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.
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
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
| Field | Exxon (Exxon Valdez) | Volkswagen AG |
|---|---|---|
| Program | Clean Water Act | Clean Air Act |
| Operator | Exxon (Exxon Valdez) | Volkswagen AG |
| Location | Alaska | Nationwide (imported vehicles) |
| Year | 1991 | 2016 |
| Settlement / penalty | ~$1 billion | $14.7 billion |
| Source | U.S. DOJ / EPA / State of Alaska settlement, 1991 | U.S. DOJ / EPA / CARB consent decrees, 2016-2017 |
⇆ 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.