THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 26, 1995 TAG: 9505260005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Virginia's mockingly called Polluters Relief Act takes effect July 1. That's the law that will forgive any business that pollutes, so long as the business discovers and confesses its pollution.
Environmentalists hate the new law - the most lenient in the nation - and the recent spectacular fire at Norfolk's Fine Petroleum Co., a company with a tawdry environmental record, gives them no cause for optimism that it will work.
The new law assumes the best about businesses. At least in theory, they will do a better job of policing against pollution if they are not penalized whenever they discover they have polluted.
Businesses are not obligated to report any pollution they discover, not even to judges, unless there's a ``clear, imminent and substantial danger to public health or the environment.'' But if businesses confess before they're caught, they're forgiven.
As an earlier editorial on the Polluters Relief Act noted, businesses are people in suits. Most are trustworthy. Some aren't. With the environment at stake, trust should have limits.
As proposed by Gov. George Allen and the Virginia Manufacturers Association, the law granted immunity even from criminal pollution charges, if the business confessed.
The legislature removed the criminal-immunity provision. Still, had the new law been in effect when the Fine Petroleum Co. warehouse burned last week, said Roy A. Hoagland, staff attorney and Virginia assistant director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the civil or criminal environmental enforcement process could have been much more difficult. The reason, he said, is that if the chemical company had conducted its own environmental audits, it could have claimed under the new law that the findings were privileged, meaning the state could not see them.
The EPA is trying to recover from Fine the $1.5 million it spent on a 1993 cleanup at the warehouse of thousands of gallons of solvents, paints, formaldehyde, other flammable liquids and toxic chemicals, records show. Criminal prosecution of Fine was dropped after a federal judge told the agency to focus on either the criminal allegations or the money. Before the criminal investigation was dropped, Fine had signed an agreement to plead guilty to two criminal counts of disposing of hazardous chemicals without a permit.
Among other environmental violations listed in a story by staff writer Scott Harper: In May 1992, Milton Fine was seen throwing several small containers of hazardous waste into a trash bin in a public-housing neighborhood.
Doug Fox, the EPA's on-scene cleanup coordinator at the warehouse in 1993, said of Milton Fine, ``He's used to doing business without any rules, without any government regulations. He's still operating like it's the '50s or '60s. Well, this is the '90s . . . and we can't continue to allow this.''
Virginia's protection of its environment will take a step backwards July 1, and the Fine case demonstrates that trust can be misplaced. by CNB