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Q&A

Hazardous material complaint response times

0:40:44

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105 sec

Council Member Restler raises concerns about the increase in hazardous material complaints and the extended response times, which are linked to staff vacancies in the hazardous materials inspections unit.

There was a 16% increase in hazardous material complaints received by DEP.
Average response time increased to over 4 days, up from less than half a day last year.
The hazardous materials inspections unit has a vacancy rate of 22%.
DEP received approval to hire eight industrial hygienists, but faced challenges in recruitment.

Lincoln Restler

0:40:44

Okay.

0:40:45

And I think that, commissioner, your comments on asbestos a moment ago speak to this.

0:40:53

But we saw in the PMMR that there was a 16% increase in the number of hazardous material complaints received by DEP and the average time to respond to these complaints had increased to over four days, up from less half a day just last year and far exceeding the one point five day response time target.

0:41:11

The PPMR stated that the hazardous materials inspections unit has a vacancy rate of 22%.

0:41:17

Is that still right?

0:41:18

And what are we doing to staff that unit up and bring down response times?

Rohit Aggarwala

0:41:23

I I may need to ask deputy commissioner Leuven to to specifically address it.

0:41:29

But yes, we do have our asbestos inspectors as a group have one of the highest overall vacancy rates in the agency.

0:41:41

We have received in early February approval from OMB to hire eight industrial hygienists, and pool was held to hire from that list at the February and no candidate showed up to interview.

0:41:55

So, you know, sometimes it's it's not for lack of trying and you know, it's it's not always a thing at the agency or at OMB or something.

0:42:08

You know, some of this is about us being more aggressive and more thoughtful on recruitment and we do have a number of efforts that we are making over the course of this year to go out and find candidates for some of these lines.

0:42:21

And as as I mentioned with the police to understand in some cases where we have structural challenges where we're just out of sync with the market.

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