U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) has introduced legislation to improve Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) public notification procedures for hazardous waste sites.
Smith’s legislation comes in response to a scathing report from the General Accountability Office (GAO)—the investigative arm of Congress—which admonished the agency for their failures to adequately notify the public of the health risks associated with the over 250 sites across the country that received asbestos contaminated vermiculite ore from a mine in Libby, MT owned by W.R. Grace & Co.
In its report—compiled after two years of investigation including interviews with Hamilton residents—GAO found that in some instances the EPA regional offices did not implement key provision of the agency’s own regulatory public notification process and in cases where they did, those procedures often proved insufficient to meet communities’ needs. For instance, while the EPA did publish a notification about the Hamilton site in a local newspaper, the notification was small, did not identify asbestos as the contaminant, did not give the address of the site, and did not provide the dates of the public-comment period. Residents complained that this notice appeared in the classified section of the newspaper among many other classified advertisements making it hard to find.
"To help address the sporadic and inadequate notification procedures, I have introduced HR 4196, The National Public Notification of Environmental Hazards Act of 2007. My bill takes some of the best notification practices found across the country and codifies them in the law to ensure that all citizens are given equal access to critical information about the health risks at nearby contaminated sites,” said Smith, who had requested the GAO investigation.
Under HR 4196, the EPA will be required to conduct a door-to-door information notification campaign for every resident and business located within ½ mile radius of the response site leaving printed materials about the response action at the site and how to receive additional information. The EPA would also be required to mail materials about the removal action at the site to each resident and business within the same ½ mile radius.
Newspaper notification will also be mandated, and those notices will have to be prominent and include information about the location of the site, the hazardous substance, the location of a local public repository to review additional information, the dates of a public comment period, and the name and contact information for the proper agency officials. HR 4196 also requires prominent newspaper notification of at least one public meeting and others as necessary. The bill also requires the establishment of a public information office for each site, an agency designated spokesperson, coordinated news releases about the site, easy public assess for data repository, updated web sites and establishment of a toll-free telephone information number.
“We have seen in Hamilton and several other examples across the country that when it is left up to the EPA, time and time again the agency has failed to properly notify the public. In fact, in some cases, the EPA did not even meet its own bare-minimum requirements for notification. That is unfair and wrong,” Smith said.
“My legislation will ensure that the agency we entrust with environmental protection does its job and notifies the public of danger as aggressively and thoroughly as possible,” Smith said.
