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Environmental regulation is a balancing act. Many environmental laws and regulations apply equally to regulated entities regardless of size, sophistication and fiscal status. These entities, however impose varying degrees of risk to the environment. MDE strives to coordinate enforcement and compliance efforts to balance and favor minimizing public health risk and the environment. MDE does this while maximizing our footprint in the environmental community through education and presence.
MDE’s rules are written in laws and regulations and reiterated in permits. A good measure to determine whether MDE is doing a good job is the percentage of those regulated entities that are in compliance. Stephen Pattison, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Community Relations and Outreach for MDE said that, “Violations and non-compliances are not a true measure of the good efforts that our regulated community are expending every day to protect Maryland’s air, water and land. Maryland is fortunate to have engendered such a responsible group of regulated facilities.”
MDE’s mission to protect and restore the quality of Maryland’s air, water, and land resources, is accomplished through permitting, compliance and enforcement activities. Enforcement is broken down into inspection, monitoring and evaluation components. Discretion is used by our professional team of evaluators to identify the severity of the punishment based on weight of the infraction.
Working with Regulated Entities
Most of MDE’s programs allow discretion after a discovered infraction, depending on several factors including the severity of the violation and its environmental consequences. It is a weighted process based on the demeanor of the violator, their good faith efforts, compliance history and whether there is a pattern to violations. If the violation is not severe, MDE can provide compliance assistance, showing the permittee how to comply with their permit. However, if the violation is determined to be significant or other factors exist, such as a history of non-compliance, then enforcement action must be pursued.
In the past, the command and control techniques utilized by environmental regulators, were viewed in an adverse light. Nowadays compliance can be achieved with various positive techniques. Many times permit limits can be attained with simple best management practices or pollution prevention techniques, rather than installing expensive treatment equipment. If you don’t generate the pollution in the first place, you don’t have to remove it.
Supplemental Environmental Projects
For significant violations, penalties are appropriate after all other options are exhausted. An alternative method to administering all or a portion of a penalty is called a supplemental environmental project (SEP). SEPs are offered to certain qualified violating entities in place of fines to invite a stewardship approach and community service that far outweigh incurred fees.
Instead of paying the entire penalty proposed to settle a violation, a violator agrees to perform an environmentally beneficial project. The chosen project cannot be connected with the violation, which also has to be corrected in a timely manner and the entity must return to compliance. The SEP must improve, protect or reduce risks to public health or the environment at large. The cost of performing a SEP is a multiple of the cost of paying the penalty. Many violators choose to perform SEPs since they have the benefit of promoting a good image for that organization. This allows for a win-win situation for MDE, regulated entity, and the environment. SEPs are a way MDE combines environmental compliance with direct environmental benefit that is visible to the public.
Advanced Customer Service
Our compliance assurance efforts strive to treat our customers fairly in the interest of the citizens of Maryland. MDE’s Office of Special Programs (OSP) oversees these enforcement efforts to guarantee communication among the Department’s divisions. This high level of internal department-wide enforcement awareness allows MDE todifferentiate between the varying depth of sincerity of our regulated entities. MDE then molds enforcement efforts to the individual organizations to achieve a higher compliance rate.
Compliance is a Measure of Our Success
Generally, MDE’s formal enforcement actions against a regulated entity is not a surprise to that facility. Prior to any action, the MDE works with that entity to get them back into compliance. It is not in the best interest of the department to have regulated entities out of compliance. Penalties and enforcement actions do not measure our success in meeting our mission. Compliance is a measure of our
success. MDE focuses its resources where we get the most bang for the buck. We pursue the worst violators with enforcement actions. We supplement this with a working program for infrequent, essentially good businesses to provide education through compliance assistance.
For information on compliance assistance contact MDE’s Office of Special Programs, Customer Service Center at 410-537-3772.
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