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US EPA Region IV UIC Enforcement Public Notices

This page is no longer maintained because US EPA Region IV finally got around to putting UIC enforcement public notices on their website.  Please see Public Notice of Facility Enforcement Actions on the Region IV website for listings of proposed and final enforcement actions relating to the Region IV UIC Program (and other Region IV water programs).  Read on for the history of this page (if you care).

US EPA Region IV long ago discontinued its public notice mailing list for Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) underground injection control (UIC) enforcement actions (issuance of UIC administrative orders).  They also discontinued the placement of public notices in local newspapers.  The reasoning was that a mistake had been made and the law really did not require a public notice mailing list for UIC enforcement actions (one is required for UIC permitting actions), and the law also did not say where the newspaper notices had to be run.  Syd H. Levine & Associates protested this policy change in a complaint letter of November 9, 1998, but to no avail.  Pursuant to a July, 2000 FOIA request (actually a September, 2000 supplemental request), EPA asserted, "Currently, copies of newspaper notices are sent only to Syd Levine.  No other forms of such notification are sent to anyone else."  Despite the foregoing misleading statement, no notice of any kind had been received for two years (the first such notice arrived weeks later).  But what about the other 100 plus recipients on the old mailing list, a list that included government agencies, news media, environmental groups, industry associations, as well as individuals and companies?

This new policy implemented by Region IV made a mockery of public participation since the public simply had no practical way to learn of Region IV's "star chamber" UIC enforcement proceedings.  Accordingly, AnaLog Services, Inc. published the UIC enforcement public notices on this page for a period of time (after all, we were the only ones receiving said public notices by mail).  We repeatedly requested that Region IV post UIC public notices on their website in a timely and complete manner, and in fact this was done half-heartedly for a short time, then discontinued for years.

Out of an abundance of caution (and fear), we asked US EPA Region IV if there were any legal problems with publishing this material on the web.  After a Region IV attorney first said the material was public record and we could publish same without problems, we received a peculiar email dated November 6, 2000, from the Region IV SDWA enforcement program office; see what they had to say about this page.

US EPA Region IV has finally resumed posting UIC enforcement public notices on the web and thus this page is no longer necessary.  Please see Public Notice of Facility Enforcement Actions on the Region IV website for listings of proposed and final enforcement actions relating to the Region IV UIC Program (and other Region IV water programs).  Once there, select the state that interests you, or simply cursor down the page to see all the pending Region IV various water program enforcement public notices.


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10-18-00
Last 10-20-10