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The Environmental Polluting Agency

April 17, 2020

Under cover of an historic pandemic, the EPA has announced it will suspend enforcement of environmental laws. You read that right. The agency is hoping we're all so distracted that no one will notice. Why would they do this, you ask. It will come as no surprise that a number of industries, including oil, have asked for the suspension. In the words of EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler: EPA "recognizes challenges resulting from efforts to protect workers and the public from COVID 19 may directly impact the ability of regulated facilities to meet all federal regulatory requirements."

Critics of the hiatus concede exceptions to regulations could be made on a case-by-case basis, for example, if companies are short-staffed because employees are working from home. But those industries deemed essential and continuing to operate should be expected to comply with the law. In fact, because COVID 19 is exacerbated by air pollution, leading to higher death rates, polluting industries should be held to an even higher standard than usual. The EPA, however, far from raising the bar, has made no allowances for the public to respond to this weakening of environmental standards during a time of crisis. They have, instead, moved forward with a number of deregulatory actions, the public be damned.

(One egregious example of recent deregulation is the approval of a pesticide that the EPA itself determined is a likely carcinogen, prone to drift hundreds of feet from the application site. How did this deadly substance gain approval? Through bypassing the usual public input process. While the herbicide's registration was open to public comment, it wasn't listed in the federal register.)

Remember, dear reader - we're not supposed to notice. Thank goodness I can inform you that nothing could be further from the truth. The public response to the suspension of regulation enforcement has been immediate and profound, with advocacy groups like the Pesticide Action Network, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Justice Health Alliance, and the Climate Justice Alliance filing a petition seeking an emergency final rule protecting public health. The petition asks that EPA issue a rule requiring companies to publicly disclose when they stop monitoring or reporting their air and water pollution emissions, along with a detailed justification for stopping.

Stay tuned, everybody. This isn't over yet.



With thanks to the Pesticide Action Network.

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