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JOHN FICHTER PROPOSES TO MAKE PA TAXPAYERS PAY FOR POLLUTERS' MESS;
TAKES NO ACTION AGAINST POLLUTERS
APRIL 15, 2005: John Fichter reports that he introduced a budget amendment to allocate half a million dollars to Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) for water supply contamination emergencies. Once again, Mr. Fichter's approach to problems is to spread the costs around to taxpayers statewide, rather than to pass legislation to structurally address the problem and ensure that the parties responsible for the problem are the ones that pay to solve it. In this case, residents of Rahway Avenue in East Norriton, just north of the Norristown border, have found their wells contaminated with very high levels of tetrachloroethylene (PCE), a dry cleaning solvent. A quick search of EPA's database reveals only one handler of PCE within a one-mile radius of the Rahway Avenue wells: Antonellis' Dry Cleaning Service, 320 East Johnson Highway:
 
Notice that the DRY CLEANER site is located IMMEDIATELY adjacent to the Rahway Avenue wells. While there are other handlers of hazardous waste in the vicinity, this DRY CLEANER is the only one documented to have handled PCE, the DRY CLEANING solvent. It would be sensible for PADEP to contact the owner/operator of the DRY CLEANER and investigate their past handling of their PCE and make sure that they or their insurance company gets called on quickly to address any contamination they may have caused. If the costs to remediate the groundwater can not be recovered from the responsible parties, perhaps taxpayers may ultimately need to pay the bill; but to ignore the responsible parties, and merely seek state tax money to pay for bottled water or city water hookups, lets polluters off the hook, reduces availability of clean water supplies, and increases taxes. Getting bottled water to residents immediately is well and good, but in the long run the state government should address these issues by going after the responsible parties. Mr. Fichter should stop seeking tax-increasing Band-Aid solutions, and instead try to enhance and enforce PADEP's capabilities to demand that polluters clean up their own messes.
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