{"id":32607,"date":"2022-04-13T15:52:36","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T21:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=32607"},"modified":"2022-04-13T15:56:59","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T21:56:59","slug":"environmental-regulator-granted-additional-authority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=32607","title":{"rendered":"Environmental regulator granted additional authority"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bill intended to give a state agency the ability to respond more quickly to the release of pollution received final approval from lawmakers April 12.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Bruce Bostelman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB1102, introduced by Sen. Bruce Bostelman of Brainard, creates the Nebraska Environmental Response Act.<\/p>\n

It authorizes the director of the state Department of Environment and Energy to issue an order requiring a person responsible for releasing a pollutant to clean it up or take action to do so if that person fails or refuses to act.<\/p>\n

If the state responds to a release, the responsible person is liable to the state for cleanup costs, which become a lien on any real property owned by the person and subject to or affected by the cleanup.<\/p>\n

The director may cause an administrative order to be served upon those the director has reason to believe have violated the act. An order may assess a penalty of up to $5,000 per day per violation.<\/p>\n

The director may allow another person, entity or responsible person to remediate site conditions voluntarily under the Remedial Action Plan Monitoring Act instead of issuing a cleanup order.<\/p>\n

LB1102 also authorizes the director to issue a cease and desist order if the director finds that a person has performed any act that presents or may present \u201csubstantial\u201d harm to the environment.<\/p>\n

Finally, the bill requires the state treasurer to transfer $300,000 from the state general fund to a new cash fund that the department will use to pay cleanup costs and collect recovered funds.<\/p>\n

LB1102 passed on a vote of 46-0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bill intended to give a state agency the ability to respond more quickly to the release of pollution received final approval from lawmakers April 12. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[183],"class_list":["post-32607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-resources","tag-sen-bruce-bostelman"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32607"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32609,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32607\/revisions\/32609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}