THE POLLUTER SHOULD NOT GET THE PROFITS WHILE THE PUBLIC GETS THE POISON.

VAULT · 09 EARTH

Published by Langhorne P. Breedlove

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2026 · 3:00 AM ET

Tags: Environmental Enforcement · Superfund · Criminal Prosecution · Cleanup Funding · Public Health · Polluter Accountability

Dear fellow American proletariat: A company can earn money selling a product, save more money by neglecting the waste it creates, and then leave behind a contaminated stream, a vacant industrial parcel, and a very complicated invoice. The residents nearby did not negotiate that business arrangement. They simply inherited it.

The basic question is whether environmental law can prevent harm, identify responsible parties, secure cleanup, compensate legally recognized losses, and punish deliberate violations without confusing those duties. American Proletariat proposes stronger evidence-based accountability, transparent remediation financing, and credible independent enforcement. That is a proposed reform agenda, not a claim that the United States currently has no environmental enforcement system.

ROOTS · WHEN THE PUBLIC INVOICE BECAME LAW

The federal environmental framework expanded substantially in the 1970s. The Clean Water Act regulates certain discharges into waters of the United States; the Clean Air Act addresses air pollution through multiple federal and state programs; and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act establishes a framework for managing hazardous waste. Their provisions differ in scope, jurisdiction, required proof and remedies. There is no single national rule making every environmental injury automatically a federal crime. (Sources 01, 02)

In December 1980 Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, commonly called CERCLA or Superfund. The law created authorities to respond to releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances and to recover eligible response costs from responsible parties. Its liability framework can be strict and retroactive, and jointly and severally imposed where legally appropriate. Those rules come with statutory defenses, limits and fact-specific questions of causation and divisibility. (Sources 03, 04)

The principle is straightforward: if a legally responsible company caused or contributed to contamination, government should pursue that party for qualifying cleanup costs before placing the full burden on the public. But an entity identified as a potentially responsible party is not automatically adjudicated liable merely because investigators send it an information request. That distinction protects procedural fairness and the integrity of cleanup decisions. (Sources 03, 04)

TODAY · WHAT THE ENFORCEMENT NUMBERS SAY

EPA's fiscal year 2025 civil enforcement program concluded 2,127 civil cases, assessed more than $650 million in penalties, and obtained commitments exceeding $6.4 billion to return facilities to compliance. The agency also estimated actions would reduce, treat or eliminate nearly 116 million pounds of pollution. These are reported annual enforcement outcomes: assessed penalties are not necessarily money collected that year, compliance commitments are not completed construction, and estimated pollution reductions are not direct measurements of every future environmental benefit. (Source 05)

EPA's separate criminal program reported 187 new cases opened and 156 defendants charged in fiscal year 2025, along with more than $600 million in fines, restitution and court-ordered relief. A criminal charge is not a conviction. Criminal sentencing results and civil cleanup obligations measure different kinds of accountability, and a large monetary total does not demonstrate that a contaminated site has been made safe. (Source 06)

Under Superfund enforcement, EPA secured approximately $714.3 million in fiscal year 2025 commitments for future site cleanup or payment, recovered $174.1 million of past response costs, and billed roughly $94.5 million for oversight costs. At the end of that fiscal year, EPA reported cleanup work taking place at 870 sites under 1,467 enforcement agreements or orders valued around $25 billion in estimated cleanup costs. Some amounts represent commitments, others recoveries or bills; they cannot all be added as if they were new cash deposited in one account. (Source 07)

CIVIL LIABILITY IS NOT CRIMINAL GUILT

CIVIL ENFORCEMENT · MAKE THE VIOLATION STOP

Civil environmental proceedings can produce administrative compliance orders, injunctions, monetary penalties, cleanup obligations or settlements. Under applicable laws, violations may be established without proving criminal intent. A company may need to remedy an unlawful discharge, restore compliance, or pay an authorized penalty even when no executive has been criminally convicted. The government must still prove the required elements and respect opportunities to contest agency action. (Sources 05, 08)

CRIMINAL PROSECUTION · PROVE THE OFFENSE

Criminal environmental statutes generally demand specific prohibited conduct and the mental state required by that statute. The Department of Justice's Environmental Crimes Section prosecutes qualifying violations in federal courts alongside U.S. attorneys and investigators. Investigations can concern intentional illegal discharges, unlawful hazardous-waste handling, concealment, falsified records or other conduct defined in law. Prosecutors must establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, with full constitutional safeguards. (Sources 06, 09)

That is why 'prosecute every polluter' is not a legal plan. A lawful industrial emission within the applicable permit and regulatory framework is different from a knowing illegal discharge or falsified monitoring report. The solution to insufficiently protective legal limits may be legislation or rulemaking, not inventing retroactive criminal guilt after the fact.

SUPERFUND LIABILITY · WHO PAYS FOR THE MESS?

CERCLA can authorize EPA to negotiate cleanup agreements, issue certain cleanup orders, perform eligible response work, and pursue recovery of costs from liable parties. Liability may reach defined categories such as certain current owners or operators, past operators at the time of disposal, arrangers and transporters, subject to statutory conditions and defenses. It can apply even if the person charged with cleanup did not commit an environmental crime. (Sources 03, 04)

WHAT IF THE POLLUTER HAS DISAPPEARED?

A responsible company may have dissolved, become insolvent, left the jurisdiction, or be impossible to identify reliably. Contamination can also predate modern environmental statutes. Public cleanup funding exists partly because a community should not remain exposed indefinitely while lawyers search for the successor to a factory that closed before its current residents were born.

The Superfund Trust Fund can finance eligible response activities when responsible parties cannot immediately perform or pay. Congress has provided additional funding and revived certain industry excise taxes, but the availability of money does not eliminate the need to prioritize sites, evaluate remedies, monitor long-term risks and pursue available cost recovery. Nor does every polluted property qualify for Superfund's highest-priority National Priorities List. (Sources 03, 10)

Cleanup is also a sequence. Discovery, assessment, listing where appropriate, investigation, remedy selection, design, construction, long-term operation and eventual deletion from the National Priorities List are separate stages. A cleanup agreement is a step toward remediation, not proof that groundwater is safe or that all contamination has been removed. (Source 10)

THE PROPOSED ACCOUNTABILITY FRAMEWORK

ONE · IDENTIFY THE HARM & PRESERVE THE EVIDENCE

Strengthen environmental monitoring and independent sampling for significant suspected contamination, including air, groundwater, drinking-water sources, soil and sediment as applicable. Publish the methodology, detection limits, chain of custody, uncertainty and known exposure pathways. Protect confidential medical information and genuinely sensitive infrastructure details. A photograph of discolored water may justify investigation; it does not alone establish which party violated which statute.

TWO · TRACE RESPONSIBLE PARTIES LAWFULLY

Use permits, manifests, corporate and property histories, disposal records, environmental sampling and financial information to investigate responsibility. Review successor liability, insurance, bankruptcy claims, existing settlement terms and statutory exemptions. Give affected parties notice and lawful avenues to challenge findings. A corporation should not escape legitimate obligations merely by reorganizing, but neither should unrelated owners be assigned guilt by association.

THREE · REQUIRE CLEANUP SECURITY

Where lawful and appropriate, require enforceable financial assurances, performance milestones, escrow or bonding, insurance, and contingency arrangements for high-risk operations. The purpose is to reduce the chance that a bankrupt operator leaves the public with an unfunded cleanup. Financing requirements must be calibrated to actual risk, applicable law and the possibility that excessive barriers may shift legitimate work to weaker-regulated jurisdictions.

FOUR · SEPARATE REMEDIATION FROM PUNISHMENT

A negotiated cleanup should specify what contamination will be addressed, the selected remedy, health and environmental standards, milestones, independent verification and long-term monitoring. Penalties should address statutory violations; criminal prosecution should address provable crimes; restitution or compensation should rely on the relevant legal basis. Counting the same $10 million settlement as cleanup, a penalty and an economic benefit would be creative bookkeeping, not accountability.

FIVE · LET THE PUBLIC SEE THE LEDGER

Create a site-by-site public dashboard showing investigation status, responsible-party determinations, legal instruments, costs estimated and actually spent, money recovered, pollutants addressed, health warnings, milestones completed, remaining contamination and the agency responsible for follow-up. Include accessible community meetings and appropriate Tribal consultation. Public participation should occur while remedy choices can still change.

WHO ACTUALLY HAS THE AUTHORITY?

EPA implements and enforces major federal pollution statutes; the Department of Justice litigates federal civil and criminal cases; states administer numerous delegated programs and their own laws; Tribal governments possess distinct powers and rights; and local agencies handle important public-health, water and land-use responsibilities. Courts adjudicate disputed liability and criminal guilt. Congress can revise federal law and appropriations, but an executive agency cannot create a new criminal offense or disregard statutory defenses by announcing an enforcement initiative.

A strengthened national system should coordinate rather than duplicate the existing framework. The EPA's fiscal year 2025 enforcement data do not include every state or local enforcement action, so federal totals should not be presented as the total number of environmental cases nationwide. Conversely, a state-issued permit does not conclusively resolve every federal statutory issue. (Sources 05, 11)

THE ONE-YEAR & TEN-YEAR LEDGER

A credible fiscal model must separate four columns: public investigation and enforcement, public cleanup expenditures, legally enforceable private-party work, and actual recoveries or penalties collected. Employer-financed remediation is not a new federal appropriation. A court-ordered financial commitment is not cash immediately available for another project. The relevant baseline includes existing EPA and state programs, already funded Superfund projects, and ongoing private cleanup agreements.

Here is an illustrative federal oversight expansion—not a Congressional Budget Office estimate. Assume 250 additional environmental investigators, attorneys, engineers, financial analysts and community specialists at a fully loaded $225,000 annual average: $56.25 million per year. Add a hypothetical $43.75 million annually for laboratories, independent sampling, secure records, case support, inspections and evaluations. Recurring spending is $100 million. Add $75 million in one-time training, equipment and interoperable-data startup spending. First-year gross federal outlays would be $175 million; ten years of flat recurring expense plus startup would be $1.075 billion undiscounted.

Now consider a separate, purely illustrative public cleanup reserve of $500 million per year for sites without immediately available responsible-party funding. Ten flat years would produce $5 billion in gross appropriations before recoveries or inflation. It does not establish how many sites could be cleaned, which projects qualify, or whether the amount is sufficient. In a consolidated example, the hypothetical administration and reserve would total $675 million in year one and $6.075 billion over ten flat years, but actual policy design must prevent overlap with existing Superfund funding.

The formal ten-year ledger should model site discovery, risk ranking, investigations, litigation, financial assurance, remediation design, construction, operation, monitoring, federal facility obligations, labor costs, state and Tribal partnerships, taxpayer expenditures, collections and uncertainty. Cost-recovery collections must be distinguished from assessments and settlement commitments; environmental and health benefits require appropriate causal methods before they are counted as fiscal savings.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Aggressive enforcement without careful legal proof can impose unreasonable costs on innocent parties, slow urgently needed remediation, or discourage voluntary disclosure. Underfunded investigations can allow evidence to disappear. An inflexible liability system can make redevelopment of abandoned industrial sites economically difficult even where a prospective owner is prepared to clean them safely. Overreliance on penalties may generate headlines without making communities less exposed.

There are also familiar dangers in the other direction: regulators may lack resources to investigate major pollution, settlements may be too weak to ensure completion, and the public can be left financing work a viable responsible party ought to undertake. Critics of stronger liability may emphasize investment, jobs, statutory certainty and due process; advocates may emphasize deterrence, public health and avoiding taxpayer-funded cleanup. Evidence is needed on both economic effects and actual environmental outcomes.

MEASURE THE REMEDY, NOT THE ANNOUNCEMENT

Publish sites assessed, cases properly resolved, responsible parties identified, civil orders complied with, criminal cases charged and adjudicated separately, cleanup agreements reached, funds actually recovered, remedies constructed, contaminant concentrations over time, monitoring completed, exposure reduced, and properties returned to safe lawful use. Show data gaps, enforcement reversals, and remaining risks. An agency should not get full credit for drafting an agreement to clean up a river while the pollutant is still in the river.

THE POINT

Environmental accountability means identifying the responsible conduct, applying the correct law, enforcing fair procedures, and funding cleanup even where liability cannot be promptly collected. It is not a theory that every business is criminal or that every environmental permit provides perfect protection. It is a system where harm is measured, responsibility is documented and actual remediation is verified.

When a company earns the revenue, it should not be allowed to make an unrelated community inherit the waste by default. The polluter-pays principle is meaningful only when the public can see who paid, what was cleaned, and what remains.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

01 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Laws & Regulations, core environmental statutory framework.

https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations

02 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Summary of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-resource-conservation-and-recovery-act

03 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Superfund Enforcement, responsible parties and cleanup orders.

https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/superfund-enforcement

04 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Superfund Liability, strict and retroactive liability rules.

https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/superfund-liability

05 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — FY2025 Enforcement Results: Civil Enforcement, released 2026.

https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/enforcement-and-compliance-assurance-annual-results-fy-2025-civil-enforcement

06 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — FY2025 Enforcement Results: Criminal Enforcement, released 2026.

https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/enforcement-and-compliance-assurance-annual-results-fy-2025-criminal-enforcement

07 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — FY2025 Superfund Cleanup Enforcement Results, released 2026.

https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/enforcement-and-compliance-assurance-annual-results-fy-2025-superfund-cleanup

08 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Basic Information on Enforcement, civil and criminal distinctions.

https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/basic-information-enforcement

09 · U.S. Department of Justice — Environmental Crimes Section, mandate and prosecutions.

https://www.justice.gov/enrd/environmental-crimes-section

10 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Superfund Cleanup Process and response procedures.

https://www.epa.gov/superfund/superfund-cleanup-process

11 · U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — FY2025 Annual Enforcement Data and Trends.

https://awsedap.epa.gov/public/extensions/FEC_AR2025/FEC_AR2025.html

10 RECOMMENDED ARTICLES, ESSAYS & POLICIES

→ Explore National Contaminated-Site Discovery & Cleanup Mobilization

→ Explore Climate, Clean Air, Land & Resources

→ Explore Public Lands, Biodiversity & Resource Stewardship

→ Explore Ten-Year Fiscal Accountability

→ Explore Federal Reserve, Currency & Financial Reform

→ Explore Greens

→ Explore Bourbons

→ Explore Elite & Industrial Power

→ Explore Reformers, Abolitionists & Civil Rights

→ Explore Great Salt Lake & Western Water

WE ARE ONE.  ·  E PLURIBUS UNUM.