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Sunday, January 09, 2005
Indiana Law/Environment - Lawmakers to address environment
"Lawmakers to address environment" is the headline to an informative AP story by Rick Callahan, that appears in the Louisville Courier Journal. Some quotes:
INDIANAPOLIS — With a new governor and a new direction for Indiana's environmental agency on the horizon, lawmakers are preparing to revisit three long-running environmental issues: permits, sewer overflows [CSOs] and underground storage tanks [USTs].None of the bills mentioned appear to been introduced and assigned to committee as of today.[Permits] Gov.-elect Mitch Daniels, who will take office tomorrow, wants Indiana to follow the lead of states such as Kentucky that allow the advance issuing of permits for industrial sites to make them "shovel-ready" for developers.
Daniels said Indiana's current permit system is complicated and slow and discourages development by costing businesses time and money.
"For a lot of businesses, the question is `Can I go into business in Kentucky in six months or in Indiana in 12 months?' All else being equal, they're going to pick Kentucky," he said.
[USTs] Rep. David Wolkins, who will sponsor the pre-permitting legislation, is also drafting a bill that would retool financing for a state fund that helps pay for the cleanup of leaking underground gasoline tanks.
The Excess Liability Trust Fund, created by lawmakers in 1988, once topped $70million. It has been depleted by payouts for the cleanups of more than 400 old tanks.
As of Dec. 22, the fund had a $12.7million balance, but that is projected to fall to $5million within a few months. At that point, money will be released only for the highest-priority cleanups, said Bruce Palin, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's deputy assistant commissioner for the Office of Land Quality.
Wolkins' bill could call for fee increases in one or both of the fund's two sources of money — a 40-cent tax on each 50 gallons of gasoline or kerosene entering the state and a $90 annual registration fee for each underground tank. * * *
[CSOs] Sen. Beverly Gard, chairwoman of the Senate Environmental Affairs Committee, is drafting a bill that would give cities and towns with overflow-prone sewers more time to upgrade their outdated systems.
A law passed in 2000 gives communities with IDEM-approved cleanup plans temporary exemptions from water-quality standards to discharge sewage during and after storms. But Gard, R-Greenfield, said the law did not provide them enough flexibility to make costly improvements in sewers that discharge raw sewage into waterways during rainy periods.
"We knew when we passed this initial legislation about four years ago that there was eventually going to have to be some fine-tuning," she said. * * *
Bonnie Nash, spokeswoman for state environmental regulators, said 82 of Indiana's 102 cities with combined sewer systems — those in which storm drains and sanitary sewers empty into the same lines — have submitted state-required plans that call for fixes that will take anywhere from a few years to two decades.
[Lead] Gard also is drafting legislation to improve the state's ability to track childhood lead-poisoning cases. Children who ingest lead-based paint can suffer intelligence-lowering brain damage, behavioral problems, slowed growth and hearing loss.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 9, 2005 09:57 AM
Posted to Environmental Issues | Indiana Law