Lawmakers like to pass laws so they can say they passed laws.  Laws don’t protect people if compliance is unfunded and unenforced.

This article headlined Why wasn’t there a plan? appeared in the January 11, 2014, issue of the Charleston  Gazette-Mail newspaper.  It reports that Freedom Industries, the company believed responsible for storing the toxic chemical leaked into the Elk River in West Virginia, had provided the state and county officials with the report required by the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act.  That law required the state and county officials to prepare for potential accidents including accidental discharges.

It seems clear now that the state, the county, and the water provider had either ignored the information they were given by Freedom Industries or they failed to act as the law required.  Or both.  This from the Gazette-Mail’s article seems to sum it up:

Fred Millar, a longtime chemical industry watchdog in Washington, D.C., said the lack of better planning was an example of how the landmark emergency response law hasn’t been properly enforced around the country.

“Obviously, the whole idea of the chemical inventory reports is to properly inform local emergency officials about the sorts of materials they might have to deal with,” Millar said Friday. “It’s just head-in-the-sand to be ignoring this type of threat.”

Laws passed without enforcement provisions and appropriate funding are meaningless and deceive the public.  As the West Virginia incident shows, legislators who pass laws which deceive the public are as complicit for the outcomes as those state and local officials who were allowed to ignore those laws.