Amid some grumbling, Bel Air's board of town commissioners earlier this week voted to pay a $35,000 federal fine to the Environmental Protection Agency for stormwater management regulations violations that were discovered by EPA inspectors in early 2014.
This is the first instance we have heard in Harford County where fines have been levied because the local municipalities or the county didn't comply with this somewhat nebulous concept of managing the rainwater and snow melt that runs off roofs and parking lots and streets into streams and rivers and, in this county, ultimately finds its way into the Chesapeake Bay.
We'll grant that stormwater is a pollutant, as are many other substances that get discharged into the bay, from industries, homes, recreational activities and agriculture, the latter frequently blamed by environmental advocates as the bay's largest source of pollution. The source really doesn't matter. Humans and their activities pollute – that's an irrefutable fact.
The Town of Bel Air's situation is one of damned if you do, damned if you don't. As some of the comments to reporter David Anderson's story in Wednesday's edition about the fine reflected when posted on Facebook: One reader lamented that the fines will ultimately come out of the pockets of town residents – truthfully speaking it will, indeed; another posited that it would have been a lot cheaper if the town employees had just followed the regulations in the first place – isn't that always the case when you break the law and get caught?
Inspectors determined the town had failed to develop procedures to "field screen" stormwater outfalls and identify sources of illegal pollutant discharges, failed to create a stormwater management plan for the Department of Public Works facility on Churchville Road and failed to file annual stormwater management reports for 2012 and 2013.
The EPA allowed the town to file a settlement agreement, rather than face enforcement actions and the risk of $16,500 per-day fines, Town Administrator Jesse Bane said.
He noted town and EPA officials negotiated the settlement from an initial amount of $49,500 to $35,000 and said Bel Air has also taken multiple steps to address the violations.
The regulations imposed on the locals are burdensome without a doubt and the enforcement process appears to be one of catch as catch can. The things Bel Air didn't do appear trivial in some respects, though in one instance they are not.
Failing to have a stormwater plan in place for the town-owned DPW facility off Route 22 – right next to Bynum Run – was just asking for trouble from the EPA and completely avoidable. Governments aren't exempt from the law when it comes to polluting and ought to set proper examples for their citizens. Whether you get caught not following the rules is irrelevant.