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Georgia EPD keeps tabs on quality of resources
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Georgia Environemental Protection Division Director Richard Dunn - photo by Mark Lastinger/staff
The management of our air, land and water resources impacts everyone in this room in a lot of significant ways. The prism we try to view the management of these resources is balance. ... Georgia is blessed with natural resources that are critical in supporting our ecology, our recreation, our health and our economy. Our job is to balance those demands and meet the needs of current Georgians as well as future Georgians.
Georgia Environmental Protection Division Director Richard Dunn

ATLANTA — Richard Dunn’s job is literally a matter of life and death. He is the director of Georgia’s Environ-mental Protection Division, which is charged with protecting the state’s air, land and water resources through the authority of state and federal environmental statutes.

These laws regulate public and private facilities in the areas of air quality, water quality, hazardous waste, water supply, solid waste, surface mining, underground storage tanks, and others. EPD issues and enforces all state permits in these areas and has full delegation for federal environmental permits except for wetlands.

“The management of our air, land and water resources impacts everyone in this room in a lot of significant ways,” Dunn told an Effingham County audience during Effingham Day at the Capitol on Jan. 28. “The prism we try to view the management of these resources is balance. ... Georgia is blessed with natural resources that are critical in supporting our ecology, our recreation, our health and our economy. Our job is to balance those demands and meet the needs of current Georgians as well as future Georgians.”

EPD has 700 employees, mostly environmental specialists, engineers, geologists and lab scientists.

"I hope that you will find myself, (Deputy Commissioner) Lauren (Curry) as well as our 700 employees listen, that we are responsive to your concerns and that we are solution oriented," Dunn said. "That's what we strive to be."