This Policy promotes environmental compliance among small businesses by providing them with special incentives. EPA will eliminate or reduce penalties for small businesses that voluntarily discover, promptly disclose, and correct violations in a timely manner. EPA wants to encourage small businesses to learn about environmental compliance and pollution prevention through the wide range of training, checklists, mentoring, and other activities now available to small businesses through regulatory agencies, private organizations, non-profit organizations, and the Internet. Therefore small businesses that voluntarily discover a violation because they utilized these types of activities may have the penalty eliminated if they meet all the criteria in the Policy. For purposes of this Policy, a small business is defined as a person, corporation, partnership, or other entity that employs 100 or fewer individuals across all facilities and operations owned by the entity.
Entities can also include small governments and small organizations.
Violations could be discovered after attending training classes or seminars, receiving on-site compliance assistance, participating in mentoring programs, or using compliance guides or checklists downloaded from the Internet. The small business voluntarily discloses the violation within 21 days. This disclosure must be sent in writing to the regulatory agency. However, if the correction will take longer than 90 days, a written schedule will be necessary. For small businesses that are correcting the violation by using pollution prevention technologies, they may have an additional period of 180 days, i.e. up to a period of 360 days.