EPA Announces 2024 to 2027 Enforcement Priorities

(Washington, D.C. – August 17, 2023) EPA today announced its 2024 to 2027 National Enforcement and Compliance Initiatives – six priority areas where EPA plans to devote focused resources to address serious and widespread environmental problems.

“EPA’s announcement today is important in helping to advance justice and protect communities and the climate,” said Peter Zalzal, EDF’s Associate Vice President for Clean Air Strategies. “EPA has focused its initiatives on serious environmental problems where holding polluters accountable and ensuring rigorous compliance with our nation’s clean air and water laws will deliver vital and urgently-needed benefits.”

Every four years, EPA identifies widespread environmental problems that could benefit from coordinated resources and federal enforcement and selects several for its National Enforcement and Compliance Initiatives.

EPA is planning to address environmental justice across all six of its initiatives, which include:

• Mitigating climate change (including a focus on oil and gas and landfill methane emissions)
• Addressing exposure to PFAS
• Protecting communities from coal ash contamination
• Reducing air toxics in overburdened communities
• Increasing compliance with drinking water standards
• Chemical accident risk reduction

Recent analyses underscore the importance and urgency of addressing these priority areas.  For instance, EDF recently identified pervasive and extensive non-compliance at some of the nation’s largest chemical manufacturing facilities – facilities that are significant sources of toxic air pollution and often located in communities already facing severe pollution burdens.

Similarly, a recent EDF analysis found extensive non-compliance at facilities subject to EPA’s Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention Rule – accentuating the importance of EPA’s focusing on those facilities to help prevent harm to communities.  

Recent scientific work likewise reveals significant, harmful methane emissions at oil and gas facilities and landfills. A recent study by EDF and others in the Permian Basin found methane emissions three times higher than inventory estimates, with unlit and malfunctioning flares as a major source of this pollution. Other studies have similarly found elevated levels of methane pollution at the nation’s landfills.

“Collectively, the initiatives EPA announced today respond to urgent environmental problems at some of the nation’s largest industrial sources – including coal plants, industrial and oil and gas facilities – and they will be critical in helping to reduce pollution and protect communities,” said Zalzal.