The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is modernizing its approach to environmental compliance and efficiency through a project called “E-Enterprise for the Environment.” Today we will review EPA’s plans for E-Enterprise as outlined in the Agency’s 2017 budget pertaining to air quality, water quality, and inspections. Tomorrow we will look at EPA’s budgetary plans for compliance and a data exchange network under the E-Enterprise initiative.
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Recap. You can review the basic premise of E-Enterprise and how it affects the regulated community as well as some of the comments the EPA has received concerning E-Enterprise.
What’s Out in the EPA Budget?
The EPA budget for fiscal year (FY) 2017 eliminates a number of programs that totaled $85.4 million, including beaches protection categorical grants, multipurpose categorical grants, state indoor radon grants, targeted airshed grants, and water quality research and support grants.
Priority Goal
One of EPA’s priority goals for FY 2016–2017 is to “strengthen environmental protection through business process improvements enabled by joint governance and technology.” Strategies to attain this goal include reducing burden by 1 million hours, adding five new functionalities to the E-Enterprise Portal, and initiating development on two projects selected through E-Enterprise Leadership Council joint governance, all by September 30, 2017.
The EPA intends to leverage technology, in part, by using E-Enterprise to rethink how government agencies deliver environmental protection. Under this strategy, the EPA intends to continue streamlining its business processes and systems to reduce reporting burdens on states and regulated facilities and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of regulatory programs. Within the E-Enterprise program, the Agency will continue to pilot projects, such as the E-Enterprise Portal and Federated Identity Management prototypes, to move disjointed state and federal programs toward a more coordinated and open platform of services to make environmental data reporting and sharing faster, simpler, and less expensive.
The FY 2017 budget includes $15.7 million in funding to support states’ roles in E-Enterprise efforts, including supporting coordination and governance for the Environmental Council of the States and state grants to provide broader state participation in E-Enterprise joint governance and implementation of projects, which will result in greater efficiency across the environmental enterprise.
E-Enterprise and Air Quality
EPA’s FY 2017 budget calls for a $2.8 million-dollar increase for the continued development of the Combined Air Emissions Reporting project, which is intended to streamline and integrate multiple emissions reporting, in line with the E-Enterprise business strategy, to make it easier and more efficient for state, local, and tribal air agencies and industry to report required air emissions data and to improve the quality of the data received.
E-Enterprise and Water Quality
The EPA intends to use the E-Enterprise approach to improve the ability to identify, protect, and enhance healthy waters and watersheds, mainly through the use of reliable and timely data. The Agency intends to accelerate implementation of electronic reporting in order to minimize burden for data entry and error resolution, reduce the effort in responding to public requests for data, establish consistent requirements for e-reporting across all states, and allow more timely access to National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program data in an electronic format.
‘Smart’ Inspections
Another focus in FY 2017, under the E-Enterprise umbrella, is the development of a field collection, evidence management, and reporting system for conducting compliance monitoring inspections. This focus will start with the initial development of the program, in tandem with the states, for the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). This is called “Smart Tools for RCRA” for field inspectors, and it is planned to be implemented in FY 2016. The development of these tools for the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act programs is planned for FY 2017.
Tune in to tomorrow’s Advisor for a review of EPA’s budgetary plans for E-Enterprise as it pertains to compliance and a network for data exchanges among agencies.