The Investigative Journal’s weekly review of federal environmental enforcement, drawn from Justice Department filings, Federal Register notices, and EPA public records.
Federal environmental enforcement over the week of Sept. 14, 2026 was dominated not by a refinery or a chemical plant but by a deceased New York City landlord’s estate. Court records filed in the Southern District of New York show the Estate of Harry D. Silverstein agreed to pay a $4 million civil penalty to resolve allegations that Silverstein and, after his 2016 death, his estate systematically violated federal lead-paint disclosure and work-practice rules across roughly 1,000 apartments in 14 pre-1978 residential buildings in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.
The week’s docket was otherwise heavy with Superfund and natural-resource-damage work: a $125 million construction settlement advancing the Lower Passaic River cleanup, a $1.9 million natural resource damages recovery from a North Carolina paper mill site, a supplemental remediation decree from a 2016 North Dakota pipeline rupture, and a cost-recovery action against Newmont Corporation subsidiaries over a century-old California gold district. Below are the notable actions, the compliance obligations attached to each, and what warrants further reporting.
1. Estate of Harry D. Silverstein — $4 Million Lead-Paint Penalty (S.D.N.Y.)
The Justice Department, acting for EPA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, filed a complaint and a proposed Stipulation and Order of Settlement on Sept. 9 in the Southern District of New York. The Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division posted the documents and opened a public comment period running Sept. 14 through Oct. 14, 2026.
According to the complaint, the government reviewed lease files for a sample of 579 units in the Silverstein portfolio. For 286 of those units — nearly half — the filing alleges that neither Silverstein, the estate, nor their agents provided any lead warning or disclosure to tenants at all. The complaint alleges more than 2,700 violations attributable to Silverstein for failing to provide any lead warning or disclosure, and more than 500 violations by the estate in the first year alone after Silverstein’s death on Nov. 4, 2016. It further alleges that renovation work disturbing painted surfaces was carried out by uncertified firms in violation of EPA’s Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule, and that at least 11 children living in the buildings recorded elevated blood lead levels between 2012 and the dates the buildings were sold.
The Stipulation and Order requires payment of $4,000,000 within 60 days of the effective date, split evenly between EPA and HUD, plus statutory interest from the date of lodging. Late payment triggers stipulated penalties of $1,500 per day. Because the estate divested all 14 buildings by August 2020, the injunctive relief is prospective: if the estate resumes owning, operating, or managing residential buildings, it must notify both agencies within 30 days and comply in full with the Lead Disclosure Rule and the RRP Rule.
The estate’s admissions are narrow. It acknowledges the ownership structure, that New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development issued lead-paint violations at the buildings, and that on one or more occasions it could not locate evidence that required warnings and pamphlets were provided. It does not admit the full scope of the alleged violations. The settlement remains subject to court approval and a 30-day comment period under 28 C.F.R. § 50.7.
Why it matters: Four million dollars is a substantial figure for a Lead Disclosure Rule case. For scale, the largest lead-paint penalty EPA recorded in the second quarter of 2026 was $359,069, according to a quarterly tally published by the trade outlet EHSLeaders. The Silverstein figure is roughly eleven times that. Records also indicate the government pursued the case against an estate years after the underlying properties changed hands, which suggests EPA and HUD are willing to chase lead-disclosure liability through successor entities rather than treating divestiture as an exit.
2. Environmental Resource Holdings — $125 Million Lower Passaic River Construction Settlement (D.N.J.)
The Justice Department on Sept. 10 lodged a proposed consent decree with the District of New Jersey in United States v. Environmental Resource Holdings, LLC, Civil Action No. 2:26-cv-11675. The Federal Register notice published Sept. 15 (91 FR 58470) opened a 30-day comment window.
The work, estimated at $125 million, covers Operable Units 2 and 4 of the Diamond Alkali Superfund Site. Under the decree, ERH would construct an upland sediment processing facility and several upland support facilities to enable dredging and capping in the lower 17 miles of the Passaic River, sample the lower 8.3 miles of the river to establish a baseline, and reimburse EPA’s future oversight costs. ERH is a corporate successor to Occidental Chemical Corporation and to Diamond Alkali Company/Diamond Shamrock Corporation, which operated the former Diamond Alkali plant in Newark.
“This settlement demonstrates this Administration’s commitment to expediting work through cooperative engagement and well-tailored agreements,” Assistant Administrator Jeffrey Hall of EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance said in the Department’s announcement. Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of ENRD said the agreement was “a significant step toward cleaning up a site that has been a longstanding priority for EPA.”
Why it matters: This is a work-performance decree, not a cash penalty. The obligation is measured in construction rather than fines — a structure that shifts remediation cost onto the responsible party while producing no headline penalty number. Readers tracking enforcement “totals” should note that decrees of this type do not appear in penalty tallies despite representing the single largest dollar commitment of the week.
3. Domtar Paper Company — $1.9 Million in Natural Resource Damages (E.D.N.C.)
The United States and the State of North Carolina filed a CERCLA natural resource damages complaint against Domtar Paper Company, LLC on Sept. 16 in the Eastern District of North Carolina, together with a lodged consent decree. The Department posted both documents on Sept. 16 with the comment period listed as “to be scheduled.”
The complaint concerns the Weyerhaeuser Co. Plymouth Wood Treating Plant Superfund Site in Martin County, near the confluence of the Roanoke River and Welch Creek, roughly seven miles upstream of Albemarle Sound. Filings allege that Weyerhaeuser — whose liabilities Domtar succeeded to, having owned the site since 2007 — disposed of untreated wastes containing dioxins, furans, and mercury during wood and paper manufacturing between approximately 1957 and 2007, contaminating groundwater, sediment, soil, and surface water. Dioxin has been identified in fish tissue, and state fish-consumption advisories remain in place for portions of Welch Creek, the lower Roanoke River, and western Albemarle Sound.
Under the lodged decree, Domtar would pay $1,750,000 plus interest into NOAA’s Damage Assessment and Restoration Revolving Fund for trustee-implemented restoration, and $155,000 for the trustees’ future restoration implementation and monitoring costs. The decree records that Domtar previously reimbursed $71,797.92 in state trustee assessment costs and $1,153,142.72 in federal trustee assessment costs. Stipulated penalties for noncompliance escalate from $3,500 to $6,000 per violation per day.
4. Belle Fourche Pipeline — Supplemental Remediation Decree for the Ash Coulee Spill (D.N.D.)
The Department lodged a proposed final supplemental consent decree on Sept. 9 in United States and State of North Dakota v. Belle Fourche Pipeline Company, Civil Action No. 1:22-00089-DLH-CRH. The Federal Register notice published Sept. 14 opened comment through Oct. 14.
The underlying case arises from the December 2016 failure of the Bicentennial Pipeline roughly 17.4 pipeline miles west of the Skunk Hill station in Billings County, North Dakota, which discharged oil into an unnamed tributary of Ash Coulee Creek. Most claims under the Clean Water Act, the Pipeline Safety Laws, and North Dakota law were resolved by a partial consent decree entered Oct. 2, 2023 — the settlement in which Belle Fourche and affiliate Bridger Pipeline LLC agreed to a $12.5 million civil penalty and compliance measures covering control-room operations, water-crossing and geotechnical evaluation programs, and integrity management. The supplemental decree resolves the reserved remediation claims and requires the company to implement a Remediation Work Plan for the spill site.
Why it matters: Ten years elapsed between the rupture and the final remediation decree. That interval is a reasonable proxy for how long full resolution takes in a contested pipeline discharge case, and it is worth weighing against arguments that penalty figures alone measure deterrence.
5. Goldcorp USA and Newmont Subsidiaries — CERCLA Cost Recovery at the Rand Historic Mining Complex (E.D. Cal.)
The United States filed a CERCLA Section 107 complaint on Sept. 9 in the Eastern District of California against Goldcorp USA, Inc., Goldcorp, Inc., Glamis Rand Mining Company, New Verde Mines, LLC, and Yellow Aster Mining and Milling Company, seeking recovery of response costs incurred by the Bureau of Land Management at the Rand Historic Mining Complex in Kern and San Bernardino counties. A proposed consent decree was posted Sept. 10 with the comment period listed as opening Sept. 15.
The complaint alleges that mining and processing at the Descarga tailings impoundment left high concentrations of arsenic, and that BLM sampling between 2005 and 2007 documented levels exceeding EPA regional screening levels, including in residential yards adjacent to waste rock piles and mill tailings. BLM issued a Record of Decision for Operable Unit 2 in May 2015; after a five-year effectiveness review, it concluded the original remedy was insufficient and determined a cap was required, later substituting a synthetic liner for rock in a 2024 Explanation of Significant Differences. Goldcorp, Inc. merged with Newmont Mining Corporation in 2019; the resulting entity was renamed Newmont Corporation in 2020. The complaint does not state a fixed dollar demand, instead seeking all response costs plus a declaratory judgment on future liability.
6. The Administrative Tier
Below the consent-decree docket, EPA’s expedited settlement program continued to generate small-dollar resolutions. Regional public notices reviewed by TIJ show a proposed $3,750 Clean Water Act penalty against an Altamont, Illinois respondent (Docket No. CWA-05-2026-0019) for late semi-annual pretreatment reports and missed sampling events between June 2021 and March 2026, and a $142,010 Class II administrative penalty against IES Downstream LLC (Docket No. CWA-09-2026-0065) for Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure deficiencies at its Honolulu marine terminal, where EPA alleged inadequate secondary containment at a December 2024 inspection. Both notices have since closed for comment and are no longer posted on EPA’s active public-notice index.
These figures are small individually but define the enforcement floor. EPA finalized 109 settlement agreements in the second quarter of 2026 totaling $7,065,164, up from 91 in the first quarter, according to the EHSLeaders tally. Clean Air Act matters accounted for $3,557,842 of the Q2 total, TSCA $1,111,162, and Clean Water Act $907,113. Measured against that quarterly baseline, the Silverstein penalty alone exceeds half of a typical quarter’s administrative collections.
7. On the Defense Side: Johnson Tract Permit Upheld
Not all of the week’s environmental litigation ran against industry. On Sept. 15, the Department announced that the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska had rejected a challenge to a Clean Water Act permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers for the Johnson Tract mineral exploration project in South Central Alaska, granting summary judgment to the United States on every claim. The permit allows JT Mining to build an access road and upgrade an airstrip serving an exploratory drilling site on private land inside Lake Clark National Park.
Patterns
Three observations from the week’s filings. First, Superfund and natural-resource-damage work dominated the docket — four of the six federal court matters were CERCLA cases, and the two largest by dollar value were structured as performance or restoration obligations rather than penalties. Second, successor liability was the connective thread: an estate, a corporate successor to Occidental Chemical, a successor to Weyerhaeuser, and Newmont subsidiaries inheriting Glamis Gold operations. In each, the government pursued an entity that did not itself create the contamination. Third, EPA leadership continues to describe its approach in terms of “cooperative engagement” and “well-tailored agreements,” language consistent with a preference for negotiated work commitments over litigated penalties.
Warranting Further Investigation
TIJ will continue reporting on three threads. The Silverstein matter raises the question of what happened to the 14 buildings after sale — whether the successor owners remediated the lead hazards or inherited the same violations, and whether the 11 documented cases of childhood lead poisoning were followed up by city or state health authorities. The Lower Passaic decree is a construction contract in substance; the schedule, cost controls, and oversight-reimbursement terms deserve scrutiny as the $125 million is spent. And the Rand Historic Mining Complex case raises a recurring question in abandoned-mine cleanups: BLM determined after a five-year review that its own 2015 selected remedy was inadequate, a finding that merits examination of how remedy selection is validated at legacy mining sites.
All matters described above are proposed settlements or pending actions. Allegations in complaints are allegations, not findings; consent decrees and stipulations remain subject to public comment and court approval, and the defendants named have not admitted liability except where expressly noted. TIJ sought no comment from the parties prior to publication; parties wishing to respond may contact the editor, and any response will be published.
Sources
- DOJ ENRD — Proposed Consent Decrees
- U.S. v. Estate of Harry D. Silverstein — case documents
- 91 FR 58470 — Notice of Lodging, U.S. v. Environmental Resource Holdings, LLC
- U.S. and North Carolina v. Domtar Paper Company, LLC — case documents
- Federal Register — Belle Fourche Pipeline supplemental consent decree notice
- U.S. v. Goldcorp USA, Inc., et al. — case documents
- EPA Public Notices index (Dockets CWA-09-2026-0065 and CWA-05-2026-0019; comment periods closed)
- EPA ECHO — Enforcement and Compliance History Online
- EPA — Civil and Cleanup Enforcement Cases and Settlements