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At EWG, our team of scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers pores over government data, legal documents, scientific studies and our own laboratory tests to expose threats to your health and the environment, and to find solutions. Our research brings to light unsettling facts that you have a right to know.
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Pollution Pays
An Analysis of the Failure to Enforce Clean Water Laws in Three States
An analysis of federal enforcement records shows that large industrial polluters in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania are routinely breaking the law -- and getting away with it. Big water polluters are almost never fined for their violations, and when they are fined, the penalties are often too low to act as a deterrent to future pollution. For many big polluters, breaking clean water laws has become standard business practice.
Much of the blame for the sad state of clean water enforcement should fall on the shoulders of state governments and their environmental enforcers, who increasingly see themselves as "partners" of the businesses they are supposed to be policing. One representative of the Ohio EPA went so far as to declare: "We are not an enforcement agency." Sadly, clean water enforcement records obtained from the U.S. EPA back up that official's claim.