August 23, 2023
By:
Walter G. Wright
Category:
Arkansas Environmental, Energy, and Water Law
Arkansas Environmental, Energy, and Water Law
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The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) announced its National Enforcement and Compliance Initiatives (“NECIs”) for fiscal years 2024-2027.
EPA chooses every four years national initiatives on which to focus resources on what it believes are serious and widespread environmental problems for which federal enforcement can make a difference.
The primary objective of the initiatives has been stated by EPA as protecting:
. . . human health and the environment by holding polluters accountable and compelling regulated entities to return to compliance.
The NECIs include for the first time initiatives to:
- Mitigate climate change
- Methane emissions from oil and gas facilities
- Methane emissions from landfills
- Use, importation, and production of HFCs
- Address exposure to PFAS contamination
- Address facilities that manufacture PFAS and/or use PFAS in a manufacturing process
- Address the federal facilities that release PFAS
- Address industrial parties that significantly contribute to the release of PFAS into the environment
- Address coal ash
- Address on-site landfills
- Address settling ponds
- Address other coal plant surface impoundments
NECIs are also retaining the following initiatives:
- Reducing air toxics in overburdened communities
- Increasing compliance with Safe Drinking Water Act drinking water standards
- Chemical accident risk reduction
EPA notes that environmental justice concerns will be a component of these initiatives.
Note that the State of Arkansas has been delegated almost every federal environmental program. As a result, the primary sources of enforcement are Arkansas agencies. Nevertheless, EPA has the authority, and does on occasion, initiate federal enforcement actions involving Arkansas facilities.
A copy of the EPA NECIs can be downloaded here.
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