EPA Watch is The Investigative Journal’s weekly digest of federal and state environmental enforcement, compiled from public records including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ECHO enforcement database, EPA news releases, and consent-decree notices published in the Federal Register.
The week of July 13, 2026 was defined less by new penalties announced than by large settlements moving through their public-comment windows. Three proposed consent decrees—covering a crude-oil pipeline rupture in Kansas, a “forever chemicals” manufacturer operating in three states, and a Superfund aluminum site in Montana—were open for public comment, together representing more than half a billion dollars in penalties, cleanup obligations, and injunctive relief. At the same time, a Clean Air Act citizen suit forced new deadlines onto EPA’s air-quality docket, and the broader enforcement picture remained the subject of competing interpretations. Below are the week’s most consequential actions, each drawn from primary source documents.
1. Keystone Pipeline owner to pay $26.9M in $69M Clean Water Act settlement
The week’s marquee action advanced in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, where a proposed consent decree resolving the December 2022 Keystone Pipeline rupture entered public comment. EPA, the Justice Department, and the State of Kansas announced the agreement with South Bow (USA) LP and South Bow Infrastructure Operations Inc. on July 10, and the Justice Department’s notice of lodging was published in the Federal Register on July 15 (91 FR 43406), opening a 30-day comment period.
According to EPA’s settlement summary, the December 7, 2022 rupture near Washington, Kansas discharged approximately 12,937 barrels of diluted bitumen crude oil overland and into Mill Creek—a violation of Section 311(b) of the Clean Water Act, which prohibits harmful discharges of oil into U.S. waters. The complaint alleges the rupture resulted from stress on the pipeline that went undetected over many years. Under the proposed consent decree, South Bow would pay a civil penalty of $26,867,789 deposited into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, spend an estimated $40 million on measures to strengthen leak prevention and detection, and contribute more than $3 million to Kansas for natural-resource restoration and to resolve state-law claims—a package EPA values at roughly $69 million.
The decree remains a proposal subject to court approval; the case is captioned United States and the State of Kansas v. South Bow (USA) LP, No. 2:26-cv-02401. The injunctive requirements—covering inspection schedules, operational limits, and integrity assessments—credit corrective actions the company says it has already taken. Records indicate the civil penalty ranks among the larger Clean Water Act oil-spill recoveries of the past several years, and the outcome of the comment period bears watching given the pipeline’s continued cross-border operation.
2. Chemours PFAS settlement ($450M) remains in active review
The largest dollar figure in the current enforcement pipeline belongs to Chemours. On June 24, EPA, the Justice Department, and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection announced what the agency characterizes as the first comprehensive federal settlement with a major PFAS manufacturer. The proposed consent decree, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, continued through its review period into mid-July.
EPA alleges that Chemours released per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances into the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, the Delaware River in New Jersey, and the Ohio River in West Virginia—in some cases without required permits and in others in violation of them. The $450 million settlement would require more than $337 million in injunctive relief, including an estimated $280 million to supply alternative drinking water and roughly $60 million to bring the company’s West Virginia facility into compliance, plus a multi-year, government-supervised $90 million mitigation program. Pursuant to EPA policy, the company was assessed a $22.5 million civil penalty based on its ability to pay. The agreement resolves alleged violations of the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and West Virginia law, and would require the company to control GenX releases at an efficiency of at least 99 percent and complete 14 wastewater, stormwater, and groundwater treatment projects.
The claims remain allegations pending court approval, and the resolution is not comprehensive: West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey called it “an encouraging first step” that “addresses only one piece of a much larger issue,” signaling continued negotiations over the Washington Works facility. The Justice Department’s account frames the deal as allowing continued manufacturing of PFAS for critical commercial and military uses while curbing future contamination—a balance TIJ will continue to track as the decree is finalized.
3. Columbia Falls Aluminum: $57.6M Superfund cleanup decree open for comment
On the hazardous-waste front, a CERCLA consent decree for the Anaconda Aluminum Co. Columbia Falls Reduction Plant, a National Priorities List site near Columbia Falls, Montana, was open for public comment during the week. The Justice Department lodged the decree on July 2, and its notice appeared in the Federal Register on July 7 (91 FR 41663), with comments due within 30 days.
Under the proposed decree in United States and the State of Montana v. Columbia Falls Aluminum Company, LLC, No. 9:26-cv-00099-KLD, the company would reimburse EPA $1.8 million in past response costs and perform the cleanup work required by the January 2025 Record of Decision—work EPA estimates will cost $57,634,528. The company would also cover future state oversight costs. In exchange, the United States would provide a standard covenant not to sue under CERCLA Sections 106 and 107(a). The action reflects the “polluter pays” model at the core of Superfund enforcement, shifting long-term remediation costs to the responsible party rather than the Trust Fund. The decree is a proposal and has not yet received final court approval.
4. Clean Air Act citizen suit forces SO2 deadlines onto EPA
Not every enforcement development is directed at private industry. On July 16, EPA published a notice of a proposed consent decree (91 FR 43632) that would resolve a Clean Air Act citizen suit brought against the agency itself. In Center for Biological Diversity et al. v. Lee Zeldin, No. 3:25-cv-6568-AMO, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club sued in the Northern District of California in August 2025, alleging EPA had missed statutory deadlines to act on state implementation plan submissions for areas designated nonattainment under the 2010 sulfur-dioxide air-quality standard.
Under the proposed decree, EPA would commit to firm deadlines to approve, disapprove, or partially approve SO2 plan revisions covering Hayden, Arizona (by August 28, 2026), Sullivan County, Tennessee (by December 18, 2026), Navarro County, Texas (by March 1, 2027), and Howard and Hutchinson Counties, Texas (by July 30, 2027). Comments are due by August 17, 2026, under docket EPA-HQ-OGC-2026-3697. Deadline suits of this kind do not impose penalties; rather, they compel the agency to make overdue regulatory decisions. Sulfur dioxide is associated with respiratory effects, and the affected areas host industrial sources such as smelters and power generation. The substance of EPA’s eventual decisions—not merely their timing—will determine the practical effect on those communities.
5. Justice Department’s retreat from criminal “defeat device” cases
A significant shift in criminal enforcement posture continued to reverberate through the week. According to reporting by E&E News and CBS News, both citing a Justice Department memo attributed to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, federal prosecutors were directed in January 2026 to stop pursuing criminal charges and to drop pending cases targeting the sale of aftermarket emissions “defeat devices” that disable pollution controls on diesel vehicles. Those outlets reported the directive could affect more than a dozen pending criminal cases and over twenty investigations.
The reported policy is limited to criminal charges; tampering and defeat devices remain illegal under the Clean Air Act, and civil enforcement, which can carry penalties reaching tens of thousands of dollars per vehicle, may continue. The distinction matters. EPA’s own 2026 criminal docket shows the agency’s Criminal Investigation Division still active in water cases—including a May sentencing in Oregon over the discharge of more than 500,000 gallons of polluted industrial wastewater and a May plea in Tennessee involving illegal discharges and tampering with a monitoring device. Read together, the records suggest a targeted narrowing of one mobile-source criminal program rather than an across-the-board withdrawal, a distinction that warrants continued scrutiny as civil follow-through is tested.
Patterns: record claims meet contested data
EPA has framed the past year in superlative terms. In its Fiscal Year 2025 annual results, released in March 2026, the agency reported concluding 2,127 civil enforcement cases—which it calls the highest in nine years—assessing more than $1.2 billion in combined civil penalties and criminal fines, restitution and court-ordered relief, charging 156 defendants (the most since 2016), securing $6.4 billion in commitments to return facilities to compliance, and finalizing 65 Superfund instruments valued at more than $888 million. EPA titled its announcement “Strongest Enforcement and Compliance Results in Years.”
Independent analysts read the same data differently. An annotation of the agency’s press release by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative and commentary in trade outlets argue that headline case counts can obscure a decline in penalties actually assessed, contending that a large share of recently concluded cases carried no monetary penalty and that total federal fines fell year over year. EPA and its critics are, in part, measuring different things—cases concluded versus dollars imposed, and different reporting windows—which is why the underlying figures reward independent verification against the raw ECHO data rather than either side’s summary. Separately, on July 14 EPA sought public input on a possible general permit pathway for coal-ash disposal facilities awaiting individual permits, a regulatory step tied to one of the agency’s standing enforcement initiatives.
By sector, the week’s pattern is clear enough: enforcement muscle is concentrated in a handful of very large water, PFAS, and Superfund settlements, while the mobile-source criminal program has narrowed and several air-quality actions are being driven by citizen-suit deadlines rather than agency initiative. Whether that concentration reflects strategic prioritization or a thinning of routine enforcement is the central question the numbers alone cannot yet answer.
What warrants deeper TIJ investigation
Three proposed decrees—South Bow, Chemours, and Columbia Falls—are only proposals until courts enter them. TIJ will monitor each comment docket and confirm whether the final terms match what was announced. The Chemours matter deserves particular follow-through given Governor Morrisey’s statement that the West Virginia resolution is incomplete. The reported defeat-device pullback merits a district-by-district accounting: how many criminal cases were actually dismissed, and does civil enforcement in fact continue at scale? Finally, the gap between EPA’s record-results framing and independent penalty analyses is best resolved not by dueling press releases but by an independent pull of ECHO enforcement data—work TIJ intends to undertake, including a test of the claim that some states are expanding enforcement where federal activity has narrowed.
Sources: EPA Enforcement and ECHO database; EPA news releases; U.S. Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division; and consent-decree notices published in the Federal Register, all linked above. Penalty figures and violation descriptions reflect government filings and agency statements; proposed consent decrees are subject to public comment and court approval and are noted as such. This digest summarizes public records and quotes them sparingly under fair use.