State officials weak on enforcing clean water laws

Here are some excerpts:

These thousands of violations were discovered by citizen groups, which were forced to initiate legal proceedings to secure some level of enforcement. Citizens as enforcers is a concept that Congress embraced when it passed the Clean Water Act. The act also requires states to safeguard public participation and citizen intervention in enforcing the law.

If this action "created further chaos," as Peters said, within the cabinet, then that is exactly what it needed to do.

Perhaps the citizen groups' proceedings were embarrassing to the cabinet, and that is why it initiated its own enforcement action. But the cabinet's proposed settlement with the companies is barely a slap on the wrist given the number and seriousness of the violations. The cabinet proposes to assess less than 1 percent of the allowable penalties.

That is why the groups that initiated the action have sought to intervene in this case. Yet our interest in seeing the law enforced and the public protected is opposed by the cabinet. Why would the beleaguered cabinet turn away (or obstruct) the assistance of the same citizens it is charged to protect?

Read the entire op-ed here.