Questions Remain About IDEM's Handling of BP Air Permit Hearing

State law specifies 30 days, but IDEM scheduled a hearing with 18 to 20 days notice.

Post-Tribune of NW Indiana

By Gitte Laasby, Post-Tribune staff writer

May 2, 2008

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management refuses to answer certain questions about the timing of a public hearing on BP's air permit.

Among them: Who at IDEM was responsible for ignoring state law and providing inadequate notice of the hearing?

As the Post-Tribune revealed in April, IDEM's chief of the permits branch of the Office of Air Quality, Matt Stuckey, e-mailed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in January to ask how long was the required notice. He was told state law applies.

State law specifies it's 30 days, but IDEM scheduled a hearing with 18 to 20 days notice.

Now IDEM won't say who at the agency made the call to ignore state law.

The Post-Tribune asked IDEM three times whether Stuckey or anybody else from IDEM looked up state requirements.

Another question was whether Stuckey informed his superiors of the response he received from the EPA and, if so, who made the decision to schedule the hearing with too little notice anyway.

Each time, IDEM sent back a similar answer.

"We looked into it and, considering the public was requesting the hearing to be moved back, we did so," spokeswoman Amy Hartsock wrote.

Hartsock refused to elaborate until the Post-Tribune asked Gov. Mitch Daniels' spokeswoman, Jane Jankowski, for a comment on a story about IDEM's lack of responsiveness to questions.

"Yes, Matt Stuckey and (Assistant Commissioner of the Office of Air Quality) Dan Murray did confer with U.S. EPA and internal legal counsel about the matter," Hartsock wrote in an e-mail Thursday. "U.S. EPA deferred the decision to Indiana on Indiana law.

"In addition to reviewing the requirements of the law, moving the time frame out served the purpose of also giving the public more time."

Murray, who is Stuckey's supervisor and the top agency official in the Office of Air Quality, was involved throughout the permit process, IDEM Commissioner Tom Easterly said in an April interview.

IDEM initially scheduled the hearing for Feb. 25, and said the date was changed to March 14 in response to public requests for more time.

Without renotice, the permit could have been successfully challenged.

Easterly previously said in an interview that IDEM's legal counsel interpreted the law to say 30 days of notice was not required.

Asked whether Stuckey checked with legal counsel on the notice requirement, Easterly said, "I can't speak for what somebody else did."

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