t's a common piece of pro business boilerplate that environmental regulation is a bad idea. It's just too expensive, we're told. It stifles economic growth. Such rules are onerous and impose draconian restrictions on companies.

Having to comply with some environmental regulations is tiresome, certainly. And it involves tons of paperwork, endless phone calls to the various layers of officialdom, and expensive solutions.

But, back in the old days, when the country took a more laissez faire approach, you didn't have any of that. Back then you could just pour whatever you wanted into the creek, or dump it at the back of the yard and watch it soak into the ground.

No bottom line expense for you. No phone calls, no forms, no nothing.

Fortunately, the old days are gone, but the pollution produced in the old days remains. There are a number of such toxic locations in our area.

In Rosendale, the Citgo station on Route 32 has been placed on the Registry of Inactive Hazardous Waste Disposal Sites. This problem goes back to a series of businesses that employed a whole host of nasty stuff. From one of these businesses, or perhaps more, pollutants like benzene and various other solvents and chemicals were spilled into the ground.

This situation leaves the current business owners, Aero Star Petroleum, potentially holding the bag for cleaning up a mess they didn't make.

Talk about stifling business.

In Ellenville there's a toxic mess at the former Ellenville Scrap Iron and Metal premises on Cape Road at the western edge of the village. The EPA has identified six "areas of concern" on a 24 acre site, involving chemistry related to metal recycling and battery reclamation, as well as an area where creosote soaked railroad ties were stashed.

The solution for today is to remove most of the hazardous soil and truck it off to a disposal area somewhere else. Then a cap would be placed over the remaining toxic areas to ensure that the pollutants stay where they are.

All of this will cost something on the order of $5 million, taxpayer money that might have gone to something productive. Small business loans, for example.

These former businesses, the clothing dyers and the auto repair shop in Rosendale and the scrap metal concern in Ellenville, are long gone. Yet their toxic legacy lives on, with the current generation forced to pony up the cash to make things right. There's likely no way, unfortunately, to send the perpetrators a bill for what they left behind.

Perhaps it's time that those who engage in "pro-business thinking" rethought their position. Instead of fighting environmental regulation, business should step up and do the responsible thing and support efforts that are designed to protect all of us — including the children and grandchildren of those who caused the problem in the first place.