The Environmental Protection Agency (``EPA'') is issuing this final Civil Monetary Penalty Inflation Adjustment Rule as mandated by the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 to adjust EPA's civil monetary penalties (``CMPs'') for inflation on a periodic basis. Prior to this new law, EPA's penalties had never been adjusted for inflation. This rule will allow EPA's penalties to keep pace with inflation and thereby maintain the deterrent effect Congress intended when it originally specified penalties. This first mandatory adjustment increases almost all of EPA's penalty provisions by ten percent (except for new penalty provisions enacted into law in 1996, which are not being increased). The Agency is required to review its penalties again at least once every four years thereafter and to adjust them as necessary for inflation according to a specified formula.