The Environmental Safety Company enhanced enforcement efforts this yr, considerably lowering air pollution in overburdened communities, the company stated in a report Thursday.

The EPA stated it concluded greater than 1,800 civil instances, a 3% improve over 2023, and charged 120 prison defendants, a 17.6% improve over the earlier yr. The “revitalized enforcement and compliance efforts” resulted in additional than 225 million kilos of air pollution reductions in overburdened communities, the company stated in its last report on Biden-era enforcement actions earlier than President-elect Donald Trump takes workplace in January.

Bolstered by 300 new staff employed since final yr, the enforcement program centered on “twenty first century environmental challenges,” together with local weather change, environmental justice and chemical waste, stated David Uhlmann, EPA’s assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance. Greater than half the company’s inspections and settlements concerned poor and deprived communities lengthy scarred by air pollution, reflecting the Biden administration’s emphasis on environmental justice points.

Enforcement efforts included first-ever prison costs for a California man accused of smuggling climate-damaging air coolants into america. The case concerned hydrofluorocarbons, a extremely potent greenhouse fuel also called HFCs, a fuel as soon as generally utilized in fridges and air conditioners.

The EPA has pledged to implement a rule imposing a 40% discount in HFCs as a part of a worldwide phaseout designed to gradual local weather change.

In different highlights, engine maker Cummins Inc. paid greater than $2 billion in fines and penalties — and agreed to recall 600,000 Ram vans — as a part of a settlement with federal and California authorities. Cummins was discovered to make use of unlawful software program that permit Ram vans — manufactured by Stellantis — to skirt diesel emissions assessments for practically a decade.

The superb is the biggest ever secured beneath the federal Clear Air Act.

The EPA and Justice Division additionally reached a $241.5 million settlement with Marathon Oil for alleged air high quality violations on the firm’s oil and fuel operations on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. The settlement requires Marathon to scale back climate- and health-harming emissions from these amenities and can lead to over 2.3 hundreds of thousands tons value of air pollution discount, officers stated.

Uhlmann, who was confirmed as head of the enforcement workplace final yr, stated in an interview that with the assistance of a spending increase accepted by Congress, the company has made “consequential adjustments in how we strategy enforcement at EPA.”

“We’ve revitalized an enforcement program that suffered greater than a decade of funds cuts and and was badly hampered by the (COVID-19) pandemic,” he stated. The company additionally weathered a sequence of actions by former President Donald Trump’s administration to roll again environmental laws and scale back total staffing.

“We’ve strengthened the partnership between the prison and civil packages, and we’ve additionally centered on shifting our instances with better urgency in order that we offer significant outcomes to communities in time frames that make sense to the people who find themselves harmed when illegal air pollution happens,” Uhlmann stated.

With Trump set to return to the White Home, Uhlmann stated he hoped enforcement wouldn’t undergo, noting {that a} host of civil and prison investigations begun up to now two years might bear fruit in 2025 and past. Trump, who has named former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to be EPA administrator, has stated he’ll once more slash laws and goal what he calls onerous guidelines on energy vegetation and oil and pure fuel manufacturing.

Uhlmann declined to invest on how enforcement will change beneath Trump however stated, “Upholding the rule of regulation and ensuring that polluters are held accountable and communities are shielded from dangerous air pollution will not be a partisan matter. We do enforcement at EPA primarily based on the regulation, primarily based on the information, with out regard to politics.

“So, , communities ought to count on that EPA will proceed to guard them from dangerous air pollution.”