Knowing [is] What Makes an Environmental Crime

The EPA’s bloated budgets have armed the agency with the ability to not only add new programs, but also enhance its core programs, including enforcement. With more money to hire, train and deploy inspectors and agents to find environmental infractions, more enforcement cases are inevitable. The gold standard of enforcement cases (from the EPA’s perspective) is the criminal case. Criminal cases give the EPA and state environmental agencies the media exposure they crave to spotlight its programs and promote deterrence (and thus compliance) and thereby to enhance environmental protection.