Maine - LePage's Environment Head Blocks Chemical Safety Laws, Slashed Enforcement, Missed Deadlines

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Internal documents and interviews with about two dozen current and former DEP employees reveal how the administration has systematically sedated some of Maine's environmental laws.

Under LePage and Aho, the DEP has:

• Stifled the Kid Safe Products Act -- a 2008 law to protect fetuses, babies and children from potentially damaging chemicals -- by blocking efforts to bring more chemicals under the law's jurisdiction. Many of the chemicals were produced by Aho's former lobbying clients, who fought similar laws in Connecticut, California and the state of Washington.

• Recommended a rollback or elimination of certain recycling programs that are strongly opposed by Aho's and Robinson's corporate clients in the automotive, waste and bottled-water industries, who would suffer if successful Maine programs that make manufacturers responsible for certain products are replicated in other states.

• Presided over a dramatic downturn in enforcement of laws affecting developers, with initial enforcement actions in the Land Division falling by 49 percent under the LePage administration. (See related story: "They're just not doing enforcement.&quot Before becoming commissioner, Aho unsuccessfully fought to weaken many of the laws at issue as the longtime lobbyist of the Maine Real Estate and Development Association, or MEREDA.

• Purged information from the DEP's website and clamped down on its personnel, restricting their ability to communicate information to lawmakers, the public, policy staff, and one another. (See related story: "Sources describe a department under duress.&quot

"In both enforcement and in what we communicate to the Legislature, it almost seems like the commissioner is still a lobbyist for the clients she represented before she came to office," says one current DEP employee, one of many interviewed for this story who did not want their names used for fear they would be fired.

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