Washington • Criminal prosecution and convictions of polluters have fallen to quarter-century lows under the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, deepening three years of overall enforcement declines, according to Justice Department statistics.
And while the administration says it's focusing on quality over quantity in pollution cases, using its enforcement resources to go after the biggest and worst offenders, an Associated Press analysis found little sign of that so far in court cases closed in 2019.
The criminal pollution cases initiated, and won this year, under the Trump administration, appear to be smaller one-offs, such as an Alaska fishing captain who let a reality TV show crew film his cheering crew as it dumped waste overboard into an Alaskan strait in 2017.