Having been “inundated with questions from both state regulators and the regulated community about how to handle the current extraordinary situation,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced a temporary policy regarding enforcement of federal environmental legal obligations. In its March 26, 2020 Memorandum on COVID-19 Implications for EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Programs (Memorandum), the EPA announced that it will relax its enforcement discretion for certain incidents of non-compliance resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic provided the regulated entity complies with measures spelled out in the Memorandum. The Memorandum is not a regulation, does not alter any provision of any statute or regulation containing legally binding requirements, and does not alter a facility’s compliance obligations in any way. In a memo from March 30, 2020, the EPA emphasized that “this temporary policy is not a license to pollute.”
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