Prince William Sound spill vs Washington Works (PFOA / C8)

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.

Head to head · real figures only
  • Larger settlement Exxon (Exxon Valdez) ~$1 billion vs $16.5 million
  • More recent case E.I. DuPont de Nemours 1991 vs 2005
  • Regulatory program differ Clean Water Act vs Toxic Substances (TSCA)
Clean Water Act · 1991 Public record

Prince William Sound spill

Exxon (Exxon Valdez) · Alaska
~$1 billion
settlement · log scale, $16.5M to $14.7B

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

Toxic Substances (TSCA) · 2005 Public record

Washington Works (PFOA / C8)

E.I. DuPont de Nemours · West Virginia
$16.5 million
settlement · log scale, $16.5M to $14.7B

The largest civil administrative penalty EPA had ever obtained, at the time.

DuPont settled claims that it withheld health and environmental information about PFOA ("C8") used to make Teflon, paying a $10.25 million penalty plus $6.25 million in supplemental environmental projects.

Source: EPA administrative settlement, 2005

Both cases, in numbers
Field Exxon (Exxon Valdez) E.I. DuPont de Nemours
Program Clean Water Act Toxic Substances (TSCA)
Operator Exxon (Exxon Valdez) E.I. DuPont de Nemours
Location Alaska West Virginia
Year 1991 2005
Settlement / penalty ~$1 billion $16.5 million
Source U.S. DOJ / EPA / State of Alaska settlement, 1991 EPA administrative settlement, 2005

⇆ 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.