WASHINGTON – Despite fears that environmental protections will relax under Donald Trump’s administration, fewer cases are being pursued by the Environmental Protection Agency now than at any time in the past 20 years.

The number of prosecutions from EPA investigations during the final year of President Barack Obama’s administration are half as many as earlier in his presidency, or under the tenures of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, according to federal data.

Some critics, including a former top agency official, blame fear by EPA of angering Congress.

The decline comes as the number of EPA investigators has dwindled to a 10-year low. There are about one-fourth fewer investigators as a minimum set by Congress, according to agency figures.

An EPA spokesman attributed the decline in agents to budget cuts. The agency has shrunk by nearly 2,000 employees since 2010.

A $600 million decline in EPA funds in that time is a factor, a former official said in an interview.

But Doug Parker, who headed the criminal investigation division for four years before leaving the agency in March, also said top EPA officials were afraid of crossing congressional Republicans with large numbers of prosecutions for environmental crimes.

“There was deep division among the senior leadership,” particularly between career staff and political appointments, he said.

No one specifically advocated reducing investigators to placate Congress during “many a meeting” over the reduced number of agents, said Parker, who is now president of Earth & Water Strategies, a Washington consulting firm.

Still, he said, “the political calculus for the political folks was, ‘Let’s keep enforcement kind of quiet because we don’t want to ‘poke the bear.’”

During the first 11 months of the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 81 people or businesses faced prosecution based on EPA investigations, according to data compiled by Syracuse University researchers.

In fiscal 2011, there were 182 prosecutions, according to a report by the university’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks a variety of federal data.

The number was 198 in fiscal 1998 under the Clinton administration, and 196 in Bush’s first year in 2001.

Fewer cases follows a decline in the number of EPA investigators. The roster of EPA agents is down to 157 from 206 in 2010, according to the agency.

The 2000 Pollution Prevention Act requires the EPA have at least 200 special agents.

“That’s a lot of leads not being followed up,” Parker said.

Budget cuts have “required EPA to make hard choices across the board, and enforcement is no different,” EPA spokesman Nick Conger said in an email. He declined comment on Parker’s remarks.

The EPA is focusing on cases with “the highest impact on protecting public health and the environment,” Conger said, even if that means “doing fewer lower priority cases.”

That “does not reflect a lessening of our commitment to enforcement,” he added.

Conger cited a number of high-profile prosecutions this year – including one-month sentences given to former Freedom Industries presidents Gary Southern and Dennis Farrell for their roles in the 2014 Elk River chemical spill that contaminated the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginia residents.

Parker agreed the agency has had successes in larger cases and said agency officials did not interfere in those investigations.

However, working with fewer agents can impact the high-profile cases that the agency is prioritizing, he said.

The agency has also passed up investigating tips or cases referred from local law enforcement.

Parker did not recall specific cases but said large swaths of the country are underserved. Oklahoma and North Dakota, for example, are served by EPA agents in Dallas and Houston.

“We always tried to prioritize the most significant cases, but if we didn’t have anyone in hundreds of miles to investigate a matter, it generally just wouldn’t get investigated,” he said.

EPA still responds to catastrophic events like the 2010 BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, said Peter Anderson, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section in the 1990s. More likely to go ignored are cases without an immediate threat to life, he said.

Anderson, a principal at the Washington law firm Beveridge & Diamond, who has defended companies from environmental prosecution, said the kinds of cases that could skirt criminal prosecution may involve building on wetlands, discharging non-toxic materials to sewer systems, or importing goods made with endangered wood.

Parker said the EPA could have “more cops on the beat,” but hired other staff.

“Having additional policy analysts might not have as direct an impact” on environmental protection, he said.

Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which advocates for local, state and federal environmental workers, blamed “the whole style of the Obama years.

“If it’s not in the small cluster of issues they’re pursuing, the agency prefers not to do anything that will cost them political capital,” he said.

The EPA has money to shift toward enforcement, he said. “They’re constantly holding design contests or giving out grants for livable communities.”

Anderson said global companies have asked if the decline in investigators means they have a “reprieve” from environmental regulations. He cautions that they do not.

Easing compliance could lead to disasters that are costly in dollars and reputation.

But small companies may feel they can slip under the radar, he said.

President-elect Trump’s nominee to head the EPA, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, was not available for comment.

Parker said Pruitt has interpreted laws strictly in challenging Obama’s environmental policies and could be more likely to adhere to the requiring staffing levels. But Pruitt also appears to be opposed to EPA’s overall mission as career employees at the agency see it, he said.

Kery Murakami is the Washington, D.C. reporter for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Contact him at kmurakami@cnhi.