From E&E EnergyWire
Deep cuts to environmental enforcement proposed by the Trump administration, experts say, would translate into fewer U.S. EPA inspectors poking around in the oil patch and less oversight of state regulation programs.
The spending proposal rolled out yesterday contains a 24 percent cut to EPA’s enforcement office, called the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA). That would further erode a branch that has already been losing staff to budget cuts during the Obama years.
Even though Congress is unlikely to agree to such deep cuts, enforcement veterans and former agency officials say the proposal is a clear signal of the new administration’s priorities.
“The policy direction is less enforcement,” said Rich Alonso, a former air pollution enforcer at the agency now at Bracewell LLP.
Advocates of enforcement called the cuts devastating. In an email exchange, Obama-era OECA Chief Cynthia Giles called them a “death blow.”
The administration’s blueprint justifies the cuts by stating the plan “avoids duplication” of state enforcement efforts.
The main EPA programs delegated to states include programs covering clean water, drinking water, solid and hazardous waste programs, and stationary source air pollution, Alonso said. Presumably, those would be targeted for the biggest reductions.
Federal-only programs include mobile sources and fuel regulations under the Clean Air Act, pesticide programs, toxic substances control and the wetlands program.
But state governments may not be able to pick up the slack. In EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s home state of Oklahoma, agencies have been told to prepare for another year of spending cuts at levels as high as 14.5 percent.
In Pennsylvania, the head of the state Department of Environmental Protection wrote to Pruitt yesterday, saying proposed reductions in federal funding would hit his agency hard.
“These budget cuts do not reduce any of the responsibilities that DEP has to the people of Pennsylvania, but does decrease the resources available to fulfill those responsibilities,” wrote acting Secretary Patrick McDonnell, part of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration.
Trump budget writers protected state revolving funds, which provide money for infrastructure to state and local governments. But they proposed a sharp cut to grant programs, including many for states, saying many “go beyond EPA’s statutory requirements.”
But many of those grants “actually go to support bread-and-butter air and water pollution programs,” said Avi Garbow, EPA’s general counsel in the Obama administration.
“This is a pipeline that is going to dry out,” said Garbow, now at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
‘Desktop enforcement’
More details of how Trump wants to cut EPA and other agencies are expected in May (E&E Daily, March 16).
Alonso said he’d expect sharp cuts to any programs where EPA reviews the work of state environmental programs to ensure compliance. State oil and gas agencies are the primary regulators of oil and gas operations.
While he expects energy companies to see the enforcement changes as a good sign, Alonso said they should be cautious in their optimism.
He expects that EPA officials will turn to more “desktop enforcement,” where the agency demands compliance data from companies to look for violations. While that requires fewer resources for the agency than on-site inspections, it can be time-consuming for companies.
And environmental groups, likely drawing record contributions, will also try to fill any gap EPA leaves in enforcement with lawsuits.
“These organizations are pretty well-known. They’re taken seriously,” Alonso said. “They’re good adversaries.”
But Joel Mintz, author of “Enforcement at the EPA: High Stakes and Hard Choices,” said nonprofit groups can’t come close to filling such a gap.
“There’s only so much they can do,” said Mintz, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University. “It will not make up for the loss of attention to environmental problems.”
Critics say the cuts could challenge Pruitt’s oft-touted devotion to the “rule of law” by making it difficult or impossible to comply with federal statutes.
For example, federal law requires that the agency have 200 criminal investigators. But it has far fewer. The agency already struggles to meet many deadlines set in statute. Environmental groups and others can sue to enforce them.
“If this budget is imposed,” said Garbow, the Obama-era general counsel, “it could so decimate the agency that it is incapable of following the duties delegated to it by Congress.”
