Strategic Plan Review

AQUIFER MANAGEMENT & PROTECTION

Enforcement/Compliance Program Re-Engineering

Based on lessons learned from past experience, we have begun to explore and integrate creative new ways to engage constituents and facilitate their compliance with our regulations. One way we are doing this is through a passive enforcement behavior modification process to educate constituents and incentivize compliance, depending on the significance of the risk to the aquifer and severity of the issue. This allows us to facilitate the best compliance outcome with the highest regulatory quality for the region. An example of a passive enforcement process would be if an abandoned well was found on someone’s property and they didn’t have the funds to properly cap it. The EAA could offer to bring it back into service for use as a monitoring well—if it was in an area that was advantageous to our monitoring program. This would be a beneficial use for water quality protection and would help solve the compliance issue ( slide 10 ).

PAGE 17