(Host) An environmental group is calling on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to crackdown on the state for failing to enforce key provisions of the Clean Water Act.
Tim Burke is the Lake Champlain “Lakekeeper” for the Conservation Law
Foundation.
He says that documents recently released by the state Agency of Natural Resources show that two storm water programs were put on hold during the early days of the Douglas Administration.
(Burke) “The leadership of the agency directed agency staff members not to finalize these permits until a review had been held. And that was in February 2003, and we still don’t have the permits. So obviously the Douglas Administration when they first got in office, put the two permits on the shelf.”
(Host) The CLF letter to the EPA says the state has unnecessarily delayed pushing industrial plants to clean up their storm water discharges
But Environmental Conservation Commissioner Jeffrey Wennberg strongly defended his department’s performance.
He says it has accomplished more in setting up pollution control permit systems in three years than the previous administration of Governor Howard Dean accomplished in eleven.