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Delaware Online: Delaware pollution law could get teeth

Attorney General Beau Biden and key lawmakers announced a push Tuesday to toughen a never-used law that allows higher penalties for chronic polluters and environmental scofflaws.

Legislation due to be introduced next week would make it easier to brand repeat environmental lawbreakers as “chronic violators.” It also would give the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control expanded power to subpoena records while investigating management and operation of those firms.

“Good companies don’t pollute the environment and they follow the law,” Biden said during a briefing outside the former Metachem Products chemical plant, a Superfund cleanup site abandoned to taxpayers in 2002 after decades of documented violations, mismanagement and unsafe operation. “But the reality is, too often, polluting our environment is seen as a cost of doing business for some companies.”

Biden was flanked by DNREC Secretary Collin P. O’Mara as well as Sen. David A. McBride, D-Hawks Nest, and Rep. Michael Mulrooney, D-New Castle, who chair environmental committees in the House and Senate.

McBride sponsored a bill approved in 2001 that allows fines of up to $10,000 per day for companies that repeatedly violate environmental laws. The measure resulted from a legislative probe of state failures to notify the public about pollution releases.

DNREC adopted regulations to put the law into force a few years later, but has never branded any company as a chronic wrongdoer, despite listing some as candidates.

O’Mara said prosecution under the current law would be difficult.

“We don’t believe we would be on a strong footing,” O’Mara said.

McBride said that he hoped the changes would help Delaware take a more aggressive approach against repeat offenders.

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