When Big Brother oversight is a good thing: EPA uses Web to catch pollution fugitives

I'm usually not at all a fan in the least of the government encouraging citizens and businesses to narc out on one another, or using the Web to post notices and names of Alleged Bad Ones. My opposition is a complicated thing and usually revolves around the sense that it is too much a "catching dolphins in the fishing net" and "conflict of interest" issues that prevent it from being as fine a thing as perhaps it sets out to be. Not to mention, a list of charges is not necessarily a true conviction, nor do we know where the case stands, plus we average joe citizens rarely are given enough information or education to truly understand the charges and what it means.

However, I am intrigued and tentatively supportive of the new EPA's offender database on the Web.

The purpose of this site is to "to enlist the public and other law enforcement agencies in tracking down fugitives accused of violating environmental laws and evading arrest" in order to bring them to justice, according to Waste News. Some may wonder about calling "polluters" fugitives and offenders alongside murderers, but if you consider the cost of environmental pollution on human life and health, you may as well consider these folks serial assaulters and murderers.

Does that sound melodramatic? Well consider a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that stated, ". . .fine-particulate air pollution, or a more complex pollution mixture associated with fine particulate matter, contributes to excess mortality in certain U.S. cities."

That's just a start.

Polluters are hazardous to your life, health and safety. They should be charged as criminals and brought to justice. That the EPA is taking this step seems like a positive step towards actually prosecuting and punishing polluters for their crimes against not just nature, but humanity---after all, "save the planet" is really about saving the inhabitants of the planet, which includes you.

I'd like to see more executives of big EPA offender companies---you know, CEOs of superfund sites, and the like---on the list, but offenders such as these are a good start:

Raul Chavez-Beltran

• Wanted Poster (PDF) (1 pg, 64K About PDF)
• Chavez-Beltran was charged in the Western District of Texas - El Paso Division.
• Alleged violations include:
  • Illegal transportation, storage and disposal of mercury contaminated soil
  • Conspiracy
  • Mail Fraud
• Chavez-Beltran is the President of EnCon Environmental Services, Inc.
• Chavez-Beltran has been a fugitive living and working in Mexico.
• If sighted, contact the Criminal Investigation Division office in Dallas, Texas at: 1-214-665-6600 or submit the Report a Fugitive's Location web form.

Unfortunately, Walter D. James III, an environmental attorney based in Grapevine, Texas, told the El Paso Times, ". . .the EPA is critically understaffed to investigate environmental crimes. While the budget for the division has increased by $11 million since 2000, there are only 135 criminal investigators, far fewer than the 200 Congress authorized in 1990."

Hopefully the new administration can staff the division adequately to handle these crimes and fugitives.

Thanks to Waste News, one of my favorite (and the best) source for environmental news for the heads-up about this story.

Comments

[cynematic]

The state of California used to have a tollfree hotline to report car license plates on cars with obvious emissions problems. I suppose it got dropped for lack of funding and the possibility of mischievous misuse, but I have to say, I'm *mightily tempted* to report Humvee drivers as "EPA fugitives" too.

:o