EPA 305-F-04-003 

EPA’s Planned Compliance Assistance (CA) Activities for 

Fiscal Year (FY) 2005 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) offers a diverse set of compliance assistance (CA) activities to help 

business, industry and government comply with regulatory requirements and improve environmental performance.1

 This 

assistance helps users implement new regulations; address problems with existing regulations; or address geographical, national, 

regional, local or facility-specific environmental issues. Compliance assistance may include written or electronic materials such 

as tools (e.g., overviews of laws and regulations or best management practices); training (e.g., workshops, seminars) and both 

targeted and public outreach opportunities (e.g., presentations, mailings, hotlines); and on-site visits or revisits. 

Each fiscal year since 2001, EPA has prepared an Agency-wide compliance assistance plan and inventory identifying 

CA activities that EPA intends to undertake for the upcoming fiscal year. From 2001 until 2004, EPA used the Compliance 

Assistance Planning Database (CAPD) to create the previous EPA Compliance Assistance Activity Plans. In February 2004, 

EPA began using a new database, the Integrated Compliance Information System (ICIS), to capture information on CA activities 

and to track results of the Agency’s CA. Because of the shift to the ICIS database, EPA has modified the summary data and 

analyses contained in the FY 2005 Plan and Inventory. The highlights below reflect these changes 

National Highlights of EPA’s 292 CA Activities Planned for FY 2005 

The primary difference between the FY 2005 Plan and the FY 2004 Plan is the decrease in the amount of CA planning 

data reported, which is due, in part, to the introduction of the new database. The total number of CA activities-- 292 planned for 

FY 2005-- has decreased 30% compared to 415 planned CA activities reported in FY 2004. Several offices did not report any 

data in the new database this year, and while nine of ten Regional Offices entered CA planning data for FY 2005, they reported 

about 30% fewer planned activities for this fiscal year – 245 compared to 352 for last fiscal year.2 

• EPA Organizations Planning CA: In FY 2005, EPA’s Regional Offices continue to plan and undertake the majority 

(84%) of CA activities for FY 2005 with Regions 2, 6 and 10 accounting for 60% of the Regional total. 

Headquarters Offices are responsible for 16% of planned CA activities. This proportion has stayed relatively constant 

over the five years EPA has collected this information. 

• Types of CA Activities: The most frequent type of CA activity planned for FY 2005 is “Outreach Materials 

Distributed,” representing 46% of activities. This new category, systematically reported for the first time in ICIS, 

includes both outreach materials targeted to specific audiences and outreach to the general public about CA 

opportunities. “Workshops/Trainings” and “Presentations/Meetings” account for 38% of planned CA activities for 

FY 2005. Together these three types of CA account for more than 80% of planned activities. 

• Support for Agency Priorities: One hundred (100) of the 292 planned CA activities support either an EPA national 

enforcement and compliance assurance priority and/or a Regional priority. Data about planned CA that addresses 

other Agency priorities (e.g., Air Program priorities of the Office of Air and Radiation, or Safe Drinking Water 

Program priorities of the Office of Water) are not available for FY 2005, because of changes in how such data were 

collected in ICIS. 

• Top Five Sectors Addressed: The five most frequently addressed sectors in the FY 2005 Plan are federal, state and 

local governments (general) , federal facilities, tribes, healthcare and schools (including elementary, secondary and 

colleges and universities.) This is the first time that healthcare has appeared in the top five sectors since EPA began 

collecting information on sectors addressed by planned CA activities in FY 2001. 

• CA Related to Different EPA Statutes: Planned CA activities support environmental requirements under all of EPA’s 

major statutes. The Clean Water Act (CWA) accounts for 20% of planned CA activities, the Clean Air Act (CAA) 

accounts for 18 % and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) accounts for 18%. 

• EPA Support for Other CA Providers: Through grants, contracts and other types of agreements, EPA funds a 

portion of the CA activities of a few states and other CA providers. Such activities represent about 10% of the total 

CA activities reported in the FY 2005 Plan, about 6% less than FY 2004. In addition to financial support, about 17% 

of EPA’s CA activities planned for FY 2005 involve training other CA providers. 
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• Integrated Approaches or Strategies: EPA continues to promote strategic consideration and use of all compliance 

assurance and enforcement tools to address environmental problems through integrated or performance-based strategies. 

Related to this, the FY 2005 Plan includes 52 projects that indicate the planned CA activity is part of an integrated 

approach. This means that the planned CA is part of an approach or strategy that may combine compliance assistance, 

compliance monitoring, enforcement and/or compliance incentives to address an environmental problem. 

• Measuring the Impact of CA: EPA continues to build its capacity and methods of measuring the impact of 

compliance assistance in addressing environmental problems. The FY 2005 Plan indicates that EPA intends to measure 

the impact of 44% of CA activities, a 9% decrease from FY 2004. The decrease is due in part to changes in the way 

that ICIS captures data on this topic. Regions have responded to these changes by entering “Yes” only for those 

activities for which they had a very high degree of certainty that they had the resources and could measure the impact of 

a particular planned CA activity. 

Electronic Access to CA Planning Information 

Analyses that Support These Highlights: These National Highlights are based on summary statistics of the FY 2005 

Plan and inventory. Appendix A of the report contains analyses of FY 2005 data alone, while Appendix B contains comparisons 

of data selected from all five annual compliance assistance activity plans (FY 2001 - FY 2005). A complete report, including 

these statistics in Appendices A and B, is available only in electronic form. To view the more detailed report, go to EPA’s 

Compliance Assistance Planning Web Page: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/assistance/planning/index.html. 

Project or Activity Specific Information: More detailed information (e.g., activity title, brief description, contact 

information) about the CA activities that EPA plans for FY 2005 is available in a database that business, industry, government 

and the general public can search via the Internet at: National Environmental Compliance Assistance Clearinghouse, 

http://www.epa.gov/clearinghouse. To search this information for FY 2005, go to the Clearinghouse; select the “Planned and 

Ongoing Activities” button in the left sidebar, select “US EPA Activities,” and select “FY05 Compliance Assistance Planning 

Data.” Then search by organization and other criteria (e.g., sector, location, etc.). For additional information about these 

materials and/or Web access to them, contact: Ms. Rebecca A. (Becky) Barclay, U. S. EPA, Office of Enforcement and 

Compliance Assurance, Office of Compliance, 202-564-7063, barclay.rebecca@epa.gov. 

1 Compliance assistance, for purposes of this plan and inventory, includes activities, tools or technical assistance that provides 

clear and consistent information for: (1) helping the regulated community understand and meet its obligations under 

environmental regulations; or (2) helping compliance assistance providers to aid the regulated community in complying with 

environmental regulations. Compliance assistance may also help the regulated community find cost-effective ways to comply 

with regulations and/or go “beyond compliance” through the use of pollution prevention, environmental management practices, 

and innovative technologies, thus improving their environmental performance. To be categorized as a compliance assistance 

project or activity, at least one objective must be related to achieving or advancing regulatory compliance. 

2 Discretion in CA Reporting: EPA offices are encouraged to enter all planned CA activities for each fiscal year. Each office 

has wide discretion in how the planned CA activities are grouped and reported in records in the ICIS database. For example, an 

individual record may describe a specific set of workshops on a given CA topic, or a record may describe an entire project 

consisting of several different types of planned CA activities (e.g. development of a CA tool, development of training materials 

and the conduct of workshops related to that new tool). Given the wide discretion in grouping and reporting activities, care must 

be taken when comparing the number of “activities” reported. Within this report, the term “planned CA activities” usually 

refers either to the “number of records entered” or the “number of responses selected” within each record, depending on the topic 

being analyzed.