[Source: The Washington Post] The Environmental Protection Agency will no longer have inspectors drop by power plants and other potential illegal polluters without giving states notice, a move Trump administration critics say will limit the agency’s ability to enforce environmental laws.
A July 11 memo from Susan Bodine, the EPA’s top enforcement official, to regional administrators spelled out the agency’s new “no surprises” policy as an effort to better cooperate with state and local regulators.
“With increased EPA cooperation and transparency, the EPA expects the states to respond in kind,” Bodine writes.
The memo is the latest move by President Trump’s environmental deputies to vest more power in the states when it comes to ensuring companies are following the nation’s clean air and water laws. But the administration’s critics say the EPA is helping polluters by deferring to state regulators, who often tread more lightly when dealing with local employers.
Under the new policy, the agency will provide states “with advance notice of inspections” and “will generally defer to a state as the primary implementer of inspections and enforcement.” Bodine also asked regional offices to avoid inspections that overlap with one’s states have already conducted within a 12-month time period, though the EPA said in an emailed statement that multiple inspections during that timeframe are not entirely prohibited.
“Taking the element of surprise away from inspections decreases their effectiveness, for obvious reasons,” Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and a former EPA enforcement attorney, said in a statement. “I fear that EPA’s ‘no surprises’ posture masks a ‘see no evil’ approach to corporate polluters.”
The new policy, however, does not close the door on whether inspections will be a surprise for the companies themselves. But Whitehouse worries state regulators could tip off companies about ones that are coming.
“Some states are more cooperative with industry, do not conduct or want surprise inspections in their states, or have used EPA’ s possible surprise inspections as a hammer,” Whitehouse said. “Some states do discourage EPA inspections and the possibility that facilities will be notified is a real concern.”
In an emailed statement, however, the EPA countered that it anticipated “any disagreements with respect to giving advance notice to a facility would be worked out” between federal and state regulators.
Trump officials have defended the agency’s approach to law enforcement even as its enforcement numbers have dropped since the president took office. The number of civil cases started and completed in 2018 hit a 10-year low while the amount of money sought through civil penalties plummeted to the lowest average level since 1994 during the past fiscal year.
Testifying before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee in February, Bodine said the agency has reduced the need for as many annual inspections by becoming better at finding instances of noncompliance.
“Some are judging our work on a narrow set of parameters and then drawing the conclusion that EPA is somehow soft on environmental violators, that the EPA doesn’t care about compliance with the law,” Bodine told lawmakers. “I’m here to tell you that is absolutely not true.”
Source: The Washington Post
July 19, 2019
