Principal Maddie Boyer (Austin) and Of Counsel Stephen Smith (Washington, DC) recently spoke with Bloomberg Law about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “compliance first” Memorandum released earlier this month. B&D analyzed these developments in a recent alert, “Compliance First”: What EPA’s Updated Priorities Mean for Industry.

In “EPA Shift to Prioritize Compliance Seen Easing Enforcement Focus,” Bloomberg Law reports that some environmental groups are concerned that EPA will no longer take action against “bad actors.” Maddie explained that is not the case. “There’s no ‘give industry a pass’ subtext here,” she said, adding that EPA’s “core mission will continue.” B&D’s alert described this, noting that industry should not interpret the Memorandum “as a directive to reduce inspections or reduce enforcement generally.”

Stephen said that the Memorandum “gives regulated entities an additional outlet to elevate their arguments from the regional offices up to EPA headquarters.” He projected that this channel of communication “could promote greater consistency in enforcement actions nationwide.”

B&D anticipated EPA to adopt this orientation, with our Texas office having direct experience with a similar policy implementation when Craig Pritzlaff served as Director of the Office of Compliance and Enforcement at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.  

As we have for 50 years through Democratic and Republican administrations, Beveridge & Diamond stands ready to help our clients respond to shifts in law and policy, to counsel them in state and federal government enforcement matters and internal investigations (including criminal matters), and to defend them in all types of litigation – including toxic torts, class actions, and the new wave of citizen/NGO, plaintiffs’ bar and “blue state” attorney general lawsuits. Nearly two-thirds of B&D lawyers have prior U.S. state or federal government experience, including several former senior EPA and DOJ attorneys who served under both the initial Trump and Biden administrations.