Thousands of oil and gas operations, government facilities, and other sites won permission to stop monitoring for hazardous emissions or otherwise bypass rules intended to protect health and the environment because of the coronavirus outbreak, The Associated Press has found.
The result: approval for less environmental monitoring at some Texas refineries and at an army depot dismantling warheads armed with nerve gas in Kentucky, manure piling up and the mass disposal of livestock carcasses at farms in Iowa and Minnesota, and other risks to communities as governments eased enforcement over smokestacks, medical waste shipments, sewage plants, oil fields, and chemical plants.
The Trump administration paved the way for the reduced monitoring on 26 March after being pressured by the oil and gas industry, which said lockdowns and social distancing during the pandemic made it difficult to comply with antipollution rules. States are responsible for much of the oversight of federal environmental laws, and many followed with leniency policies of their own.
AP’s two-month review found that waivers were granted in more than 3,000 cases, representing the overwhelming majority of requests citing the outbreak. Hundreds of requests were approved for oil and gas companies. AP reached out to all 50 states citing open-records laws; all but one, New York, provided at least partial information, reporting the data in differing ways and with varying level of detail.
Almost all those requesting waivers told regulators they did so to minimize risks for workers and the public during a pandemic—although a handful reported they were trying to cut costs.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says the waivers do not authorize recipients to exceed pollution limits. Regulators will continue pursuing those who “did not act responsibly under the circumstances,” EPA spokesman James Hewitt said in an email.
But environmentalists and public health experts say it may be impossible to fully determine the impact of the country’s first extended, national environmental enforcement clemency because monitoring oversight was relaxed. “The harm from this policy is already done,” said Cynthia Giles, EPA’s former assistant administrator under the Obama administration.
The EPA has said it will end the COVID-19 enforcement clemency this month.
Refinery giant Marathon Petroleum, already struggling financially before the pandemic, was one of the more aggressive in seeking to dial back its environmental monitoring. On the same day the EPA announced its new policy, the Ohio-based company asked Indiana officials for relief from its leak detection, groundwater sampling, spill prevention, emissions testing, and hazardous waste responsibilities at its facilities statewide. Indiana declined to issue a comprehensive waiver but agreed to consider individual requests.
“We believe that, by taking these measures, we can do our part to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus,” Tim Peterkoski, environmental auditing and processes manager for Marathon Petroleum, told the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
Marathon also pushed for and was granted permission to skip environmental tests at many of its refineries and gas stations in California, Michigan, North Dakota, and Texas.
Spokesman Jamal Kheiry said Marathon sought broad regulatory relief early in the pandemic, when it was uncertain how long lockdowns would last or how its operations would be affected. But the company continued emissions monitoring and other activities and usually met deadlines, he said.
Penny Aucoin, a resident of New Mexico’s oil-rich Permian Basin, said that, since the pandemic, she and her husband have spent days begging regulators to investigate surges of noxious gas or hisses that they feared could signal a dangerous leak from one of the many oil and gas companies operating near their mobile home.
“There’s nobody watching,” Aucoin said. “A lot of stuff is going wrong. And there’s nobody to fix it.”