In 2015, Congress amended the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation
Adjustment Act of 1990 to require agencies like EPA to change the
way that they adjust maximum civil penalty levels to account for
inflation. In the past, EPA has only adjusted penalty levels for
inflation once every several years, but the new law requires EPA to
apply two new adjustments—an initial "catch-up"
adjustment, and then annual adjustments beginning January 15, 2017.
The Act mandates federal agencies, including EPA, to publish notice
of the initial adjustments in the form of "interim final
rules" by July 1, 2016.
Accordingly, EPA has just released an interim final rule
implementing the initial catch-up adjustments based on the
percentage increase in the October 2015 Consumer Price Index for
all Urban Consumers (CPI-U) as compared to the last time EPA
adjusted its penalties (2013). Since some of the penalty levels
have not been updated in a long time, some of the increases are
substantial,
