Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Annual Results: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Fiscal Year 2025 Report

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has released a report titled:

Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Annual Results Report - Fiscal Year 2025 (“Report”).

A March 9th EPA news release claims that:

… Some of the strongest achievements in years have taken place since President Trump was sworn back into office, including hundreds more civil enforcement cases concluded than the previous year and an unprecedented commitment to helping secure the border. 

EPA states that its Enforcement and Compliance program outlines enforcement programs such as:

• Compliance Assurance: EPA maintains programs to assist the public and co-regulators in ensuring compliance with the law and ensuring that enforcement offices are properly trained and certified.
• Civil Enforcement: Takes actions to deter future violations and ensure prompt return to compliance.
• Criminal Enforcement: Investigates and assists in the prosecution of the most culpable environmental violations.
• Superfund Enforcement: Ensures responsible parties perform cleanup or pay for it, preserving taxpayer dollars and the Superfund Trust Fund.
• Federal Facilities: Ensures federal agencies and their facilities comply with environmental laws and regulations in the same manner and to the same extent as other regulated entities.
• National Enforcement and Compliance Initiatives: Focuses enforcement and compliance resources on the most serious environmental violations using national program priorities.

Actions identified by EPA in the March 9th new release include:

• Concluding 2,127 civil enforcement cases, the highest number in nine fiscal years.
• Charging 156 defendants, also the highest number in nine years, and obtaining 65 years of incarceration for the guilty.
• Finalizing 65 Superfund enforcement instruments, valued at more than $888 million, with $714.3 million to address 59.4 million cubic yards of contaminated land and water.
• Performing 179 inspections that included cybersecurity risk assessments at public water systems and providing additional technical compliance assistance at 125 drinking water and 59 wastewater treatment systems.

Some environmental groups have taken a contrary position in terms of recent federal environmental enforcement. For example, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility issued a January 22nd report titled:

The Collapse of Environmental Enforcement Under Trump’s EPA - Department of Justice Civil Prosecutions of Illegal Pollution Plummet in Past Year.

Note that the vast majority of environmental enforcement in the state of Arkansas is undertaken by the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment – Division of Environmental Quality (“ADEQ”). ADEQ has been delegated basically every federal environmental statutory program and therefore is responsible for enforcement. Nevertheless, EPA does retain the ability when it so chooses to undertake enforcement in Arkansas on occasion.

A copy of the EPA Enforcement Report and a Blog post referencing the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Report can be found here.