EPA Posts State-by-State Water Quality Enforcement Reports Online
Environmental News Service
07/09/2009
WASHINGTON, DC, July 9, 2009 (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has placed online comprehensive reports and data on water quality enforcement in all 50 states.
Administrator Lisa Jackson says the move is part of a larger effort by to enhance transparency, promote the public's right to know about water quality and provide information on EPA's actions to protect water under the Clean Water Act.
The information covers federal and state enforcement of non-compliance with Clean Water Act National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, NPDES, permits that regulate the discharge of pollutants from point sources to waters of the United States.
The majority of facilities covered by the NPDES program are stormwater discharging facilities. Currently, there are about 1,000 large and medium municipal separate storm sewer systems (MS4) permitted with individual permits, and 6,000 small MS4s permitted mostly under general permits. About 95,000 industrial stormwater facilities and 250,000 construction starts are covered by general permits.
In a memorandum issued July 2, Jackson directed EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, OECA, to develop an action plan to enhance public transparency regarding clean water enforcement.
"Clean and safe water is a priority for this Administration," Jackson says in the memo.
"Despite the successes we have achieved over the years, water in the United States is not meeting public health and environmental goals," Jackson states. "Too many of our streams, lakes and rivers do not meet our water quality standards."
"We are also falling short of this Administration's expectations for the effectiveness of our clean water enforcement programs. Data available to EPA shows that, in many parts of the country, the level of significant non-compliance with permitting requirements is unacceptably high and the level of enforcement activity is unacceptably low," Jackson's memo states.
"Our commitment to the rule of law as a foundational principle for EPA requires that we take action against significant violations and that we assure a consistent standard for compliance across the country," Jackson states in the memo. "A level playing field for enforcement and compliance is important for fair treatment of industrial facilities across the country and to prevent some regions from achieving an economic advantage over others."
"I recognize that resources are limited at the federal and state level during these challenging economic times and that we must meet our highest environmental priorities first," Jackson acknowleges in the memo. "However, I believe that, working together with states, there are positive steps we can take quickly to improve compliance and enhance water quality. The first step is to improve transparency."
In the memo, she directs the agency to improve and enhance the information available on the EPA website on compliance and enforcement activities in each state in a user-friendly format, showing connections to local water quality where possible.
"We need to launch into a major shift of EPA's Clean Water Act information systems – so that data on both facilities' discharges and compliance and water quality and other environmental conditions will be readily available and transparent to both federal and state regulators and the public, over the web, on a real-time basis," Jackson says in her memo.
She directs the agency to raise the bar for clean water enforcement performance and ensure enforcement is taken against serious violations that threaten water quality.
Finally, she directs an improvement of EPA enforcement performance in those states where the federal agency directly implements the clean water program.
In keeping with this directive, EPA has posted detailed information on the current state of clean water compliance and enforcement in each state, and copies of the latest clean water enforcement and compliance performance reports for each state to the agency's website.
The EPA also launched new web-based tools to help the public search, assess, and analyze the data the agency used to help prepare those reports.
The OECA and the Environmental Council of States have jointly developed a method to assess state performance in the enforcement and compliance monitoring program.
EPA conducts reviews of its regions and the states on a four year cycle. The reviews consider national and state data on enforcement, enforcement file reviews, commitments made in annual agreements and discussions with senior management at the state and regional levels.
EPA completed Round 1 of reviews between 2004 and 2007. The reviews of each state are found in the table at: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/state/srf/index.html.
EPA began conducting Round 2 of reviews in 2008, and expects to complete these reviews in 2012.
