The EPA’s top compliance official, Susan P. Bodine, announced a new policy rolling back restrictions and regulations on businesses’ requirements to report air and water pollution late Thursday. The New York Times reports that the EPA cited the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason for the relaxation of these important public health and environmental restrictions.
According to the Times, the new order gets rid of the requirement for businesses to report when they have hit or exceeded certain levels of pollution that affect the air or water surrounding their business. “In general, the E.P.A. does not expect to seek penalties for violations of routine compliance monitoring, integrity testing, sampling, laboratory analysis, training, and reporting or certification obligations in situations where the E.P.A. agrees that Covid-19 was the cause of the noncompliance and the entity provides supporting documentation to the E.P.A. upon request.”
Cynthia Giles, who was the head of the EPA’s enforcement division under Obama, told the Times that this order amounted to a complete “waiver of environmental rules. It is so far beyond any reasonable response I am just stunned.” An EPA spokesperson, Andrea Woods, disagreed with Giles assessment, saying that “for situations outside of routine monitoring and reporting, the agency has reserved its authorities and will take the pandemic into account on a case-by-case basis.”
Conservatives in control of government agencies have a penchant for pretending that when they defang those agencies, those agencies somehow are able to “reserve” their “authority” to do anything. It’s not a bug—it’s a feature. And the promises that conservatives ask for from big business are always broken. Once again, not a bug.
While national emergencies have a way of bringing important government programs into existence and highlight the need for more well-thought-out infrastructure, they also allow terrible policy moves to be made. It’s painfully perfect, however, that during a national public health crisis the current Republican administration would offer up deregulation that directly and very adversely affects public health.