US environmental regulators will now tell you where to find the real penalty amounts

The US environmental regulators are updating their rules to point to the correct, inflation-adjusted penalty amounts for environmental violations. This means that the penalty figures listed in the regulations will now direct readers to the current, higher amounts, rather than showing outdated numbers.

For years, the listed fines for environmental violations were often lower than what companies actually had to pay, because the official documents were not updated for inflation. This change means that anyone looking up a penalty will immediately see where to find the current, higher figures. It removes a small piece of ambiguity that might have made some violations seem less costly than they actually were.