EPA fines stove retailer, pursues informal enforcement with many others, Jan. 2020

On October 22, 2021, the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General announced it was launching an investigation into the EPA’s residential wood heater testing and certification program. The memo announcing the investigation was directed at both the Office of Enforcement and Compliance (OECA) based in DC and the Office of Air and Radiation (OAR) whose staff is mainly based in Triangle Park, North Carolina. The report is scheduled to be published sometime next year.

The Office of the Inspector General is “an independent office within the EPA that helps the agency protect the environment in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.” It identifies areas it believes need investigation and issues a public report with recommendations. While it does not have enforcement power, the EPA is expected to take the Office's recommendations seriously. There can be disagreements over priorities and that is already happening in the water program and elsewhere. The OIG also submits semiannual reports to Congress. In the event that the EPA ignores any of the recommendations made by OIG, it is possible that the agency can be pressured to address them through hearings, appropriations riders or funding. The EPA OIG can also uncover criminal behavior, which would be addressed accordingly by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

 

More specifically, the memo announcing this evaluation says, “Our objective is to determine whether EPA effectively uses its oversight and enforcement authority to ensure that all residential wood heaters reaching consumers are properly tested and certified in accordance with established standards. … We may also choose to include a sample of regions in our evaluation and to conduct work at laboratories and third-party certifiers in selected regions.”

A current ad for uncertified
outdoor wood boilers

Before publicly announcing this evaluation, the OIG contacted the Alliance for Green Heat on Oct. 13, 2021 and held a conference call with AGH on Oct. 21. For years, AGH has been raising alarm bells about the lack of EPA enforcement in a number of areas, including the numerous companies that continue to manufacturer and sell outdoor wood boilers. AGH has often contacted the EPA Office of Enforcement and published stories on our newsletter on companies who make and/or distribute uncertified residential central wood heaters, including ACME (Missouri), EZBoiler (Michigan), Hyprotherm (Arkansas) and MBTEK (Pennsylvania distributor of Polish appliances). AGH has spoken with most of the companies by phone and they say that they have never been contacted by the EPA or a state agency about certification issues.

AGH also raised EPA’s failure to contact the whistleblower regarding the credible allegations of fraud at US Stove Company, along with a number of other areas where enforcement action was needed.

The OIG’s evaluation is also believed to have been triggered by the NESCAUM report, Assessment of EPA’s Residential Wood Heater Certification Program, that found a “systemic failure of the entire certification process, including EPA’s oversight and enforcement of its requirements.” That report led the EPA to conduct its own review of the certification paperwork for all certified stoves. The EPA is contacting scores of companies to obtain missing information or for clarification. In some cases, it is requiring the company to have the stove tested again.

If you have evidence of misconduct or mismanagement regarding the EPA’s oversight of wood heater testing or certification, you can provide information using this form, and refer to case OSRE-FY22-0026.

Further reading:

EPA fines stove retailer, pursues informal enforcement with many others, Jan. 2020

AGH files report with Consumer Product Safety Commission on alleged fraud, April 2021

Report finds ‘systemic failure’ in EPA wood stove tests, March 2021