EPA Crafts New Enforcement Strategy To Bolster Regulatory Compliance

摘要

EPA's enforcement chief and other agency officials are detailing a broad new strategy for improving compliance with environmental laws, including "more effective" and "simpler" rules and permitting requirements that more directly target the upstream sectors of the regulated community, bolstered by greater use of electronic reporting.The emerging "next generation" strategy aims to boost compliance amidst what the agency officials say are growing non-compliance rates and to enhance efforts to stretch the agency's constrained enforcement budget."The rates of non-compliance that we see are a serious issue that tell us we need to develop new strategies," said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance (OECA), during a July 24 National Environmental Enforcement Information web-based conference, which EPA recently posted online.For example, in state water programs with strong discharge monitoring report data, there is a fairly stable 25 percent non-compliance rate, but in other sectors where the data is not as robust, dischargers may have a rate of non-compliance of 45 percent or more, Giles told the meeting. The distinction highlights the relationship between high quality, robust data and improved compliance, and is the driving focus of EPA's new enforcement strategy.