Sunday, October 4, 2020

Trump EPA shenanigans will be a public health and environmental disaster

An even more right-wing SCOTUS will make this all that much harder to try to fix.
The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has ush­ered in a wave of wor­ri­some and need­less reg­u­la­to­ry relax­ations that have increased pol­lu­tion across the Unit­ed States. Recent report­ing by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press and oth­er out­lets has doc­u­ment­ed more than 3,000 pan­dem­ic-based requests from pol­luters to state agen­cies and the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency for waivers of envi­ron­men­tal require­ments. Numer­ous state gov­ern­ments, with the tac­it encour­age­ment of the EPA, went along with many of those requests. All too often, those waivers — request­ed, osten­si­bly, to pro­tect Amer­i­can work­ers from expo­sure to the coro­n­avirus — were grant­ed with lit­tle or no review, notwith­stand­ing the risks the result­ing emis­sions posed to pub­lic health and the environment…

These reg­u­la­to­ry fail­ures have occurred against the back­drop of a steady decline in both fed­er­al and state envi­ron­men­tal enforce­ment. The num­bers of gov­ern­ment sci­en­tists and attor­neys whose work focus­es on enforc­ing envi­ron­men­tal laws has dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly in recent years. There have also been sub­stan­tial decreas­es in the num­bers of in-per­son gov­ern­ment inspec­tions of pol­lu­tion sources, the vol­ume of enforce­ment actions pur­sued, the num­ber of envi­ron­men­tal crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, and the amount of mon­ey that pol­luters have been com­pelled to spend on pol­lu­tion con­trol as a direct result of enforce­ment activ­i­ties. EPA has all but aban­doned its long­stand­ing over­sight of state enforce­ment work. And the fed­er­al agency has craven­ly deferred to state enforce­ment (or nonen­force­ment) pri­or­i­ties, even though quite a few states lack the resources and/​or polit­i­cal will to effec­tive­ly enforce envi­ron­men­tal standards.

Howls of protest and a fed­er­al law­suit prompt­ed EPA to ter­mi­nate its Covid pol­i­cy as of Aug. 31. But too much dam­age has already been done. - In These Times

1 comment:

  1. Looking at the list of requests made to MPCA, it appears that many are just requests for delays in inspections and easing of unattended livestock feedlots (most are in Hagedorn's district).

    I am not sure if these will have long term impacts since they are no longer granting these waivers.

    I noticed that many were granted to SuperAmerica ... is that a Koch operation ... or did they sell it ?

    Here's a link to the list
    https://www.pca.state.mn.us/covid-19/requests-mpca-regulatory-flexibility-due-covid-19

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