On March 16th both Houses of the State Legislature passed the Licensed Site Professionals bill without very very few no votes. The bill will be on the Governor’s desk and it is expected that he will sign it with all haste.
With the LSP Bill, the DEP will have to undertake several things to implement the bill. They will have to implement a temporary licensing program for LSPs; remediation time frames, presumptive remedies, and support the LSP board once it the members are appointed among other activities. Additionally as the LSP does not automatically apply to current sites, the DEP will have to continue to oversee remediations for active sites. Once sites come in under the LSP program, DEP has to review all of the 1000s of documents that are generated from cleanups.
At the same time as the site remediation program’s responsibilities will increase in the short run, its budget will decrease. The Governor’s proposed budget reduces funding to site remediation by 4 million.
Environmentalist already had concern over the many loopholes in the bill and the lack oversight with a fully funded DEP; those concerns are magnified as the site remediation program is underfunded. Remember 50% of the RAO reviewed by Mass DEP required more work or were invalidated. How soon before something slips through the cracks here in NJ.
“Remember 50% of the RAO reviewed by Mass DEP required more work or were invalidated.”
That statement is simply not true. Very very few of the thousands of RAOs that have been submitted have ever been invalidated and of those that the MADEP deemed needed more work, after the work was done < 4% resulted in any change RAO Opinion, i.e. an RAO is submitted with three rounds of supporting groundwater that the LSP concludes is representative of site conditions. A DEP staffer thinks another round is necessary for unknown reasons (they don’t need to detail their rationale like a LSP does) and requires another round at the cost of several thousand dollars. The LSP completes another round of groundwater sampling and anlysis and nothing has changed.
Thank you for your comments. Unfortunately, the 50% comes directly from MASS DEP. A copy of their document can be found at http://www.epa.gov/superfund/policy/ic/pdfs/potter.pdf at page 28. I would be interested in your take on the 2007 Level 3 audits. It looks like almost 75% of the sites under a Level 3 audit failed in 2007. Does this means the program is working is not working?
Thank you again for you comments and I would enjoy more information the Mass program as NJ is going to go down the similar road.
Hello gentlement. As some of you already know, I’m a former MassDEP Auditor and know much about the inforamtion presented in the presentation. I would just advise that you not missinterpret the numbers on that one powerpoint slide without having heard the presenter’s explaination of it or the facts behind the number. The powerpoint is meant to include a verbal description of the detail behind the number. Also, there is a significant difference between L1 and L3 Audits. Please understand that L1 Audits are not comprehensive and are only meant to identify potential issues (and not all associated with lingering risk). A L3 Audit is required to assess that which was identified as a possible problem in a L1. As Bill eludes to, the results of the L3 Audits are much different than the interpretation Mike has developed using this number. I’m not speaking to what NJ does either way and it is not my business to do so. I’m just pointing out that Mike might want to be careful about his interpretation of that particular data. There is alot that went into that number that is not associated with actual Risk to Human Health or Environment or even actual L3 confirmation of Risk violations. Plainly stated, it should not be interpreted to mean that 50% of the closed sites would have failed closure or present lingering risk. That is in no way accurate or indicative of the data that went into the number. Mike, additional information can be found here: http://www.lspa.org/download/whitepapers/Internreport-FINAL052504.pdf.