Contractors Sound Off About RRP Rule and Dust Wipe Amendment
Thanks to PR activities by NARI, Wall Street Journal Blogger Sarah E. Needleman wrote a blog regarding the increased costs to both contractors and homeowners related to the RRP rule and the potential additional increase in costs should the EPA go forward with its proposed Dust Wipe Clearance amendment. The article is just one of very few where the media has really taken the time to understand the impact of the RRP rule and provide accurate information for their readers. Kudos to Needleman!
The blog was posted on June 23, 2011 at 4:35PM. At the time of writing this, exactly 24 hours later to the minute, there were already over 80 comments left by contractors expressing their opinions and concerns about the rule as well as their disappointment in our government for allowing such a shortsighted regulation.
Many point out that one of the consequences of the rule is that now more children have been put at risk for lead poisoning; for two reasons. The first is due to the fact that illegally operating contractors are under-bidding compliant contractors because they are ignoring the required lead-safe work practices and therefore creating lead hazards. The second is that homeowners are either doing the work themselves and or doing the demolition stage of the work themselves to avoid the added costs related to the rule’s required lead-safe work practices.
As Ben Franklin once said: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
I encourage all contractors to check out the blog and leave a comment of their own. NARI will be using the comments in their efforts to provide evidence of the rule’s impact and negative consequences as they meet with government officials and politicians in their efforts to get the EPA to recognize its shortsighted approaches to the rule.
Also, I encourage you to check out this RRPedia post for a list of additional ways the rule will affect contractors, homeowners and our great country. Please consider forwarding a link to this RRPedia blog post to other contractors and homeowners and ask they read about the consequences of the rule; then use what they have learned to add comments at Needleman’s blog.
Here is the link, please copy it and send it to others who can help all of us hang together for our common good!