residents of polluted US communities fear planned cuts in EPA enforcements

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/residents-polluted-us-communities-fear-planned-cuts-epa-enforcement-1397140033

***SNIP

Near the end of its draft Strategic Plan for 2014-18, the EPA details the hard numbers:

By 2018, the agency would conduct an average of 14,000 federal inspections and evaluations per year across the country. That’s a 33-percent dip from the annual EPA caseloads from 2005-09, and a 30-percent drop from 2012.
By 2018, the EPA would initiate an average of 2,320 civil judicial and administrative enforcement cases a year in the five-year span. The drop: 41 percent from 2005-09 figures, and 23 percent from 2012.
And, by 2018, the agency envisions concluding 2,000 civil judicial and administrative enforcement cases per year, a 47-percent dip from the caseloads in 2005-09, and a 33-percent cut from 2012.
The EPA said it intends to put its enforcement might behind major pollution cases across the country. Under its five-year plan, the agency would focus, for instance, on criminal cases “having the most significant health, environmental, and deterrence impacts.”

“The strategic decision to focus on high impact cases means that the overall number of cases will tend to be lower than in past years,” the EPA told the Center in a written statement. “We anticipate this strategy will result in a higher level of public health protection because of the significant impacts associated with the large cases, and the precedent they set for performance of large facilities across the country.”


***all my friends and neighbors are scientists at the EPA -- and the EPA is moving away from hard science to computational models -- they've all been offered early retirement, buy outs, etc.