Environmental Auditing And Penalty Mitigation Under The Trump Administration

For companies that are subject to environmental regulation, the Trump Administration's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA" or "the Agency") Audit Policy presents an opportunity to reduce enforcement risks while improving compliance. The policy appears to be focused more on improving compliance through cooperative mechanisms, such as compliance assistance programs and voluntary self-disclosure, as opposed to a more adversarial and time-consuming enforcement-driven approach. Examples of this revised approach to environmental compliance include new policies aimed at limiting reliance on aggressive interpretations of statutory and regulatory requirements in enforcement actions, the reversal of Biden-era criminal enforcement initiatives, and multiple instances in which EPA has extended compliance deadlines for rules that the regulated community have deemed infeasible, excessively costly, or impermissible.