EPA actions increase by 67 percent
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took enforcement actions against 25 Hawai'i firms and government agencies this year, a 67 percent increase over the 15 in 2002.
EPA Western Region administrator Wayne Nastri said that while the EPA tries to get polluters to comply with regulations rather than launching enforcement actions, sometimes violations require punishment.
"Our goal is compliance, and enforcement is a tool to achieve compliance. But we use enforcement as a tool of last resort," he said. "We are the environmental officer on the beat."
Nastri said that the EPA's ally in environmental enforcement is the state Department of Health.
One of the major areas of concern for the agency is the protection of shoreline waters from polluted runoff, and notably from sediment washed down from construction sites.
"We're doing a lot of work on water issues," he said.
Among the water-related enforcements during the past year has been citing the state Department of Transportation for runoff from a construction site in Lihu'e, compliance orders involving the City and County of Honolulu for various sewage discharge-related issues, and a citation against James Pflueger and Pflueger Properties for illegal discharges from a grading operations near Kaloko Reservoir on Kaua'i.
Nastri said the EPA's enforcement efforts have made biotechnology firms more careful in how they grow bioengineered crops in the Islands. The agency last December fined Pioneer Hi-Bred International and Dow AgroSciences nearly $20,000 for EPA permit violations, and in April fined Pioneer Hi-Bred International $72,000 for failing to promptly alert the EPA that it had found experimental genes in seeds from plants grown near a test site.
In other enforcement actions, the agency cited a Chinatown grocery for selling unregistered mothballs, fined firms on two islands for asbestos removal violations, cited the Postal Service for underground fuel tank violations, and fined a company $60,000 for improperly storing used oil.
Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808)245-3074.
