The political debate over regulation tends to focus on the regulations themselves. But enforcing the regulations is just as important. Despite what you might think from the howls of business groups and conservative commentators, the enforcement system is not nearly as strong as it should be.
Twenty years after passage of the Clean Water Act, roughly ten thousand discharges still had no permits whatsoever, 12-13 percent percent of major private and municipal sources were in a "Significant Noncompliance" status during a single three-month period alone, and another 5 percent avoided that status only because they were already on extended compliance schedules. Other studies showed considerable variation in compliance levels between states. Some of the non-compliance may not have resulted in serious pollution problems. Still, these figures were cause for serious concern.
Unfortunately, environmental enforcement problems seem to have continued into this century. A 2012 report by GAO says that EPA still reported "substantial rates of noncompliance in some programs." Compounding the challenge in inducing compliance at desired levels is the enforcers' ignorance of the scope of the problem they are addressing. As the GAO also noted, "Because of incomplete or unreliable data on compliance in some programs, . . ., EPA cannot determine the full extent of entities' compliance."
Enforcement by states has also continued to fall short of expectations, including "routine failure in some states to bring enforcement actions or impose meaningful penalties. As of 2009, EPA set a national goal that states inspect 100% of CWA major permit holders every two years, but in 2010, only two states met that goal, the national average was only 61 percent, and thirteen states inspected fewer than 50 percent of major facilities.
This is not to say that enforcement is just a paper tiger. In 2015, EPA's enforcement program resulted in $7 billion in investments by companies in compliance and cleanup measures; $404 million in penalties; 129 combined years of incarceration for sentenced defendants, and $39 million for environmental mitigation projects. These enforcement actions resulted in reductions of 215,000 tons of air pollutants and 46,000 pounds of water pollution. This is a significant enforcement effort. Still, it falls far short of reaching all violations, leaving many pollution sources out of compliance.
One reason why EPA doesn't do a better job in enforcement is that it doesn't have the money. EPA's budget problems are hard to fix, given the huge battles over the federal budget. So it's not easy to fix that problem. But there are a number of promising ideas for how to get more bang for a buck, some of which EPA is actively exploring. I'll address some of those ideas in a post later this week.
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Daniel Farber | June 6, 2016
The political debate over regulation tends to focus on the regulations themselves. But enforcing the regulations is just as important. Despite what you might think from the howls of business groups and conservative commentators, the enforcement system is not nearly as strong as it should be. Twenty years after passage of the Clean Water Act, […]
Matthew Freeman | June 3, 2016
We have an in-house guideline about bragging on CPRBlog, which is that we try to keep it to a minimum. It’s not so much a matter of modesty as it is that we think the work our Member Scholars and staff do speaks for itself. But we’re going to suspend our usual practice for a […]
David Driesen | June 2, 2016
During the last few years, airlines have increased their reliance on “bait-and-switch” scheduling. They induce travelers to choose their airline based on advertised routes and schedules. They know that especially good routes are valuable and generally charge more for a good route than a bad one. Long after travelers have taken the bait, often paying […]
Matthew Freeman | June 1, 2016
CPR’s Rena Steinzor and Katherine Tracy had an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee over the weekend highlighting the reluctance of police and prosecutors to treat worker deaths as if they were anything but mere accidents. In fact, they’re often the result of illegal cost-cutting and safety shortcuts by employers, behavior that sometimes warrants criminal charges. They write: When a worker dies […]
Dave Owen | May 31, 2016
Originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog by CPR Member Scholar Dave Owen Today, the United States Supreme Court released its opinion in US Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes, Co. The key question in Hawkes was whether a Clean Water Act jurisdictional determination – that is, a determination about whether an area does or does […]
Joel A. Mintz | May 26, 2016
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan – the agency’s bold attempt to use the Clean Air Act to protect our health and the environment by regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants – has been challenged in court by some 28 states, 205 members of Congress, electric utilities, coal companies […]
Katie Tracy | May 25, 2016
This morning, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report finding that hazardous working conditions across the meat and poultry industry put workers at risk of on-the-job injuries and illnesses. While injury and illness rates reportedly declined in the decade from 2004 to 2013, GAO emphasizes that the decrease might not be because of […]
Matt Shudtz | May 25, 2016
Are you interested in ensuring that communities impacted by climate change can effectively adapt to changing conditions and that vulnerable populations will be protected and treated fairly in the process? Do you have a background in the legal and policy issues related to both clean water and climate change adaptation? If so, you should consider […]
Rena Steinzor | May 24, 2016
This post has also been published on The Huffington Post. Within the next few days, Congress is likely to enact the first update of a major environmental statute in many years. Widely hailed as a bipartisan compromise, legislation to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA, pronounced like the opera Tosca) was made possible by […]