The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (PCA) is responsible for monitoring and enforcing environmental standards in the state. For the final quarter of 2010, the PCA had an accounts receivable balance of $8.2 million, with errors of $6.2 million.

Auditors found that the PCA hadn’t created adequate controls to monitor regulatory fines or penalties the agency received. Because the PCA didn’t safeguard or keep daily logs of receipts, auditors found that checks could have been lost or stolen without the agency’s knowledge.

The PCA also failed to “redact not public information, such as bank routing and account numbers.” The agency allowed employees without a business need to access the information, which auditors said employees could use to “commit fraud against the check writer.”

The PCA also neglected to safeguard non-public data, which was available for all agency employees to view, and which 52 employees could edit, auditors found.

The lax financial controls led to errors in the PCA’s quarterly report, the audit found.

“For the quarter ended December 31, 2010, the agency reported about $8.2 million of accounts receivable to the Department of Management and Budget; however, the report had significant errors and concerns, totaling about $6.2 million.”

Those errors included an overstatement of superfund receivables by $4.5 million, including $3 million where the agency had already either settled and failed to adjust the balance or didn’t post the payments to the debtor’s account.

The report concludes that the agency was ultimately unable to substantiate hundreds of thousands of dollars in regulatory penalties due to the lax controls.

Auditors recommend that the PCA institute safeguards for its accounts receivables, limit the workers who have access to view and edit non-public data and that Office of Management and Budget provide more oversight for all state agencies on dealing with account receivables.

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The chief of DoJ’s Environment and Natural Resources division, Ignacia Moreno, and civil division leader Tony West were sent to New Orleans early on, Holder told reporters, “to lead our efforts to protect not only the people who work and reside near the Gulf, but also the American taxpayers, the environment and the abundant wildlife in the region.”

Indeed, Moreno is no stranger to the complex process of navigating corporate liability claims in the aftermath of large-scale contamination. Before joining the DoJ, she was a leading player in the longstanding Superfund battle between General Electric and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — on the side of GE.

ProPublica reported in May 2009 that several EPA attorneys were privately echoing the frustrations of anti-pollution groups with the choice of Moreno to head environmental enforcement at DoJ. From their story:

When Moreno’s nomination was announced in mid-May, she was actively defending GE against charges brought by the very division of the Justice Department that she has been appointed to lead.

In court documents filed in that case, the EPA said that GE owes the federal government nearly $10 million for the government’s cleanup of 800 barrels of toxic waste that GE improperly disposed of at a Superfund site in New Hampshire.

GE, with the help of Moreno, argued that it was not responsible for the Superfund site because it thought it had sold the waste to a company that was going to reuse it to make paint. GE said it didn’t know that the waste was instead being dumped, according to court filings.

Before getting confirmed by the Senate, Moreno promised to recuse herself from any GE-related matters that could arise during her tenure at DoJ. Following another prolonged court battle over Superfund law, GE last year began a cooperative effort with the EPA to dredge contaminated sediment from the Upper Hudson River in New York.

This year’s event features a Special Olympics hot dog cook-out, a teen dance and battle of the bands, a rummage sale and beer tent. But the centerpiece of the festival is the walleye tournament — a competition to see who can catch the largest fish from the river.

Doyle said that the people fishing for walleye are aware of the state fish advisories. “The fishermen all know about the advisories ’cause they are posted when you buy a permit,” he said.

“We don’t serve any walleye caught in river,” he said, adding that the fish served during the Friday evening fish fry is “probably pollock.” Doyle estimates that 80 percent of the Walleye Fest competitors will keep and use the fish they catch.

“Other people donate them to food banks,” he said. “If people don’t want the fish we will filet the fish and donate them to different food organizations that want them.”

Dioxin remediation work three miles downstream from Freeland in Saginaw Township’s West Michigan Park will not impact the river-wide festival, Doyle said.

In 2001, the National Institute of Health listed the family of chemicals known as dioxins as “known human carcinogens” — and while the jury is still out on the chemicals’ level of toxicity, a 2003 Environmental Protection Agency report said dioxin is a “dangerous carcinogen.”

You can read Eartha Jane’s full story here.

The Pentagon is refusing demands from state government officials to clean up three contaminated military sites, in Maryland, New Jersey, and Florida. EPA has authority, under the Superfund toxic clean-up program to back the states and make the Pentagon clean up these bases– which are full of toxins released from unexploded chemical weapons. But EPA has yet to exercise this power– even as the Pentagon has allegedly bullied these states by threatening to cut off funding for oversight activities.

The Pentagon defended itself at the hearing by saying they disapprove of state officials and EPA’s approach to the clean-up. Barbara Boxer, (D-Calif.) an ardent Bush administration foe, responded: “I don’t want the EPA making decisions on war strategy and I don’t want the [Pentagon] making decisions on environmental clean up.” I don’t know– maybe we should see if Stephen Johnson has been secretly spending his time cooking up an Iraq withdrawal plan.