Nick Conger

There are few American values we cherish more than fair play and accountability. These values guide any strong law enforcement program that holds bad actors to account when they do harm to others.

That is certainly true of how we operated at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, where I worked until last year. EPA’s enforcement deters irresponsible and criminal conduct, cuts down on pollution in our communities, and is central to EPA’s mission to protect public health.

This sacred obligation to the American people is now in grave jeopardy because the Trump administration wants to slash the EPA budget by 31%, raising the specter of virtually no money available for core programs such as enforcement.

That would mean taking the environmental cop off the beat.

Imagine a world in which profit-driven companies can cut corners, cheat or knowingly take actions that poison our air, water and lands — with impunity. We must not return to an era when rivers caught on fire, cities looked like midnight at noon because of dirty air, and communities were built on abandoned toxic waste dumps.

EPA's enforcement office does more than just slap penalties on polluters and then move on. In case after case, through mutually-agreed upon settlements, defendants are required to invest money into solutions to come back into compliance. That’s money that companies are putting into programs that make our communities cleaner, healthier and safer.

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Examples abound.

For six years, Volkswagen illegally sold nearly 600,000 diesel vehicles in the U.S. that were pumping dangerous amounts of nitrogen oxide pollution into our air. NOx contributes to smog and soot (remember how Los Angeles used to look?) that cause respiratory and cardiovascular-related health effects. They are particularly dangerous to children, older adults, and people with heart or lung disease. A little more than a year after this came to light, VW was on the hook for nearly $20 billion, including more than $15 billion to reduce pollution and to buy back or fix the vehicles.

Volkswagen broke the law. The EPA brought an enforcement action. Customers were compensated. Pollution was mitigated. This was the epitome of good law enforcement.

There are plenty of other companies out there breaking laws that protect our health. About two months ago, EPA announced it was investigating Fiat Chrysler Automobiles on alleged violations similar to the VW case. If the charges hold, will the pollution their cars caused be likewise reduced? Will FCA customers be made whole again, as VW customers were?

In Florida and Louisiana, a large fertilizer company called Mosaic was storing highly corrosive hazardous waste in 500-foot high piles across more than 600 acres of land. The manmade piles, among the largest in the country, can also contain several billion gallons of highly acidic wastewater that can reach our groundwater or local waterways. EPA required Mosaic to spend $1.8 billion to close certain facilities and treat hazardous wastewater, while also ensuring the company spends $170 million to reduce the environmental impact of its manufacturing and waste management programs.

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Years ago, one of Anadarko Petroleum Corp.’s subsidiaries, Kerr-McGee, conducted uranium mining and other activities that involved highly toxic chemicals at sites across the nation. These operations left contamination, including radioactive waste across the Navajo Nation and other dangerous waste in communities in the Northeast, the Midwest and the South. Anadarko tried to skirt its responsibility by transferring the business assets responsible for this contamination into a now-defunct and bankrupt company called Tronox. EPA stepped in and uncovered this scheme, and required Anadarko to spend nearly $4.4 billion on cleaning up contamination from volatile organic compounds, pesticides and PCBs in communities in Florida, Illinois, Mississippi and North Carolina.

These are just recent examples. The list goes on. Time and again, EPA’s enforcement office delivers clean air, water and healthy land protections to the American people, when polluting companies have failed them. Some argue that environmental enforcement can be handled by states alone. These recent cases prove that is simply not true. VW, Mosaic, and Anadarko had violations spread across multiple states, and as large, multinational companies, would have likely secured much less stringent settlements when dealing with state agencies.

We depend on an active and vigorous enforcement program at the federal level, led by the only agency in the country dedicated to protecting us from the pollution that threatens our health. Cutting EPA’s budget means imperiling the air we breathe and the water that comes from our tap. As the budget process unfolds, no less than our values and our laws are at stake.

Nick Conger, a press secretary at the Natural Resources Defense Council, was communications director in EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance from July 2013 to April 2016 and later was an adviser in EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s public affairs office.

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