Studies Decry EPA Enforcement Cuts

Violations of federal environmental laws would more likely go undetected and unpunished under a Bush administration plan to shift money to the states and reduce its own staff, according to two new government reports.

A report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that the Bush administration cannot prove that the states will make up for the loss of 8% of the EPA’s enforcement staff.

“It cannot be demonstrated that it won’t cause unwanted adverse effects,” said Ed Kratzer, an author of the recently released GAO report, of the proposed staff cuts.

As part of its proposed 2002 budget, the Bush administration asked Congress to shift $25 million from EPA enforcement staffing to a grant program to help the states improve their enforcement of federal environmental laws. EPA’s own enforcement staff would be cut by 270 positions as a result. The House has embraced the administration’s plan, but the Senate rejected it.

House and Senate members will form a conference committee, probably next month, to resolve their differences.

The studies--one requested by a Republican member of Congress, the other conducted by the EPA’s Inspector General’s Office--are expected to feed the ongoing debate over the shape of environmental policy between the administration and industry, on one side, and environmentalists and some lawmakers, mostly Democrats, on the other.

Even though the dollar amount is small, the agency’s proposal has received a great deal of attention from the administration and its critics because it represents a significant shift in policy. It reflects the administration’s philosophy that urging compliance with the law is more effective than cracking down on polluters and that states are better regulators than the federal government.

“Our new $25-million grant program will allow the states to enhance their enforcement efforts in ways that will increase accountability for results and will provide flexibility to address unique needs,” EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said Wednesday in written answers to questions.

But environmentalists argue that companies will comply only if there are aggressive inspections and stiff fines for violations.

The EPA report looked at state efforts to enforce one aspect of the federal Clean Water Act: regulations designed to protect human health and the environment by setting limits on pollutants that can be discharged into rivers, streams and seas. It concluded that the three states it studied--California, North Carolina and Utah--had many weaknesses in their enforcement programs, including failing to report serious violations or impose fines high enough to deter companies from polluting waterways.

The EPA report also considered recent audits of five other states and found similar problems. The report used California to show how states should better align their enforcement resources with their biggest pollution problems. The state identified storm runoff as its most serious water quality problem, but most of its enforcement resources were focused on large plants that were complying with the laws.

The state last year more than doubled its staffing to focus on storm water and is hoping the new team will “get up and running” and successfully address that problem, said Robert Miller, spokesman for the California Water Resources Control Board.

“The inspector general’s report confirms that our concerns are valid and why: The states are not doing their job, and what is needed is more oversight by the EPA,” said Daniel Rosenberg of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

But EPA officials said shifting money to the states will result in better enforcement and will help fix some of the problems identified in the inspector general’s report. The states already perform 95% of the inspections and 90% of the enforcement actions for federal environmental laws, they said.

In its report, the GAO said the EPA bases its enforcement staffing decisions on “outdated and incomplete” information. It recommended that the agency collect and update information on the demands facing its enforcement staff before considering shrinking its size.

“Without accurate work force planning information . . . EPA cannot demonstrate that the staff reductions will be absorbed without impairing its effectiveness,” the report states. “Furthermore, in some states, particularly those states that may not receive additional grant funds, it is possible that the level of enforcement activity may actually be reduced.”

States typically have been more restrained than the federal government in fining polluters, in part because the polluters often are businesses that are key to the local economy.

An EPA analysis shows that in recent years states were responsible for a relatively small percentage of the penalties assessed: 30% in 1998 and 15% in 1999.

“There is no doubt that unless the penalties are sufficient to deter crime, these companies are going to continue to break environmental laws,” said John Coequyt of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based research and advocacy group.

For their part, state regulators say the job of enforcing an ever-growing list of EPA regulations is huge and that the states need more money to do it well.

“You can’t say those funds wouldn’t be put to pretty good use; they would be,” said Linda Eichmiller of the Assn. of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators.

“It costs a lot of money to maintain a program to the level that the [inspector general] would like to see,” she added.