§13103 EPA activities

Summary

The EPA must set up an office to run the source-reduction work in this chapter. The office must be separate from the Agency’s single-medium program offices, but it can review and advise those offices to encourage multi-media source reduction. An Agency officer chosen by the Administrator will lead the office. The Administrator must make and carry out a strategy to promote source reduction. The strategy must do specific things numbered 1–6 and 8–13: 1) create standard ways to measure source reduction; 2) check how Agency programs and rules affect source reduction before and after they are proposed; 3) coordinate source-reduction work inside the Agency, with other federal offices, and support broad research; 4) improve public access to environmental data collected under federal law; 5) help businesses adopt source-reduction methods using the Source Reduction Clearinghouse, state matching grants, information sharing, and technical help; 6) set measurable goals with tasks, dates, needed resources, responsibilities, and ways to track progress; 8) form an expert advisory panel from industry, states, and public groups to advise on data collection and sharing; 9) provide training for state and federal permit, enforcement, and inspection staff; 10) recommend to Congress how to remove barriers using incentives or disincentives; 11) find ways to use federal purchasing to encourage source reduction; 12) develop and share model audit procedures to spot source-reduction opportunities; and 13) create an annual award for companies with outstanding or innovative source-reduction programs.