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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency	15-P-0277
Office of Inspector General	September 10,2015
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At a Glance
Why We Did This Review
We conducted this evaluation
to determine whether the
U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) ensured
selected facilities with Clean Air
Act violations were complying
with key terms of their consent
decrees. A consent decree
(CD) is a legal settlement,
contained in a court order,
where a person or company
agrees to take specific actions.
The EPA entered into multi-
year CDs involving millions of
dollars in controls, penalties
and supplemental
environmental projects. We
reviewed three CDs from 2006
to 2011 for three industry
sectors: cement manufacturing,
coal-fired electric utility and
sulfuric acid production. We
reviewed two facilities from
each of the three selected CDs.
This report addresses the
following EPA goals or
cross-agency strategies:
•	Addressing climate change
and improving air quality.
•	Protecting human health
and the environment by
enforcing laws and
assuring compliance.
Send all inquiries to our public
affairs office at (202) 566-2391
or visit www.epa.gov/oiq.
The full report is at:
www.epa.aov/oia/reports/2015/
20150910-15-P-0277.pdf
EPA Can Reduce Risk of Undetected
Clean Air Act Violations Through Better
Monitoring of Settlement Agreements
Adequate tracking of
consent decrees by the EPA
reduces the risk of
violations going
undetected, which could
impact human health and
the environment.
What We Found
The EPA has not ensured that facilities were
complying with several key terms of the three
CDs we reviewed. EPA regional enforcement
files were missing key CD deliverables as well as
other documents required by the CD. Further, CD
requirements were not always incorporated into
facilities' permit as required by the CD and
potential CD violations were not addressed. The
EPA did not have sufficient management controls to ensure that these facilities
were complying with the terms of their CDs. These deficiencies occurred
because:
•	The seven EPA regions we interviewed have not implemented automated
systems for tracking compliance with CD requirements in accordance with
the EPA's guidance for the selected industries.
•	The EPA's guidance does not establish clear requirements on how regional
staff should monitor CDs, provides only vague guidance on what specific
documents to include in the CD enforcement file, and lacks specific
procedures for terminating CDs (other than petroleum refinery CDs).
•	The EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance stated that
because of the need to balance its resources between addressing violators
not currently under CDs and monitoring compliance of existing CDs, it has
chosen to focus its resources on addressing new violations not under CDs.
As a result, the EPA does not have reasonable assurance that these facilities are
complying with several key terms of their CD. We found that the Title V permits
for two facilities had not been revised to incorporate the CD requirements. Thus,
violations of the approved emission limits could go undetected since Louisiana
and West Virginia permitting and enforcement staff were not aware of the
requirements of the CDs we reviewed. Not ensuring compliance with the
requirements of the CD creates the risk that facility emissions of harmful air
pollutants above CD-required limits go undetected, thus reducing CD
effectiveness and exposing the public to harm.
Recommendations and Planned Agency Corrective Actions
We made six recommendations ranging from updating and reissuing guidance for
regional monitoring of CDs and termination procedures to requiring the use of a
monitoring system to track CD compliance. The agency agreed with three of the
six recommendations, which are resolved. The agency partially agreed or
disagreed with the remaining recommendations, which are unresolved.

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