Environmental Enforcement

Penalties May Not Recover Economic Benefits Gained by Violators Gao ID: RCED-91-166 June 17, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) penalty policies and practices.

GAO found that: (1) although total penalties assessed by EPA increased in fiscal year (FY) 1990, the amounts showed little relationship to the economic benefit of the violations; (2) total penalties assessed by EPA in all of its programs increased from $35 million in FY 1989 to $61 million in FY 1990, but the absence of documentation made it impossible to calculate the amount EPA should have collected; (3) state and local authorities did not regularly recover the value of the economic benefit in penalties, and repeated violations occurred in the absence of penalties; (4) such factors as limited budgetary resources, program targets for settled cases, and concerns that high penalties would jeopardize local business deterred regulatory officials from following EPA penalty policies and recovering economic benefits; (5) EPA headquarters lacked sufficient information to oversee its regional office practices, and the organizational responsibilities for enforcement were diffuse, with 15 offices responsible for either setting or carrying out enforcement policies; and (6) EPA oversight of state penalty practices was limited, largely because EPA did not require the states to adopt its own civil penalty policy.

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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