Washington Watch: Environmental Enforcement Plummets Under Trump

Under President Trump, penalties for federal environmental violations have dropped to their lowest level since the enforcement office was created in 1994.

In fact, the total amount of fines levied against polluters by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the last fiscal year plummeted to just $72 million nationwide. That is more than 85% below the average total for the previous 20 years. This is according to the EPA database and the inflation-adjusted analysis prepared by Cynthia Giles, a former head of the EPA’s enforcement office in the Obama Administration who is now with the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program. Giles’ analysis was reviewed by the Environmental Integrity Project.

In addition to the precipitous drop in penalties, there was also a large drop in the amount of money companies had to pay in order to come into compliance with EPA cleanup orders.

Giles says she is most concerned that less aggressive enforcement will undermine efforts to deter companies from acting illegally or carelessly. “It tells me that [the EPA is] backing away from doing the biggest, highest impact cases,” Giles said, “and those are the most important for protecting public health, and they’re the cases the states can’t or won’t do.”

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