It’s More than a Job, but a Mission to Promote Justice

This article was prepared for FEDagent by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division.

On April 14, 2015, Dallas Foulk and Adrian LaPour went to work at Nebraska Railcar Cleaning Services in Omaha, Nebraska. While they were removing remnant petroleum distillates from inside one of the railcars, the material ignited in an explosion that took their lives. The explosion blew the railcar's escape ladder off, trapping one man inside and propelling the other off the top of the railcar. A third employee was injured.

After a lengthy investigation, the company and two owners were convicted of willful violations of worker safety standards, knowing violations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) involving illegal handling of hazardous waste and knowing endangerment to others, knowing submission of false documents and perjury. They were sentenced to 42 months in federal prison, and payment of $221,000 in fines and restitution to the victim’s families.

Bringing these criminals to justice fell to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Labor, specifically a team led by Cate Holston, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) in Kansas City.

Holston started with EPA in 2006 as a Life Scientist in the Wetlands and Streams Program. She joined the EPA Criminal Investigation Division in 2011. And since then, often joined by local authorities or other law enforcement officers, she has taken on a string of eco-crimes — from toxic-waste dumping to illegal wetland filling and releasing contaminated wastewater. Most recently, work by a team she supervises led to enforcement against a Neodesha, Kansas, company whose illegal safety and environmental practices caused an explosion, two worker injuries, community evacuation, and contamination of both the Fall and Verdigris rivers - drinking water sources for downstream communities, including Independence and Coffeyville, Kansas, and communities in Oklahoma.

“We don't just have jobs,” Holston says.

“We're on a mission to promote justice, and to promote environmental compliance, and to make sure our air is clean to breathe, and our water is clean to drink, and our soil is safe to grow things in and to play in for kids.”

That's where the EPA's criminal enforcement program comes in. The lesser-known office of the EPA investigates crimes, gathers evidence, and nabs environmental outlaws.

Holston and her colleagues also say their work deters polluters. EPA and its law enforcement partners are committed to holding responsible parties accountable for actions that put entire communities at risk. She cites a James Strock quote: “While both corporations and individuals pay penalties, only individuals can go to prison – a sanction that no one can pass along to the American consumer as just another cost of doing business.”

Four decades ago, Congress and Republican presidents created the nation's big environmental laws — the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act hazardous waste law — including criminal provisions in all of them. Most recently, a bipartisan Congress passed the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act, ensuring knowing violations and related hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) smuggling crimes also may result in criminal fines, imprisonment, and other penalties. These criminal provisions expand beyond the normal menu of white-collar crimes like fraud or conspiracy, which also can be used to prosecute environmental crimes.

Cate has been a longtime Kansas resident, finishing her undergraduate Biology and Masters in Business Administration degrees at Kansas State University. She was also a top member of the KSU Cross Country and Track Teams. After a short detail to learn more about the job of a special agent, she was eager to apply her science background to a career that would be both physically and mentally demanding. Without previous law enforcement or weapons experience, it was a new challenge. She has since found that her environment and science skills have accelerated enforcement case understanding.

Cate learned about the Nebraska Railcar incident through monitoring local emergency and spill reports.  Nebraska Railcar had previously been cited by both EPA Region 7 and OSHA.

Working from the EPA regional office in Kansas, she is one of almost 160 EPA special agents nationwide, a detective force backed by about 150 scientists, attorneys, and support staff.

Fighting eco-crime turns out to be a lot like fighting any other crime. EPA special agents are trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center at a converted military base in Georgia, where recruits from more than 80 federal agencies learn during the 10-week course what it takes to obtain a search warrant, how to interview witnesses and what activities rise to the level of criminal activity. Trainees are also instructed on using firearms. Plus, the EPA agents get specialized training on what kinds of tests are needed to detect contaminants in the water and how to identify toxic-chemical dumping.

EPA's CID is the “tip of the spear.”  Repeated efforts to enforce administrative and civil remedies are sometimes unable to address egregious, recalcitrant, habitual violators who often undercut legitimate competition by taking illegal shortcuts and lying to environmental regulators. They are also more likely to employ people with fewer skills who will work for less money.

“In a perfect world, we wouldn't have this, and everybody would try to comply,” said Holston. “We would only have accidents, and we would deal with those in a civil manner, maybe fines.”

But sometimes it is clear someone has decided to break the law. EPA special agents might be tipped off by a concerned citizen, a disgruntled former employee, a multi-agency task force, a community member who has noticed unexplained pollution events, or a call to the EPA's polluter hotline.

“For our criminal cases, we need proof - evidence that the person in charge knew what was going on and made a decision,” said Holston. “It usually boils down to money.”

Sometimes a company can get an edge over law-abiding competitors by refusing to install equipment necessary to keep pollution within limits. In the case of the railcar company, the managers were not only trying to avoid the cost of safety and waste disposal training and equipment, but also the production slowdown that would cut into their profits.

In another case, the offending company dumped hazardous waste into a concrete pit at their Kansas City, Kansas, facility and buried the materials to dodge the waste disposal costs. They were eventually sentenced to a fine of $1,500,000.

While EPA special agents are trained to work under hazardous environmental and law enforcement conditions, a typical day includes a wide range of activities. EPA Special Agents receive extensive training, and hazards they face come in many forms.  In the same week, an EPA Special agent might testify in federal court, help execute a search warrant, gather hazardous waste as evidence, meet with a source to gather intelligence on illegal activities, make an arrest, and type up activity reports for a case’s prosecutor to consider in deciding whether to charge a case.

“In this business you never know what you're walking into,” said Holston. “The work we do is important.  People and businesses who assume they can illegally pollute the environment and only risk a small fine are mistaken. People in these communities benefit from the deterrence which can come only from EPA CID investigations and Department of Justice prosecutions. When people and businesses recognize that prison is a real possibility, they will think twice before purposefully flaunting the law and putting people and the environment at risk.