Oklahoma Department Of Environmental Quality Asleep At The Wheel

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK -- The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality has brought forward fewer than a dozen enforcement cases since 2000, the lowest number of any state. Enforcement activity should broadly reflect economic and business activity within a state; given that Oklahoma is near the median of state rankings for GDP and business environments, one would expect Oklahomoa would rank similarly for environmental enforcement activity. Instead, Oklahoma had the lowest enforcement activity of any state.

Those findings are outlined in a recently released report, The Other Environmental Regulators: How States Unevenly Enforce Pollution Laws. Oklahoma was also one of only two states that did not provide enforcement caseload information online and denied open records requests for relevant data.

According to the report, “The state with the most identified cases, Texas, comes in at more than 800 times that of Oklahoma, the state with the fewest. The population of Texas is only seven times that of Oklahoma. The number of [utilities and other power generation] firms in Texas is six times the number in Oklahoma.”

“We’ve known for years that the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), was lax on enforcement, and that they do not have the resources they need to properly pursue violations, and this report proves it,” said Johnson Bridgwater, Chapter Director of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Sierra Club. “The combination of DEQ’s low caseload and its refusal to provide caseload information online or in response to open records requests suggests a culture that places polluters ahead of the public good. Even worse? Despite the clear evidence that they do not pursue environmental enforcement, they have been asking the EPA for even MORE regulatory authority over coal ash disposal.”