As Connecticut businesses bristle at new regulations written by the state Department of Environmental Protection, DEP”™s commissioner stepped up a campaign to reach out to industry.
DEP Commissioner Amey Marrella addressed a gathering of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council in mid-October, as she continued to defend how DEP has balanced its regulatory duties against overburdening businesses with red tape. Earlier in the month, Gov. M. Jodi Rell assigned a permit ombudsman within the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development in an attempt to address business complaints of lengthy processes in securing permits.
At deadline, DEP had yet to release its annual report covering the 2010 fiscal year ending last June. The department undertook nearly 1,075 enforcement actions in fiscal 2009, up from about 990 actions in fiscal 2008 and 770 in each of the previous two years.
In a 190-page report released heading into October, Marrella outlined the feasibility of the agency complying with a new state law that mandates DEP make every effort to notify permit applicants of any deficiencies in their applications, within two months of their being filed; and completing technical analysis on permit applications within six months.
The agency held more than a dozen hearings and met with business groups as it readied the report.
“The outreach associated with this assessment was very useful,” DEP stated in the report. “DEP needs to continue to do more to reach out to the business community and other stakeholders.”
The law also requires DEP to pilot an expedited permitting process covering at least 200 industrial entities; and a consulting program to provide assistance to businesses.
DEP lost significant numbers of experienced staff through Connecticut”™s early retirement programs implemented in 2003 and 2009; a scenario exacerbated by regular attrition, hiring freezes, and the time needed to train new staff. At the time of the October report, DEP said it was short-staffed by about 65 people, including a handful of needed legal and information technology staff.
Meanwhile, the report added, the agency must continually direct staff resources to updating Connecticut policies to mesh with federal ones that are constantly evolving.
The department said it can undertake several improvements without any additional statutory or regulatory changes, including:
Ӣ expand pre-application meetings with applicants;
Ӣ prioritize applications for projects having significant positive economic impact;
Ӣ provide clear direction when requesting additional application information; and
Ӣ develop simpler processes for permit renewals where no changes are needed.
“While they do have a lot of ideas, in order to achieve the goals the legislation set out for them, they are going to have to hire significant new staff and have significant new funding,” said Eric Brown, associate counsel with the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. “I think everyone inside and outside the department understands that is not going to happen any time soon.”
Given the funding and staffing shortage, Brown said DEP can nevertheless ease its burden by not working up regulations that are onerous to implement for every new directive from EPA and the Connecticut General Assembly, swamping its existing workers with paperwork. An example, he added, are new rules that force small business owners to file paperwork for spills that occur on their premises.
DEP has stated the measure will not have an adverse impact on small businesses, saying the proposed rules merely clarify what small businesses must already report under state law; and help DEP better manage its stretched resources by responding to spills that pose a serious threat.
The new rules would exempt companies that experience regular spills in the course of their normal operations, provided those spills do not pose a health risk. Such an exemption had been sought by Norwalk-based King Industries Inc., one of several businesses and groups to weigh in on the draft proposal first released in 2008, along with Northeast Utilities and CBIA.
“It”™s essentially codifying the department”™s view that everything needs to be reported, and then the department will decide what needs to be addressed,” Brown said. “That might be theoretically nice if the department was sufficiently staffed, ”¦ but you have to eventually stop chasing molecules.
“If the goal is zero risk,” he added, “you get to a certain point of diminishing returns.”
