Environmental freeze

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced a sweeping freeze on enforcing administrative violations of environmental regulations. “Covid-19 Implications for EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Program” details the consequences of the pandemic, which may constrain the ability of regulated corporations to perform routine compliance monitoring. The EPA has stated it does “not expect to seek penalties for violations of routine compliance monitoring, integrity testing, sampling, laboratory analysis, training and reporting or certification obligations where the EPA agrees that Covid-19 was the cause of the noncompliance”. The policy is retroactive and applies from 13 March 2020, with no set end date.