Arkansas
Legal Orders Database
The Legal Orders Database of the Division of Environmental Quality (DEQ) describes the legal actions DEQ has taken against permitted facilities, such as consent administrative orders (CAO) and notices of violation (NOV). DEQ's Legal Services staff support its regulatory offices on compliance, bring formal enforcement cases and emergency orders, represent DEQ in permit appeals and rulemaking, and handle cases in circuit court, including requests for injunctions and the enforcement of administrative orders.
In a Phase I ESA
ASTM E1527-21 does not name enforcement lists among its standard record sources. An order at a property is still worth reading for what was cited and what was required.
Four Arkansas details bear on an order.
- Orders are split between two searches. DEQ says orders processed in SEEK, the department's data system, are found with one search, and orders processed outside SEEK with another. Search both.
- Informal steps come first. DEQ's tank compliance page describes informal enforcement first: inspections, follow-up inspections and warning letters. Only when those fail is the case sent to the Office of Land Resources' enforcement coordinator, whose formal actions can be warning letters, compliance meetings, Notices of Violation, or Consent Administrative Orders, Emergency Orders or Default Administrative Orders. Read the inspection records as well as the orders.
- Penalties follow a set policy. DEQ uses a Uniform Penalty Policy to work out the administrative civil penalties it proposes in formal enforcement before the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, and civil penalties are assessed under the guidelines in the Commission's Regulation 7, Section 9.
- Some violations are self-reported. Under DEQ's Environmental Self-Disclosure Incentive Policy, a regulated entity that uses a voluntary environmental management system may lower its risk of punitive penalties for permit violations, if it meets the policy's conditions. Submissions go through SEEK, which lists self-disclosures among its department-wide programs. DEQ may also offer an entity in violation the option of a Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP), which settles part of an enforcement case and comes on top of any cleanup the violations made necessary.
Where to look a site up
- DEQ's Legal Orders Database page links the Legal Orders Within SEEK Database Search and the Legal Orders Outside of SEEK Database Search. This handbook did not open either search.
- For complaints and inspections, see Pollution complaints and inspections.
- DEQ's Legal Services pages list the Legal Office at 501-682-0892. Questions on self-disclosures go to ee.selfdisclosurepolicy@arkansas.gov.
Getting the file
DEQ takes Freedom of Information Act requests by email at EE.FOIA@arkansas.gov, and its Records Management Section arranges visits to review files. See Records Management and FOIA requests.
Sources
Arkansas Division of Environmental Quality pages, read October 13, 2026, no modified date shown: