Who’s Polluting
Near You

Here is the map the title promises. Each state is shaded by its significant-noncompliance density - the number of facilities currently flagged in significant noncompliance for every 1,000 regulated facilities and permits on record there. It is a rate, not a raw count, so a small state with a concentrated problem is not hidden behind Texas or California. Nationally the rate runs about 6.2 per 1,000; the darkest states below sit well above that.

ECHO is not one database. It is a join across four separate federal programs, each with its own law, its own permits, and its own word for “you are in trouble.” A single refinery can appear in all four at once. The bars below count each program’s regulated universe from the latest live ECHO Exporter pull - read them as a weekly snapshot, since one facility can fall under more than one program.

1. ICIS-AIR Clean Air Act ~266K

   Stationary sources of air emissions - refineries, power plants, factories, and other permitted emitters.

   flags noncompliance as High Priority Violator (HPV)
2. ICIS-NPDES Clean Water Act ~1M

   Permitted dischargers to rivers, lakes, and coastal waters under National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits.

   flags noncompliance as Significant Noncompliance (SNC)
3. RCRAInfo Resource Conservation & Recovery Act ~1.5M

   Hazardous-waste handlers - generators, transporters, and treatment / storage / disposal facilities.

   flags noncompliance as Significant Non-Complier (SNC)
4. SDWIS Safe Drinking Water Act ~432K

   Public water systems - the utilities and small systems that deliver drinking water to the tap.

   flags noncompliance as Serious Violator

“Violation” is not one thing. A late monitoring report and a chronic discharge over the permit limit sit on very different rungs. Two of those rungs - Significant Noncompliance under the Clean Water Act and High Priority Violator under the Clean Air Act - are the specific tripwires that move a facility from routine paperwork to the enforcement docket.

1. 01

   In compliance

   No open violations on record for the facility's permits and required reports.

2. 02

   In violation

   One or more permit-limit exceedances, monitoring gaps, or late / missing reports - not yet serious enough to trip a formal noncompliance flag.

3. 03

   Significant Noncompliance

   Clean Water Act

   EPA's SNC test flags violations serious enough to matter: exceeding a monthly-average limit by set magnitudes for Group I / II pollutants, or chronic violations that continue across quarters.

4. 04

   High Priority Violator

   Clean Air Act

   The air-program analog to SNC: the most serious Clean Air Act violators, flagged for priority federal or state attention.

5. 05

   Formal enforcement

   EPA or a state issues an administrative order, files suit, or enters a consent decree; penalties are assessed and a compliance schedule is set.

The ladder is deliberately simplified across programs; each of the four systems has its own exact statutory tests. The point of the diagram is the escalation, not a legal definition - see Methodology for sources.

These are not model numbers. Each is a real, published settlement between a named company and the U.S. government - the kind of case that resets what a violation is worth. They are the visible tip of the enforcement pyramid; the sections above and below are about everything underneath them.

The six span nearly 900x, from DuPont’s $16.5 million to Volkswagen’s $14.7 billion. To keep all of them legible, each penalty is plotted on a logarithmic dollar scale below - every gridline is 10x the last - so a dot’s position, not its distance from the edge, tells you the order of magnitude.

1. 01
   Clean Air Act · 2016

   Volkswagen diesel fleet

   Volkswagen AG · Nationwide (imported vehicles)

   Defeat devices that cheated emissions tests on ~580,000 U.S. diesels.

   The October 2016 partial settlement totaled about $14.7 billion, including a $2.7 billion environmental mitigation trust and $2 billion for zero-emission-vehicle investment. A separate 2017 resolution added a $1.45 billion Clean Air Act and customs civil penalty on top of criminal fines.

   Source: U.S. DOJ / EPA / CARB consent decrees, 2016-2017

   $14.7 billion

   settlement / penalty
2. 02
   Clean Water Act · 2015

   Deepwater Horizon / Macondo well

   BP Exploration & Production · Gulf of Mexico

   The largest Clean Water Act penalty in U.S. history.

   For the 2010 blowout that discharged millions of barrels of oil, BP agreed to a $5.5 billion Clean Water Act civil penalty - part of a record $20.8 billion global settlement with the United States and five Gulf states.

   Source: U.S. DOJ / EPA consent decree, 2015 (entered 2016)

   $5.5 billion

   settlement / penalty
3. 03
   Superfund / hazardous waste · 2014

   Kerr-McGee legacy sites

   Anadarko Petroleum / Tronox · Nationwide (~2,700 sites)

   The largest recovery for the cleanup of environmental contamination.

   A fraudulent-transfer case over decades of Kerr-McGee wood-treatment, uranium, and chemical waste ended in a $5.15 billion settlement to fund cleanup and health claims across roughly 2,700 sites in dozens of states.

   Source: U.S. DOJ, April 2014

   $5.15 billion

   settlement / penalty
4. 04
   Clean Water Act · 1991

   Prince William Sound spill

   Exxon (Exxon Valdez) · Alaska

   The settlement that reset the price of an oil spill.

   After the 1989 tanker grounding fouled 1,300 miles of Alaskan coastline, the 1991 settlement combined a $900 million civil recovery paid over ten years with $100 million in criminal restitution.

   Source: U.S. DOJ / EPA / State of Alaska settlement, 1991

   ~$1 billion

   settlement / penalty
5. 05
   Clean Water Act · 2015

   Dan River coal-ash spill

   Duke Energy · North Carolina

   A pipe under a coal-ash pond let go into a drinking-water river.

   Duke Energy subsidiaries pleaded guilty to nine Clean Water Act violations across North Carolina plants and paid $102 million in fines, restitution, and community service after the 2014 Dan River release.

   Source: U.S. DOJ, 2015

   $102 million

   settlement / penalty
6. 06
   Toxic Substances (TSCA) · 2005

   Washington Works (PFOA / C8)

   E.I. DuPont de Nemours · West Virginia

   The largest civil administrative penalty EPA had ever obtained, at the time.

   DuPont settled claims that it withheld health and environmental information about PFOA ("C8") used to make Teflon, paying a $10.25 million penalty plus $6.25 million in supplemental environmental projects.

   Source: EPA administrative settlement, 2005

   $16.5 million

   settlement / penalty

Different industries live under different programs. A cattle feedlot is almost purely a Clean Water Act story; a refinery answers to all four at once. This map shows which programs weigh on each sector - the enforcement surface - not how often each one is actually cited. The violation rates are the slot a live ECHO pull fills; the map itself is settled regulatory fact.

The distance between “in violation” and “paid a fine” is the whole story of environmental enforcement. The bars below are live counts from the latest ECHO Exporter. Of about 3.2 million regulated facilities, fewer than one in five carry an inspection on record, about 7% are in violation now, and just 0.6% are flagged for significant noncompliance. One caveat on the shape: the formal-action and penalty stages count cumulative enforcement history, while “in violation” and “significant noncompliance” are a current snapshot - which is why formal actions on record outnumber the facilities in significant noncompliance today.

1. 01
   Regulated facilities 3,162,002 facilities
2. 02
   With an inspection on record 563,249 facilities
3. 03
   Found in violation 223,922 facilities
4. 04
   Significant noncompliance 19,291 facilities
5. 05
   Formal enforcement action 171,662 facilities
6. 06
   Monetary penalty assessed 4,849 facilities

These are real ECHO Exporter counts, computed at build time from the program flags, and they still vary by program, year, and state. What is not in doubt, across every EPA, GAO, and independent review of the data, is the direction: formal enforcement and monetary penalties reach only a small fraction of the facilities found out of compliance - about 4,800 of the 3.2 million facilities carry a federal monetary penalty on record.