Environmental Compliance and Enforcement: EPA's Effort to Improve
and Make More Consistent Its Compliance and Enforcement
Activities (28-JUN-06, GAO-06-840T).
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforces the nation's
environmental laws and regulations through its Office of
Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA). While OECA provides
overall direction on enforcement policies and occasionally takes
direct enforcement action, many enforcement responsibilities are
carried out by EPA's 10 regional offices. In addition, these
offices oversee the enforcement programs of state agencies that
have been delegated the authority to enforce federal
environmental protection regulations. This testimony is based on
GAO's reports on EPA's enforcement activities issued over the
past several years and on observations from ongoing work that is
being performed at the request of the Senate Committee on
Environment and Public Works, and the Subcommittee on Interior,
Environment and Related Agencies, House Committee on
Appropriations. GAO's previous reports examined the (1)
consistency among EPA regions in carrying out enforcement
activities, (2) factors that contribute to any inconsistency, and
(3) EPA's actions to address these factors. Our current work
examines how EPA, in consultation with regions and states, sets
priorities for compliance and enforcement and how the agency and
states determine respective compliance and enforcement roles and
responsibilities and allocate resources for these purposes.
-------------------------Indexing Terms-------------------------
REPORTNUM: GAO-06-840T
ACCNO: A56067
TITLE: Environmental Compliance and Enforcement: EPA's Effort to
Improve and Make More Consistent Its Compliance and Enforcement
Activities
DATE: 06/28/2006
SUBJECT: Environmental monitoring
Law enforcement
Environmental law
Environmental policies
Internal controls
Performance management
Performance measures
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GAO-06-840T
* Regional Enforcement Activities Vary Substantially
* Several Factors Contribute to Variations in Regional Enforce
* Regions Differ in Their Philosophical Approaches to Enforcem
* National Enforcement Data Are Incomplete and Inaccurate
* EPA's Workforce Planning and Allocation System Is Not Adequa
* EPA Has Initiated or Planned Actions to Achieve Greater Cons
* EPA's State Review Framework Holds Promise, but It Is Too Ea
* Efforts Are Underway to Improve Data, but Critical Gaps Rema
* EPA Has Improved the Management of its Human Capital System,
* Contact and Staff Acknowledgments
* Order by Mail or Phone
Testimony
Before the Committee on Environment and Public Works, U. S. Senate
United States Government Accountability Office
GAO
For Release on Delivery Expected at 9:30 a.m. EDT
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE AND ENFORCEMENT
EPA's Effort to Improve and Make More Consistent Its Compliance and
Enforcement Activities
Statement of John B. Stephenson, Director, Natural Resources and
Environment
GAO-06-840T
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I am pleased to be here today to discuss our work on the Environmental
Protection Agency's (EPA) difficulties in ensuring consistent and
equitable enforcement actions among its regions and among the states. Our
testimony today is based on reports we have issued on EPA's compliance and
enforcement activities over the past several years,1 and provides some
observations from the ongoing work that we are performing at your request
and that of the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related
Agencies, House Committee on Appropriations. As you know, we are assessing
how EPA, in consultation with regions and state agencies, sets priorities
for compliance and enforcement and how the agency and the states determine
respective compliance and enforcement roles and responsibilities and
allocate resources for these purposes. As part of this effort, we are
assessing EPA's initiated and planned actions to address key factors that
result in inconsistencies-identified in our previous work-in carrying out
its enforcement responsibilities. We expect to complete this ongoing
review on EPA and state enforcement and issue our report in March 2007.
EPA seeks to achieve cleaner air, purer water, and better protected land
in many different ways. Compliance with the nation's environmental laws is
the goal, and enforcement is a vital part of the effort to encourage state
and local governments, companies, and others who are regulated to meet
their environmental obligations. Enforcement deters those who might
otherwise seek to profit from violating the law, and levels the playing
field for environmentally compliant companies.
EPA administers its environmental enforcement responsibilities through its
Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA). While OECA provides
overall direction on enforcement policies, and occasionally takes direct
enforcement action, many of its enforcement responsibilities are carried
out by its 10 regional offices (regions). These regions, in addition to
taking direct enforcement action, oversee the enforcement programs of
state agencies that have been delegated authority for enforcing federal
environmental protection requirements.2
1See GAO, Environmental Protection: More Consistency Needed Among EPA
Regions in Approach to Enforcement, GAO/RCED-00-108 (Washington, D.C.:
June 2, 2000); Human Capital: Implementing an Effective Workforce Strategy
Would Help EPA to Achieve Its Strategic Goals, GAO-01-812 (Washington,
D.C.: July 31, 2001); and Clean Water Act: Improved Resource Planning
Would Help EPA Better Respond to Changing Needs and Fiscal Constraints,
GAO-05-721 (Washington, D.C.: July 22, 2005).
In my testimony today, I will describe the (1) extent to which variations
exist among EPA's regions in enforcing environmental requirements, (2) key
factors that contribute to any such variations, and (3) status of the
agency's efforts to address these factors.
In summary, as we previously reported on regional efforts to enforce
provisions of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, the regions vary
substantially in the actions they take to enforce environmental
requirements. These variations show up in key management indicators that
EPA headquarters officials have used to monitor regional performance, such
as the number of inspections performed at regulated facilities and the
amount of penalties assessed for noncompliance with environmental
regulations. For example, in fiscal year 2000, the number of inspections
conducted under the Clean Air Act compared with the number of facilities
in each region subject to EPA's inspection under the act varied from a
high of 80 percent in Region 3 to a low of 27 percent in Regions 1 and 2.
We also reported that it is important to understand the reasons for some
of these variations, such as a regional determination to conduct more
in-depth inspections at a fewer number of facilities instead of conducting
less intensive examinations at many more facilities. Accordingly, we
recommended that EPA clarify which enforcement actions it expects to see
consistently implemented across the regions and direct the regions to
supplement its reporting with information that helps explain why variation
occurred. We did not focus our work on the effects of inconsistent
enforcement on various types of businesses, including small businesses,
the particular focus of the Committee's hearing today. However, in
performing our work we noted that a recent study for the Small Business
Administration,3 as well as other studies, have suggested that
environmental requirements fall most heavily on small businesses. To the
extent that this is the case, small businesses could be especially
disadvantaged by any inconsistencies and inequities in EPA's enforcement
approach. EPA has made progress toward resolving challenges in its
enforcement activities that we have previously identified. Nonetheless,
each of the challenges is complex and will require much more work and
continued vigilance to overcome.
2For many federal environmental programs, EPA either authorizes states to
administer the federal program or retains authority to administer the
program for the state. The state programs that have been approved by EPA
are described as "delegated" in this testimony for clarity and consistency
with EPA program terminology.
3W. Mark Crain, The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms, a report
prepared at the request of the Small Business Administration's Office of
Advocacy (Washington, D.C., September 2005).
Our work has identified several factors contributing to regional
variations: (1) differences in the philosophy of enforcement staff about
how to best achieve compliance with environmental requirements; (2)
incomplete and inadequate enforcement data, which hamper EPA's ability to
accurately determine the extent of variations; and (3) an antiquated
workforce planning and allocation system that is not adequate for
deploying staff to ensure greater consistency and effectiveness in
enforcing environmental requirements.
Finally, EPA recognizes that to ensure fair and equitable treatment, core
enforcement requirements must be consistently implemented so that similar
violations are met with similar enforcement responses, regardless of
geographic location. Accordingly, and in response to our findings and
recommendations, the agency has initiated or planned actions that are
intended to achieve greater consistency in regional and state enforcement
activities. These actions include the following:
o Developing the State Review Framework. This framework involves
a new process for conducting reviews and measuring the performance
of core enforcement programs in states with delegated authority
(as well as nondelegated programs implemented by EPA regions).
Although the process is a promising means for ensuring more
consistent enforcement actions, it is too early to assess whether
the process will result in more consistent enforcement actions and
a level playing field for the regulated community across the
nation.
o Improving management information. EPA has a number of ongoing
activities to improve the agency's enforcement data, but the data
problems are long-standing and complex. It will likely require a
number of years and a steady top-level commitment of staff and
financial resources to substantially improve the data so that they
can be effectively used to target enforcement actions in a
consistent and equitable manner.
o Enhancing workforce planning and allocation. For the past
several years, EPA has taken measures to improve its ability to
match its staff and technical capabilities with the needs of
individual regions and states. For example, EPA developed a human
capital strategy and performed a study of its workforce
competencies. Nonetheless, the agency still needs to determine how
to deploy its employees among its strategic goals and geographic
locations so that it can most effectively use its resources,
including its compliance and enforcement resources.
Regional Enforcement Activities Vary Substantially
EPA's enforcement program depends heavily upon inspections by
regional or state enforcement staff as the primary means of
detecting violations and evaluating overall facility compliance.
Thus, the quality and the content of the agency's and states'
inspections, and the number of inspections undertaken to ensure
adequate coverage, are important indicators of the enforcement
program's effectiveness. However, as we reported in 2000, EPA's
regional offices varied substantially on the actions they take to
enforce the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. Consistent with
earlier observations of EPA's Office of Inspector General and
internal agency studies, we found these variations in regional
actions reflected in the (1) number of inspections EPA and state
enforcement personnel conducted at facilities discharging
pollutants within a region, (2) number and type of enforcement
actions taken, and (3) the size of the penalties assessed and the
criteria used in determining the penalties assessed. For example,
as figure 1 indicates, the number of inspections conducted under
the Clean Air Act in fiscal year 2000 compared with the number of
facilities in each region subject to EPA's inspection under the
act varied from a high of 80 percent in Region 3 to a low of 27
percent in Regions 1 and 2.
Figure 1: Percentage of Total Regulated Facilities Inspected Under
the Clean Air Act During Fiscal Year 2000, by EPA Region
While the variations in enforcement raise questions about the need
for greater consistency, it is also important to get behind the
data to understand the cause of the variations and the extent to
which they reflect a problem. For example, EPA attributed the low
number of inspections by its Region 5, in Chicago, to the regional
office's decision at the time to focus limited resources on
performing detailed and resource-intensive investigations of the
region's numerous electric power plants, rather than conducting a
greater number of less intensive inspections.
We agree that regional data can be easily misinterpreted without
the contextual information needed to clarify whether variation in
a given instance is inappropriate or whether it reflects the
appropriate exercise of flexibility by regions and states to
tailor their priorities to their individual needs and
circumstances. In this regard, we recommended that it would be
appropriate for EPA to (1) clarify which aspects of the
enforcement program it expects to see implemented consistently
from region to region and which aspects may appropriately be
subject to greater variation and (2) supplement region-by-region
data with contextual information that helps to explain why
variations occur and thereby clarify the extent to which
variations are problematic.
Our findings were also consistent with the findings of EPA's
Inspector General and OECA that regions vary in the way they
oversee state-delegated programs. In this regard, contrary to EPA
policy, some regions did not (1) conduct an adequate number of
oversight inspections of state programs, (2) sufficiently
encourage states to consider economic benefit in calculating
penalties, (3) take more direct federal actions where states were
slow to act, and (4) require states to report all significant
violators. Regional and state officials generally indicated that
it was difficult for them to ascertain the extent of variation in
regional enforcement activities, given their focus on activities
within their own geographic environment. However, EPA headquarters
officials responsible for the air and water programs noted that
such variation is fairly commonplace and does pose problems. The
director of OECA's water enforcement division, for example, told
us that, in reacting to similar violations, enforcement responses
in certain regions are stronger than they are in others and that
such inconsistencies have increased.
Similarly, the director of OECA's air enforcement division said
that, given the considerable autonomy of the regional offices, it
is not surprising that variations exist in how they approach
enforcement and state oversight. In this regard, the director
noted, disparities exist among regions in the number and quality
of inspections conducted and in the number of permits written in
relation to the number of sources requiring permits.
In response to these findings, a number of regions have begun to
develop and implement state audit protocols, believing that having
such protocols could help them review the state programs within
their jurisdiction with greater consistency. Here, too, regional
approaches differ. For example:
o Region 1, in Boston, has adopted a comprehensive "multimedia"
approach in which it simultaneously audits all of a state's
delegated environmental programs.
o Region 3, in Philadelphia, favors a more targeted approach in
which air, water, and waste programs are audited individually.
o In Region 5, in Chicago, the office's air enforcement branch
chief said that he did not view an audit protocol as particularly
useful, noting that he prefers regional staff to engage in joint
inspections with states to assess the states' performance in the
field and to take direct federal action when a state action is
inadequate.
We recognize the potential of these protocols to achieve greater
consistency by a region in its oversight of its states, and the
need to tailor such protocols to meet regional concerns. However,
we also believe that EPA guidance on key elements that should be
common to all protocols would help engender a higher level of
consistency among all 10 regions in how they oversee states.
Several Factors Contribute to Variations in Regional Enforcement
Programs
While EPA's data show variations in key measures associated with
the agency's enforcement program, they do little to explain the
causes of the variations. Without information on causes, it is
difficult to determine the extent to which variations represent a
problem, are preventable, or reflect appropriate regional and
state flexibility in applying national program goals to unique
circumstances. Our work identified the following causes: (1)
differences in philosophical approaches to enforcement, (2)
incomplete and inaccurate national enforcement data, and (3) an
antiquated workforce planning and allocation system.
Regions Differ in Their Philosophical Approaches to Enforcement
While OECA has issued policies, memorandums, and other documents
to guide regions in their approach to enforcement, the
considerable autonomy built into EPA's decentralized, multilevel
organizational structure allows regional offices considerable
latitude in adapting headquarters' direction in a way they believe
best suits their jurisdiction. The variations we identified often
reflect different enforcement approaches in determining whether
the region should (1) rely predominantly on fines and other
traditional enforcement methods to deter noncompliance and to
bring violators into compliance or (2) place greater reliance on
alternative strategies, such as compliance assistance (workshops,
site visits, and other activities to identify and resolve
potential compliance problems). Regions have also differed on
whether deterrence could be achieved best through a small number
of high-profile, resource-intensive cases or a larger number of
smaller cases that establish a more widespread, albeit lower
profile, enforcement presence. Further complicating matters are
the wide differences among states in their enforcement approaches
and the various ways in which regions respond to these
differences. Some regions step more readily into cases when they
consider a state's action to be inadequate, while other regions
are more concerned about infringing on the discretion of states
that have been delegated enforcement responsibilities. While all
of these approaches may be permissible, EPA has experienced
problems in identifying and communicating the extent to which
variation either represents a problem or the appropriate exercise
of flexibility by regions and states to apply national program
goals to their unique circumstances.
National Enforcement Data Are Incomplete and Inaccurate
OECA needs accurate and complete enforcement data to determine
whether regions and states are consistently implementing core
program requirements and, if not, whether significant variations
in meeting these requirements should be corrected. The region or
the state responsible for carrying out the enforcement program is
responsible for entering data into EPA's national databases.
However, both the quality of and quality controls over these data
were criticized by state and regional staff we interviewed.
Internal OECA studies have also acknowledged the seriousness of
the data problem. An OECA work group, the "Targeting Program
Review Team," stated that key functions related to data quality,
such as the consistent entry of information by regions and states,
were not working properly and that there were important
information gaps in EPA's enforcement-related databases. Another
OECA work group concluded in 2006, "OECA managers do not have
available to them timely, complete, and detailed analyses of
regional or national performance." A third OECA work group
asserted that the situation has deteriorated from past years,
noting:
"managers in the regions and in OECA headquarters have become
increasingly frustrated that they are not receiving from [the
Office of Compliance] the reports and data analyses they need to
manage their programs...[and there] has been less attention to the
data in the national systems, a commensurate decline in data
quality, and insufficient use of data by enforcement/compliance
managers."
Consistent with our findings and recommendations, EPA's Office of
Inspector General recently reported that, "OECA's 2005
publicly-reported GPRA [Government Performance and Results Act]
performance measures do not effectively characterize changes in
compliance or other outcomes because OECA lacks reliable
compliance rates and other reliable outcome data. In the absence
of compliance rates, OECA reports proxies for compliance to the
public and does not know if compliance is actually going up or
down. As a result, OECA does not have all the data it needs to
make management and program decisions. What is missing most, the
biggest gap, is information about compliance rates. OECA cannot
demonstrate the reliability of other measures because it has not
verified that estimated, predicted, or facility self-reported
outcomes actually took place. Some measures do not clearly link to
OECA's strategic goals. Finally, OECA frequently changed its
performance measures from year to year, which reduced
transparency." For example, between fiscal years 1999-2005, OECA
reported on a low of 23 performance measures to a high of 69
measures, depending on the fiscal year.
Although EPA is working to improve its data, the problems are
extensive and complex. For example, the Inspector General recently
reported that OECA cannot generate programmatic compliance
information for five of six program areas; lacks knowledge of the
number, location, and levels of compliance for a significant
portion of its regulated universe; and concentrates most of its
regulatory activities on large entities and knows little about the
identities or cumulative impact of small entities. Consequently,
the Inspector General reported, OECA currently cannot develop
programmatic compliance information, adequately report on the size
of the universe for which it maintains responsibility, or rely on
the regulated universe data to assess the effectiveness of
enforcement strategies.4
EPA�s Workforce Planning and Allocation System Is Not Adequate
for Effectively Deploying Staff to Regions
As we reported, EPA's process for budgeting and allocating
resources does not fully consider the agency's current workload,
either for specific statutory requirements, such as those included
in the Clean Water Act, or for broader goals and objectives in the
agency's strategic plan. Instead, in preparing its requests for
funding and staffing, EPA makes incremental adjustments, largely
based on historical precedents, and thus its process does not
reflect a bottom-up review of the nature or distribution of the
current workload. While EPA has initiated several projects over
the past decade to improve its workload and workforce assessment
systems, it continues to face major challenges in this area
If EPA is to substantially improve its resource planning, we
reported, it must adopt a more rigorous and systematic process for
(1) obtaining reliable data on key workload indicators, such as
the quality of water in particular areas, which can be used to
budget and allocate resources, and (2) designing budget and cost
accounting systems that are able to isolate the resources needed
and allocated to key enforcement activities.
Without reliable workforce information, EPA cannot ensure
consistency in its enforcement activities by hiring the right
number or type of staff or allocating existing staff resources to
meet current or future needs. In this regard, since 1990, EPA has
hired thousands of employees without systematically considering
the workforce impact of changes in environmental statutes and
regulations, technological advances in affecting the skills and
expertise needed to conduct enforcement actions, or the expansion
in state environmental staff. EPA has yet to factor these
workforce changes into its allocation of existing staff resources
to its headquarters and regional offices to meet its strategic
goals. Consequently, should EPA either downsize or increase its
enforcement and compliance staff, it would not have the
information needed to determine how many employees are
appropriate, what technical skills they must have, and how best to
allocate employees among strategic goals and geographic locations
in order to ensure that reductions or increases could be absorbed
with minimal adverse impacts in carrying out the agency's mission.
EPA Has Initiated or Planned Actions to Achieve Greater Consistency
in Enforcement Activities
Over the past several years, EPA has initiated or planned several
actions to improve its enforcement program. We believe that a few
of these actions hold particular promise for addressing
inconsistencies in regional enforcement activities. These actions
include (1) the creation of a State Review Framework, (2)
improvements in the quality of enforcement data, and (3)
enhancements to the agency's workforce planning and allocation
system.
EPA�s State Review Framework Holds Promise, but It Is Too Early
to Assess Its Effectiveness
The State Review Framework is a new process for conducting
performance reviews of enforcement and compliance activities in
the states (as well as for nondelegated programs implemented by
EPA regions). These reviews are intended to provide a mechanism by
which EPA can ensure a consistent level of environmental and
public health protection across the country. OECA is in the second
year of a 3-year project to make State Review Framework reviews an
integral part of the regional and state oversight and planning
process and to integrate any regional or state corrective or
follow-up actions into working agreements between headquarters,
regions, and states. It is too early to assess whether the process
will provide an effective means for ensuring more consistent
enforcement actions and oversight of state programs to help ensure
a level playing field for the regulated community across the
country. Issues that still need to be addressed include how EPA
will assess states' implementation of alternative enforcement and
compliance strategies, such as strategies to assist businesses in
their efforts to comply with environmental regulations; encourage
businesses to take steps to reduce pollution; offer incentives
(e.g., public recognition) for businesses that demonstrate good
records of compliance; and encourage businesses to participate in
programs to audit their environmental performance and make the
results of these audits and corrective actions available to EPA,
other environmental regulators, and the public.
Efforts Are Underway to Improve Data, but Critical Gaps Remain
Regardless of other improvements EPA makes to the enforcement
program, it needs to have sufficient environmental data to measure
changes in environmental conditions, assess the effectiveness of
the program, and make decisions about resource allocations.
Through its Environmental Indicators Initiative and other efforts,
EPA has made some progress in addressing critical data gaps in the
agency's environmental information. However, the agency still has
a long way to go in obtaining the data it needs to manage for
environmental results and needs to work with its state and other
partners to build on its efforts to fill critical gaps in
environmental data. Filling such gaps in EPA's knowledge of
environmental conditions and trends should, in turn, translate
into better approaches in allocating funds to achieve desired
environmental results. Such knowledge will be useful in making
future decisions related to strategic planning, resource
allocations, and program management.
Nevertheless, most of the performance measures that EPA and the
states are still using focus on outputs rather than on results,
such as the number of environmental pollution permits issued, the
number of environmental standards established, and the number of
facilities inspected. These types of measures can provide
important information for EPA and state managers to use in
managing their programs, but they do not reflect the actual
environmental outcomes that EPA must know in order to ensure that
resources are being allocated in the most cost-effective ways to
improve environmental conditions and public health.
EPA also has worked with the states and regional offices to
improve enforcement data in its Permit Compliance System and
believes that its efforts have improved data quality. EPA
officials said that the system will be incorporated into the
Integrated Compliance Information System, which is being phased in
this year. According to information EPA provided, the
modernization effort will identify the data elements to be entered
and maintained by the states and regions and will include
additional data entry for minor facilities and special regulatory
program areas, such as concentrated animal feeding operations,
combined sewer overflows, and storm water. Regarding the National
Water Quality Inventory, the Office of Water recently began
advocating the use of standardized, probability-based, statistical
surveys of state waters so that water quality information would be
comparable among states and from year-to-year.
While these efforts are steps in the right direction, progress in
this area has been slow and the benefits of initiatives currently
in the discussion or planning stages are likely to be years away
from realization. For example, initiatives to improve EPA's
ability to manage for environmental results are essentially
long-term. They will require a long-term commitment of management
attention, follow-through, and support-including the dedication of
appropriate and sufficient resources-for their potential to be
fully realized. A number of similar initiatives in the past have
been short-lived and unproductive in terms of lasting
contributions to improved performance management. The ultimate
payoff will depend on how fully EPA's organization and management
support these initiatives and the extent to which identified needs
are addressed in a determined, systematic, and sustained fashion
over the next several years.
EPA Has Improved the Management of its Human Capital System,
but Challenges Remain in Allocating Staff to Match Enforcement
Requirements in its Regions
Since the late 1990s, EPA has made progress in improving the
management of its human capital. EPA's human capital strategic
plan was designed to ensure a systematic process for identifying
the agency's human capital requirements to meet strategic goals.
Furthermore, EPA's strategic planning includes a cross-goal
strategy to link strategic planning efforts to the agency's human
capital strategy. Despite such progress, effectively implementing
a human capital strategic plan remains a major challenge.
Consequently, the agency needs to continue monitoring progress in
developing a system that will ensure a well-trained and motivated
workforce with the right mix of skills and experience. In this
regard, the agency still has not taken the actions that we
recommended in July 2001 to comprehensively assess its
workforce-how many employees it needs to accomplish its mission,
what and where technical skills are required, and how best to
allocate employees among EPA's strategic goals and geographic
locations. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, EPA's process for
budgeting and allocating resources does not fully consider the
agency's current workload. With prior years' allocations as the
baseline, year-to-year changes are marginal and occur in response
to (1) direction from the Office of Management and Budget and the
Congress, (2) spending caps imposed by EPA's Office of the Chief
Financial Officer, and (3) priorities negotiated by senior agency
managers.
EPA's program offices and regions have some flexibility in
realigning resources based on their actual workload, but the
overall impact of these changes is also minor, according to agency
officials. Changes at the margin may not be sufficient because
both the nature and distribution of the workload have changed as
the scope of activities regulated has increased and as EPA has
taken on new responsibilities while shifting others to the states.
For example, controls over pollution from storm water and animal
waste at concentrated feeding operations have increased the number
of regulated entities by hundreds of thousands and required more
resources in some regions of the country. However, EPA may be
unable to respond effectively to changing needs and constrained
resources because it does not have a system in place to conduct
periodic "bottom-up" assessments of the work that needs to be
done, the distribution of the workload, or the staff and other
resource needs.
Mr. Chairman, to its credit, EPA has initiated a number of actions
to improve its enforcement activities and has invested
considerable time and resources to make these activities more
effective and efficient. While we applaud EPA's actions, they have
thus far achieved only limited success and illustrate both the
importance and the difficulty of addressing the long-standing
problems in ensuring the consistent application of enforcement
requirements, fines and penalties for violations of requirements,
and the oversight of state environmental programs. To finish the
job, EPA must remain committed to continuing the steps that it has
already taken. In this regard, given the difficulties of the
improvements that EPA is attempting to make and the time likely to
be required to achieve them, it is important that the agency
remain vigilant. It needs to guard against any erosion of its
efforts by factors that have hampered past efforts to improve its
operations, such as changes in top management and priorities and
constraints on available resources.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be
happy to respond to any questions that you or Members of the
Committee may have.
Contact and Staff Acknowledgments
If you have any questions about this testimony, please contact me
at (202) 512-3841 or [email protected] . Major contributors to
this testimony include Ed Kratzer, John C. Smith, Ralph Lowry,
Ignacio Yanes, Kevin Bray, and Carol Herrnstadt Shulman.
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Highlights of GAO-06-840T , testimony before the Committee on Environment
and Public Works, U.S. Senate
June 2006
ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE AND ENFORCEMENT
EPA's Efforts to Improve and Make More Consistent Its Compliance and
Enforcement Activities
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforces the nation's
environmental laws and regulations through its Office of Enforcement and
Compliance Assurance (OECA). While OECA provides overall direction on
enforcement policies and occasionally takes direct enforcement action,
many enforcement responsibilities are carried out by EPA's 10 regional
offices. In addition, these offices oversee the enforcement programs of
state agencies that have been delegated the authority to enforce federal
environmental protection regulations.
This testimony is based on GAO's reports on EPA's enforcement activities
issued over the past several years and on observations from ongoing work
that is being performed at the request of this Committee and the
Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, House
Committee on Appropriations. GAO's previous reports examined the (1)
consistency among EPA regions in carrying out enforcement activities, (2)
factors that contribute to any inconsistency, and (3) EPA's actions to
address these factors. Our current work examines how EPA, in consultation
with regions and states, sets priorities for compliance and enforcement
and how the agency and states determine respective compliance and
enforcement roles and responsibilities and allocate resources for these
purposes.
EPA regions vary substantially in the actions they take to enforce
environmental requirements, according to GAO's analysis of key management
indicators that EPA headquarters uses to monitor regional performance.
These indicators include the number of inspections performed at regulated
facilities and the amount of penalties assessed for noncompliance with
environmental regulations. In addition, the regions differ substantially
in their overall strategies to oversee states within their jurisdictions.
For example, contrary to EPA policy, some regions did not require states
to report all significant violators, while other regions adhered to EPA's
policy in this regard.
GAO identified several factors that contribute to regional variations in
enforcement. These factors include (1) differences in philosophy among
regional enforcement staff about how best to secure compliance with
environmental requirements; (2) incomplete and unreliable enforcement data
that impede EPA's ability to accurately determine the extent to which
variations occur; and (3) an antiquated workforce planning and allocation
system that is not adequate for deploying staff in a manner to ensure
consistency and effectiveness in enforcing environmental requirements.
EPA recognizes that while some variation in environmental enforcement is
necessary to reflect local conditions, core enforcement requirements must
be consistently implemented to ensure fairness and equitable treatment.
Consequently, similar violations should be met with similar enforcement
responses regardless of geographic location. In response to GAO findings
and recommendations, EPA has initiated or planned several long-term
actions that are intended to achieve greater consistency in state and
regional enforcement actions. These include (1) a new State Review
Framework process for measuring states' performance of core enforcement
activities, (2) a number of initiatives to improve the agency's compliance
and enforcement data, and (3) enhancements to the agency's workforce
planning and allocation system to improve the agency's ability to match
its staff and technical capabilities with the needs of individual regions.
However, these actions have yet to achieve significant results and will
likely require a number of years and a steady top-level commitment of
staff and financial resources to substantially improve EPA's ability to
target enforcement actions in a consistent and equitable manner.
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