Epa Concerned About Citation Decline Batt’s Approach To Regulating Industry Garners Mixed Review

Federal environmental regulators are raising some concerns about the decline in the number of notices of environmental violations being issued by the state since Gov. Phil Batt took office 2-1/2 years ago.

Environmental Protection Agency state Director Lynn McKee said it was too early to tell whether Batt’s approach is working.

But EPA officials who oversee state regulators gave high marks to the Division of Environmental Quality for its hazardous waste program. A review released this week said inspections are well-documented and the staff is knowledgeable.

But they called for more study of why reported violations were so low in 1996.

A month ago, Coeur d’Alene attorney Scott Reed, a self-described environmentalist and high-profile Democrat, announced that his analysis of over 2,200 pages of state records showed dramatic differences in the number of enforcement actions taken during the last two years of Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus’ administration and the first two of Batt’s.

According to Reed’s research, the division slapped only 13 citations on businesses compared to 57 in the 24 months before Batt took office, and the agency demanded only nine businesses enter legally binding agreements to stop polluting in 1995 and 1996 compared with 59 the previous two years.

Environmental critics of the governor claim the figures simply show polluters are getting away with more.

But the governor and his environmental regulators counter that the statistics reflect his campaign promises to work with business to maintain Idaho’s environmental quality by changing operations and improving them rather than simply punishing violations.

“In the past, we were black-and-white - you got a violation if you didn’t label a drum of hazardous waste or didn’t send in a quarterly report on time,” division compliance assurance chief David Pisarski said. But now “we’re not going to enforce in the traditional manner on minor violations.”

Pisarski also said that after 25 years of regulation, Idaho industry knows more about the environment and it complies more readily with protective standards.