The Investigative Journal’s weekly review of federal and state environmental enforcement, drawn from EPA, the U.S. Department of Justice, and public consent-decree filings. Figures below are civil penalties and injunctive-relief estimates as stated in government announcements and court records. Several actions remain in public-comment periods and are not yet final; allegations in lodged or pending matters are unproven.
Federal environmental enforcement has run at an elevated pace through the summer of 2026, and the latest tranche of settlements shows the government leaning on a familiar mix of civil penalties and costly injunctive relief. The signature action of the period is a Clean Air Act settlement with paper manufacturer Domtar A.W. LLC, lodged in federal court in Arkansas on July 24. It lands alongside a $69 million Clean Water Act resolution over the 2022 Keystone Pipeline rupture and continued fallout from a landmark $450 million PFAS settlement with Chemours. Here is what the records show.
1. Domtar to pay $1.5 million over Arkansas paper-mill air violations
On July 24, the Justice Department, acting for the EPA and the Arkansas Department of Energy & Environment, lodged a proposed consent decree with Domtar A.W. LLC to resolve alleged Clean Air Act and state air-and-water violations at the company’s kraft pulp and paper mill in Ashdown, Arkansas. Under the agreement, Domtar would pay a $1.5 million civil penalty split between the United States and Arkansas, and spend an estimated $2.6 million or more to bring the plant into compliance.
Government filings allege Domtar failed to install required pollution controls on its “brown stock washer” — equipment that separates spent chemicals from pulp fibers — allowing hydrogen sulfide, a gas with a characteristic rotten-egg odor, and other hazardous air pollutants to escape. The complaint indicates the company at one point went 53 days without an inspection and failed to detect a leaking valve, and that it did not conduct adequate performance testing on two boilers. Because monitoring lapsed, the filings note, the full volume of hazardous pollutants released — including volatile organic compounds, methanol, carbon monoxide, chlorine dioxide, and hydrochloric acid — is unknown.
The decree would require installation of proper controls, third-party review of the plant’s leak-detection program, and two emission-reduction projects, and is subject to a public-comment period before a court can enter it. “Domtar is moving in the right direction to resolve its Clean Air Act violations,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. EPA Region 6 Administrator Scott Mason credited the company’s cooperation. Domtar, a Delaware-registered subsidiary, has not admitted liability, and the allegations remain unproven pending entry of the decree.
2. South Bow to pay $26.8 million over Keystone Pipeline oil spill
Earlier in the month, on July 10, the EPA, DOJ, and the state of Kansas announced a Clean Water Act settlement with South Bow L.P. and South Bow Infrastructure Operations Inc. over the December 2022 rupture of the Keystone Pipeline near Washington, Kansas. Records state the break released roughly 12,937 barrels of diluted bitumen crude oil — “dilbit” — overland and into Mill Creek, the result of stress on the pipeline that the complaint says went undetected for years.
The settlement is valued at about $69 million. South Bow would pay a civil penalty of more than $26.8 million into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, spend roughly $40 million to strengthen the pipeline’s spill-prevention and leak-detection systems, and contribute more than $3 million to Kansas for natural-resource restoration and to resolve state-law claims. The proposed consent decree was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas and carries a 30-day public-comment period. As with all lodged decrees, the companies’ liability is resolved only once a court enters the agreement.
3. Chemours PFAS settlement clears $450 million — and draws state criticism
The period’s largest figure belongs to a settlement announced June 24 but still reverberating. The EPA, DOJ, and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection reached what the agency called the first comprehensive federal settlement with a major PFAS manufacturer, Chemours. The agreement, valued at more than $450 million, resolves alleged violations of the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and West Virginia water law tied to PFAS discharges into the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, the Delaware River in New Jersey, and the Ohio River in West Virginia.
Records show the package includes more than $337 million in injunctive relief — about $280 million of it to provide alternative drinking water to affected communities — plus a $90 million government-supervised PFAS mitigation program. The civil penalty itself is $22.5 million, an amount EPA and DOJ said was set after reviewing the company’s ability to pay. “This first comprehensive federal settlement against a major PFAS manufacturer delivers on the … promise to make polluters pay and stop PFAS contamination at the source,” said Jeffrey A. Hall, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.
The settlement has not gone unchallenged. According to news reports, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein and Attorney General Jeff Jackson criticized the deal as a “backroom” arrangement that does little for their state’s residents — a notable, on-the-record split between federal negotiators and a state whose waterways were among those named. The distance between the $450 million headline and the $22.5 million cash penalty, and the question of how much injunctive spending actually reaches Cape Fear communities, invite closer scrutiny.
4. Region 5 keeps the smaller cases moving
Not every action carries an eight-figure number. EPA’s Region 5 has continued to process “expedited settlement agreements,” a streamlined track for lower-dollar violations. In one public notice (docket CWA-05-2026-0015), the Kinder Morgan / Milwaukee Bulk Terminal facility agreed to pay a $10,681 civil penalty over industrial stormwater discharged to Lake Michigan in alleged violation of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit and Section 301 of the Clean Water Act. A parallel expedited agreement with Tuf-Tile Inc. set a $10,000 penalty over a pretreatment discharge. Individually minor, these agreements are a reminder that the bulk of EPA’s docket is routine permit and reporting compliance rather than marquee litigation — and that the agency’s public-notice pages are where most enforcement actually surfaces first.
Criminal docket
EPA’s 2026 criminal case list shows continued activity across multiple statutes. On July 9, two individuals were indicted in Oklahoma on charges of smuggling and distributing illegal pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act; an indictment is an allegation, and defendants are presumed innocent unless and until convicted. In June, three defendants in Texas entered a plea agreement over falsifying wastewater test results in violation of the Clean Water Act. And in late May, an Oregon defendant was sentenced in connection with discharging more than 500,000 gallons of chemically polluted industrial wastewater into a municipal sanitary sewer. The mix — pesticide smuggling, data falsification, and illegal discharges — tracks the categories EPA’s criminal program has emphasized in recent years.
The pattern: penalties climbing quarter over quarter
Zooming out, the data points to rising enforcement output. According to quarterly tallies compiled by industry trackers, EPA finalized 74 penalty settlements in the fourth quarter of 2025, 91 in the first quarter of 2026 (about $3.37 million in fines), and 109 in the second quarter (about $7.07 million). Both the case count and the dollar totals moved higher across the period.
Clean Air Act cases led the second quarter, accounting for roughly $3.56 million in penalties, with the single largest fine — about $1.58 million — assessed against a Nebraska beef-processing plant over hydrogen-sulfide emissions from its wastewater system. That H2S theme, echoed in the Domtar case, hints at a recurring compliance gap in food and pulp processing worth tracking. Clean Water Act penalties totaled about $907,000 across 23 entities in the quarter, while Toxic Substances Control Act actions — largely lead-based paint and export-notice failures — added roughly $1.1 million. The through-line is breadth: EPA is spreading enforcement across many mid-size facilities rather than concentrating it in a handful of blockbuster cases.
What warrants a deeper look
Three threads merit further TIJ reporting. First, the Chemours math: the distance between the $450 million figure and the $22.5 million cash penalty, and whether the drinking-water spending reaches the North Carolina communities whose officials called the deal inadequate. Second, the Domtar inspection gap: a 53-day monitoring lapse that left the true volume of hazardous emissions unknown, and whether other kraft mills show similar brown-stock-washer control deficiencies — a question EPA’s ECHO enforcement database can help answer facility by facility. Third, the reliance on sub-$15,000 expedited settlements: whether the streamlined track is resolving violations efficiently or under-penalizing repeat dischargers.
Readers can follow the primary records through EPA’s Cases and Settlements portal, the ECHO database of facility compliance and enforcement histories, and the Justice Department’s Environmental Enforcement News feed. Companies named in pending matters are entitled to a right of reply; TIJ will update these items as consent decrees are entered, contested, or withdrawn.
— Eduardo Bacci, The Investigative Journal. This digest summarizes public records; it does not constitute legal advice. Corrections and responses: editor@tij.news.