DC Department of the Environment - The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

DC Department of the Environment
|| 12/6/2005 || 12:48 pm || Comments Off on DC Department of the Environment || ||

The D.C. City Council voted to create the D.C. Department of the Environment. I can’t believe I’m a month behind this vote, and worse is that forwarded to friends as if it were fresh off the presses. Oh well, it is good new afterall, even if it’s a month late.

Read the story:
Via the Common Denominator

Environment gets D. C. cabinet status
(November 15, 2005, online news update)

D.C. City Council voted today to create a new D.C. Department of the Environment,
intended to consolidate environment-related functions currently scattered among several
city agencies.

The new department, originally proposed by At-Large Councilwoman Carol Schwartz and
supported by Mayor Anthony A. Williams, is expected to be operational in about six
months.

The new department will assume functions currently carried out by the Department of
Health, Department of Public Works, Department of Transportation and the independent
D.C. Water and Sewer Authority.

The Health Department’s Environmental Health Administration and its Bureau of
Hazardous Materials and Toxic Substances will form part of the new department’s core,
with responsibility for air and water quality, watershed protection, fisheries and wildlife
and regulating such things as hazardous waste, underground storage and brownfields
remediation. The new department also will assume responsibility for the city’s
environmental impact review process.

Stormwater management functions of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority are expected to
be transferred to the new department after completion of a feasibility analysis of the
transfer.

Transfer of the Office of Energy to the new department is expected to enhance the city’s
focus on energy conservation and use of less polluting sources of energy, as well as speed
the transformation of the city’s vehicle fleet to vehicles that burn “cleaner” fuels such as
natural gas.

The new department also will be expected to establish city policy over rodent control, tree
management, recycling and solid waste, although responsibility for implementing the
policies is expected to remain with the Departments of Public Works and Transportation.

The Department of the Environment is the second new cabinet-level city department
created this year and the fourth established since Mayor Williams took office in 1999. The
Department of Motor Vehicles and Department of Transportation were spun off of the
Department of Public Works. The Department of Small and Local Business Development
was created at the start of the current fiscal year Oct. 1, but is not expected to be fully
operational until sometime in 2006.

Copyright 2005 The Common Denominator