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It's amazing to us how EPA-referred criminal environmental enforcement has collapsed," David Burnham, who is TRAC's co-director, told Reuters
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DOJ records for the first seven months of fiscal year 2020-2021 show that environmental criminal prosecutions that peaked under the Clinton administration have since steadily declined by as much as 72% compared to forecasted total prosecutions for 2021.
EPA spokeswoman Melissa Sullivan said that the coronavirus pandemic has "affected the quantity of incoming allegations, data and real time information."
"As judicial systems nationwide begin to fully open, we expect case progressions and judicial results to increase," she added.
DOJ spokeswoman Danielle Nichols declined to comment.
The analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research project at Syracuse University, is based on data it obtained from the DOJ under the Freedom of Information Act.
The prosecution of environmental crimes following EPA referrals peaked during the fiscal year 1998, under President Bill Clinton, with 198 EPA-referred cases prosecuted, according to the study.
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