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Environmental Protection: EPA-State Enforcement Partnership Has Improved, but EPA's Oversight Needs Further Enhancement

GAO-07-883 Published: Jul 31, 2007. Publicly Released: Jul 31, 2007.
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Highlights

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforces the nation's environmental laws through its Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA). OECA sets overall enforcement policies and through its 10 regions oversees state agencies authorized to implement environmental programs consistent with federal requirements. GAO was asked to (1) identify trends in federal resources to regions and states for enforcement between 1997 and 2006, and determine regions' and states' views on the adequacy of these resources; (2) determine EPA's progress in improving priority setting and enforcement planning with states; and (3) examine EPA's efforts to improve oversight of states' enforcement programs and identify additional actions EPA could take to ensure more consistent state performance and oversight. GAO examined information from all 10 regions and 10 authorized states, among other things.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Environmental Protection Agency To enhance EPA's oversight of regional and state enforcement activities to implement environmental programs consistent with the requirements of federal statutes and regulations, the Administrator of EPA should include, in EPA's fiscal year 2008 evaluation of the SRF, an assessment of lessons learned and an action plan for determining how significant problems identified in state programs will be uniformly and expeditiously addressed.
Closed – Implemented
In FY 2008, EPA completed an assessment of lessons learned from its State Review Framework(SRF)reviews. EPA's assessment identified important national issues, including significant non-compliance with water permitting requirements and an unacceptably low level of enforcement activity. As a result, in July 2009, the EPA Administrator directed the Office of Water to develop an action plan to strengthen EPA and state enforcement performance and to further enhance public transparency regarding compliance and enforcement activities. In October 2009, EPA issued its Clean Water Act Enforcement Action Plan.
Environmental Protection Agency To enhance EPA's oversight of regional and state enforcement activities to implement environmental programs consistent with the requirements of federal statutes and regulations, the Administrator of EPA should evaluate the capacity of individual authorized state programs, where the SRF finds the state appears to lack sufficient resources (e.g., funding, staff, and expertise), to implement and enforce authorized programs and then develop an action plan to improve that state's capacity.
Closed – Implemented
EPA has taken action to define state performance problems with implementation of compliance and enforcement programs. These actions include an evaluation of the capacity of individual authorized state programs, recommendations for addressing identified performance problems, and associated time frames for state programs to complete corrective actions. EPA publishes it's findings, recommendations, and state corrective actions in its online database.
Environmental Protection Agency To enhance EPA's oversight of regional and state enforcement activities to implement environmental programs consistent with the requirements of federal statutes and regulations, the Administrator of EPA should publish the SRF findings so that the public will know how well state regulators are enforcing authorized programs and protecting public health and the environmental conditions in their communities.
Closed – Implemented
In July 2009, EPA published on its website the State Review Framework (SRF) reports and data on enforcement performance for all 54 states and territories, including those states and territories where EPA directly implements the programs. EPA has also implemented web-based tools to help the public search, assess, and analyze the enforcement data that EPA used to prepare the SRF reports.
Environmental Protection Agency To enhance EPA's oversight of regional and state enforcement activities to implement environmental programs consistent with the requirements of federal statutes and regulations, the Administrator of EPA should conduct a performance assessment similar to SRF for regional enforcement programs.
Closed – Not Implemented
EPA has begun using the State Review Framework (SRF) to evaluate regional enforcement programs in six of ten regions that directly implement one or more programs not delegated to the states. However, EPA has not implemented a comprehensive, SRF-type review of the ten regional enforcement programs to address substantial inconsistencies among the regions in enforcement actions and state oversight, as GAO intended with the recommendation.

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Topics

Environmental lawEnvironmental monitoringFederal aid to localitiesFederal aid to statesFederal regulationsstate relationsGrants to statesLaw enforcementPollution controlProgram managementRegional planningStrategic planningProgram implementationPolicies and procedures