New York State environmental regs questioned

Daily Record (Rochester, NY), Aug 5, 2008 by Eric Walter

Environmental groups released a new survey Monday suggesting New York State has weaker soil cleanup standards than a number of other states when it comes to hazardous chemicals such as lead, arsenic and vinyl chloride.

The survey also found state standards to be weaker than those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The announcement was made on the heels of an agreement by state lawmakers to reform the state's Brownfield Cleanup Program, which provides tax credits to developers for rehabilitating contaminated parcels of land. Under the revisions, the state will pay for up to half of the cost for cleaning up a site but also will cap the total amount of credits developers can receive. According to the Department of Environmental Conservation's Web site, there are at least 50 brownfields in Monroe County.

"Now that they've resolved that issue, we'd like them to take a look at what they're paying for," said Laura Haight, senior environmental associate with the New York Public Interest Research Group. "We give the most generous tax credits for cleanup in the country, you'd think we'd have the highest standards [for cleanup]."

To that end, NYPIRG and other groups, including the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, the Citizens' Environmental Coalition and the Sierra Club are pushing for Gov. David A. Paterson and DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis to strengthen current regulations, Haight said.

The survey based its numbers on soil cleanup standards for EPA regions 3 and 9, which include Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Delaware, Washington D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Among other findings, it notes that arsenic is allowed to remain on land zoned for restricted residential, commercial and industrial uses at up to 16 parts per million (PPM) under state regulations. The limit is 0.39 PPM in EPA Region 9 and 1.9 PPM in Region 3.

New York is located in EPA Region 2.

The survey also found that New York has also fallen behind a number of other states when it comes to cleanup standards for brownfields. Despite leading the pack in cleanup standards through the 1980s and 1990s, New York allows 3,900 PPM of lead contamination in soils compared to standards limiting lead to 400 to 1,000 PPM in California, Connecticut, New Jersey and New Hampshire, according to the report.

New York's current regulations were set during the final weeks of the Pataki Administration. Haight said NYPIRG wants Paterson and Grannis to take a fresh look at them.

The groups are suing New York through the public interest law firm Earthjustice over alleged weak cleanup standards. Last fall, the DEC conceded one of the groups' claims, specifically that New York's standards do not adequately consider aquatic life, indoor air quality and a number of other factors when formulating those regulations. Current regulations have yet to be amended to reflect changes in those areas, Haight said.