SCRANTON — The state Department of Environmental Protection says its testing laboratories are in jeopardy of losing national certification because of diminishing staff.
Without certification through the National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program, the department’s Bureau of Laboratories may continue to analyze samples including air, water, soil and waste water.
However, no accreditation raises questions about the department’s ability to do its job effectively, DEP Secretary John Quigley said at a news conference in Scranton this week. And it could mean legal headaches for the department if someone doesn’t like test results showing environmental protection violations.
“For example, if they’re investigating an illegal discharge and taking samples from a creek, stream or river — that may be deemed inadmissible if the lab didn’t follow procedures or if the lab wasn’t certified,” William J. Cluck, a Harrisburg environmental and land use attorney, said. “And that would jeopardize enforcement action against the alleged polluter.”
Since 2004, the bureau’s staff has diminished by about 37 percent — from about 110 to just 69 employees now, according to Neil Shader, the department’s press secretary. Similar cuts have been felt across the agency, he said in an email.
The staff reduction, reflected in yearly state budget allocation reductions, has led to longer test result turnarounds, he said. In June 2015, the department opted not to renew the certifications for its four mobile lab units, which perform on-site testing. Earlier that year, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the agency that accredits Pennsylvania’s state labs through the NELAP, raised its fees for accreditation, and the department decided renewal no longer was cost-effective, New Jersey DEP spokesman Larry Hajna said in an email.
As part of the NELAP program, state agencies offer accreditation in a peer review-type system under a universal set of rules. New Jersey provides accreditation for the DEP’s bureau of labs.
The New Jersey department is not aware of critical staffing reductions in the Pennsylvania labs, Hajna said. But he explained it’s up to the DEP to notify them when there aren’t enough people to do the work.
“If it can no longer maintain the same amount of analyses due to staffing levels, then the lab is required to notify the NJDEP of the accreditations it no longer wishes to maintain,” he said.
Friends of Lackawanna, a grass-roots group fighting a proposal to expand the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, raised the issue at its “Let’s Talk Trash” panel discussion March 21.
“Your people are, we’re sure, doing the best that they can,” Pat Clark, a group leader of Friends of Lackawanna, said addressing Quigley, who was on the panel. “But you’re chronically understaffed, and your budget gets cut year after year after year after year.”
Quigley defended his staff and hinted that a Republican administration may have been sabotaging the agency.
“We are fighting with two hands tied behind our backs with the budget situation,” he said “Over the last decade, the average state agency in Pennsylvania lost 6 percent of its workforce. In that same period of time, DEP lost 14 percent of its workforce. Folks, that wasn’t by accident.”