Maryland does not have enough inspectors enforcing its environmental laws, and the shortage has become more severe over the past five years, state officials say, raising worries that the state's new "green" policies will be undercut by insufficient policing. The state Department of the Environment, which checks factories, power plants and construction sites for violations of pollution rules, has 132 inspectors to cover 205,000 sites. That's a ratio of one to more than 1,500, significantly worse than the 1-to-1,090 ratio the state had in 2003. Now, state officials are proposing to use these same inspectors to carry out a new environmental crackdown, targeting manure-laden runoff from Maryland's 200 largest chicken farms.
Environmental activists and the state attorney general say they are worried that Maryland is trying to do too much with too little and weakening the threat of enforcement that keeps polluters honest.
"You can have all the laws on the books that you want, but if you don't have the people to enforce the laws . . . you're getting nowhere," said Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D). He called the Department of the Environment's force of inspectors "not even close to adequate."
Environmentalists say it is difficult to determine what the state's shortfall of inspectors has meant for the environment, because no one knows how much has been missed. At last count, state figures show the Department of the Environment reached about 23 percent of the sites -- though not all of them are required to be inspected annually.
Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092202962.html
