Critics are blasting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for dramatically lowering a fine on agribusiness company Syngenta for violations of pesticide regulations in Hawaii.

Syngenta, under a settlement announced this week, will pay $150,000 for improperly using the pesticide chlorpyrifos at a seed corn field in Hawaii in 2016 and 2017. It also will spend at least $400,000 to train farmers, particularly small-scale growers, in pesticide use.

The EPA initially proposed a fine nearly nine times larger — or $4.9 million — for just one incident. This amount was proposed in December 2016, under the Obama administration.

Syngenta “got off with a ridiculously small fine,” said Paul Achitoff, managing attorney for the mid-Pacific office of Earthjustice, an environmental law organization.

He said the EPA often asks for the maximum penalty when it files a complaint and then lowers the amount for the fine that is ultimately imposed. But in this case, he said, “there’s such a huge difference.”

He also said the EPA and Syngenta were close to resolving the case for a larger amount in 2016, when President Barack Obama was in office. But he said Syngenta pulled back after the 2016 election, figuring it could pay less under the Trump administration.

“And now a year and a half later, we see that they’re absolutely right. They could get a much better deal under Trump,” Achitoff said.