BY DAVID ROYSE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Penalties will be increased
for major environmental violations in an attempt to stop companies from
thinking of low fines as simply a cost of doing business, the state's
top environmental official said Wednesday.
Department of
Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Sole said the stiffer
penalties will be handed down by the agency for the most serious
violations, likely being applied in about 10 percent of enforcement
actions taken by the agency.
For example, the minimum penalty
for improper storage, treatment or disposal of hazardous waste will go
from $100 to $500 and the maximum will increase from $25,000 per day to
$32,500 per day under the new guidelines. In a few cases, fines for
such hazardous waste violations could go as high as $50,000 a day under
the new rules, Sole said.
Additionally, Sole said the agency
would start actually collecting true per day fines in more cases. In
the past, a per day fine has often been levied on the first day of a
violation, but much smaller penalties have been assessed on subsequent
days until the violation stops, Sole said.
"The changes to DEP's
guidelines provide a stronger deterrent for the most egregious
violations, ultimately reducing the number of significant infractions
that occur," Sole said in a statement released by the agency. "I want
to change the idea that penalties are 'a cost of doing business,' by
emphasizing the agency's tough stance against violators."
Another
key difference in the way penalties will be handled involves whether a
company's violation of environmental rules results in an economic
benefit, Sole said. That can already be factored in when calculating a
penalty, but rarely is.
From now on, such economic benefits will
result in higher penalties, Sole said. For example, if starting work
before completing a permit results in speeding up the opening of a new
development, saving a developer $10,000, the ultimate penalty would
likely go up by $10,000 to erase that savings, the agency said in its
new guidelines.
Environmental activists have complained for several years that DEP's approach to enforcing pollution rules has been too lax.
"Businesses
have long known that if they do pay a penalty it's going to be
minimal," said Mark Ferrulo, director of the advocacy group Environment
Florida. "It often pays to pollute in Florida, where it's actually
cheaper to pay the fines than to invest the money in cleaning up the
source of pollution."
Ferrulo said that new Gov. Charlie Crist
had a strong record on the environment and on enforcing environmental
laws when he was attorney general, and that he thought the current move
toward tougher enforcement at DEP was partly a reflection of that.
"Environmental
enforcement has always had a carrot but it's never had a stick, and I
think it's great news that DEP is now going to carry a bigger stick,"
Ferrulo said. "Because we're talking about direct impacts on public
health that many of these violations have."
Besides hazardous
waste cases, new higher penalties will also be in effect in cases where
violations are intentional or cases where companies are repeat
violators, cases that cause what the agency considers significant harm
to the environment, and violations that go on for a long time.
