Pennsylvania DEP restarts enforcement activity initiative

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), headquartered in Harrisburg, is restarting a process to improve statewide consistency in the way DEP conducts inspections of regulated entities and activities, ensures compliance with state and federal laws and regulations and handles enforcement cases.

“The result of this process will be a general, inspection, compliance and enforcement policy aimed at improving consistency for all our program-specific policies,” says DEP Secretary John Quigley. “This foundation will help to ensure that our work across all programs is internally aligned, consistent and in compliance with state and federal regulatory requirements.”

In keeping with DEP’s commitment to transparency, the process will include a public notice and comment period, anticipated to occur in the summer, the agency says.

DEP first launched a compliance monitoring initiative in 2013 to evaluate compliance and enforcement policies and strategies and to update a 2004 internal policy on how the agency handles violations of law and commonwealth regulations. Recommendations were drafted but never implemented.

In April, Quigley re-energized the initiative, starting with an internal review of DEP policies on inspections, compliance and enforcement. The internal review is expected to be completed in May, followed by the public comment period.