Agenda - Planning Commission - 09/02/2004

Home

Z.B. August 10, 2004 -- Page '7 Enforcement m Contractor argues only police can issue criminal. citations .. Department of environmental_protection field inspector issues over 300 blasting citations Citation: Commonwealth v. Marks Contracting LTD, Commonwealth Co~trr of Pen~sylvania, Nos. 2327 C.D. 2003 & 2328 C.D. 2003 (2004) PENNSYLVANIA (05/28/04) -- Marks Contracting LTD was wor~ng on a construction project that involved explosive blasting. During the project, a department of environmental protection field inspec- tor cited Marks for 331 violations of the Blasting Act, an Act regulating the use of explosives in construction operations. Marks Contracting LTD sued, arguing only police officers, not field in- spectors, could issue criminal citations. The court found in its favor. The commonwealth appealed, arguing there was no reason to find field inspectors could not issue criminal citations. DECISION: Reversed. The field inspectors acting under the Blasting Act had the power to issue crkminal citations. Statutory law gave field inspectors general enforcement powers. The state's criminal rules recognized the increasing role of agency inspectors who were not police officers, the trend of the legislature to gant authority to agen. cy inspectors to issue citations, the more flexible standards evolving under the case law, and the growing technical specialization required to determine if violations had occurred. The Blasting Act regulations were highly technical and, in many cases, special equipment and expertise were necessary to discover violations. In this matter, numerous citations were issued for blasts that exceeded the maximum allowable peak particle velocity at a location closest to a structure- not owned or leased by the permittee. A layperson could not make an educated assessment as to whether such a violation occurred. PoLice departments could not possibly buy, maintain, and correctly learn to operate all of the specialized equipment available to field inspec.tors to as- sist them in assessing whether certain regulatory standards had been violated under the numerous acts in existence. Ultimately, there was no compelling reason to require police to be called upon to issue a citation when the officer simply had to depend.on the informa- tion provided by agency inspectors. xee ~d.~'o: Common,,vealrh v. Loc/cridge, $~ 0,4.2d iJ 9! (2002 ;. .;'ee ~zl.s'o: Comrm;m4.'ectlzh ~.,. Dat.t.ghero,, 829 A.2d ]273 (2003L 2004 ,.~umlan 2,relishing ,~-roup..:,nv ¢eproducuon ;s oronibited. For more informauon please call (617) 542-0048. 85