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EPA Levies $40,000+ Fines on Landlords Who Fail to Provide ‘EPA-Approved’ Pamphlets to Tenants
“Thinking of renting or selling a home or apartment?” asks the Environmental Protection Agency. “Make sure you disclose its lead-based paint history. Mr. Wolfe Landau did not and it cost him a $20,000 fine.”
Landau is one of the many landlords and realtors fined by the EPA for failing to provide an “EPA-approved” pamphlet to tenants seeking to rent or buy a house built before 1978.
And for the EPA, the non-compliance business is booming.
Juan Hernandez of Bridgeport, Conn., faces seven “Level 1” violations for failing to provide seven tenants with a copy of the “Protect Your Family From Lead In Your Home” pamphlet, which was mandated by the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992.
In Section 1018 of the law, Congress directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the EPA to require the disclosure of lead-based paint hazards before the sale or lease of housing units built before 1978, the year lead-based paint was banned.
The EPA filed a complaint against Hernandez on March 27, detailing notifying him that the agency plans to collect $49,980 from him, which works out to $7,140 for each pamphlet he failed to distribute.
“Failure to provide a purchases or lessee an EPA-approved lead hazard information pamphlet pursuant to 40 C.F.R. § 745.1 07(a)(I) results in a high probability of impairing the lessee’s ability to properly assess information regarding the risks associated with exposure to lead-based paint and to weigh this information with regard to leasing the target housing in question,” the complaint read.
Hernandez’s total fine for other disclosure violations, such as supplying the property’s lead history and a “Lead Warning Statement,” reached $127,150, payable to the “Treasurer of the United States of America.”
Sarthurk
August 25th, 2012
Green is the new Brown, as in Brownshirts.
Callmelennie
August 25th, 2012
Sounds harsh, but we can’t have people suffering brain damage from eating dried paint chips or licking lead based paint off the walls, can we?
Think of the children
cfm990
August 25th, 2012
Cool! Now I can blackmail my landlord.
even steven
August 25th, 2012
@Callmelennie…that’s what happened to Joe Biden.
Annie
August 25th, 2012
Somalia has a written language?
Dadof3
August 25th, 2012
The Leviathon continues its steady march to crush all producing people under its gigantic wheel.
First came the manufactures
Then raw milk to get food producers in line
Then the lemonade stands and hot dog vendors to get the food distributors in step.
Now its the evil people who invested in real estate. Cant have land ownership in utopia you know.
What’s next?
Doc
August 25th, 2012
Some years back a good friend of mine was a school superintendent for a fairly large school district in Calif. A reporter from a local paper was just appalled that lead paint abatement didn’t just soar to the top of his to do list. He simply told the reporter “We take pride in knowing that our students are smart enough to know they shouldn’t eat the paint off of the window sills.”
You can probably imagine the shit he took for that, but he was already set for retirement and decided…FUCK IT, I’m gonna tell it like it is for a change.
Xavier
August 25th, 2012
Those fines do sound excessive, but it’s hard to believe that anyone involved with selling or renting property wouldn’t be aware of these requirements.
Darwinian Monkey
August 25th, 2012
We’re talking about China, right?
Horseface
August 25th, 2012
Tyranny.
RosalindJ
August 25th, 2012
I do not believe that someone would be a renter and not know that eating non-food items is a no-no.
Then I look at the man-on-the-street interviews, and I remain unconvinced that had they been given pamphlets to read about lead-based paint (which has been eradicated from use for decades, and those walls have surely been re-painted or knocked down by now), that they would be capable of comprehending them anyway.
Unneutral
August 25th, 2012
EPA
I believe that means, Employment Prevention Agency.
Corona
August 25th, 2012
I had my Rubella Umbrella shot. Have you?
everywhere i go
August 26th, 2012
I was talking to a librarian last year about her concerns about the government looking into lead used in the print in books.
They don’t give a shit if you or your children get lead poisoning — it is all about government control.
Mary Jane Anklestraps
August 26th, 2012
Unneutral, you are correct.
Stranded in Sonoma
August 26th, 2012
Can we just pour a bucket of lead-based paint down the throats of the EPA management?
slum landlord
August 26th, 2012
It’s a scam to seize your property if you can’t afford the fines plus penalties and interest.
David Kramer
August 26th, 2012
Is it time yet folks? Keep your powder dry.
House of Kell
August 26th, 2012
LMFAO…with all these retarded liberals running around the country there cannot possibly be any lead paint chips, left!!!
Nutjob
August 26th, 2012
Its called breaking you through legislation for the final outcome….siezure of your assets.
reddecaesari
August 26th, 2012
the amount of the fine is up to the discretion of the epa. what will they do for a shakedown when they can’t find any rental properties older than 1978? go after non low-flow toilet abusers?
Nutjob
August 26th, 2012
@reddecaesari,
Shhhhhhhhhhh, don’t give them any ideas. They’ll ban barbeque grils next because of their carbon emission and mandate they all have to be electric grills.
RANDO
August 26th, 2012
So who’s gonna protect us from the environmental PROTECTION Agency?
RosalindJ
August 26th, 2012
Brilliant! Mandate low-flow barely functional toilets that explode. Then levy fines for not removing them fast enough. Why, if I hadn’t been indoctinated differently by our betters, I would think it was all part of a plan. Or something.
Absolute muddjuice
August 26th, 2012
Nazification of America in full bloom….