logo

Did the Environmental Protection Agency relax regulatory enforcement because of COVID-19?

Monday, June 1, 2020
By Eric Smith
YES

On March 26, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a temporary "enforcement discretion policy," relaxing some regulatory requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The move followed a request from the American Petroleum Instiute, an oil-industry trade group, seeking "non-essential compliance discretion," citing disruptions arising from quarantine and other measures taken to deal with spread of the disease. The EPA said it would indefinitely waive penalties for most pollution rule violations as long as they proved to be related to the pandemic.

One former EPA official told Inside Climate News the move was effectively "a license to pollute." A law firm predicted that any legal challenges would "face significant legal hurdles" given the nature of the temporary measures.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.
FACT BRIEF BY
facebook
twitter
email
email