Public review means Polluter Review...

[Linda Baker <PolPosse@aol.com>]

Until EPA and their State enviro agencies have a real public review of any permit, they have to know the opportunity exists, understand what the permit is for, and what kind of comments can be made that will be considered.  In addition, the information must be available for the public to access it.  For example:

I have been working on a site in Independence/Sugar Creek MO, where the regulators deliberately withold public information, to keep us from knowing what is going on.  Over two years ago I had requested to be notified by the state when the EPA NPDES permit was going to be reissued.  I understand that my name along with several other people had also been furnished to the Attorney General's office, to be notified when public comment started.  The public comment came and went, and None of the people were notified.  This site is well known and there were many opportunities for the subject to be brought up either verbally in one of the regular meetings, or through the EPA newsletter for that site.  I was forced to file a formal request to reopen the public comment period, and even when they finally did that, they screwed up on providing me with the information I needed to make comments which took time away from my review to make comments.  One of the reasons the status of the NPDES permit was important to me, was an incident occurring from our citizen investigation.  Myself, Barb Chappell, and Bill Haman began walking the creek to find oil seeps and we discovered an outfall that was spewing petroleum smelling orange liquid into the creek, not far from the Missouri River. An outfall under the NPDES designation is for storm runoof only, but there had been no storm. This is the same outfall that had numerous historical violations and currently proposed to be a major outfall for most of the east tank farm.  Although we made extensive comments on the entire permit, we have not heard anything from MDNR, or EPA.  Citizens will never feel like they can be involved if the agencies keep the information closeted away, and allow the source to break the law.