The Nickel Report

EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) recently announced a major shift in the agency’s approach to environmental enforcement, emphasizing swift, efficient achievement of compliance over punitive or expansive enforcement measures. The “Reinforcing a ‘Compliance First’ Orientation for Compliance Assurance and Civil Enforcement Activities” memo (not publicly available as of this writing) clarifies that EPA’s primary goal is to ensure compliance with federal environmental laws using the most defensible and clear interpretations of statutory or regulatory mandates, thereby reducing ambiguity and regulatory uncertainty to industry’s benefit. The memo has implications for future compliance and enforcement activity as well as ongoing cases.