Just a week into 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) collected $1.675 billion from a U.S. engine maker for installing illegal defeat devices designed to allow the RAM trucks they were installed in to emit excessive pollution.
Cummins Inc.’s acceptance of the fine makes it the largest civil penalty in the history of the Clean Air Act (1963).
You’d probably be surprised to know that the EPA usually collects hundreds of millions of dollars in civil and criminal fines related to breaches of the federal agency’s rules every year.
The cases range from small fines and warnings to sometimes multibillion-dollar penalties and surprisingly long prison sentences.
In 2017, a bumper year for the EPA because of the Volkswagen emissions scandal, the agency collected just under $3 billion in fines and sentenced defendants to a combined 153 years of incarceration. Judges also ordered over $3 billion in court-ordered environmental projects and nearly $150 million in restitution.
Sentences that year ranged from simple probation to up to 11 years in federal prison for defrauding a government tax credit scheme.
In 2022, a typical year, defendants were sentenced to a combined 21 years in federal prison, paid $150 million in fees, and forfeited over $200 million in illegal proceeds.
It’s unclear if the EPA, weakened and gutted under President Donald Trump, will make good on a series of far more rigid rules passed under President Joe Biden. Enforcing EPA rules is notoriously tricky at the criminal level because each case requires a full investigation.
Former agency leaders who have spoken to Reckon in the past have noted that the agency’s priority is to collect penalties and ensure environmental issues are fixed. Court is the last case scenario. But in certain cases, it’s impossible to avoid.
Here are some of the biggest and most important EPA cases in recent decades:
1. Cummins Inc. vehicle emission control violations (2024): Cummins Inc. was required to pay a $1.675…
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