The South End is less than a five-minute drive from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the chateau-style state Capitol, but people here say the proximity hasn’t helped them. “Weeks go by, and months go by, and it’s pushed under the rug again,” said Carter-El, who’s attended numerous meetings with regulators and politicians over the past three years.

With the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, Congress pledged to protect public health with the guarantee of safe air. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that reduced emissions associated with the law prevented 160,000 deaths in 2010 alone.

The act relies on cooperation between federal and state regulators. But experts, including some at the EPA, say its benefits aren’t being fully realized because enforcement remains wildly inconsistent.

The EPA has had trouble coordinating with recalcitrant states and territories, which are responsible for day-to-day policing despite significant federal and state cutbacks. Incomplete and inaccurate data supplied by states to the EPA, along with a patchy air-monitoring system, complicate attempts to identify problem areas.

The scarcity of data prompted the Center for Public Integrity to file public-records requests with all 50 states, as well as the EPA and the U.S. Census Bureau, to try to assess Clean Air Act enforcement nationwide. Among the Center’s findings:

• Forty state environmental agencies have reduced regulator head counts in recent years, even as federal and state responsibilities have proliferated and the country has largely recovered from the recession.

• North Carolina — which the EPA criticized earlier this year for coddling polluters — has suffered some of the deepest cuts, its agency’s 2014 workforce cut by a third from 2008 levels. In Illinois and Arizona, staffing has fallen by more than a third since 2007. Over the same period, New York’s workforce has been cut by nearly a quarter and Michigan's by a fifth.

• Florida has filed only one Clean Air Act case involving asbestos — a deadly mineral long used in building materials — in the past three years. Georgia has handed over asbestos enforcement to the EPA, and Connecticut is considering doing so.

‘Stripped from the bones’

After decades as an assemblyman from Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Pete Grannis was ready to trade in politics for what he called his “dream job.” In 2007, he was sworn in as DEC commissioner, putting him in charge of the same agency that had hired him as a young lawyer in the 1970s.

But his triumphant return was cut short by the financial crash. In his first three years on the job, the DEC lost more than 300 staffers — a nearly 9 percent cut. In 2010, another 135 positions were eliminated. “I pushed back and I pushed back as hard as I could,” Grannis said of the reductions, which he felt singled out the department.

He sent memos to then-Gov. David Paterson warning that further cuts to the DEC’s air division could have lasting effects since enforcement relies on a “cops-on-the-road” presence. “All the meat has been stripped from the bones, and some of the bones have disappeared,” Grannis wrote.

Soon after the memos were leaked to the press, Paterson’s secretary gave Grannis two options: submit a letter of resignation or be fired immediately. He chose the latter; news of his dismissal caused an uproar among environmentalists who saw him as an ally struck down by pro-business politics.

Grannis now works as a top administrator for the New York State Comptroller, whose office criticized the DEC’s flat-lining budget and inadequate staffing despite expanding responsibilities in a 2014 report. The report warned that unchecked air emissions would put state residents at greater risk of death and illnesses such as cancer and asthma.

The DEC has fewer than 2,900 full-time employees, down from 3,775 in 2007. Over the past decade, air-enforcement positions have also been cut by nearly a quarter. Last year, the agency referred just 85 air-related cases for civil enforcement, compared to 467 in 2007.

“It’s pretty clear they're doing less with less,” said Peter Iwanowicz, a former DEC acting commissioner who now heads Albany-based Environmental Advocates of New York.

Iwanowicz said overburdened regulators often lose sight of communities like the South End. He said he wasn’t aware of the severity of the area’s air-quality problems until oil-train traffic began spiking in 2013 — three years after he left the DEC.

Carter-El said the neighborhood has long been overlooked. It wasn’t until after the death of a second-grader in 2013 that officials outfitted South Pearl Street, the main road leading to Interstate 787, with proper traffic signals and signs, even though at least 10 children had been struck in previous accidents there. Earlier this year, South End residents celebrated the opening of a Family Dollar, the only convenience store nearby besides a small corner bodega.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has embraced climate-change initiatives but also supports expanding the Port of Albany — straining relations with activists who question his commitment to the environment.  “The governor wants to view New York as open for business, even if it’s dirty business,” Iwanowicz said.

Known for his micro-management, Cuomo has clashed repeatedly with the EPA. The agency quashed his attempts in 2014 to use $511 million in federal water funds for bridge reconstruction. In August, Cuomo threatened to sue the EPA if plans to allow the dumping of dredged sediment from harbors and rivers into the Long Island Sound are approved.

Over the past year, Cuomo’s administration also has taken heat for allegedly ignoring EPA warnings about drinking water tainted with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a suspected carcinogen, in the upstate community of Hoosick Falls. In early September, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy urged the state to “move beyond accusatory letters and, rather, work cooperatively” with EPA regional officials.

Cuomo’s office declined to respond to questions from the Center, referring it to the DEC. The agency reiterated its commitment to the South End and wrote that “like any other industrial area that is in the vicinity of residences, utilization of the Port [of Albany] can be done in a manner that is consistent with the Governor’s climate and environmental priorities.”

A level playing field

It’s hard to know, by any objective measure, which states are doing a good job of enforcing the Clean Air Act. Of the dozens of people interviewed for this story, no two could agree on which states or EPA regions were excelling or failing.

Annual enforcement metrics provided by states — such as inspections, violations, penalties — are riddled with “widespread and persistent data inaccuracy and incompleteness … which make it hard to identify when serious problems exist or to track state actions,” the EPA wrote in a 2013 memo.

The EPA’s Office of Inspector General has repeatedly raised concerns over uneven enforcement. In a 2011 audit, the office found that even top-performing state agencies failed to meet national goals for basic duties like inspections and wrote that the EPA “cannot assure that Americans in all states are equally protected from the health effects of pollution.”

Auditor Kathlene Butler said in an interview that the differences among the states were stark. “It seemed some states were very clear on what was expected of them in terms of performance from the [EPA] region,” she said. “Other states knew there was an ability to negotiate.”

Wilson said the EPA has a better understanding now of how states are faring than it did at the time of the audit. In a statement to the Center, the agency wrote that its “relationship with the states is strong,” and called building state partnerships a priority under McCarthy. But the EPA has resisted calls by the inspector general for enforcement reform.

Eddie Terrill, air director at Oklahoma’s Department of Environmental Quality, said he and other members of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies are eager for stronger EPA guidance but don’t always get it. As a result, he said, “Every state has a different perspective on how things ought to be done.”

Mintz said tension between states and the EPA goes back to the agency’s creation in 1970. Before that, states were responsible for their own environmental programs. Today’s imperfect system reflects a compromise between those who wanted nationwide pollution standards and those who wanted states to retain individual control, he said.

The EPA provided few internal records on state performance requested by the Center. Most forthcoming was the Southeast regional office in Atlanta, which has ramped up oversight of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) after years of significantly fewer state-issued violations, paltry fines and failure to go after repeat offenders.

From 2011 to 2014, air-related penalties in North Carolina dropped by 93 percent while overall enforcement actions decreased by 51 percent. “This raises concerns about effective deterrence and providing a ‘level playing field,’” the EPA wrote to DEQ Secretary Donald van der Vaart in a May letter obtained by the Center under the Freedom of Information Act. It was the latest attempt to get the DEQ to correct problems federal officials attribute to 2011 policies that made it easier for polluters to resolve violations informally and resulted in fewer penalties.

The Domtar pulp and paper mill in Plymouth, North Carolina, was among more than a dozen facilities flagged by the EPA for “chronic noncompliance.” Company officials claimed the addition of a new biofuel plant in early 2013 wouldn’t significantly increase air pollution, but waited until mid-2014 to notify regulators that emissions of hydrogen sulfide — a gas that can cause instant death in high concentrations and loss of smell and memory problems at lower levels — were heavier than projected.

The state fined Domtar $100,000 in June 2015 but allowed the company to continue operating its new plant without the proper permit. A Domtar spokesman said the company is “working diligently with the state” on a new permit and installing a monitoring system.

The DEQ’s Stephanie Hawco declined to respond to questions from the Center and said the agency will reply to the EPA’s May letter later this fall. Hawco also declined to answer questions about Domtar, saying only that “DEQ has protected public health by … ensuring [Domtar is] on a path toward getting into compliance.”

The DEQ’s 2014 environmental staffing levels were down by a third of what they were in 2008, according to state officials who provided the Center with detailed figures. Over the same period, the air-enforcement staff was reduced by nearly a quarter.

North Carolina is among the states suing the EPA to try to block the Clean Power Plan. Secretary van der Vaart has been vocal about his opposition to the plan, calling it a federal “takeover.” Three of the state’s coal-fired power plants were among the nation’s top 100 emitters of greenhouse gases in 2014, a Center analysis found.

It’s not uncommon for enforcement inadequacies to go unresolved long after they’ve been identified. Since 2009, the EPA has carried out enforcement of federal asbestos regulations on Georgia’s behalf because of state budget reductions. In May, the EPA wrote in a separate internal review that Georgia officials had also blocked the agency from reviewing state air penalty records — an allegation a spokesperson for Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources denied.

A 2013 EPA review of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency found state regulators improperly modified permits after pollution incidents instead of issuing violations. They also failed to report critical violations to the EPA as required — so “it appears to EPA and the public that these things are not being done.” No updates were provided in subsequent annual reports.

The EPA’s New England office flagged “the loss of key enforcement staff in recent years” among the six states in its region as a major concern in March. The agency has shouldered enforcement duties on Rhode Island’s behalf, records show.  Similar to its counterpart in Georgia, Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection notified the EPA it may no longer carry out asbestos enforcement.

A new paradigm

When the EPA urged New York regulators in 2014 to reconsider Global’s expansion, it also encouraged the DEC to start advanced air monitoring at the Albany terminal — installing sensors, for example, that detect volatile organic compounds like benzene.

The suggestion was part of the EPA’s nascent Next Generation Compliance strategy, aimed at boosting enforcement with “closer to real-time” monitoring. The enhanced tracking will enable facilities to “identify and fix pollution problems before they become violations,” the EPA says.

The EPA has visited 20 states to promote “Next Gen” and has given 11 money for infrared cameras that detect otherwise invisible pollution. Efforts to beef up monitoring are crucial, says the American Lung Association, because less than a third of U.S. counties have ozone or particle-pollution monitors, leaving many communities in the dark about basic air quality.

Next Gen “makes data more transparent and puts it in the hands of the public — we’re all for that,” said Eric Schaeffer, a former EPA enforcement director who now heads the Environmental Integrity Project, a research and advocacy group. But he said transparency means little if the public can’t easily distinguish significant pollution events from run-of-the-mill ones.

In 2014, the EPA narrowed its definition of “high priority” air violations, which trigger greater oversight. States can petition to remove the designation entirely if the EPA agrees a violation can’t be sufficiently proven or is no longer worth the extra effort.

Under the new policy, Schaeffer said, a major release of a carcinogen isn’t a high-priority violation unless it lasts at least a week or longer. “You got a definition that basically muffles a lot of violations.”

Since the revision, 51 violations nationwide have been dropped from the high-priority list. The EPA determined that in 70 percent of these cases, extra oversight was “not in the public interest,” records show. For the rest, states were “unlikely to prevail” if legally challenged.

The EPA refused to provide information about the violations — names of companies, even names of states — to the Center, citing unspecified privacy concerns. States still must resolve all violations regardless of priority, the EPA told the Center, adding that it is working to make it easier for the public to “see pollutant discharges, environmental conditions, and noncompliance.”

For people in the South End, things are still too opaque. Aside from glimpses of Global’s hulking blue and white tanks, few seem to know much about the crude oil terminal. Instead, they focus on the near-constant parade of screeching railcars and rumbling trucks that muffle the sounds of children playing basketball on a concrete court.

B.B. White’s 7-year-old son was among the neighborhood kids out on the playground on a hot July afternoon, riding a scooter as railcars passed by. The two live so close to the railyard that White, 60, sees trains parked feet away when he draws back his kitchen curtains to check on his vegetable garden. His son often wakes up at night, startled by the wall-rattling tremors.

They’ve lived at Ezra Prentice for about a decade and would relocate if they could afford to move. “I can hardly breathe,” White said. “A lot of people around here, you can tell they look sick. Something's wrong with the air. I don't know what it is.”