DEC blasted for lax review of pollution permits
-
- April
- 28
The state Department of Environmental Conservation has been “rubber-stamping’’ water-pollution permits without substantive review, violating federal laws, an environmental group charged Monday.
The lax oversight means “we can’t say what’s in our waters. And neither can the DEC,’’ said Katherine Nadeau of Environmental Advocates of New York.
DEC spokesman Yancey Roy said the agency has significantly beefed up the program since a new administration took over in January 2007. He said six new monitors were hired, bringing the total to 17.5, and that 11 percent of permits were reviewed in the year that ended on March 31, compared to less than 2 percent two years earlier.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
