Hearing
to Consider the Nomination of John Peter Suarez
to be
EPA Assistant Administrator for the
Office
of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance
Tuesday,
May 7, 2002, 11 a.m., SD-406
Mr. Chairman, thank you for
holding this hearing to consider the nomination of John Peter Suarez to head
EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. The enforcement and
compliance office, EPA, and the environment, have gone far too long without new
leadership in this area.
EPA's enforcement and compliance
program is at a cross-roads, between old ways of doing business and new ways
that stress what is best for the environment as the ultimate test for what
action to take.
To their credit, the last
administration began the process of modernizing the enforcement program by
reorganizing it. That reorganization recognized that there is more than one way
to protect the environment and ensure people meet their environmental
obligations.
EPA can improve the environment
by assisting people to understand and meet their obligations. This is
especially true for small businesses that want to do the right thing but can't
wade through EPA's immense and complicated rules and regulations.
EPA can improve the environment by providing people
with incentives to meet and go beyond their environmental obligations. These
incentives are worth their weight in gold when they fix environmental problems
that would otherwise go unknown or unprotected by traditional enforcement
techniques.
EPA can also protect the environment with
traditional enforcement techniques for the most harmful malefactors. Polluters
who intentionally pollute, or polluters who refuse to fix their problems
deserve strong and stiff punishment.
We understand that the cleaner, cheaper, smarter way
to improve the environment, as Administrator Browner used to say, may not be
the traditional approach. So, she combined all of these elements - enforcement,
assistance, and incentives - into a single enforcement and compliance assurance
office.
However, the transformation is not yet complete.
There are still some that measure commitment to the environment in terms of beans
- the number of cases settled, the number of penalty dollars collected.
Unfortunately, these beans often times have little to do with protecting or improving the environment.
One example came two years ago when EPA sent out
nearly 600 letters to facilities that omitted entries for nitrate compounds on
their Toxic Release Inventory reporting forms. EPA threatened to assess fines
totaling $20,000 per facility for these paperwork violations.
The problem was, other than these violations having
no environmental impact, EPA found them by targeting firms trying to do the
right thing - those actually submitting their forms.
This wasn't a case of a few bad actors. Eighty
percent of filers failed to understand the requirement. Not surprising given
that reporting instructions run several hundred pages. Professional consulting
firms paid to know this requirement missed it. No wonder that half of those on
EPA's hit list were small businesses.
Unfortunately, in the face of no damage to the environment,
instead of helping these people understand their obligations and come into
compliance, EPA's enforcement program went for maximum cases and maximum penalty
dollars.
We need to prosecute forcefully those who
intentionally harm the environment. We should deal harshly with those who
refuse meet their environmental obligation. However, EPA needs to target its
limited federal enforcement resources in areas and ways that do the most good
for the environment.
The test should not be how to maximize traditional
beans, or cases, or penalty dollars. EPA is not the IRS. They do not exist to
collect money. They are here to protect the environment. I hope the first question
you ask in every case will be: What is the most efficient, effective way to
protect the environment? If you do that, the environment will benefit from your
tenure. Thank you.