EPA's Audit Policy Spells Success for Corporate Users, EPA, the Public, and Most Importantly, the Environment
Editors' Summary: EPA's audit policy provides incentives for companies to develop environmental audit and compliance management systems to detect, disclose, and correct violations. When companies voluntarily discover environmental violations and disclose them to EPA, the Agency will waive or substantially reduce the applicable penalties. As part of EPA's proposal to revise this policy, the Agency conducted a survey to evaluate the policy's effectiveness. After outlining the basic tenets of the EPA audit policy, this Dialogue describes the results of the Agency's policy evaluation and explains the proposed revisions. The Dialogue then highlights how the audit policy is being integrated with the Agency's compliance and enforcement efforts. Last, the Dialogue illustrates some creative uses of the audit policy in various enforcement initiatives.