Bush's EPA Is Pursuing Fewer Polluters ... down nearly 70 percent ... prosecutions, cases, convictions drop

Bush's EPA Is Pursuing Fewer Polluters | Probes and Prosecutions Have Declined Sharply | By John Solomon and Juliet Eilperin | Washington Post Staff Writers | Sunday, September 30, 2007; Page A01

The Environmental Protection Agency's pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data.

The number of civil lawsuits filed against defendants who refuse to settle environmental cases was down nearly 70 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, compared with a four-year period in the late 1990s, according to those same statistics.
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The slower pace of enforcement mirrors a decline in resources for pursuing environmental wrongdoing. The EPA now employs 172 investigators in its Criminal Investigation Division, below the minimum of 200 agents required by the 1990 Pollution Prosecution Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush.
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The Massachusetts case is emblematic of the steep decline in criminal cases initiated by the EPA. The number of environmental prosecutions plummeted from 919 in 2001 to 584 last year, a 36 percent decline, according to Justice Department statistics collected by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
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Those same Justice Department data also show that the number of people convicted for environmental crimes dropped from 738 in 2001 to 470 last year.

Similarly, the number of cases opened by EPA investigators fell 37 percent, from 482 in 2001 to 305 last year, according to data the EPA provided congressional investigators. ...