EPA Plans New Pollution Check of Industries : Environment: Specific teams from the agency would monitor requirements and compliance in all areas.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner says that she intends to make sweeping changes in the way her agency monitors pollution produced by the nation’s industries.

The result will make enforcement more efficient, she says, while making it easier for businesses to determine what they must do to stay out of trouble with federal regulators.

“The old piecemeal approach, where the air office looks at air pollution, the water office looks at water pollution, and so on, doesn’t work for me as a regulator and it doesn’t work for you,” Browner told industry leaders Friday at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce session.

The new approach will assign a key industry to a specific team in the agency that would assess its environmental requirements and compliance in all areas.

The new system corresponds with a Clinton Administration pledge to make business’ and government’s dealings on environmental issues less bureaucratically tangled and time consuming and also less confrontational.

“For each industry, we’ll ask the question: In every way that EPA intersects with this industry--in rule making, in permitting, in reporting requirements, in enforcement, in technical assistance--are we doing everything we can to meet our environmental goals in the most efficient and effective way?” Browner said.

She said the EPA would also seek to “identify innovative approaches in pollution prevention and environmental technology.”

“I have made pollution prevention the guiding principle of all we do at EPA, because it makes sense to stop pollution before it starts than to pay to clean it up,” she said.

Browner said one of the goals of this change and others she has directed is to lessen the cost of environmental compliance for industry and the economy.