August 31, 2026
For roughly 30 years, EPA has picked a short list of national priorities, known as the National Enforcement and Compliance Initiatives (NECIs), to focus extra inspection and enforcement resources on. Typically, every three years, after extensive consultation with the states and other stakeholders, the agency decides which six priority areas make the cut. For EHS leaders, this list is worth watching. What the agency includes, and what it omits, signals where federal attention is heading, and the past two years have brought some of the most significant revisions in three decades.
Where Things Started
When EPA set the FY2024–2027 NECIs back in August 2023, the list included six priorities: Mitigating Climate Change, Addressing Exposure to PFAS, and Protecting Communities from Coal Ash Contamination, all new at the time; Reducing Air Toxics in Overburdened Communities, modified from a prior cycle; and Increasing Compliance with Drinking Water Standards and Chemical Accident Risk Reduction, both continued from before. Environmental justice (EJ) wasn’t its own initiative, but it was woven into the selection criteria across all six.
Where Things Stand Now
The new administration moved to make mid-cycle changes in the NECIs in March 2025 to reflect its own policy priorities. The EPA kept five of the original six priorities in some form, dropped one outright, and added one that wasn’t included before. Climate change enforcement fell off the list. Methane enforcement at oil and gas facilities has been deprioritized, and methane enforcement against landfills moved back into the agency’s core enforcement program. In its place, EPA added a new initiative, Multi-Media Border Security.
PFAS and Drinking Water Standards carried over unchanged. The other three continued, but not without some changes. Coal ash enforcement is still on the list, but the focus at active plants shifted away from the EJ-linked monitoring approach and toward imminent health threats specifically. Air toxics enforcement got both a new name and a new logic: “Reducing Air Toxics in Overburdened Communities” became “Creating Cleaner Air for Communities,” and enforcement is no longer limited to communities that had been pre-identified as overburdened. It now focuses on the most significant hazardous air pollutants wherever they are present. Chemical Accident Risk Reduction remains a priority as well, but inspections now prioritize high-risk facilities broadly rather than being focused on the two chemicals originally named in the initiative.
Policy Changes Affecting All the NECIs
Two changes from the March 12, 2025, enforcement guidance apply across every initiative, not just the ones that got renamed or re-scoped. EJ factors are no longer permissible in enforcement discretion unless a statute expressly calls for them, which removes the EJ-weighting that had been baked into the original selection criteria. And EJScreen, the tool EPA had used to identify EJ-related data, is now precluded from enforcement use altogether. A third standing directive rounds this out: enforcement actions can’t disrupt any stage of energy production absent an imminent health threat, and anything that would fall into that category now needs higher-level approval before it can proceed.
The Bigger Picture
Taken together, these changes point to a broader shift in enforcement philosophy, not just a swap of EJ-linked criteria for something else. The new administration has signaled that federal enforcement resources should concentrate on core air, water, waste, and chemical risk – the underlying hazards themselves – rather than on where a facility sits relative to a community-burden or EJ designation. Multi-Media Border Security’s addition and climate’s removal both fit that pattern: one is a new priority tied to the new administration’s goal; the other reflects a lower enforcement priority for greenhouse gas-focused programs. There’s a parallel shift at the facility level: when a specific chemical like hydrogen fluoride is no longer singled out, or a community designation like “overburdened” no longer influences enforcement priority, facilities that previously sat on the periphery may now fall within scope.
The Practical Question
It isn’t just whether EPA enforcement is trending up or down. It’s whether you know which initiative, if any, your facility may currently sit under, as well as how your site performs across the full compliance landscape – including all the obligations that remain in force but were never designated as a national priority to begin with.
I’m taking a publication holiday over Labor Day so see you in two weeks. Hope you have a great end to summer.
Doug Parker
CEO, Ecolumix
Coming in Future Issues:
Independent Monitors in the EHS Context: Why are they appointed in some of the most extreme enforcement cases, and what it means for companies that have one.
Where EPA’s Deregulatory Agenda Stands: A lot has been initiated, but not much is settled.
Questions or topics worth covering? Reach out: doug@ecolumix.com
