Despite a decline in civil environmental enforcement results, EPA remains poised to continue pursuing high stakes enforcement cases in 2015.

On December 18, 2014, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its annual enforcement and compliance results for Fiscal Year (FY) 2014. The statistics reflect a continuing focus on what EPA considers to be larger, more complex, “risk-based enforcement cases” that are intended to drive industry compliance and achieve “significant environmental and health gains.” EPA brought fewer enforcement cases overall in FY 2014 than FY 2013 — a fact EPA attributes, in part, to the government shutdown and resource and staffing constraints from a smaller budget. Although the regulated community should expect EPA to pursue even fewer civil enforcement cases in FY 2015 and beyond because of continued budgetary shortfalls and evolving approaches to enforcement, including the Next Generation Compliance Initiative (NextGen), many of EPA’s cases will likely involve higher stakes as EPA targets fewer violators but seeks a greater return on its investment of enforcement resources. In addition, states, tribes and citizen groups may attempt to fill any perceived gap in civil environmental enforcement by taking advantage of the increased availability of environmental and compliance information through NextGen.