$30,702 in fines for failing to pass out a stupid pamphlet….Are you kidding me?
Via the EPA:
A Milford, Conn. company has agreed to pay $30,702 to settle claims by EPA that it failed to provide lead hazard information to home owners or occupants before doing renovations that may have disturbed surfaces coated with lead-based paint.
The settlement resolves claims made by EPA’s New England office that Permanent Siding and Windows, a contractor specializing in spray-on vinyl siding and replacing windows and doors, failed to provide EPA’s lead hazard information pamphlet to at least 17 owners or occupants before the company began renovation activities. This pamphlet is required by the federal Pre-Renovation Rule and helps educate home owners or occupants on how to minimize their exposure to hazardous lead dust that is often generated during sanding, cutting, demolition or other renovation activities. The pamphlet also provides resources for more information about lead. The violations in this case took place during renovation work done between January 2006 and March 2009.
And people still wonder why jobs are not coming back.
Yeah, the lead abatement regs are nuts. I have 2 contractor buddies. They spent thousands of dollars out of their own pockets to be “EPA certified”. It’s a joke. If they followed the EPA regs they’d never be competitive and have to charge 5x what a job should cost. So they finesse the paperwork and do the job the way they’ve always done it.
As you’ve seen the regs aren’t about safety or consumer protection, they’re about raising revenue via fines. The fine for being non-EPA-certified is in the millions. So that’s who the EPA goes after.
I feel bad for your contractor friends, the EPA is making business impossible for everyone.
To me the whole thing seems absurd. Fined for not passing out stupid pamphlet.
Over regulation is the real killer of American jobs. The EPA needs to go away and all environmental issues need to be managed on a state by state level. The cookie cutter approach is friggin killing us.
It is a killer. And the EPA is a shining example of a bureaucracy out of control. They have a drawer of little regulations here and a stack procedures there, that they can pull out at any time. Then they can nail any business at any time with a “ticky-tack” violation that costs them a lot of money yet does absolutely nothing to improve the environment.
This is about as ignorant as it comes. Would the EPA rather these people go out of business? As you said, it’s no wonder the jobs are not coming back to America.