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PR EPA ISSUES FINAL POLICY TO ENHANCE SMALL BUSINESS COMPL.

Release Date: 5/23/96
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PR EPA ISSUES FINAL POLICY TO ENHANCE SMALL BUSINESS COMPL.

FOR RELEASE: THURSDAY, MAY 23, 1996

EPA ISSUES FINAL POLICY TO ENHANCE SMALL BUSINESS COMPLIANCE WITH ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS

EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner today announced the Policy on Compliance Incentives for Small Businesses. The new compliance program is part of the initiative to reinvent environmental regulation announced by President Clinton on March 16, 1995.
The new policy sets guidelines to reduce or waive penalties for small businesses that make good faith efforts to correct violations under most EPA statutes. The policy does not apply when public health or the environment are seriously threatened, or when the violation involves criminal conduct.

"This new policy demonstrates the Clinton Administration's commitment to work with the small business community," Browner said. "There are thousands of small businesses that are making a conscientious effort to comply with our nation's new laws. This common sense policy expands significantly the number of those small businesses that can now take advantage of financial incentives to comply with rules to protect public health and the environment."

The final policy applies to companies employing 100 or fewer persons on a company-wide basis. Facilities can demonstrate good faith in two ways: either by conducting a self or third-party compliance audit and promptly disclosing and correcting the violations or by getting on-site compliance assistance from a state, federal or other government-sponsored compliance assistance program. If the small business uses a confidential compliance asssistance program, the business may get penalty relief by promptly disclosing the violations to the appropriate regulatory agency. Under the Agency's previous Interim Policy on Compliance Incentives for Small Businesses, issued June 15, 1995, small businesses were only able to get penalty relief if they sought government-sponsored compliance assistance to help identify and correct a violation of environmental law. The final policy extended the "good faith" demonstration to self-audits after the Agency received public comments from trade associations, states, and federal regulators.

"We have provided small businesses a whole other avenue by which they can demonstrate good faith commitment to environmental compliance," said Steve Herman, EPA's Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. Now a small business can undertake a private compliance audit, disclose and 

correct violations and avoid penalties entirely."

For the policy to apply, the violation itself must be a first time, non-criminal violation that does not pose a significant threat to public health, safety or the environment. If the violation is corrected within 180 days, or 360 days using pollution prevention, EPA will eliminate the entire penalty. If a business meets all the criteria but takes additional time to correct the violation or, in the rare event that a business obtains a significant economic benefit from the violation, the EPA will waive up to 100 percent of the gravity or punitive portion of the penalty, but may seek the amount that company saved through its non-compliance. This will eliminate any economic advantage that violators have over those companies that do comply with the law.

Herman also noted that EPA will defer to state enforcement actions that are consistent with this policy, and that the Agency continues to encourage states to develop flexible enforcement policies which build on the their existing compliance assistance programs.

The Policy takes effect June 10 and applies to all pending cases where an agreement on the penalty amount has not been reached.

(A fact sheet on the final Policy is attached)

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