Lawmakers grill DNREC head after IPC pollution conspiracy
Wilmington-area legislators grilled DNREC Secretary David Small on Monday over the state's role in monitoring an oil recycler that for decades falsified reports about the amount of illegal chemicals it dumped into the city's sewer system.
"For 20 years, this company has been cheating," said state Rep. J.J. Johnson, D-New Castle. "I don't understand how DNREC can put their hands up and say they didn't have anything do with this and blame the EPA or city of Wilmington."
International Petroleum Corp. pleaded guilty on Feb. 2 to conspiring to violate the U.S. Clean Water Act and transporting hazardous waste without a manifest. A federal judge ordered the company to pay a $1.3 million fine to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and $2.2 million in restitution to the city.
Two recent stories in The News Journal detailed how IPC was able to falsify its reports and how environmental regulator's reliance on self-reported data can lead to abuse.
Plant managers and operators at IPC's plant on South Market Street were able to manipulate sampling data, tamper with monitoring equipment and make false statements about wastewater discharges from the time IPC first opened its doors in 1992, according to court documents.
The company's efforts made it seem like the plant was meeting permit limits for a host of potentially dangerous chemicals, even as it pumped those substances into the city's wastewater treatment plant. As a result, an unknown quantity of prohibited chemicals likely made their way into the Delaware River, according to federal officials.
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During a DNREC budget hearing Monday, Johnson and state Sen. Harris McDowell, D-Wilmington North, took turns pushing Small for answers about whether holes in regulatory oversight allowed the conspiracy to go unchecked for so long.
"There was a gap that the facility unfortunately abused," Small confirmed. "It took advantage of the system that was in place, and the checks and balances that were there to assure that this kind of thing didn't happen."
Wilmington's Public Works Department, which was tasked with monitoring the company's wastewater discharge, routinely gave IPC advance notice before conducting on-site inspections, city officials admitted last week.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deemed the city's oversight to be effective but did not conduct routine inspections of its own to ensure Wilmington's audits were achieving their goal of verifying that the data supplied by the company was accurate.
DNREC, meanwhile, oversaw the company's air emissions and stormwater runoff, but was not involved in regulating IPC's wastewater discharge, Small told the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee.
"You're saying we've created a loophole that prevents detection," McDowell asked. "Don't you think we ought to re-examine this relationship?"
Small said he is willing to have a conversation about whether DNREC's surface water discharge section could take a more active role in overseeing companies required to "pretreat" their wastewater before it is released into municipal sewer systems.
The first step would be to determine whether the EPA can give the state that power, Small said after the hearing. Officials with the EPA on Monday did not immediately respond to phone messages and emails seeking an answer to that question.
The other question is whether DNREC's surface water discharge section has the capacity to do that oversight work.
"We have a significant backlog of permitting already," Small said. "To add additional resources would require funding and a regulatory framework we don't have in place currently."
Small also likely will not be around to put such a program in place. The DNREC secretary since 2014 is currently serving on an interim basis until his successor is confirmed by the state Senate.
Republicans effectively blocked Gov. John Carney's pick, former EPA regional administrator Shawn Garvin, in January. His confirmation is now in limbo until after a Feb. 25 special election to fill Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long's Middletown area Senate seat, a vote that also will determine which political party wins control of the state Senate.
Funding an expansion of DNREC's powers could prove to be a tall order for Small's successor. Lawmakers are already hoping to close an estimated $350 million budget gap.
McDowell, who co-chairs the Joint Finance Committee, said strengthening state environmental enforcement to avoid another IPC-type incident is worth funding. He noted some line items in DNREC's budget are "very healthy" while several fees paid by industrial users that support enforcement programs have not been increased since 1992.
"For something like this that's important to the health of the people, that's a high priority," he said.
Contact business reporter Scott Goss at (302) 324-2281, sgoss@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @ScottGossDel.