To the Editor:
While a Hartford Business Journal editorial (“The Great Recession Reveals Our Enemy, Oct. 18) claimed the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) ‘just doesn’t get it,’ quite the opposite is true.
In 2008, DEP launched a LEAN initiative to achieve improvements in the way we do business. The work of the 23 staff-led LEAN teams formed to date — and more are planned — has resulted in significant reductions in the time it takes to make decisions on permit applications.
This month DEP submitted a Permitting Assessment Report to the governor and General Assembly as required by legislation in the 2010 session. In that law, we were specifically directed to identify the additional staffing and resources, as well as process improvements and programmatic changes, necessary to consistently meet specific time frames for permitting decisions.
Our comprehensive report analyzed several years of data for 25 permit programs and demonstrated the positive impact of LEAN, general permits, and other initiatives to reduce permitting timeframes. We achieved these improvements despite a 10 percent decline in our staff over the past several years and despite increased responsibilities we have been given by both federal and state lawmakers. We have indeed ‘done more with less.’
Our report recommends more than 40 process improvements — changes we will make that do not require statutory or regulatory adjustments. And our report recommends more than 20 programmatic changes — which require regulatory and statutory actions — including many new general permits or general permit revisions.
We ‘get’ that we are living in difficult economic times, and that our state faces a major budget crisis. It is also true that improving processes takes time, effort, and continuing commitment — especially in areas involving complex laws, science, and engineering.
That is why I stated in a letter at the very front of our report that DEP will keep moving forward to make improvements and to implement recommendations from the report no matter what decisions are made regarding additional resources for the agency. We hope that the business community will work with us to help prioritize the many process improvements and programmatic changes recommended in the report.
Amey Marrella Commissioner, Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection
OSHA Story Rings True For Contractor
To the Editor:
I was intrigued by your article on OSHA. Being a contractor and having been cited by OSHA a couple of times, I would like to add some of my experience and observations.
If an OSHA inspector was to visit your job site, you expect to be fined. They will always find something, whether a major item like inadequate fall protection, which should be of a major concern, to some small obscure rule you never knew of until OSHA makes you aware of it.
There are numerous occasions I have observed numerous trades not showing up on a job site if they knew an OSHA inspection was imminent. Employees know that an OSHA inspector will always find something no matter how well the employee has been trained by his employer on safety and no matter how well the job is stocked with the latest and greatest safety equipment.
An OSHA inspector does not or will not take into account mistakes made on the job by the employee. You can spend thousands of dollars training your work forces; document training sessions and hold numerous state certificates. If your employees disregard any of this, the employer is cited, not the employee. It is time for people to be responsible for their own actions. Like they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
Do I agree that safety is a good thing? Of course, I do. Do I think OSHA has made work sites safer over the last 20 years? Of course I do. Is it time for OSHA to find a happy medium between safety and excessive regulations and fines? Of course, I do.
It would appear that OSHA, like most governmental entities, wants to control more and more of our everyday life. Every year Connecticut becomes more of a Nanny State. Let’s take back our freedom.
(NAME WITHHELD BY REQUEST)
East Hartford
