Regulatory Compliance Assessments: The Key to Environmental Responsibility

Michael J. Hoffman, P.E.

Strict compliance with environmental regulartions has not been designated as the highest priority with many in the hierarchy of Corporate America. Many large national and international ocmpanies are decentralized to the extent that regulatory compliance is the responsibility of plan management or the plant engineering staff. For smaller companies, environmental issues are often delegated to plant engineering, safety, or human resources departments where they become part of many problems to be solved. For most companies and individuals, it was anticipated that good faith efforts for compliance and cooperation with Agency Inspectors would serve to mitigate non-compliance problems. Although large fines have received great attention int he press, many environmental mangers have flet these "deterrent fines" would be issued only for flagrant violations. Many managers have believed that a goal of general compliance was acceptable and that cooperation with the regulators would avoid penalties. Although this strategy was functional in the early 1980s, this approach to regulatory compliance will not be acceptable to enforcement officials and the courts. For many companies, as well as institutions and governement agencies, failure to so comply with environmental regulations has resulted in large fines and a requirement to perform a mult-media assessment of regulatory compliance. Federal, state and local environmental regulatory authorities as well as the Department of Justice and the court system have launched a not-so-subtle program to increase compliance.