THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 9, 1995 TAG: 9501090068
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: ROANOKE LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
The success of the Department of Environmental Quality's plan to become more user-friendly for businesses may come at the expense of Virginia's natural resources, environmentalists charge.
And the streamlining of the agency, which began under then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, will only have wider effects if Gov. George Allen's staff- and money-slashing budget proposals go forward, the environmentalists said.
``Are we going to wait until we have another kepone, Kim-Stan or Avtex?'' Patti Jackson, executive director for the James River Association, asked. ``I don't think we want any more of those.''
Allied Chemical's dumping of the pesticide kepone in the James River in the 1970s was one of the state's worst environmental disasters. The leaking Kim-Stan landfill in Alleghany County also ranks among the worst stains on Virginia's environmental record, as does Avtex Fibers Inc.'s dumping of PCBs in the Shenandoah River.
Jackson and others say Secretary of Natural Resources Becky Norton Dunlop and Department of Environmental Quality Director Peter Schmidt - both appointed by Allen - have steered the agency off course.
Schmidt declined to comment, but Dunlop defended the department in a phone interview Sunday.
``We made a commitment to do what had been committed to originally, and that was to streamline and make the process efficient as we move toward improving the quality and the condition of Virginia's environment,'' she said.
Dunlop said when Allen appointed her last year, she met with General Assembly members who were ``appalled'' that the 1993 merger of four agencies to create the department had not produced an efficient and cost-effective unit.
``Now that's occurring, and we think that it's for the betterment of the agencies and for natural resources policy,'' because staff members are working more closely together, she said.
Environmentalists accuse the department of lowering pollution standards, crippling the staff's ability to monitor and enforce laws, and closing the door on full public participation. While industries have a voice in agency decisions, others are not heard, critics say.
``Anybody who wants to get something changed in (a) permit will have to move a mountain,'' Jackson said. ``We are ignored, virtually ignored, in public comment time, because they know we can't ever go to court.''
In Virginia, only the applicant for a water-discharge permit can take the agency to court. For air permits, the law was recently changed to allow such judicial access, called ``standing,'' to citizens who show an immediate, substantial and pecuniary interest, said Kay Slaughter, with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville. by CNB