CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The top man who oversees water and water quality in West Virginia said there was no shortage of personal feelings about how above ground storage tanks in West Virginia should be regulated.
“They’re requested to be stakeholders. They want the process to be transparent and they want everyone’s comments posted online,” said Scott Mandirola, director of water and waste management for the Department of Environmental Protection.
The agency is writing the rules on how the tanks will be managed around the framework established by the legislature. A public comment period ended last week.
Mandirola said unlike most of the new laws for which they write rules, it’s very specific what the legislature wanted.
“If you have a very broad legislation which gives you broad authority, but with very little detail what comes out of the process may be different and not what everybody was expecting,” he said.
However, Mandirola also knows this legislation is unlike most they deal with. The tank bill had everybody’s attention after 300,000 people saw their drinking water contaminated in January.
“I’ve received a tremendous amount of e-mails from individuals requesting to be stakeholders and involved,” he said. “Which is in greater numbers, it’s out of the ordinary for sure.”
Mandirola admitted they hadn’t yet thoroughly reviewed all of the public comments received. He said the step is coming, but for now the focus of his office has been creation of an online registration system which is required by the new law. The deadline for having the online registration established is June 6.