IDEM Goes Away

A short note. I get most of my news these days through my Google Reader - everything important has a feed or its not really important . . .

When this headline came across, I swear I though it was from my Onion feed, but I was wrong:

IDEM dissolves Office of Enforcement (IBJ)

From the Associated Press piece:

Indiana’s efforts to redefine serious environmental violations are drawing fire from critics, who say the state is endangering people’s health by requiring that a violator cause actual harm or threaten the environment before facing penalties. The new definition, which has yet to take effect, comes as the state Department of Environmental Management is dissolving its Office of Enforcement and moving those employees into different departments.

Managers will also be involved in the decision making process on enforcement:

The revised policy also gives managers more discretion over when companies will face prosecution and penalties and says top managers, including the commissioner, can authorize compliance staff to deviate from the policy on a case-by-case basis.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.