Community Project Ideas for Enforcement
EPA Region 6 Wants Your Project Ideas
Region 6’s Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division is asking for project ideas from communities on how to improve public health and the environment, especially those communities with potential environmental justice and/or climate change concerns.
These ideas would be provided to defendants when enforcement actions take place in those communities.
Region 6 is seeking input from communities on 2 types of projects that may be relevant when EPA takes enforcement action against environmental violators:
1) mitigation projects, which are injunctive relief sought by the government to remedy, reduce, or offset past (and in some cases ongoing) harm caused by an alleged violation, and
2) supplemental environmental projects (SEPs), which are projects that a violator is not legally required to perform, that the violator voluntarily agrees to implement as part of a settlement agreement, and that cannot be ordered by EPA as a corrective measure or injunctive relief.
Please keep in mind that both mitigation projects and SEPs would have to meet all the requirements of the applicable policy before it could be considered as part of a settlement, including that the project have a connection to the underlying violations.
The public can submit ideas to this email address: R6CommunitySupportIdeas@epa.gov.
The following type of information would be useful to EPA and/or a defendant when evaluating a project idea:
- a description of the project idea,
- the name and location of the community the project is for,
- any known cost information,
- and the public health and/or environmental benefit from the project.
- Please also indicate if you would be willing to be contacted in the future for follow-up questions by a defendant interested in understanding your idea further, and if so, a name and preferred contact number/email/address.
If you have any questions, please contact Carlos Flores at flores.carlos@epa.gov or (214) 665-7113.