The biggest EPA fines of 2026: one coke plant is 76 percent of the ledger

People search for the biggest EPA fines of the year and mostly find law firm client alerts and quarterly roundups. We wanted the actual ledger. So we pulled every civil enforcement case in EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database with activity in 2026, kept the ones whose settlement date falls between January 1 and July 15, 2026, and ranked the federal penalties. Receipts below, method at the bottom.

The 2026 ledger in five numbers

• 4,166 cases reached settlement or final order between January 1 and July 15, 2026.
• 439 of them carry a federal penalty. The rest closed with compliance obligations but no fine.
• Those 439 penalties total $133.2 million.
• One case is $100.7 million of that: 75.6 percent of the national total.
• The median federal penalty is $10,000. Of the 439 fines, 281 are under $25,000.

The whale: EES Coke Battery, $100.7 million

The number one entry is not a negotiated settlement. It is a court-ordered judgment. EES Coke Battery, a DTE Energy subsidiary, operates coke ovens on Zug Island between River Rouge and Detroit, making metallurgical coke for steel production. A federal court entered final judgment in February 2026 ordering the company to pay a $100 million civil penalty for Clean Air Act violations, recorded in ECHO at $100,728,768 with a February 24 settlement date. In 2018 the facility released more than 3,200 tons of sulfur dioxide against a permitted limit under 2,100 tons, and the court found the defendants saved roughly $70 million by not complying. The judgment also requires a community committee with $20 million in funding for air quality programs. DTE has appealed, so the number could still move. Until a higher court says otherwise, it stands as the largest EPA penalty of 2026 by a factor of 26.

The top ten

1. EES Coke Battery (DTE Energy subsidiary): $100,728,768, Clean Air Act, judicial. Judgment entered February 2026.
2. Antero Resources: $3.8 million combined civil penalty, Clean Air Act, judicial (March 31). ECHO records it as two $1.9 million entries for the West Virginia and Ohio dockets of the same DOJ settlement. Part of an $11.1 million package that includes about $5.8 million of vapor control work across 242 well pads and $1.5 million of orphan well plugging.
3. Swift Beef Company: $1,578,440, Clean Air Act, administrative (April 23).
4. Hasa Inc.: $1,265,246, Clean Air Act, administrative (April 13).
5. Chevron U.S.A.: $1,072,634, Clean Air Act, judicial (March 23).
6. Denka Performance Elastomer: $996,703, RCRA hazardous waste, administrative (June 23).
7. Nitto Denko Avecia: $858,889, RCRA, administrative (February 5).
8. Nutrien Ag: $847,952, FIFRA pesticides, administrative (March 18).
9. CertainTeed LLC: $781,175, Clean Air Act, administrative (March 16).
10. XTO Energy: $778,000, Clean Air Act, administrative (March 16), covering Permian Basin sites in Texas and New Mexico.

Where the money is, statute by statute

• Clean Air Act: 119 penalty cases, $117.6 million. The EES judgment lives here.
• RCRA (hazardous waste): 96 cases, $4.3 million.
• Clean Water Act: 79 cases, $3.8 million.
• FIFRA (pesticides): 67 cases, $2.6 million.
• TSCA (toxic substances): 50 cases, $2.2 million.

Strip out the single Detroit judgment and the rest of the country's EPA penalty ledger for half a year is $32.5 million. Of the 439 penalty cases, 429 are administrative orders; only 10 came through the courts.

The $450 million that is not in this ledger yet

On June 24, 2026, EPA announced a proposed settlement with Chemours over PFAS pollution at four facilities in West Virginia, North Carolina and New Jersey: a $22.5 million civil penalty plus more than $425 million in drinking water programs, pollution controls and discharge mitigation. The consent decree was filed in the Southern District of West Virginia and sits in a 30 day public comment window before a judge can enter it. Until that happens it does not appear in the settled case ledger above. If entered as filed, the penalty alone would rank second for the year.

Method

Data source: EPA ECHO civil enforcement case records via the public case_rest_services API, pulled July 15, 2026, filtered to cases with activity between January 1 and July 15, 2026, then to settlement dates inside that window. Penalty figures are federal penalties only; state and local shares are excluded. Antero Resources appears twice in ECHO at $1.9 million each (Region 3 and Region 5 dockets for one DOJ settlement); we treat that as one $3.8 million action, matching the Department of Justice announcement, so list rankings count it once. Criminal prosecutions and Superfund cost recovery are out of scope. The dataset is public and the query is reproducible.