Environmental protection is cheaper and more efficient thanks to a decade-long effort to reinvent business practices at the EPA, according to an agency report released Tuesday.
The report, "Innovation at EPA: A Decade of Progress," details ways the EPA has embraced the Clinton-Gore reinventing government initiative to improve the environment and protect public health.
"We're a different agency than we were 10 years ago. A new emphasis on innovation has changed the way we think and operate, leading to real environmental improvements and real reductions in costs," the report said.
A 1997 National Academy of Public Administration report was less enthusiastic, describing the results of the EPA's reinvention initiatives as "positive, but far from impressive."
NAPA is working on another project that will detail EPA's progress to date, a NAPA spokesperson said.
The EPA is primarily a regulatory agency. As such, the agency focused its reinvention efforts on making regulations more understandable, shorter and less redundant. The aim was to reduce litigation and give companies incentives to comply with environmental regulations beyond those required by the law.
Today, regulatory flexibility is greater and the agency is helping companies meet their environmental responsibilities, rather than fighting them, the EPA report said. The National Low Emissions Vehicle Program, for example, was achieved through industry consensus. EPA struck a deal with states, U.S. automobile manufacturers and other stakeholders that allows for new cars to be 50 percent cleaner than 1999 models, beginning in 2001. Car manufacturers agreed to the deal because it helped them avoid a variety of state emission requirements, the report said.
Another historical area of criticism at EPA is Superfund, the government's program to clean up hazardous waste sites. Critics said Superfund was too complex, expensive and unfair.
The EPA tackled Superfund problems by establishing a board of technical experts that evaluates high-cost solutions to waste clean up and offers newer, less expensive technologies, if they are available. In addition, the cost of cleanup that unknown or out-of-business parties are responsible for is now shared evenly among responsible companies. Companies that contributed small amounts of waste to a Superfund site are also being removed from Superfund litigation.
Among other improvements touted in the report, the EPA says it has increased the public's role in environmental decisions and has also improved stakeholder relations by publishing industry-specific guidelines written in plain language.