Last month, the California Air Resources Board released a draft Aliso Canyon Methane Leak Climate Impacts Mitigation Program. The program comes in response to Gov. Jerry Brown’s January 6 proclamation that Southern California Gas be held responsible for mitigating the estimated 100,000 tons of methane released from the gas storage facility at Porter Ranch, which leaked the equivalent of about one-fifth of all other California sources of the powerful greenhouse gas combined over that same period. While this high-profile case is unique in both its global and local impacts, the response by California may nevertheless be illustrative of certain broader environmental enforcement trends.

Legal scholars from the Center for Progressive Reform and elsewhere have written about a recent policy shift in the federal approach to enforcement, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calls “Next Generation Compliance.” Spurred by damaging cuts to the agency’s inspection and enforcement budgets over the last decade or more, EPA has attempted to turn lemons into lemonade by not only overhauling the way it enforces violations and interacts with potential polluters, but also by utilizing new technology to enable communities to better monitor local pollution and detect violations.

EPA’s hope …