Civil penalties for polluters dropped dramatically in Trump’s first two years, analysis shows

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/civil-penalties-for-polluters-dropped-dramatically-in-trumps-first-two-years-analysis-shows/2019/01/24/7384d168-1a82-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.acb06bcf5abb

Civil penalties for polluters under the Trump administration plummeted during the past fiscal year to the lowest average level since 1994, according to a new analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data.

In the two decades before President Trump took office, EPA civil fines averaged more than $500 million a year, when adjusted for inflation. Last year’s $72 million in fines was 85 percent below that amount, according to the agency’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online database.

Cynthia Giles, who headed EPA’s enforcement office in the Obama administration and conducted the analysis, said the inflation-adjusted figures represent the lowest since the agency’s enforcement office was established.

The decline in civil penalties could undermine EPA’s ability to deter wrongdoing, some former agency officials said, because they help ensure it is more expensive to violate the law than to comply with it. But Trump administration officials have said they are focusing much of their effort on working with companies ahead of time so they don’t run afoul of the law, rather than punishing them after the fact. That approach, they say, will ensure business operations can thrive without harming the environment.

“The public expects EPA to protect them from the worst polluters,” she said. “The Trump EPA is not doing that. What worries me is how industry will respond to EPA’s abandonment of tough enforcement.”