US EPA Releases Annual Enforcement Results and Mapping Tool

On December 23, 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released enforcement results for fiscal year 2009, and has developed a new Web-based tool and interactive map that allows the public to get detailed information by location about the enforcement actions taken at approximately 4,600 facilities.  

The website is available at http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/reports/endofyear/eoy2009/index.html 

The web site provides data and background about the Agency’s enforcement actions addressing specific environmental and public health problems, both nationally and locally.

Overview 

In fiscal year 2009, EPA concluded enforcement actions requiring polluters to invest more than $5 billion on pollution controls, cleanup, and environmental projects. Civil and criminal defendants committed to install controls and take other measures to reduce pollution by approximately 580 million pounds annually once all required controls are fully implemented. 

EPA indicates that it targets its enforcement actions to address the most important environmental and public health problems. Approximately 57% of pollution reductions and 71% of pollution control investments obtained through the Agency’s fiscal year 2009 enforcement actions focused on water and air pollution priority problems.  

EPA’s Clean Air Act enforcement actions during fiscal year 2009 reduced approximately 230 million pounds of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter per year when all the required pollution controls are in place, resulting in estimated health benefits of between $4 billion to $9.8 billion.  

US EPA has identified national priority areas for enforcement which includes:

·     air toxics (click here for air toxics strategy summary)

·     concentrated animal feeding operations (click here for CAFO strategy summary)

·     municipal sewer overflows (click here for combined sewer overflow strategy summary and here for sanitary sewer overflow strategy summary)

·     new source review (click here for NSR/PSD strategy summary)

·     storm water (click here for storm water strategy summary)

·     RCRA mineral processing (click here for mineral processing strategy summary)

·     financial assurance (click here for financial assurance strategy summary)

·     Indian country (click here for Indian country strategy summary) 

Criminal Enforcement Highlights 

In fiscal year 2009 EPA’s criminal enforcement program continued emphasizing cases with significant environmental, human health and deterrence impact while balancing its overall case load across all pollution statues. The criminal enforcement program emphasizes National Enforcement Priorities, Regional Enforcement Priorities, stationary source air cases, “high impact” cases, repeat or chronic civil noncompliance and import-export cases.  

387 new environmental crime cases were opened in fiscal year 2009, the highest number in the past five years. Almost 1/3 of the new cases opened in fiscal year 2009 were in criminal enforcement priority areas.  

Mapping Tool 

The new mapping tool (click here) allows the public to view the locations of facilities that were the subject of those enforcement actions on interactive maps of the U.S. and territories. The maps show facilities where civil enforcement actions were taken for environmental laws for air, water and land pollution and a separate map shows criminal enforcement actions.  

EPA mapped the locations of more than 90 percent of the facilities that were the subject of enforcement actions last year. Drinking water treatment facilities were not mapped due to potential security concerns. A list of the facilities not mapped is available here.  

Additional information about the mapping tool is available here. 

This article was excerpted from publically available information, and was authored by Joyce Gentry, Acacia Environmental Group LLC. For more information on the author see here.