Enforcement & Compliance

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) names the tools it uses to mark a regulated entity's compliance status and the enforcement actions taken for noncompliance, including the Letter of Warning, the Notice of Violation, the Administrative Consent Agreement, the 80K Action, and referral to the Office of the Maine Attorney General. Its Non-Compliance Response Guidance, effective June 1, 1997, with revisions effective March 31, 2011, sets out how DEP programs choose among them.

In a Phase I ESA

ASTM E1527-21 does not name state enforcement records among its standard record sources. An enforcement record can still show a violation at a property and the corrective action DEP required. Three Maine details help in reading one.

• The tools are graduated. DEP's guidance describes a Letter of Warning as for a matter that is isolated and relatively minor, where no further action is expected if the violation is corrected on time. A Notice of Violation documents a significant violation, or a pattern of lesser violations already resolved. The guidance says that by law DEP must issue a Notice of Violation before resolving a matter through an Administrative Consent Agreement, an enforcement hearing, a Rule 80K prosecution in District Court, or a civil referral to the Attorney General. It also describes a Commissioner's Emergency Order, under 38 M.R.S.A. § 347-A(3), for conditions creating or likely to create a substantial and immediate danger.
• DEP keeps the record of noncompliance. The guidance says the least DEP does after finding noncompliance is to document it in DEP records, and that DEP keeps a record of every instance of noncompliance needed to judge an entity's compliance history or to include in a later enforcement action.
• Some agreements are posted for comment. DEP says certain pending Administrative Consent Agreements must be posted for public comment, under 38 M.R.S.A. § 347-A(6), and its page lists those open for comment.

DEP also points to EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO), and says that state and federal vocabulary and policy differ when ECHO reports Maine compliance and enforcement status. Read an ECHO entry for a Maine facility with DEP's own page on ECHO.

Where to look a site up

• DEP's Monthly Enforcement Report page says it lists the reports for the last 12 months; when read, it listed PDF reports from January 2024 to August 2026. DEP prepares them under 38 M.R.S. § 349(7), which it says obliges DEP to inform the public of certain enforcement resolutions. This handbook did not open the reports.
• The Enforcement & Compliance page links the guidance and DEP's page on ECHO.

Getting the file

The pages read do not give a separate route for enforcement files. DEP's route for its public records is on the File Room, Reports and Lists page: a DEP staff person for a program or project, the file room, and the Freedom of Access Coordinator.

Sources

Maine Department of Environmental Protection pages, read October 13, 2026:

• Enforcement & Compliance, no modified date shown.
• Monthly Enforcement Report, no modified date shown.
• Non-Compliance Response Guidance, revisions effective March 31, 2011.