The following appears in a box on page 46 of the printed report.
Evaluating Results: Integrating
Regulatory
Activities at the State Level
Environmental agencies in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey have made significant efforts to integrate their regulatory activities and to incorporate pollution prevention into these activities. Massachusetts has adopted a single, integrated inspection to assess a facility’s compliance with environmental statutes, instead of conducting separate medium-specific inspections. New York is using a facility-management strategy in which a team directed by a state-employed facility manager is assigned to targeted plants to coordinate medium-specific environmental programs. New Jersey is testing the use of a single, integrated permit for industrial facilities instead of separate permits for releases of pollution to each environmental medium.
On
behalf of Congress, the General Accounting Office (GAO) evaluated
the states’ experiences with integrated programs, primarily
through interviews. The evaluation is considered preliminary
because the data needed to fully evaluate the states’
experiences are not yet available.
GAO reported that Massachusetts and New York believe that their integrated approaches have been sufficiently successful to implement them statewide. Permits have only recently been issued as part of New Jersey’s program. Industry officials in those states believe that the integrated approaches are beneficial to the environment, achieve regulatory efficiencies, and reduce costs. However, the states noted that obtaining funding from EPA and meeting EPA’s medium-specific reporting requirements were difficult and burdensome. In response, EPA proposed a new grant program designed to provide states with easier access to funding for multimedia programs and to facilitate easier reporting of multimedia activities. Such a program would encourage other states to integrate environmental management.