Reports have surfaced that the Obama administration will likely terminate the National Environmental Performance Track program as early as this week.

The EPA’s Performance Track program was designed to encourage businesses and governmental offices to move beyond mere compliance of environmental regulation by registering participants to agree to voluntary improvements across 20 environmental category areas. By joining, signers-on hoped to improve their “environmental cred.”

The program was one of several public-private partnerships that became the hallmark of the Bush administration’s environmental policy. This approach to regulation was touted as a move beyond the traditional “command and control” nature of administrative rulemaking to more collaborative and voluntary programs. Such programs have had mixed results.

Entry into the EPA’s Performance Track program is supposed to be reserved for companies with sterling environmental records, but has been denounced by many environmentalists as a public relations hoax, with the vast majority of members falling short of their commitments.

EPA’s decision to shutter Performance Track comes amid charges that the program wasn’t living up to its billing: spending millions on recruiting and publicity; and failing to independently confirm members’ environmental pledges.

“The program became so desperate to find new members,” The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, “that it turned to gift shops and post offices to pad its numbers.”

The Performance Track program has 547 participating members. In many instances, each branch or location of large companies are listed individually.

It is not entirely clear what impact the reported termination will have on the other Bush-era partnership programs in EPA and elsewhere.

Image: White House Photo/Pete Souza