When companies dump pollutants into streams, spew chemicals into the air or pave over wetlands, a newly created team within the Oregon Department of Justice is designed to help hold them accountable for the crime.

The Environmental Crimes Unit has been in operation for a little more than a month. Its members have been helping district attorney’s offices prosecute a company that allegedly tore down a large, asbestos-containing building in Linn County without the state’s OK, as well as a hot springs resort in Umatilla County that allegedly let sewage leak from an unpermitted lagoon into a tributary of the John Day River, among other cases.

The goal is to get companies and individuals to follow the state’s environmental laws, not just dismiss fines for violations as a cost of doing business as sometimes happens, said Brent Foster, special counsel for the attorney general.

“If somebody can continually violate the law and is just getting small fines, that’s a lot less of a deterrent than if somebody commits an environmental crime and actually faces jail time for it,” Foster said. “The idea is to really put teeth into the state’s environmental laws.”

The unit, which includes two prosecutors, will cost about $550,000 for the period from December 2009 to July 2011.

It’s a priority for the attorney general’s office, Foster said, because the state did not have someone dedicated to the often-complex area of environmental law. “Up until now, there has not been a full-time, state-level environmental crimes prosecutor — one person who wakes up and is responsible for enforcing environmental laws,” he said.

Patrick Flanagan, who heads the unit, said his goal is to learn the intricacies of Oregon’s environmental statutes and work with various agencies, including the departments of Environmental Quality, Fish and Wildlife, State Lands and Agriculture, to determine what violations might rise to a criminal level.

And Flanagan can then either help district attorney’s offices prosecute cases or take on cases the district attorneys don’t have the staff, expertise or funds to prosecute. “The concern is that there were cases going unprosecuted simply because the resources weren’t there,” he said.

Criminal prosecutions can be a good deterrent, said Susan Greco, an environmental law specialist with the DEQ. There are currently about a half-dozen environment-related criminal cases ongoing in the state, she said, but additional cases would help the agency’s enforcement programs by providing more deterrence.

“There’s always been some violations that could have been prosecuted in the past but just weren’t because of resources, or the local DAs didn’t feel they had the expertise to take on the case,” she said.

Flanagan, who worked as a law enforcement officer with the National Park Service before attending law school, said environmental cases often involve scientific questions and can be less straightforward than other crimes. Prosecutors might have to prove that a company knowingly discharged waste, that the waste had the potential to enter state waters and that the action broke certain regulations.

The environmental enforcement team will focus on long-term violators, Foster said, like the company that violates its waste discharge permit 65 times. “We want to get people the message,” he said. “If you’ve been out of compliance, now’s the time to get your ship in order.”

Another priority will be actions that pose significant environmental threats, Foster said, like someone releasing toxic materials into a stream that people fish from or bulldozing salmon spawning grounds. And a third priority will be companies or people who try to deceive or evade inspectors and regulators to break laws, he said.

But there won’t be an emphasis on any particular type of environmental violation, he said. Air, water, wetland and other kinds of cases will be considered. “It’s judging each case by the facts and saying where can we get that deterrent effect,” Foster said.

The Environmental Crimes Unit is long overdue, said Steve Pedery, conservation director with Oregon Wild. “Oregon has a green reputation, and most Oregonians really pride themselves in living in a state that takes conservation and protection of natural resources very seriously,” Pedery said. “The challenge is, we sometimes give ourselves much bigger pats on the back than we deserve.”

Environmental protections weakened in the 1990s, Pedery said, and agencies like the DEQ saw enforcement budgets shrink and companies complaining to legislators if they were fined.

Having the attorney general’s office involved elevates environmental protection issues, he said, and supports the state agencies. “The bully pulpit of that is going to make a significant difference,” he said.

Pedery said he hopes the new unit will help sort out the roles of state and federal regulators in mining claims and will take on a variety of issues. “There’s a whole host of other environmental challenges across the state that don’t get a lot of attention,” he said.

The new focus demonstrates that when the Legislature passes laws, the laws need to be taken seriously, said Andrea Durbin, executive director of the Oregon Environmental Council.

Deterring companies from dumping waste or violating other environmental laws will, in the long run, save the state and Oregonians money on cleanup or safe disposal and also will prevent health risks to local communities, she said.

“We hope that they look at the most serious problems of compliance and respond proactively,” Durbin said. “We think that just that alone, having attorneys whose job it is to enforce state and federal (environmental) laws, is going to have reverberating impact.”