Dan River coal-ash spill vs Deepwater Horizon / Macondo well

Two real, published enforcement settlements, lined up. Every figure below is public record; the head-to-head is computed at build time over those real numbers. Penalty bars share one log scale, so they read across the gutter.

Head to head · real figures only
  • Larger settlement BP Exploration & Production $102 million vs $5.5 billion
  • More recent case same 2015 vs 2015
  • Regulatory program same both under the Clean Water Act
Clean Water Act · 2015 Public record

Dan River coal-ash spill

Duke Energy · North Carolina
$102 million
settlement · log scale, $16.5M to $14.7B

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

Clean Water Act · 2015 Public record

Deepwater Horizon / Macondo well

BP Exploration & Production · Gulf of Mexico
$5.5 billion
settlement · log scale, $16.5M to $14.7B

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)

Both cases, in numbers
Field Duke Energy BP Exploration & Production
Program Clean Water Act Clean Water Act
Operator Duke Energy BP Exploration & Production
Location North Carolina Gulf of Mexico
Year 2015 2015
Settlement / penalty $102 million $5.5 billion
Source U.S. DOJ, 2015 U.S. DOJ / EPA consent decree, 2015 (entered 2016)

⇆ Swap sides · All cases & states

These are landmark settlements, not live ECHO facility records. Day-to-day compliance metrics - quarters in noncompliance, formal-action counts, last inspection - are not part of a settlement figure; they join per facility from the ECHO Exporter (loadFacilities() in src/lib/source.ts). See the Methodology for what is real versus illustrative on this site.