When the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft this past November of its Fiscal Year 2014-2018 Strategic Plan, environmentalists applauded the agency’s decision to address climate change, protect water sources, ensure the safety of chemicals, prevent pollution and improve air quality.
However, some environmentalists zeroed in on a clause in the 86-page proposal that they say indicates the agency is backing away from its traditional role of enforcing measures that protect the environment, such as the agency’s plan to conduct 30 percent fewer inspections and file 40 percent fewer civil cases throughout the next five years as compared to the last five years.
Groups such as the Center for Progressive Reform note that the severe limitations contained in the proposal “could severely undercut regulated entities’ commitment to meet their regulatory responsibilities, exposing the public to unacceptable health and environmental risks.”
CPR staff, including the group’s President Rena Steinzor, member scholar Rob Glicksman and policy analyst Anne Havemann, say this is particularly concerning since traditional enforcement “is the most cost-effective weapon to prevent backsliding on the progress the nation has made in reducing traditional pollution.”
Last month, the trio wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, encouraging her to rethink some of the proposed changes to the EPA’s proposal, since as Havemann put it, “Every day, we are presented with more evidence of the need to inspect for environmental violations and enforce the nation’s laws.
“The most recent example is the failure of federal and state regulators to discover a leaking chemical storage tank that left 300,000 people in West Virginia with water so contaminated it could only be used to flush toilets.”
Whether McCarthy has responded to CPR’s concerns is not known.
However, the EPA says its “new paradigm” known as “Next Generation Compliance” will achieve better results than traditional enforcement techniques by using advanced pollution monitoring techniques to “identify pollution issues,” which the agency says can be used by government and industry officials to find and fix pollution and violation problems.
CPR says that a “federal retreat from enforcement could permit the states to ease up as well.
“A less active federal agency will likely demand less of the states; it cannot hold them to a higher standard than it holds itself. On the flip side, states may feel pressure to pick up the slack when the federal government begins initiating fewer enforcement actions.”
In an issue alert published last month, CPR pointed out that this new plan is problematic for many reasons, one being that less regulation is dangerous as even the EPA has admitted in recent years its enforcement record has been sub par for years.
But instead of blaming failed policies, the EPA appears to be blaming its issues on budget shortages.
While CPR and other environmentalists recognize that the EPA’s budget has been steadily declining for years, and that even in FY 2009, when the agency’s funding peaked, when adjusted for inflation, the agency still was given less funding than the agency received in 1978.
“While [the] EPA is struggling with funding, state budgets have been hit even harder. In a survey of 49 states, the Environmental Council of the States found that state environmental agency budgets shrank by approximately $17.5 million from FY 2011 to FY 2012, an average decline of $357,000 per state,” CPR reports.
Although CPR recognizes the EPA does not control the level of funding allocated to the agency by Congress, the group says the EPA “should vociferously protest budget cuts and identify the likely consequences for agency enforcement initiatives and for water quality in places like the [Chesapeake] Bay.
“Rather than pretending that it can do even more with less, it should be making noise — and plenty of it — about the problems that budget stinginess is creating,” the group said.
“The agency’s retreat from enforcement, as signaled in this strategic plan, will not only hinder efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, but will also negatively affect everyone who drinks water or breathes air.”
Public feedback for the EPA’s proposal ended Jan. 3.
The proposal is now scheduled to be presented to Congress sometime this month. It is Congress who will ultimately decide whether to approve or reject the proposal and determine the amount of funding the agency will receive.