Page Title

Strategic Focus

• Preparing for a New Era of Environmental Protection
• Cal/EPA Management Priorities

Preparing for a New Era of Environmental Protection

New, more complex challenges face us at the dawn of the 21st Century. We achieved many of our past gains by focusing on the largest or most obvious sources of environmental problems. We established and enforced requirements that prescribed not only the results but also how they were to be achieved.

As we look forward, we must fundamentally alter our approach to environmental protection. This Strategic Vision aims to match our past success by developing new strategies rooted in our under-standing of the causes of environmental problems.

Over the next several years, Cal/EPA’s approach to managing the environment will evolve in two important ways:

• Through place-based approaches, such as watershed management, we will place greater emphasis on contributors to environmental impacts such as motor vehicles, residential use of pesticides and other household products, and agricultural use of pesticides and fertilizers.

 

• We will move the current framework for regulating industrial and commercial activity toward a performance-based system that recognizes environmental leaders, pro-vides new incentives and increased technical assistance to improve performance, and increases oversight and enforcement for those not meeting minimum compliance and performance standards.

In addition, within each of our strategies, we will increasingly seek to:

• Strengthen and expand partnerships to multiply our effectiveness, and,

 

• Measure and publicly report our performance.

Cal/EPA Management Priorities

Cal/EPA has several overarching management objectives that reflect a commitment to solve rather than react to environmental issues and to overcome the administrative, jurisdictional, and organizational constraints of a program structure organized around individual media. These priorities include:

• Establishing an Agency-wide strategic planning process for Cal/EPA that will interrelate the strategic plans of the boards, departments, and office into a single Cal/EPA Strategic Plan 

This Cal/EPA Strategic Vision initiates a process designed to coordinate, for the first time, the programs of the six boards, departments and office of Cal/EPA toward common goals. The Vision, coupled with the seven separate but interrelated strategic plans of the Agency’s boards, departments, office, and the Office of the Secretary, will be linked electronically, comprising a comprehensive agency-wide synthesis of plans for Cal/EPA.

• Adopting environmental indicators 

Environmental indicators—information that directly measures the health of the environment—are needed to transform the present single-medium reactive approach to a cross-media approach that partners with the Legislature and the Governor in making policy, allocating resources for maximum value, and making adjustments in priorities.

• Establishing cross-media strategies and coordination 

Pollution occurs without respect to jurisdictional or organizational boundaries. The medium-specific organizational structure of environmental protection in California presents significant challenges to program managers who must ensure that a strategy that solves a problem in one medium does not create a problem in another. It is necessary therefore to create cross-media strategies for addressing environmental problems.

• Providing, managing and disseminating information 

We live in a knowledge-based society. The astonishing increases in productivity accompanying the new tools of information management and dissemination provide opportunities to acquire and apply scientific and engineering knowledge that we did not have in earlier decades.

Cal/EPA will structure its organization, information management, and technological resources so that researchers, applied scientists, engineers, program managers, and the public will have access to environmental information from California and around the globe.

• Enhancing risk assessment

Risk assessment is at the core of our ability to make policy and risk management decisions based on sound science. Risk assessment should be expanded to include an evaluation of the risks to the ecology of our State as well as to public health. Risk assessments also must be of consistent high quality throughout the Agency. As we perform ecological and human health risk assessments, we must be diligent in using sound science and current data in addressing both acute and chronic risk. Communication between risk assessors and risk managers must improve.

• Improving risk management

Cross-media risk management begins with well-crafted rules of general application that regulate appropriately to prevent risk rather than respond to it. Risk management must also be focused on pollution prevention and cross-media impacts.

• Improving enforcement

Enforcement of the law must be consistent, predictable, fair, and equitable. There can be no equivocation or hesitation in the pursuit of individuals or businesses violating laws that protect human health and the environment. Enforcement efforts must be prioritized to address the worst violators and environmental harm first. A sufficient enforcement presence to deter violators is the preferred strategy rather than sporadic enforcement efforts dependent on exorbitant fines or penalties to punish the few who are caught. Finally, we need to adequately train our inspectors and enforcement personnel to mete out quick and sure justice designed to stop illegal activity as quickly as possible with appropriate cross-media coordination.

• Designing place-based approaches to environmental management

Whether we are evaluating the cumulative impact of air emissions from a dozen facilities in a single community, or considering the effects of diffuse or nonpoint sources of water pollution on a watershed, place-based management means considering the entire geographic area. This involves understanding the sources contributing to the problem and the opportunities for improvement, and designing remediation strategies accordingly.

Understanding sources of pollution on a spatial basis can play a dramatic role in land use decisions by local governments. Local governments have the ability to plan and manage land use to protect the environment but often do not have adequate information upon which to understand the full impacts of their decisions. They require greater access to information and technical resources to improve this decision-making process.

The boards, departments, and office of Cal/EPA have much of the information local governments need, but do not now have the means to aggregate the information for effective use. Developing a Geographical Information System (GIS) that will provide spatially/geographically displayed information through computerized mapping will be a high priority for Cal/EPA over the next two years.

• Employing performance incentives for continual improvement

Much of the progress over the past 30 years was achieved by regulating changes in industrial practices. The corporate culture of industry has evolved to the point that we now have begun to work as partners with many in the industrial and commercial sectors. Over the next several years, we will evolve the current regulatory frame-work toward a performance-based system that fosters continual improvement.

The new regulatory framework will feature:

• New methods to evaluate a facility’s environmental performance—on a facility-wide, multi-media basis—that will allow the public, the Agency and the firms themselves to assess their performance and progress over time;

• Incentives to engage local government and community organizations in facility environmental planning;

• Performance partnership agreements with our industrial partners that establish facility-specific environmental goals and targets corresponding to those of the watershed, community or state;

• Public recognition programs for top performing facilities;

• Integration of pollution prevention strategies into the mainstream of the permitting and regulatory process;

• Different degrees of regulatory flexibility and oversight for facilities based upon their demonstrated capability and environmental performance; and, 

• Closer scrutiny, enforcement and technical assistance for facilities not meeting compliance and performance standards.

• Building and strengthening partnerships 

Cal/EPA provides leadership and assistance in environmental management, but improving the quality of life for all Californians requires the active participation of the people who live, work and raise families in California.

Strategies based on strong partnerships will, therefore, be among our most effective tools. Public outreach efforts will focus on educating and informing citizens about environmental problems we face and the strategies we will employ to solve them. We will also report our success or failure.

Partnerships with communities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), farmers, local governments and business will be developed to identify both the sources of pollution and opportunities for improvement.

• Managing for environmental results

Historically, we have measured our success by counting the number of permits we issued, inspections conducted and dollars collected. In the past, we reasonably believed that the more we did, the more improvement we would achieve. The challenges we face today are more complex, requiring more sophisticated solutions. Simply doing more of the same will not achieve the continued increases in environmental improvements that are required. We, therefore, must begin measuring our progress based on the outcomes of our work—the results we achieve—not how much work we do.

To ensure the Agency’s results-based management system succeeds, it must be supported by a scientifically sound environmental system. The Agency will continue to use the best available science, technical analyses and data to better understand current and future environmental problems, as well as to develop efficient, effective and innovative solutions to solve these problems. Credible results will depend on the Agency’s technical information, methods, and evaluations being reliable, accurate and timely.

Since Cal/EPA shares a common interest with the Resources Agency and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (U. S. EPA)—protecting the environment and preserving the State’s natural resources—we will ask these agencies to co-sponsor the development of environmental indicators, led by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA).

OEHHA will work closely and collaboratively with the boards and departments of Cal/EPA, Resources Agency departments, U. S. EPA, the University of California, nationally prominent scientists, and stakeholder groups to determine a set of credible, scientifically sound environmental indicators. Once indicators are developed, OEHHA will assume the lead responsibility for maintaining, amending or adding indicators that enhance our ability to measure success or failure in meeting environmental objectives.

We will use the indicators to help us understand and evaluate:

• The causes of problems we must address;
• The current status of the environment, progress in improving it, and
• the quality of life for California residents; and,
• The effectiveness of our strategies.

The following diagram describes the process for developing and maintaining environmental indicators.

Figure 2—Environmental Indicators Development and Maintenance Process

Our approach to managing toward environmental results will provide an integrated, cross-media foundation from which to move with greater certainty in determining the course changes required to achieve our strategic objectives.

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