A new report finds that EPA enforcement of the Clean Water Act in the Great Lakes region has declined drastically under the Trump Administration.
The reportfound decreased funding and staffing that pre-date the Trump administration contributed to a decline in enforcement.
Jeffrey Hammons is a staff attorney with the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago,which authored the report. He said since 2017 the number of facilities across the Great Lakes who are out of compliance with the Clean Water Act has almost doubled
“Which is intuitive. If you’re enforcing less you’re probably going to see more noncompliance as more facilities relax their own internal compliance.”
Hammons said penalties for noncompliance are also trending downwards, reducing incentives for companies to comply with the Clean Water Act.
The Policy Center report comes as the EPA has said it will not penalize businesses for not complying with routine monitoring during the coronavirus outbreak.
Hammons said he isn’t sure how the new EPA policy will impact enforcement.
“I’ll be honest when I first saw they put out that enforcement guidance after already doing this research I thought are we even going to see a difference if they’re already reducing enforcement? If there is any lax enforcement as a result of that it’s going to compound on what we already see in reductions.”
An EPA spokesperson said the new policy is not a nationwide waiver on environmental rules. They did not respond to our request for comment on the Policy Center’s report.
Michigan’s Attorney General has also raised concerns about the EPA’s policy under the coronavirus, noting that it doesn’t appear to have an end date.
Ryan Jarvi is with the Attorney General’s Office. He said without routine monitoring, public sites could become polluted or unsafe - without anyone being aware of it.
“The companies should at least be making the EPA, the state, or the communities aware if they aren’t going to comply with reporting or monitoring these situations.”
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy has alerted businesses and factories that it expects them to continue complying with environmental laws during the outbreak.
But, EGLE is offering “regulatory flexibility” to companies that feel coronavirus-related complications would make it unreasonable to comply with certain obligations.
According to state officials, some 100 companies have applied for these exceptions.