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« Pregnancy today: A lesson in toxics | Main | UNEP report highlights food crisis »
Pollution portrait of a state reveals over
6, 100 violations
We talk often on this blog about how the current system of protection of public health from dangerous chemicals is broken and needs major reform. I am reminded of that every time I come to work, or go to the Environmental Health News, where I often shop for blog ideas. Yesterday, EHN featured an excellent investigation by Tony Bartelme of The Post and Courier newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina. Bartelme reported that the state of South Carolina has collected about $55 million in fines since 1991 for over 6, 100 violations of state pollution laws. Imagine how much money would have come in if environmental laws were actually good?
The newspaper reported that the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control had been criticized as " a toothless watchdog that too often sides with the businesses it regulates. " It added that "state lawmakers are slowly starving the agency's budget, even as the state's population grows and the public's expectations for health and environmental standards increase. In 1999, for instance, DHEC had 5,245 employees; today it has about 4,000, the lowest since 1992. The agency now operates on a budget of about $115 million a year, about $26 million less than the agency's budget 15 years ago in inflation-adjusted dollars."
The budget cuts don't surprise me. I'm used to seeing public health being treated as priority number 99 out of the top 100. And after working at EWG for a while, I thought nothing could surprise me anymore. But my jaw did drop when I read that there were more then 6, 100 violations of weak pollution laws in less then twenty years in one state alone. It should not be like that.
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