U.S. EPA denies being soft on polluters as Democrats question enforcement

Susan Bodine, assistant administrator of the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA), testified at a House energy committee panel, where Democratic lawmakers pressed her on significant drops in inspections, penalty collections and referrals of cases to the Department of Justice. The EPA's annual report https://bit.ly/2Sn0z6h released earlier this month showed it leveled $69 million in civil penalties against polluters and conducted 10,612 site inspections in the 2018 fiscal year, the lowest in at least a decade for both measures.