EPA to target biggest polluters

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will focus on cracking down on the largest polluters to deliver "lasting returns" to the American public, the Agency’s top enforcement official said on Thursday.

Cynthia Giles has outlined how the agency is committed to targeting polluters that violate U.S. regulations but needed to prioritise because of budgetary and staffing constraints.

Giles was writing in a blog post this week that explained how the Agency will be "focusing on large, high impact cases requires significant investment and long-term commitment. But this is the right way to invest our resources to achieve tangible and lasting returns to the public."

In a strategic plan for to 2018 that it released on Thursday, the EPA said it would enforce fewer cases overall compared with recent years.

The plan said: "This approach best protects public health not only by addressing the most serious pollution problems, but also by directing EPA's resources to important cases that may not be addressed by states."

Giles noted recent announcements about large settlements with polluters that point to the strategy being a success.

Critics warn that smaller but still significant pollution cases are unlikely to get enforced under the agency's new approach, which will rely increasingly on technology and less on manpower as the EPA sends fewer inspectors into the field.

Giles said the EPA's new programme, called Next Generation Compliance, will use new information and monitoring technologies to help the agency and states to get better compliance results.

"It is the right direction for the Agency regardless of resources because it will increase effectiveness, and it becomes more urgent in a time of challenging budgets, when we need to reduce pollution, improve compliance, and target our enforcement cases where they will make the most difference," she wrote.