Air Pollution

Improvements Needed in Detecting and Preventing Violations Gao ID: RCED-90-155 September 27, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to: (1) detect when major stationary sources of air pollution violated air pollution control requirements; and (2) ensure that appropriate enforcement actions are taken when violations are found.

GAO found that: (1) EPA did not issue regulations implementing emission monitoring policy and did not develop criteria for determining the feasibility of using monitors; (2) air quality violations were 10 times more likely to be detected by emission monitors than by on-site inspections; (3) EPA did not assess cash penalties in more than half of the significant violator cases at major stationary sources between fiscal years 1988 and 1989; (4) the joint EPA and state implementation plans did not require state and local agencies to assess penalties to eliminate the economic benefit sources obtained by not complying with regulations; and (5) state and local programs typically assessed penalties to correct the cause of the violation.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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