Headlines last week bemoaned the time state Department of Environmental Protection employees spend online looking at newspapers, auctions and buy-a-bride sites.
But whatever public dollars the department loses when its employees surf the Web likely pale to the millions of dollars in unpaid clean-up costs of toxic spills the department is owed, but which it has not aggressively pursued.
The department’s cost recovery unit, charged with collecting reimbursements for DEP’s emergency clean-ups, has been lax in collecting more than $4.5 million in unpaid cleanup costs from companies and individuals responsible for toxic spills in the state.
Poisons
As a result, dozens of companies that have dumped materials including industrial byproducts and chemicals into Connecticut’s soil and water have, to this point, gotten away clean.
That’s according to documents obtained by the state auditors of public accounts, which reviewed DEP’s activities during the 2004 and 2005 fiscal years.
DEP estimates that it receives 2,000 to 3,000 reports of spills requiring cleanup each year, instances in which trucks or facilities may spill oils, industrial solvents or manufacturing byproducts — materials that can poison soil, drinking water and the air.
In the large majority of cases, polluters pay for clean-up right away. In the 100-plus instances each year in which they do not, however, DEP sends out an emergency response team to do the cleanup on the state’s dime. The department then may place a lien on polluters’ property or company to elicit reimbursement.
But the auditors found in their report that for the two years in question, DEP placed liens on only 11 of 95 eligible cases, amounting to $1.4 million of a possible $6.1 million in reimbursements as of Jan. 12 of last year.
According to documents obtained by the auditors, the cleanup costs for the 95 spills ranged from a few hundred dollars or a couple of thousand to well over a million. Hundreds of thousands of dollars more is due in penalties and interest.
The auditors, Robert G. Jaekle and Kevin P. Johnston, found that the cost recovery unit “still does not have standard written procedures for the placement of liens.”
Brownfields Reclamation
There are individuals, farms, oil companies and other businesses listed among the offenders in the 95 cases, but a heavy portion of the polluters are manufacturers.
Among them is industrial giant Scovill Manufacturing Co., which used 30 acres in Waterbury as an industrial landfill from the 1900s until 1970, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Though most of the site has been covered with housing and commercial development, the DEP removed 2,300 tons of contaminated soil and 18 capacitors in 1998. The EPA found elevated levels of chemicals, metals and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemical compounds that were used to make coolants and manufacturing fluids until the 1970s, when the EPA banned them because they cause cancer.
But according to the DEP documents, Scovill still owes the state $141,006.83, plus interest. No lien had been put into place as of last year.
Scovill’s debt is not unusual. For cleanup of the former Century Brass Mill, in New Milford, the DEP is owed more than $479,000. East Coast Auto Parts owes the state $101,538 for pollution at its facility in Bridgeport.
At least half of the cases with unpaid reimbursements are more than five years old, making collection a more difficult prospect.
“When you delay these kind of procedures, it makes it less likely to be able to collect,” Johnston said in an interview.
“We’re talking about a total of $6 million in costs to the state in the cleanup of various spills, as well as interest and penalties.”
Agency Improves
Despite the past-due payments, Johnson praised the DEP for improving its cost recovery practices both during and since the audit. DEP has been more aggressively sending past-due letters, notifying the attorney general’s office and working the Department of Administration Services in doing land record searches that enable liens to be placed.
“I think they are making efforts. They need to tighten up their procedures,” he said.
Any oil, petroleum product, chemical or other potentially dangerous waste that is dumped constitutes a spill to DEP. Dennis Schain, head spokesman for DEP Commissioner Gina McCarthy, said the department was speeding the process of sending warning letters and alerting the Attorney General’s office.
He said insurance claims and litigation can delay payments by years in some instances and reiterated the fact that almost all spills are quickly cleaned and paid for by the polluter.
“Responsible parties need to pay for the cleanup when they make the spill, and that happens in the vast majority of cases,” Schain said.
Schain also said DEP is working with the state Department of Administrative Services to address a staffing shortage that led to a delay in land record searches.
“Getting that done has been a stumbling block because of the time and effort that takes,” Schain said.
