Small Shop. Big Poison. Zero Consequences.

EvilCorporations.com • Ursa, Illinois • 6 min read

Ursa Truck & Trailer Repair LLC operates out of 833 County Road 2100 N in Ursa, Illinois, population roughly 200 people. It is the kind of place that does not make headlines. That is exactly the problem. Between February 2022 and March 2024, this shop systematically disabled the emissions controls on at least 11 diesel commercial trucks, letting those vehicles run unfiltered exhaust onto public roads and into public lungs. The EPA caught them. Then let them pay $20,000 and walk away.

How You Break the Law With a Laptop and a Wrench

The violations documented by the EPA cover two categories of illegal conduct under Section 203(a)(3) of the Clean Air Act: tampering with emissions controls and installing defeat devices.

• ECM programming (Engine Control Module reprogramming) was performed on every single one of the 11 documented trucks. This is the core of the operation: a technician uses software to rewrite the truck’s computer so it stops activating emissions controls like the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF), Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR), and Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR).
• On at least five of the 11 trucks, the shop went further by physically replacing the turbocharger and exhaust manifold, hardware modifications that, combined with the ECM reprogramming, complete a full emissions-delete build. These trucks were not just slightly out of compliance; they were engineered to pollute without restriction.
• The EPA defines what Ursa did as manufacturing, selling, and installing “defeat devices,” parts whose principal purpose is to bypass pollution controls. This is not a paperwork error or a missed inspection. It is deliberate, for-profit circumvention of environmental law.
• Engine makes affected include Cummins and Paccar, two of the most common heavy diesel engines on American roads. Truck models documented include Kenworth T680, Kenworth T660, Mack CHU613, a Pro-Star, and an FLD box truck, a cross-section of the commercial fleet.
• The documented invoices span Invoice #19598 (February 6, 2022) through Invoice #23094 (March 2024), a paper trail of 26 months of documented illegal activity across 11 transactions. These are only the ones found. The EPA’s information request was triggered by its own investigation, not a whistleblower, not a recall, and not a regulatory audit.

What the Fine Will Never Cover

There is a phrase in the EPA settlement documents that stops you cold if you read it slowly enough. If one of these tampered trucks cannot be brought back to factory emissions standards, the owner must permanently destroy it by cutting a three-inch hole in the engine block. That is the EPA’s prescribed method of killing a machine that has been turned into an environmental weapon.

Think about that for a moment. The regulatory agency entrusted with protecting America’s air quality has a formalized, documented procedure for how to destroy evidence of the crimes it lets people pay their way out of. The three-inch hole is not punitive. It is bureaucratic. It is how the system processes the fact that an 80,000-pound diesel truck was deliberately engineered to expel unfiltered exhaust for as long as it remained on the road.

The people who breathe that exhaust did not sign any waiver. They did not receive an invoice. They are the residents living off the freight routes that cut through Adams County and the surrounding rural Illinois communities, people who already have limited access to healthcare, who already live with the background hum of industrial agriculture and commercial trucking as the economic reality of their region. Diesel exhaust is not an abstraction for these communities. It is nitrogen dioxide settling into the lungs of children who wait for school buses on gravel roads. It is particulate matter fine enough to cross the blood-brain barrier accumulating in the bodies of farmworkers and mechanics and retirees who have never heard of a DPF filter and have no idea what an ECM delete costs.

The defeat devices Ursa installed were a service. Customers paid for them. Someone made the call to book that appointment, to hand over a truck they knew would come back without functional emissions controls, and to drive it back onto public roads. That transaction happened eleven documented times. Likely more. And the agreed price for all of it, the fine that closes the EPA’s file and satisfies their legal obligation, is $20,000. Divided across eleven trucks, that is $1,818 per vehicle. The shop probably charged more than that per job to install the defeat devices in the first place.

There is no dollar amount assigned to the cumulative exhaust output of those eleven trucks running unfiltered since 2022. There is no line in the settlement for the compounded respiratory risk absorbed by anyone who shared a highway with them. The EPA’s expedited settlement process is built for speed and closure. It is not built for accountability.

What the Documents Actually Say

The following are direct, verbatim quotes from EPA Expedited Settlement Agreement EPA-5-24-CAA-ESA-16. These are not paraphrases.

“Section 203(a)(3)(A) of the CAA, 42 U.S.C. § 7522(a)(3)(A), prohibits ‘any person to [knowingly] remove or render inoperative any device or element of design installed on or in a motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine in compliance with regulations under [Title II of the CAA].’ This is also referred to as ‘tampering.'”

• The word “knowingly” is embedded in the statute. This is not a negligence violation. The law requires that the person doing it knows what they are doing. Ursa Truck & Trailer Repair ran a business where every ECM reprogram was a knowing act by a trained technician, not a mistake.
• The EPA confirmed that Ursa “tampered with and/or sold, offered to sell, and/or installed defeat devices.” That language covers all three ways a shop profits from this activity: doing the work, selling the hardware, and advertising the service.

“They have removed all tampered vehicles and engines owned or operated by Respondent from service and have either: a. permanently disabled (by cutting a 3-inch hole in the engine block) and scrapped the tampered vehicle; or b. fully returned the tampered vehicle to stock condition (i.e. all OEM emission controls reinstalled, including DPF, SCR, and EGR, and the ECM flashed to factory configurations).”

• The EPA lists DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter), SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction), and EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) as the specific systems that were disabled. Each of these targets a different class of harmful pollutant: the DPF catches soot particles, the SCR reduces nitrogen oxides, and the EGR recirculates exhaust to reduce combustion temperatures and NOx output. All three were bypassed.
• The settlement places responsibility for remediation on the respondent, meaning the EPA is relying on the same business that ran the illegal operation to self-certify that the trucks have been fixed or destroyed. There is no independent verification mechanism described in the document.

“They have removed from their webpages and social media platform(s) all advertisements, photos, videos, and information that relate to performing tampering and/or manufacturing, selling, offering to sell, and/or installing defeat devices.”

• This clause confirms that Ursa Truck & Trailer Repair was actively advertising defeat device services online. This was marketed conduct, visible to any potential customer who found the shop’s social media presence. The EPA required deletion of that advertising as a condition of settlement, which means the advertising existed and was findable at some point during the violation period.
• The requirement to remove advertising is forward-looking. There is no penalty or mechanism in the settlement to address how many customers found and used the service because of that advertising before the EPA’s investigation.

“In consideration of Respondents’ size of business, its full compliance history, its good faith efforts to comply, other factors as justice may require, and upon consideration of the entire record, the parties enter into this ESA in order to resolve any civil penalties for these alleged violations for the total penalty amount of $20,000.”

• The EPA explicitly cites the shop’s small size as a mitigating factor in setting the $20,000 penalty. The Clean Air Act authorizes civil penalties up to $44,539 per day per violation for mobile source violations. With 11 documented violations spanning over two years, the theoretical maximum exposure was orders of magnitude higher.
• The phrase “good faith efforts to comply” appears alongside two years of documented illegal activity across eleven invoices. The settlement does not define what those good faith efforts were or when they occurred relative to the violations.

Who Actually Pays for This

Environmental Degradation

The eleven trucks in this case ran without functioning emissions controls for months to years. The atmospheric math is straightforward and ugly.

• A single heavy diesel truck with a functioning DPF and SCR system removes approximately 90 percent of particulate matter and nitrogen oxides from its exhaust stream. A defeated truck emits those pollutants at near-full combustion levels. Across eleven trucks operating for portions of 26 months, the cumulative unfiltered output represents a measurable, sustained addition to local air pollution loads in Adams County and wherever those trucks traveled.
• Nitrogen oxides are a primary precursor to ground-level ozone, a greenhouse gas and respiratory irritant. Rural Illinois communities like Adams County are already in the zone of agricultural ammonia emissions, which combine with diesel NOx to form fine particulate pollution. Adding unfiltered diesel exhaust from defeated trucks compounds an existing problem that rural air quality monitoring systems are not dense enough to fully capture.
• The EPA’s own settlement document requires that if trucks cannot be remediated they must be physically destroyed, specifically because a tampered commercial diesel engine is considered an ongoing environmental hazard with no compliant path to continued operation.

Public Health

Diesel exhaust from defeat-equipped trucks is a classified human carcinogen. The people breathing it did not choose to.

• The World Health Organization classifies diesel exhaust as a Group 1 carcinogen, the highest classification, citing direct links to lung cancer. Particulate matter from diesel combustion is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and premature death.
• Fine particulate matter (PM2.5), the primary output of unfiltered diesel engines, is small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Children, the elderly, and people with pre-existing respiratory or cardiovascular conditions face elevated risk from exposure levels that would be unremarkable for a healthy adult.
• Rural communities in Illinois have significantly lower access to specialized healthcare, including pulmonology and cardiology, than urban centers. When pollution-related illness develops over years of chronic low-level exposure, the people most likely to be harmed are also the least likely to have the medical access to connect the cause to the effect.
• The trucks involved in this case include heavy commercial freight vehicles, the kind that cover long routes through multiple communities. The health impact is not contained to Ursa, Illinois. It follows every mile those trucks drove with their emissions systems disabled.

Economic Inequality

The defeat device market is built on a legal and financial asymmetry that consistently punishes the public while protecting the operators.

• Defeat device services cost money. The customers who paid Ursa for ECM reprogramming and hardware replacements were commercial operators seeking to reduce maintenance costs associated with DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid) systems, DPF cleaning, and SCR servicing. Those cost savings came directly at the expense of public air quality, transferred from private operating budgets onto the lungs of anyone near those trucks.
• The $20,000 fine represents roughly the profit margin from a few defeat-device jobs at a small rural shop. It is not structured as a deterrent; it is structured as a cost of doing business. Any operator who ran the same operation and did the same math would conclude that the legal exposure, if caught, is financially survivable.
• The EPA’s expedited settlement process, designed to reduce litigation costs for small businesses, systematically produces outcomes where the penalty is lower than the economic benefit of the violation. This structure protects small operators from the full force of environmental law while the externalized cost, degraded air, compromised health, increased public healthcare burden, remains socialized across the public.
• Communities along the freight corridors where these trucks operated did not receive notification, remediation, or compensation. The settlement resolves the EPA’s case. It does not resolve anything for the people who shared roads and air with those trucks for two-plus years.

What the Penalty Actually Represents

What Now: How You Push Back

The EPA’s expedited settlement process closed this case on September 27, 2024. The file is resolved. The fine is paid. Here is what that does not mean: it does not mean the issue is gone, and it does not mean your silence is the only remaining option.

Key Players in This Case

• Respondent: Ursa Truck & Trailer Repair, LLC, 833 County Road 2100 N, Ursa, Illinois 62376. The operator of record for all eleven documented defeat device installations.
• Signing Authority for EPA: Michael D. Harris, Director, Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region 5. Signed off on the $20,000 settlement on September 26, 2024.
• EPA Contact of Record: Ethan Chatfield, Air Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Branch, EPA Region 5 (chatfield.ethan@epa.gov).

Watchlist: Where to File and Who to Contact

• EPA Region 5 Air Enforcement: r5airenforcement@epa.gov. If you have knowledge of additional defeat device installations, unreported customers, or advertising that predates or postdates this settlement, this is the reporting address.
• EPA’s Civil Enforcement Division: The EPA maintains a Tips and Complaints system at epa.gov/enforcement/report-environmental-violation. Reporting additional violations or requesting case status is a legal right.
• Illinois EPA (IEPA): The state environmental agency can pursue parallel enforcement actions under Illinois state law independent of federal settlement. Contact the Bureau of Air at 217-782-7326.
• CARB (California Air Resources Board): CARB maintains the strongest defeat device enforcement program in the country. Trucks that cross into California or operate in multi-state commerce are subject to CARB jurisdiction independent of the EPA’s settlement.
• DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division: The EPA explicitly preserved the right to pursue criminal sanctions in this settlement. The DOJ can pick up where the civil settlement left off if there is evidence of knowing and willful violation at a scale that meets criminal thresholds.

What You Can Do

• Contact the EPA Region 5 Air Enforcement Branch to ask for the full investigation file under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act). The settlement document is public; the investigation file may contain additional detail about how many customers used the service and what trucks remain on the road.
• Connect with local environmental justice organizations in Adams County and the Quincy, Illinois area. The Illinois Environmental Council (illinoisenvironmentalcouncil.org) and Prairie Rivers Network track air quality enforcement in the state. Tell them about this case.
• If you are a trucker or know truckers operating on Illinois freight corridors, the Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All campaign provides resources on emissions reporting and advocacy for stronger enforcement of diesel pollution standards.
• Push your congressional representatives on the Clean Air Act penalty structure. The expedited settlement program was designed for speed, not justice. Contact your U.S. House representative and both Illinois senators and ask them why the penalty cap for small businesses lets defeat device operators pay less than their victims pay for healthcare.
• Share this story locally. Ursa, Illinois is a small community. The people most affected by this decision are neighbors. Local journalism, community boards, and county health departments are the most direct route to accountability when federal enforcement closes the door.