And EPA has been spending a lot of time in court, suing businesses, individuals and other governments. Criminal defendants were sentenced to a record 208 collective years of jail time. The EPA has never been busier in pursuing its enforcement crusade. The agency's gloss on all of this is that it is doing its job. It is suing and fining a lot of people.
Big numbers make for big headlines, and clearly the agency is getting headlines.
Many who read this probably think that this is good news. Formal environmental protection started in this country more or less 30 years ago. This super aggressiveness was suppose to have been tempered in the last decade. A new trend had started to emerge which focussed on compliance and cooperation rather than huge penalty assessments. It is against this backdrop that we now view the latest large EPA numbers.