Attacks More Rhetoric Than Reality Ecology Department Citations, Penalties Both On The Decline
Politicians often summon the image of the meddlesome bureaucrat from the state Department of Ecology when they argue that Washington businesses are victims of heavy-handed regulators.
“People are sick and tired of the department out there harassing hardworking citizens,” House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, said recently in what has become a standard charge against the agency that enforces state environmental law.
But an analysis of six years’ worth of pollution-enforcement records suggests the allegation is more rhetoric than reality.
An Associated Press review of hundreds of enforcement actions from the start of 1990 through the end of 1995 found that both the number of polluters cited and the penalties imposed have dropped significantly.
About 22 percent fewer penalties were assessed in the second half of the six-year period - and the dollar total dropped 67 percent, from $5.95 million over the first three years to $1.96 million.
The downward trend is clear. Harder to measure is the reason for it and its effect on environmental protection.
Ecology officials and the businesses they regulate say the decline is largely the result of a shift from “command-and-control” regulation to an approach in which the state and polluters work together to reduce problems. Rather than fines, the state offers technical assistance to help companies and individuals fix pollution-causing problems in what are called “innovative settlements.”
The shift was hastened last year with legislative passage of a measure requiring inspectors, in some cases, to warn companies before issuing fines.
“We’re after behavior modification,” says Ecology Director Mary Riveland. “If we can give a company technical assistance and get an order out telling them they now have to stop what they’re doing to clean up their act, we think that is more effective.”
Environmentalists see the decline in penalties as an ominous sign that safeguards are being eroded. They contend anti-regulatory fervor at the Legislature, translated into budget cuts and deregulation, has hamstrung and intimidated the department.
Ecology’s budget was cut by about 10 percent and its workforce by about 15 percent during the period studied, records show.
“They are becoming more lenient because they’re under tremendous pressure from the Legislature, through the budget process, to go easy on polluters,” says Kathy Fletcher, a former state environmental official now director of the environmental group People for Puget Sound.
Riveland acknowledges that deep budget cuts by an often hostile Legislature have weakened the department’s ability to fight pollution, especially water pollution.
“But that isn’t the whole story by any means,” she says. “If anything is true about environmental regulation today, it is that one size does not fit all, and we have to get more sophisticated about how we enforce regulations.”
The decline in fines collected is largely due to Ecology’s decision to work with polluters rather than “hitting them over the head,” said Greg Sorlie, enforcement project manager for the agency.
“Basically, about three years ago we made a conscious shift toward visiting facilities and walking them through ways” to stop polluting, Sorlie said. The shift was given a boost by the mid-1995 law requiring advance notice before polluters are penalized, except in severe cases.
“Our emphasis in the last several years has been more and more in providing technical assistance, in teaching rather than ordering,” said Riveland’s top deputy, Terry Husseman.
Frank Mendizabal, a spokesman for Weyerhaeuser Co., said the pulp and paper giant has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years reducing pulp-mill emissions into land, air and water.
Weyerhaeuser, one of the more heavily fined companies over the six-year period, “is nevertheless getting better,” Mendizabal said.
But environmental activists say Ecology regulators are too quick to back off on penalties.
“It’s just common sense. If the agency in charge does not provide an enforcement club, then your signal is that the laws can be broken with impunity,” says David Ortman, director of the state chapter of Friends of the Earth based in Seattle.
He and other environmentalists point to a recent Ecology report that says the quality of the state’s surface and ground water is declining due to the growing population and other pressures.
xxxx FINDINGS Here are major findings of an analysis of six years’ worth of pollution-law enforcement records from the state Department of Ecology. The records cover a period from Jan. 1, 1990, through Dec. 31, 1995. The department has greatly reduced the number of monetary penalties and the total amount of fines assessed polluters. In the first three years of the period, there were 428 penalties totalling $5.95 million. In the second three-year period, there were 333 penalties totalling $1.96 million - a 22 percent drop in penalties. The sector assessed the largest chunk of pollution fines during the period was the pulp and paper industry, followed by maritime shippers and aluminum-makers. The pulp industry, including paper giants Weyerhaeuser and Georgia Pacific, was assessed $1.55 million and to date paid $799,000 after winning reductions through appeals. Maritime shippers were assessed $1.3 million in fines, mostly against one shipper, and about $300,000 has been paid. Aluminum companies were assessed $644,800 in finds and have paid $328,300 after appeals. After various administrative and court appeals, businesses and individuals to date have paid about 46 percent of the assessed penalties. Many of the appeals are still in the courts, though Ecology sometimes reduces fines after the companies agree to clean up problems. Associated Press