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Compliance Monitoring
A key factor to providing environmental protection is assuring compliance by the regulated community with environmental laws/regulations through effective monitoring and compliance assessment. Unless there is compliance with the requirements that are designed to provide the necessary environmental protection, the promulgation of laws and regulations have little impact. Compliance monitoring consists of actions to:
Compliance monitoring consists of a wide range of activities in six basic categories, which may overlap:
EPA works closely with its regulatory partners in carrying out compliance monitoring activities. States with delegated programs conduct the majority of compliance monitoring activities within their jurisdictions. EPA's role in compliance monitoring includes:
Information about compliance monitoring data can be accessed on the Planning and Results side bar on the Compliance and Enforcement homepage. Data may be viewed in the Sector Facility Indexing Project (SFIP), which brings together environmental and other information from a number of data systems to produce facility-level profiles for five industry sectors (petroleum refining, iron and steel production, primary nonferrous metal refining and smelting, pulp manufacturing, and automobile assembly) and a subset of major federal facilities. SFIP information relates to compliance and inspection history, chemical releases and spills, production, and demographics of the surrounding population. There will also be a new system available for public access to compliance and enforcement data, expected to be available in July, 2002. This system is the Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO), which will allow users to view, query and search selected compliance and enforcement data. This Compliance Monitoring homepage provides access to documents about EPA's compliance monitoring program such as inspection manuals, guides and strategies for specific regulations or for an industry sector (e.g., woodstoves). Furthermore, on this homepage you can find compliance assistance tools and materials that can assist in compliance monitoring. For example, the Clean Air Act Applicability Determination Index (ADI) can be accessed by clicking on "ADI" under Quick Resources and under the CAA category of the Materials by Statue side bar. The ADI is a computerized database that contains memoranda issued by EPA on applicability determinations, alternative monitoring decisions, and regulatory interpretations pursuant to the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS)(40 CFR Part 60), the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP)(40 CFR Parts 61 and 63), the chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) regulations (40 CFR Part 82), the asbestos regulations (40 CFR Part 61, Subpart M), and the woodstove program (40 CFR Part 60, Subpart AAA).
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