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YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri |
Report No. 2000-55
July 17, 2000
Reorganizing the New Source Review Unit of the Air Pollution Control Program and creating additional improvements and enhancements will improve timeliness of processing air quality permit applications and improve customer service.
At the request of the
Director, Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the State Auditor�s Office
audited the department�s Air Pollution Control Program�s� (APCP) New Source Review Unit�s (NSRU)
procedures and practices for issuing construction permits.� The purpose of the audit was to determine if the New Source
Review Unit was processing construction permit applications and issuing permits
in a timely manner.� The impetus for the
request and the audit was the desire to address concerns raised by the
industries regulated by the Air Pollution Control Program.
We examined construction
permit application statistics for the nine month period January 1999 to October
1999, and in conjunction with an agreement that the two month period September
1999 and October 1999 would be representative, we reviewed all applications
processed during that period.
We determined that the New
Source Review Unit had made good progress in addressing the concerns of the
regulated industry by establishing a task force to review their own policies
and procedures, developing Internet capability, and revising construction
permit applications and instructions to make them user-friendly.
We concluded that by
reorganizing the functions of the New Source Review Unit and making additional
enhancements, the New Source Review Unit would perform more effectively and be
more responsive to its customers.� Our
recommendations addressed the following areas:
q
A
prescreening unit should be established to screen out the incomplete
applications and to ensure that technical engineers are devoting their time to
applications that can be processed.
q
Accounting
duties currently performed by engineers should be transferred to the accounting
department.
q
Non-professional
staff should be hired to review the less complicated applications.
q
Improvements
could be made in several aspects of processing the applications during the
various review stages to include obtaining supervisory approval before placing
the application on hold awaiting comments from the industry.
q
Improvements
could be made in managing fees and interest for processing construction permit
applications.
q
Better
financial and management reports are needed to assist executives in
decision-making.
q Improvements could be made in the website to make it more user-friendly, and additional industries should be evaluated to determine applicability of the permit-by-rule concept to ease the application burden for these industries.
The Department of Natural
Resources agreed with most of the recommendations and provided acceptable
implementation plans.
