Louisiana legislators are considering whether chemical plants and other industrial facilities should be allowed to conduct voluntary pollution audits that would remain secret and to grant legal immunity for certain violations discovered by the audits, NOLA.com reports.
A bill authorizing the audits advanced out of the House Natural Resource and Environment Committee on Wednesday by a vote of 13 to 3. It now goes to the full House for debate.
House Bill 510 was backed by the chemical and oil industries and mirrors similar legislation recently enacted by more than 20 other states, including Texas and Mississippi.
The bill was opposed by environmental groups and legal scholars who called it a vaguely-crafted piece of legislation that affords protections for wrong-doing.
Louisiana has nearly 500 large facilities regulated under the Clean Air Act. Many of them are concentrated in the Mississippi River communities between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where cancer risk is considered high by federal regulators.
Rep. Stuart Bishop, R-Lafayette proposed HB 510 and defended it as a “tool for industry to promote better business.” By granting facilities a measure of legal immunity, the bill would allow more open communication with the state Department of Environmental Quality, the agency that regulates the chemical and oil industries, Bishop said. Read the full story.
