Burden Reduction

and State Environmental Agencies

Executive Summary and Introduction *

State Views of Burden Reduction *

EPA Views of Burden Reduction *

Other Views on Burden Reduction *

State Examples *

Appendix *

This white paper is a summary of the States' environmental agencies' views on "burden reduction." It is produced by the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) under the direction of the ECOS Strategic Planning Committee's Data Management and Burden Reduction Subcommittee and was made possible through the assistance of U.S. EPA Cooperative Agreement.

The report's purpose is to capture the current situation and attitudes of the State environmental agencies concerning burden reduction; it is not a survey of each State's reporting burden. This paper also tries to capture the most significant efforts underway at the US EPA, as well as presenting the viewpoints expressed by some of the regulated community and environmental groups. The report does not attempt to make any recommendations, policy statements, or courses of action; its focus is to craft a statement of the current situation, and the events that led to it.

"Burden Reduction" has been an elusive goal of environmental agencies for several years now. Part of the reason for this is the changing nature of what is meant by "burden reduction." Congress, the U.S. EPA, the States and regulated facilities have different visions of what is meant by reducing burden. Sometimes these overlap, sometimes not. Sometimes each entity even varies in its own view of the term. There is neither agreement within EPA nor among States, much less between the States and EPA, about the extent of burdens and what to do about them.

Congress and the administration (through the Office of Management and Budget) have emphasized the reduction of the reporting burden of affected parties, meaning primarily the regulated community. The Paperwork Reduction Act's 1995 amendments and the resulting OMB directives instruct each federal agency to identify and reduce its burden to the public. The emphasis has been on reducing the number of forms, their complexity, and the frequency they are submitted. Part of the USEPA, however, has indicated that it understands that the States may hold a larger view of burden reduction, such as certain management burdens imposed by EPA.

The regulated community's view of burden is another matter. Industry spokesmen have indicated that regulated facilities do not distinguish between a burden required by a State, a local or the federal government. This paper briefly addresses these concerns, but mainly focuses on the perceived burdens on State environmental agencies.

States have expressed interest not only in reporting burden reductions, but also in management burden reductions (see definitions of these terms in the Management Burdens section of this paper). Reporting burdens are often the center of attention in data system discussions, but program management burdens often are more serious issues for States trying to implement federally delegated programs. These are discussed in detail within this paper.

The States and EPA have focused most of the current discussion about burden within a broader discussion about reforms of data management practices. Some of the most notable efforts have been State efforts assisted by EPA's Office of Reinvention via the One Stop program. Examples are provided of these elsewhere in the report.

States have two major categories of burdens: data reporting and management. Each is discussed in its own section in the following text.

Data and reporting burdens include the State environmental agencies' collection, storage, and transfer of environmental and management data to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. States also report these kinds of data to the public and to their own State governments (such as the State legislature).

In 1997 the States, through the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS), and EPA signed an agreement regarding the development and use of Core Performance Measures (CPMs). The intent of the document was to substitute reporting measures that emphasized environmental performance for older measures that emphasized program activity measures. Flexibility was provided to accommodate particular state needs. States had the understanding that a few CPMs would replace many program activity measures, and that a reduction in reporting burden would result. However, some States are concerned that Core Performance Measures are not being substituted for previous reporting measures, they are being added to them. Other States are concerned that the new CPMs are more of a reporting burden than old measures were. States with these objections generally feel that half of the CPMs promise was a reduction in reporting burden, and that failure to provide a reduction in burden means CPMs should not have to be used. Most States, however, continue to support CPMs and continue to work for burden reductions that may come with them.

Because not all CPMs have been developed yet, and because existing CPMs are undergoing revisions designed for implementation in Fiscal 2000, it cannot be determined whether a burden reduction or increase will result. It may be that more effort will be required to report better environmental information that in some cases has never been reported. It may be that better reporting will provide reductions in burdens in other parts of programs. For example, better environmental compliance reporting may result in an increase in reporting burden, but a decrease in oversight burdens. In June, 1998, ECOS members voted to extend the 1997 CPM agreement with EPA.

New reporting burdens are not limited to CPMs however. Congressional action may also increase reporting burden. Finally, new ways of doing business may require new and different information and possibly reporting. Community-based approaches, sector-based strategies and risk methodologies may require new information. If not managed carefully, each new approach will be new reporting instead of a replacement for older ways of collecting data.

States and EPA usually keep data in different databases, based upon media or statutory differences. Often there is duplication of data holdings and data entry for information such as location data and business-type data. In many cases, the States themselves have duplicative data in multiple databases.

The variety among separate media databases is the cause of at least part of the data management burden. Protocols for transfer of data into each of the 12 existing major databases vary widely. Each of these databases have been in existence for some time, so most States have developed data transfer protocols that may be routine to the employees involved, while still generating a burden that is perhaps no longer recognized. Table 1 shows the variety of data transfer protocols thought to be in use.

Table 1 clearly shows a duplication of effort. For example, methods 2 and 3 both involve either the State agency or EPA re-keypunching data into a second database. Industry may be burdened by having to submit forms twice as well.

Texas has speculated that it may be able to reduce its own, self-generated data management burden by 40 percent simply by integrating databases.

Staff in both the federal agencies and State agencies may not see the collection and transfer of data as a burden. Rather, they may have the attitude that the gathering and manipulation of data is an integral part of job performance: "it's my job: it's not a burden!" These activities may have occurred routinely for years, as a normal part of a job description and the intercourse between state and federal agencies. At the same time, management may see the some of these data activities as marginal to the performance of the agency, and performed instead of higher priority activities which are likely to have a more beneficial environmental result. In short, management may see some data exchange efforts as a waste of productive time, while those engaged in it do not.

State agencies may also commit quite a bit of staff time to committees or work groups organized with EPA for the purpose of discussing data management issues and managing data of mutual interest. States participate in these committees as volunteers,

Table 1. Manual and Electronic Transfer Methods for Environmental Data

and so it might be inappropriate to classify this time spent as a "burden." However, there are a great many State-EPA committees working on data issues, and they are not always coordinated through a single person in an agency. This may mean for some States that more persons are involved in data management issues than leadership realizes. Some States have expressed concern about the proliferation of state-EPA workgroups addressing data issues.

A list of the known existing committees is provided in Table 2. Depending on the definition of "data management committee," this list could be quite a bit longer. For example, ECOS is facilitating a state-EPA effort (P2000, also known as Autogrants) to create an electronic system for state grants management.

Table 2. State-EPA Data Management Committees, 1998

Non-routine requests for information also create a burden. These may occur when EPA regional or headquarters staff asks for information not already being provided or being provided less frequently or in a different format. State staff may view responsiveness to EPA data requests as "part of the job," rather than as an additional reporting burden to which the State did not agree.

Such an example surfaced when Florida worked with Region IV of EPA to reduce its RCRA reporting burden (see State Examples later in this report for details).

States (and probably regulated entities) believe a burden exists if data is collected but is then not used. However, the "usefulness" of data is relative. One person may use the data, while another sees no need for it. Also, data may be "used," but for no constructive purpose. For example, gathering info on the number of photocopies made as an indicator of business activity used to be a reporting requirement for some States. Some data may still be collected even though new and better data exists (for example, gathering information on the numbers of facilities using Best Available Control Technologies instead of the numbers of facilities using pollution prevention techniques to avoid the need for any control technology at all).

State environmental and EPA regional leadership may negotiate a set of reporting parameters, which is then usurped by the reporting requirements of grant agreements. This may occur because of the way in which a state grant award is structured. For example, a State agency leader and an EPA Regional Administrator may agree that certain environmental data and business activity data will be reported in either a State-EPA Agreement or a NEPPS agreement. However, the grant award document may require periodic reporting of additional data, for the supposed purpose of determining if grant funds were appropriately spent. Such data can include information about the number of trips taken, vehicle mileage, and so on.

Data used out of context can lead to false impressions. Much of the compliance and enforcement information held by the States and EPA is ripe for misuse if the user does not understand and convey the conditions under which the data was collected. The most recent example of differences in opinion regarding the use of this data occurred between several States and EPA on the "Sector Facility Indexing Project (SFIP)." EPA intended to portray the compliance rates and enforcement actions taken against several sectors of the regulated community.

Several States objected to the initial manner in which EPA portrayed the data. For example, EPA initially included a calculated data field entitled "Weighted Toxicity Factor." This data field took information about the amounts of Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data and multiplied it by a factor designed to account for the relative toxicity of the chemical involved. This was to show the relative severity of released chemicals by "weighting" (putting a higher value on) the more toxic chemicals. States objected to this portrayal, arguing that such weighting implied an exposure risk that was not warranted. States believed this sort of data manipulation might unnecessarily frighten the public, and imply that industries were operating out of compliance with current laws. TRI data captures the amount of toxic chemicals released, but does nothing to describe what risk, if any, these chemicals pose to the public or the environment. By using the data in this manner, some States believed EPA was implying a risk where none was known. States asked EPA if it intended to include a data field showing whether regulated industries were in compliance with TRI reporting. EPA did not, but subsequently deleted the weighted toxicity field from the database. States do not necessarily object to the use of weighted toxicity factors - Indiana uses this technique to assist it in targeting pollution prevention activities. However, States felt that EPA's proposed use was unwarranted and would cause a flood of public complaint, most of which would fall on the state agencies.

Similarly, States objected to the manner in which compliance rates were portrayed. EPA's initial portrayal of compliance data implied that any company found out of compliance even one day in a quarter would be shown as out of compliance for 90 out of 90 days for that quarter. States believed that such use of compliance data implied a greater non-compliance rate than actually exists. In addition, EPA continued to include "paperwork" violations in its data. These violations include such offenses as failure to file a report, or failure to sign a filed report. While some paperwork violations may mask real environmental offenses, many do not. The States felt that their inclusion would imply a much higher severity of non-compliance than actually exists. Such a situation would again burden the agencies, which would have to explain why non-compliance rates were so high.

Some States have reporting burdens that are not due to any federal request. For example, Utah and Texas have performance management reporting requirements imposed by their legislatures. Neither state refers to this reporting as a "burden," but we mention it here to remind the reader that state agencies may have to spend time reporting to other organizations besides EPA. These reports may be more useful, more urgent, and more related to budgetary needs than those supplied to EPA.

Not all burdens are technical or data-related. For some States, management burdens are the most troublesome. This section reviews some of the management burdens that occur in the EPA-State relationship.

States and the federal government disagree from time to time on "tenth amendment" issues. Such disagreements occur in all disciplines of government, including environment. For the States' environmental agencies, disagreements may occur over some "delegation" issue, or may occur over whether the States or the federal government is best suited to address some issue. These disagreements, and the ensuing discussion from them, may be a "burden," but it is a predictable consequence of our federal system. More often, a complaint is over some burden imposed as part of a delegation.

Nearly all federal environmental laws (and certainly all of the primary ones) are designed to be delegated to the States. "Delegation" means the State and EPA (usually the Regional Office) design a plan acceptable to both in which the State assumes responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the program. However, statutes such as the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act are not actually delegated to the States. Rather, parts of each program are delegated. For example, a State may have the delegation for permitting of sources under the Safe Drinking Water Act, but not have delegation for the Underground Injection Control portion of it.

During the past five years (1993-1998), there has been nearly a 75% increase in delegated programs from EPA to the States. With these delegations, and those that preceded them, comes "oversight" from EPA. EPA's role is, in short, to assure that the States are operating the delegated programs as intended by Congress. In recent years, there have been some high profile cases in which the States and EPA disagree about alleged shortcomings of the States in the implementation of a delegated program.

States and EPA have not settled these issues, and it is likely that a fundamental difference of opinion regarding oversight between some States and some parts of EPA remains. States may believe that, at some point, "oversight" becomes "second guessing." EPA's oversight can be a substantial burden to States, and some States may believe that the burden is unwarranted.

In 1997 and 1998 the States, through the Environmental Council of the States, and EPA's Office of Reinvention negotiated a Regulatory Innovations Agreement. This agreement was largely initiated for two reasons. One reason was the complexity and narrow scope of EPA's Project XL, which was limited to regulated facilities able to show an environmental improvement. A second reason was the frustration States felt over the seeming inability to get even the smallest exception to federal policies, even when the exception would provide an improvement in environmental performance, timeliness, or cost. The Regulatory Innovations Agreement, then, provides a mechanism for States to pursue burden reductions outside the Project XL process. A Regulatory Innovation project might affect a broad category of regulated facilities; it might not provide an environmental quality improvement, but instead might allow an environmental goal to be met faster, or for less cost. Finally, a Regulatory Innovation Project might address some protocol between EPA and the state environmental agency themselves.

States and EPA differ from time-to-time on the extent of compliance problems. This is a subject matter that could occupy its own white paper, and so will only be touched on here. One of EPA's responsibilities in our delegated system of environmental programs is to provide oversight of the State's implementation of a federal statute. Occasionally, EPA may find a large number of violations, which a State either does not classify as a violation or sees as too minor to justify a reaction. However, when pressed, the State may initiate an enforcement procedure (such as a Notice of Violation) on a minor violation. This effort expends employee time which the State might believe is better put to more inspections, attention to more serious enforcement problems, and so on. In other cases, a State may fundamentally disagree with EPA's assessment, which may result in a considerable amount of effort by both sides in resolving.

Some States have experienced burdens in negotiating delegations, Memoranda of Agreements, and Performance Partnership Agreements (PPA). In a negotiable process, it can be difficult to define the point at which negotiations cease to become discussions and become burdens. However, some States have experienced lengthy approval processes for PPAs. For example, EPA Region VI and Texas required 7 months to complete negotiations on Texas' 1998 PPA. Even though the intent of Congress was to delegate the operation of environmental programs to the States, a substantial number of States still do not have delegated programs for some of the most significant parts of the acts. In fact, States seldom receive complete delegations of programs; rather they received delegations of parts of programs, often undertaken clause-by-clause. Negotiations over regarding delegation of these various parts may present a long-term burden to States (and even to EPA).

The States and EPA are partners in a federal system of environmental management. When one partner acts without consulting the other, operations of both may be impaired, and the burden of one partner may be increased. EPA's actions regarding "guidance" issued under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act are a case in point.

EPA issued "interim guidance" in response to petitions filed under Title VI of the aforementioned act. These petitions assert that racial discrimination occurred because pollution from a facility caused a disparate environmental burden on a minority population. In issuing interim guidance, EPA avoided the opportunity for public comment that would have occurred had EPA issued a rule by a notice in the Federal Register. Because EPA's guidance affects facilities for which the States issue environmental permits, States found themselves in a difficult position. They could issue the permit and be sued under the Act, or deny the permit and be sued because no rule or environmental law exists allowing the state to deny the permit on that ground. Furthermore, each and every permit that the state issued would be immediately eligible for review under the guidance, effectively giving EPA control of the state permit-issuance programs, instead of the more general oversight provided for in the various federal environmental acts. This presented (and still presents as of this writing) a tremendous burden to the States. Such a burden might have been avoided, had EPA asked the States to develop a joint system to address environmental justice issues. EPA and the States are currently discussing how to do this.

Much of EPA's focus on burden reduction has been because of the Paperwork Reduction Act Amendments of 1995 and the subsequent January 1997 Office of Management and Budget directive. EPA is developing a plan to reduce its paperwork burden by about 27 percent from October 1, 1995, to the target date of October 1, 1998. This amounts to 28.5 million hours. From a national perspective and as a comparison, most of the nation's paperwork burden is with the IRS (not EPA). The IRS is responsible for 80 percent of the nation's paperwork burden.

It is key to note that the emphasis of this effort is on "paperwork" reduction, which means federal forms which must be filled out by more than 9 persons. Although there are many forms meeting this threshold, only a few are responsible for the bulk of the 28.5 million hours required to fill them out each year. (Table 3 lists the main federal forms responsible for the bulk of the burden.) These forms are not, for the most part, forms the State agencies fill out, of course, but many should look familiar as forms that the State collects from regulated entities, enters, manipulates, and eventually reports to EPA. The State government portion of the burden, as defined by the Paperwork Reduction Act, is a small, even inconsequential, portion of the overall burden.

Another key point is that much of EPA's view of what "burden reduction" is has been driven by this requirement. This is changing, but for some agency personnel "burden reduction" has, to date at least, meant "Paperwork Reduction Act." EPA bears much of the political stress for burden reduction, however, sometimes the States add reporting requirements to regulated facilities in addition to those required by federal statute or rule.

Table 3. Top 10 EPA Information Collection Requests

Reinventing Environmental Information (REI)

By 1997, EPA management decided that the agency's data management efforts needed a formal overhaul. This led to the release of EPA's "REI Action Plan" on November 25, 1997, and its eventual approval and issuance by the Administrator and Deputy Administrator in February 1998.

The REI Action Plan "is EPA's commitment, in partnership with the States, to implement core data standards and make electronic reporting available in the Agency's major national systems within five years…." Key components are EPA's One Stop Program, establishing key data standards, and implementation of electronic reporting. Burden reduction issues are addressed directly only within the One Stop Program, but on a larger level it is clear that EPA believes that reductions in reporting burden derives naturally from adopting data standards and electronic reporting. For example, "electronic reporting not only reduces burden, but also offers both State agencies and EPA more timely access to the data reported by industry…. " EPA sees the REI as a support tool for reporting reforms EPA is undertaking elsewhere. This support role is further stated in the "achievements" list: "[REI will reduce] paper reporting, errors, time delays and associated costs." REI, then, is an important tool in burden reduction efforts, but is not the EPA lead program for these efforts.

Still, significant reporting burdens should be expected. EPA has 13 major national systems under the REI program (see Table 4). Twelve of these (the exception being a relatively new one, the RMP*Info) represent two-thirds of the collection burden for information used by EPA. These databases are being "re-engineered" between FY 98 and FY 03. Re-engineering means largely incorporation of data standards and electronic reporting. However, the REI plan also discusses the "central data warehouse" concept. The report acknowledges "EPA's separate legislative mandates and its resulting decentralized program management approach have led to a burden on States and industry to submit status and compliance reports in multiple formats, to different locations, and on separate schedules." In central data warehousing, States might report data to a single location at EPA, rather than multiple locations, times, and formats. Alternatively, EPA may be able to retrieve data from State data warehouses. Such a reporting mechanism might save time for the States if the effort to comply with reporting requirements for it were not too great. For example, a State might find that the work required satisfying data standards and transfer protocols for a centralized warehouse might exceed the current system, which at least is already in place for most States and programs. On the other hand, some States believe a centralized system holds great promise in reducing overall burden, by permitting the State to reduce the numbers of experts required to transfer data.

Table 4. REI's Thirteen National Databases

One EPA report summarized four reporting reform approaches. One is "efficiency improvements," a category for projects that deal with the manner in which data is reported, but do not attempt to alter the quantity or types of reported data. A second is "performance-based or risk-based reporting," which changes the quantity of reported data but not the types. A third is "self-certification," which substitutes certification of compliance by a company CEO for routine compliance reporting (see State Examples section for a more thorough example and discussion). A fourth is "using reporting to reduce pollution," which is a process of generator-review of pollutant reports to reduce the levels of pollutants (also see State Examples section).

Burden reduction, data quality and "data gaps" have become dominant issues for EPA's Common Sense Initiative Council during 1998, although EPA work plans seem to emphasize data gap analysis and data quality assessments over burden reduction. This year EPA intends to draft a plan to strategically address data quality (see "Other EPA Activities" below). Poor data quality presents a burden to both States, which must answer, for example, questions about non-complying industries that are in fact in compliance or never existed, but which still appear (incorrectly) on an EPA database. Removing these has proven to be a time-consuming task in some cases. Under CSI, EPA (Center for Environmental Information and Statistics) will continue to assess data gaps in 12 major EPA databases.

The CSI group has recently revealed plans addressing perceived "data gaps" that may result in increased data reporting from States.

Another possible source of burden reduction is Electronic Reporting (the transfer of reporting data from one entity to another electronically). By reducing the use of paper, data providers and data recipients expect to save time on both the entry end and the management end. EPA is working this issue with the States through the National Governors' Association.

ERI may affect larger facilities more than smaller ones, primarily because of the capabilities of the larger companies, and their need to put a premium on data handling. There are several unresolved issues within ERI that may offer potential for burden reduction. These include consolidated data warehousing, use of the Internet to transfer data (as opposed to mailing disks), and implementation of the standards-based data reforms being worked on by other parts of EPA (discussed elsewhere in this paper). One significant obstacle is the Department of Justice's view about "electronic signatures," which means the authentication process that might be used by enforcement agencies in the event that prosecution is needed. These methods exist in case law for manual signatures, but are less clear for electronic signatures. EPA expects an early resolution of this obstacle, however.

According to EPA, the One Stop Reporting Program mission is "to reinvent environmental reporting to accomplish three goals: to reduce industry reporting burden, foster multimedia and geographic approaches to environmental problem solving, and provide the public meaningful, real-time access to environmental information." For States, this means direct financial support for about eight States per year (at this writing 21 States have received One Stop awards). In the REI Action Plan (see elsewhere in this report), EPA committed to offering One Stop support to each State.

The One Stop Program assumed responsibilities for development of facility data standards within EPA in 1997, and in 1998 began earnest work on burden reduction efforts. One of the primary State-EPA work groups addressing is the "State-EPA Data Management Workgroup," co-chaired by Brent Bradford (Utah) and Chuck Fox (formerly with EPA's Office of Reinvention; now the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water).

One Stop came into existence in part because EPA saw that some States were reinventing their data management systems to make them more usable and more useful to a broader number of users, both in and out of government. At the same time, some in EPA were desirous of creating a body of persons concerned about EPA's data management to steer EPA itself into more creative ways of managing and disseminating the data it collects (most of which comes from the State agencies). As a result, the One Stop program became the champion for data reinvention within EPA. Many of the State data reinvention projects involved reducing the State's burden of data management as well, and so the One Stop program has become a focus of burden reduction discussions as well.

During late 1997 and early 1998, EPA's Region V office constructed a detailed list of reporting requirements for States receiving federal program assistance. The list was an attempt to collect "all reporting requirements placed on our State agencies as a result of statute, regulations, policies and precedent." During the compilation of the list, the EPA Region "eliminated or reduced some requirements," for example, by reducing the frequency which certain reports are filed. It was also noted that "most grant progress and Financial Status reports are now annual rather than quarterly" and "much of what remains is a result of statutory requirement or efforts to maintain national information sources."

The report acknowledges an important difference of opinion regarding what constitutes a report:

The EPA report (see Appendix) found the following standard reporting requirements:

Table 5. Number of State Reports Submitted to EPA by Programs

Other EPA activities may affect data management, and the subsequent burden of reporting, in unexpected ways. For example, in the recent two years or so, EPA has put emphasis on non-media approaches to environmental management such as community-based environmental protection (CBEP), sector-facility indexing (SFIP), and performance-based management (GPRA). These efforts involve new ways of doing environmental management business, and therefore may generate new data needs. An EPA Regional office may consequently ask a State for new information in order to meet the EPA need on a new effort. If the State has not been a partner in the development of the new initiative, it may not agree that the need for new data is warranted. Even if the State does agree, the generation of the data may be a new burden.

EPA's Chief Information Officer is leading an effort to address data quality. During 1998 the CIO is to develop a plan for an agency-wide approach to assure error-corrections, which has been one of the chief sources of frustration for State regulators and regulated facilities. The Center for Environmental Information and Statistics (CEIS) and the Office of Research and Development's Quality Assurance Division are also working on data quality.

Table 2 (found elsewhere in this report) is a complete list of State-EPA data management committees, as far as they are known.

The "regulated community" includes any entity receiving a permit or otherwise regulated by an environmental law. In practice, this mostly means industries and some municipal facilities. In this paper, we have attempted to characterize industry's issues. This is of course only an overview of industry issues as we understand them to be.

Industry issues are usually one of four things: the bulk of paperwork, overlap and repetitive requirements, reporting to different levels of government and use of the data (in particular the quality of the data).

According to the US EPA, the paperwork burdens in filling out forms fall most heavily on entities completing a Clean Water Act form, the Discharge Monitoring Report (an NPDES report). Regulated entities spend over 13.3 million hours per year on this form alone, and the total EPA form burden is over 100 million hours. This number does not include permit applications, time spent with inspectors, resolution of compliance disagreements, and other activities relevant to environmental protection. ECOS estimates this time may be tenfold the form burden. Although companies may reduce this burden by switching to processes that reduce or eliminate pollution, even total elimination of pollution does not necessarily eliminate burden. For example, an industry may discharge water into a river that is cleaner than the river, but it must nevertheless obtain a permit to do so.

Industry has also cited difficulties with duplicative data requirements across media programs. Each piece of data may be needed for each individual program, but the cumulative effect of repetition becomes a burden for regulated industries. EPA has, for example, 13 major program databases. Companies reporting even to eight of these must repeat themselves eight times for many data fields. Furthermore, slight variations in programs can often yield data sets that vary, leading to confusion. This condition is exacerbated by the existence of State databases along with federal ones. The States and EPA are addressing this issue through the "facility identification" data standard. Other data standards are being considered as well.

Industry has also noted burdens associated with reporting to local, State and federal levels of government. Representatives of industry have asked EPA not to dismiss certain reporting burdens, just because the States collect them (pursuant to a delegation) for EPA use. In the event that redundant reporting is occurring, industry has asked EPA to rely on State reports, rather than create a federal reporting system.

Industry has indicated in many venues that data quality (sometimes referred to as "data gaps" by others) is its top data-management issue. In short, industry is concerned about the burden imposed on it when a facility is mislabeled as out of compliance, or continues to be labeled that way after it has returned to compliance. (Data gap issues are discussed in the "Data Shortages" section elsewhere in this paper.) Compliance issues are further complicated by differences in opinion about definitions, timing, statistical procedures, and record keeping.

Discussions about reducing burden can be troublesome if someone thinks that burden reduction is a euphemism for "data reduction." This is especially the case if an entity believes the real agenda is a reduction in the collection or dissemination of environmental data for the purpose of obfuscating compliance status, or otherwise reducing the public's right-to-know. Right-to-know data is exemplified by the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data reporting.

Some environmental groups (such as the U.S. Public Interest Research Group) have indicated that any burden reduction discussion should, at the very least, be accompanied by discussions about data gaps. Data gaps may happen when someone who is looking for data believes there is insufficient data or no data on some subject of interest. EPA's Common Sense Initiative Council is investigating approaches for addressing data gap priorities. Two situations are being considered: when there is no existing database and when data is not present in an existing database. These approaches include consideration of: 1) what uses the data will have; 2) suitability issues (such as reliability, frequency of updates, etc.); and 3) demand for the data.

The "data gaps" issue is being addressed by EPA's Common Sense Initiative, described elsewhere in this paper.

States have developed a variety of techniques, often in cooperation with EPA, to reduce their reporting and management burdens. This section presents some examples.

Reporting Reductions. Florida's Department of Environmental Protection has taken two approaches to reduce its burden. In one well-publicized effort, the State worked with the regional EPA office to identify numerous reporting requirements for RCRA that were no longer needed. These were eliminated, reducing the Department's reporting effort in that program by about 60%. However, at least three other States, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Texas, found that such reductions were not possible. These States concluded that they had either never had the burden to begin with, or had it, but had already eliminated it. These experiences point toward a conclusion that burdens may vary not only region to region, but perhaps program to program as well.

Using the Internet to Reduce Agency Workloads. In the state's second effort, it is using the Internet to help it reduce its internal management and communications burden. All permits under review are posted on the Internet on the Department's web page. The availability of this information, which includes the current status of the review, has led to a reduction in phone calls about the status of the permits. Obviously, this is less of a problem on permit applicants and others, provided they have Internet access. In another effort to reduce departmental burdens by using the web, the department has created a "web consultative database" that helps applicants find appropriate technical resources. In one case, a company wishing to create a "turtle farm" used the database to find a location suitable to both it and the agency. This avoided potential permit disputes regarding siting.

Plans for Expanding Burden Reduction. In the future, Florida plans to allow applicants to submit permit applications directly to the agency via the Internet. The agency will also accept permit fees via credit card payments. This means that it will be possible for an applicant to apply for a permit, work through its review, and obtain it without ever visiting the agency's offices in person. Florida expects the system to be operational no sooner than 2000.

Using Self-Certification. Self-certification takes reporting reform a step beyond efficiency improvements and performance-based reporting reductions by fundamentally changing the permitting and reporting paradigm. The basic premise is that environmental permitting and reporting can be achieved more efficiently and without degradation of environmental quality through self-certification of compliance rather than the traditional approach of permit issuance and detailed emissions reporting.

Perhaps the foremost example of implementing a system of self-certified environmental compliance is the Environmental Results Program (ERP) in Massachusetts, a sector-targeted program. Photo processing and dry cleaners are the first two sectors to participate. These sectors have many small-to-medium sized facilities, whose activities cannot easily be tracked by state agency regulators through traditional command and control means. The implementation of ERP allowed these facilities to submit self-certification statements that demonstrate compliance with state and federal environmental regulations. Using statistical sampling methods, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection is able to measure compliance with random facility checks. In the first year-long pilot of the Environmental Results Program, industry compliance improved dramatically, from 33% to 78% among the participating facilities. ERP also encouraged companies to improve their EMSs and gave companies much greater flexibility to make process changes, which addressed some of the indirect burden costs associated with traditional environmental regulations. Massachusetts has expanded ERP from the original 18 sites to an estimated 1900, and is working to bring ERP under the Project XL framework.

(The previous paragraphs are mostly from an unpublished EPA report, Reporting Reform: The Case for a Joint EPA/State Strategy.)

Reducing Regulated Facility Reporting Burden. In New Jersey, the Tellus Institute (a Massachusetts-based research firm) has studied the potential environmental benefits that could result from developing a computer-based template that companies could use for two purposes: consolidating emissions and other compliance reports; and tracking the flow of production materials through a facility. Tellus worked with five manufacturing plants that volunteered to participate in the pilot. They analyzed all of the facilities’ reporting requirements, and broke them down into their "data elements." All data elements that were redundant or failed to contribute needed information were eliminated, and the remaining elements reassembled into an integrated, multi-media template. The template is in the form of an easy-to-use computer spreadsheet. In addition to consolidating reporting, the template enables facilities to track flows of materials through its plant. In some cases, this has led to an improved ability to estimate emissions, as well as discoveries of waste streams that escaped traditional reporting requirements. At a Frigidaire plant, for example, materials tracking led to the discovery of 26,000 pounds of solid waste removed in baghouses that was previously assumed to be in air emissions estimates. Although the Tellus approach starts with the currently required data elements, it is unclear how the template would fit with current regulations. EPA funded the first phase of the process; the next phase of Tellus’ research, if funded, would include an examination of the regulatory equivalency of the reporting template.

Compliance Reporting. Maryland's Department of the Environment received its One Stop grant in 1998. A primary impetus for the State's interest in data management stems from its efforts in reporting enforcement and compliance data. In 1997, the State legislature passed SB 324, which required a comprehensive report from the agency on a variety of enforcement matters. Maryland produced its first Annual Enforcement and Compliance Report Fiscal Year 1997. The report is one of the most detailed reports of its nature produced by any State. One lesson the agency learned was its need "to improve the overall departmental process in which out programs report statistical data internally and periodically throughout the year. This further emphasizes the need to develop more advanced technology and database systems to better manage out data."

Maryland's report addresses an issue of concern to a considerable number of States: showing that States conduct not only enforcement actions, but an even greater number of compliance actions. By portraying compliance rates for all its delegated programs (and many non-delegated ones), Maryland is showing the emphasis that it places on long-term compliance over repeated enforcement actions.

The interactions of States and EPA Regions or EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance on enforcement issues can occupy enormous amounts of time and energy. Maryland's effort may provide a model for compliance reporting for other States to use and for EPA to promote that will help to reduce burdens in this subject area.

Identifying and Reducing Reporting Burden. In late 1997 and early 1998 the U.S. EPA - Region V and Illinois EPA worked on an "Inventory of Reporting Requirements for State Receiving Federal Program Assistance." The inventory includes a "comprehensive list of all reporting requirements…as a result of statute, regulations, policies and precedent." The report is more than simply a list of the reporting requirements currently in place; the EPA region makes several commitments to reduce at least the frequency of reporting. For example, "most grant progress and Financial Status Reports are now annual rather than quarterly." The Region also obtained permission to report Superfund information semi-annually rather than quarterly.

The reporting requirements fall into six major categories (the complete Inventory is presented in the Appendices):

• General Grant Requirements
• Air Program
• Water Programs
• Superfund Cooperative Agreement
• Hazardous Waste Management Program
• Other Programs:
• Toxic Substances Control Act
• Underground Storage Tank Program
• Leaking Underground Storage Tank Program
• Great Lakes Program Office

Inventory of Reporting Requirements for State Receiving Federal Program Assistance

(Readers needing to see the Appendix will require a hard copy of the report. Contact ECOS at ecos@sso.org to obtain a copy.)