Massachusetts Epa Penalty For Small Business

Criteria For Penalty Elimination Or Reduction: The small business has made a good faith effort to comply with applicable environmental requirements as demonstrated by either:

receiving on-site compliance assistance from a government or government supported program and the violations are detected during the compliance assistance and, in the case of confidential assistance programs, disclosing the violations to the appropriate regulatory agency; or

conducting a voluntary environmental audit and promptly disclosing in writing to the appropriate regulatory agency all violations discovered as part of the audit.

First violation. In the past three years, the small business was not subject to an information request, warning letter, notice of violation, field citation, citizen suit or other enforcement action or received penalty mitigation pursuant to this Policy for the current violation. And, in the past five years, the small business has not been subject to two or more enforcement actions for environmental violations.

Corrections Period -- the business corrects the violation and remedies any harm associated with the violation within six months of its discovery. Small businesses may have an additional six months, if necessary, to correct the violation if pollution prevention technologies will be used.

Lack of harm and no criminal conduct. The Policy applies if:

The violation has not caused actual serious harm to public health, safety, or the environment; and The violation is not one that may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health or the environment; and The violation does not present a significant health, safety, or environmental threat; and The violation does not involve criminal conduct.

If a small business meets all of the criteria, except it needs a longer corrections period than provided by criterion 3 or, in the rare instance where the small business has obtained a significant economic benefit from the violation(s) such that it may have obtained an economic advantage over its competitors, EPA will waive up to 100% of the gravity component of the civil penalty, but may seek the full amount of any economic benefit associated with the violations.