BATON ROUGE, La.—The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality continues to overpay waste tire processors despite the DEQ's promises to improve its monitoring of its Waste Tire Management Program, according to a report by the Louisiana legislative auditor's office.
“DEQ has not implemented effective monitoring procedures over the Waste Tire Management Program to ensure that waste tire data used to calculate subsidized payments to waste tire processors is reasonable,” according to the report issued March 5.
Between July 1, 2007, and June 30, 2014, the WTMP paid $71.1 million in subsidies to six Louisiana waste tire processors, the report said. The auditor's office first reported weaknesses in controls over payments to processors as early as fiscal years 2008 and 2009, it said.
Reports from various news sources said the negative report may have influenced Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to remove Vincent Sangibene, the DEQ undersecretary for the Office of Management and Finance, on April 14. Sangibene, who was appointed in 2008, had oversight over the WTMP.
In a March 18 letter to the auditor's office, Sangibene said the DEQ had developed new monitoring procedures to ensure that the waste tire data used to calculate subsidized payments to waste tire processors are reasonable.