"Adjusting for inflation, the budget for the EPA’s main enforcement and compliance programs hit an 11-year low in fiscal 2022, sinking below levels set during the Trump era, according to a new independent analysis.
Those cuts are a key reason the Environmental Protection Agency’s performance in cracking down on violators is at its weakest in decades across various measures, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, an environmental watchdog group.
“You’ve heard a lot that they’re working on enforcement, they’re going to beef up enforcement, they’re going to return the EPA to becoming a really effective overseer of polluters,” said Christopher Sellers, an environmental history professor at Stony Brook University and one of the report’s co-authors. “That’s not what the numbers say.”
In fiscal 2022, civil case initiations were at their third-lowest level since 1982 and civil case conclusions were the second lowest on record, the report found."
Stephen Lee reports for Bloomberg Environment February 22, 2023.
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