“Environmental crime prosecutions have continued falling in recent months, a new analysis shows, boosting pressure for the Biden administration to ramp up enforcement.
The Justice Department prosecuted 32 criminal cases referred by the Environmental Protection Agency during the first seven months of fiscal 2021, Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse said in a new report. But the number of referrals is likely to be “very weak” for the first year of the Biden administration because of the time needed to develop a case, said Tim Whitehouse, a senior enforcement attorney at the EPA from 1992 to 2002.
