One of the Environmental Integrity Project’s top priorities is to hold corporate polluters accountable when they break the law to ensure our environmental laws work for those who most need their protection.
Our attorneys work with our research and engineering teams to provide pro-bono legal representation to local organizations fighting back against illegal pollution and holding government agencies accountable for protecting public health. We take companies to court if they don’t comply with bedrock environmental laws, like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. And we sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state environmental agencies if they don’t follow the law and do their jobs to protect the public.
Our work is even more crucial as the Trump Administration signals it is not serious about environmental enforcement – especially in communities who suffer the most from industrial pollution — and slashes EPA’s workforce and budget. Many state environmental agencies will lack the resources or political will—or both—to fill in the enforcement gap left behind; it has never been more important for EIP to provide the legal and technical resources that local organizations need to fight polluting companies and protect the health and wellbeing of their communities.
EIP is not afraid to take on powerful industries who violate clean air and clean water laws, including refineries, chemical and gas processing plants, coal plants, paper mills, and large wastewater utilities.
Active Enforcement Cases
EIP regularly takes legal actions against big polluters and government agencies for failing to abide by environmental laws and regulations.
EPA Enforcement Trends
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plays a crucial role in ensuring that our environmental laws work for the American people, including taking enforcement action against polluters that break the rules and making sure that states enforce federal laws that protect the environment and communities from toxic and health-harming chemicals.
EPA Enforcement Reports
In addition to taking companies who violate the law to court, EIP also produces in-depth reports about trends in environmental law enforcement to explain to decisionmakers why environmental enforcement programs are necessary to protect public health and the environment, and where federal and state agencies may be falling short.
EPA Enforcement Records
EIP is closely tracking Trump Administration actions that undermine public health and environmental protections for U.S. communities, including rolling back environmental regulations to benefit polluting industries and failing to hold companies accountable when they release illegal pollution into our waterways and the air we breathe.
EPA Watch
EIP was founded more than twenty years ago to stand up to an administration that failed to respect or enforce our environmental laws. Since then, we have worked to hold EPA accountable for enforcement of our environmental laws while strengthening the capacity of EPA to fulfill its mission to protect human health and the environment.
