Opinion ID: 537707
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The interaction of daily and monthly violations

Text: 61 A final question that must be resolved is whether the imposition of penalties for a monthly violation forecloses penalties for daily violations within that month. Based on its holding that $10,000 was an absolute maximum per day regardless of the number of violations, the district court in Gwaltney held that no penalties for violations of the daily maximum should be imposed for months in which the polluter violated the monthly average. 611 F.Supp. at 1555. 62 As noted above, we do not read the pre- or post-amendment language to impose an absolute ceiling on the amount of penalties that may be imposed on a single day. However, we find that because discharge of a single pollutant may be the cause of both daily and monthly violations, fining the violator twice may result in imposing two fines for the same illegal act. We decline to interpret the statute to create this result. Thus, if a polluter is guilty of violating the daily average discharge limitation of pollutant A, and also violates the daily maximum limitation of only pollutant A, then the maximum fine for discharge of pollutant A would be $10,000 (or $25,000) times the number of days in the month. If, however, the polluter also violates the daily maximum of pollutant B, one would add each of those daily violations to the fine for the monthly violation of pollutant A. 22 63