Local governments shouldn’t have to pay for meth lab cleanup

Published 7:30 am Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Nothing good comes from producing or using methamphetamines.

It destroys families, pushes up the crime rate in the communities that its dealers and users plague, and leaves a trail of destruction in its wake.

That destruction isn’t just personal, however, it is also environmental, and the costs of cleaning it up will soon be switching from the federal government to cities and counties that aren’t as able to pay for it unless an alternate form of funding can be found.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) recently announced that congressional funding for its Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Methamphetamine Program has been exhausted and that renewed funding in the next few years is unlikely. The COPS program provided $19.2 million for meth lab cleanup for the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.

If that sounds like a lot of money to clean up the mess left by the production of this drug, it is.

The current estimate is that it can cost between $1,500 to $3,000, or more, to clean up an individual site, and that money will have to come from somewhere because you can’t just leave a hazardous site sitting in the woods or next to another house. The estimate is that for every pound of meth cooked, six to seven pounds of toxic waste is produced.

Maj. John Gibson with the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office said the department averages 12 to 15 meth lab cleanups a year, which means the county could be looking at absorbing an extra $45,000 a year that it currently doesn’t have to pay for.

“This is an unbudgeted item this year so we are working with the county finance department to help us with the funding,” Gibson told The Daily Citizen. “Next year’s budget will include funding for the cleanups. We will also ask the courts for restitutions in these lab cases.”

Dalton Police Chief Jason Parker also said he did not budget any funds for meth lab cleanup because of the “longstanding ability (we have) to work with the DEA on these cases.

“Consequently, we may need to request additional funds this year if another solution cannot be reached,” he said. “Dealing with these meth labs, large or small, is definitely a local issue, but we must comply with state and federal environmental and safety guidelines when removing and disposing of the various ingredients. Assuming the cleanup costs will remain local in the future, we will now have to plan for that contingency.”

The problem, of course, is that government at all levels is under intense pressure to cut spending and this cleanup money has been axed by lawmakers in Washington.

But pushing these costs down to the local level does nothing to solve the problem — except get it off the feds’ books — and in fact it makes it worse because places like Dalton, Whitfield County and Murray County are less able than the federal government to pay for the cost of cleaning up these hazardous sites.

If there are cheaper ways to clean up the meth lab mess we should be investigating them but keeping the environment clean is a federal mandate and the costs should not be pushed to each individual local government.