U.S. SENATE News:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, along with nine Democratic colleagues have sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler, asking detailed oversight questions about how the agency is adjusting its operations in light of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) while continuing its critical mission to protect human health and the environment.
While EPA has announced it will reduce enforcement of environmental laws during the pandemic emergency and is moving ahead with controversial rules that threaten public health and the environment, EPA’s Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) is not publicly available, and the agency appears to have archived its 2016 pandemic influenza website.
Given the agency’s actions and lack of access to this information, Senator Udall, Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, and Senator Heinrich, senior member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, are asking whether EPA’s essential functions and response role remain intact in the current COVID-19 pandemic and whether the COOP plan is sufficient to address the current situation.
“EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment requires a wide range of tasks, including monitoring air and water quality, cleaning up Superfund sites, ensuring that drinking water is safe, keeping harmful chemical products out of commerce, making sure that pesticides are used safely, and conducting research,” the senators wrote.
“Even though some of these in-person activities can be converted to telephonic or online meetings, EPA’s efforts may be hampered given that nongovernmental organizations, the regulated community, and EPA’s state partners could be short-staffed and similarly focused on other tasks for many weeks or longer,” the senators continued, asking for more details, “to better understand how EPA plans to perform its important mission while protecting its employees against the spread of COVID-19.”
The senators also noted concerns with EPA’s recently released COVID-19 enforcement discretion policy and asked the agency to commit to publishing promptly on its website the details of any enforcement waivers it issues, asked EPA to commit to extend all rulemaking comment periods and to revise public meeting processes following its refusal to do so for the review of its controversial risk evaluation of the toxic chemical trichloroethylene, and expressed concern that, “EPA is rushing to finalize many of its more controversial rules to weaken pollution standards” in “a deregulatory atmosphere” that EPA employees describe as “relentless.”
The full letter can be read here.
