EPA's civil enforcement chief says facilities hoping to take advantage of the agency's "enforcement discretion" policy during the COVID-19 pandemic will need documentation that any violation was linked to the public-health emergency, but the required records will depend on the specific facility and incident. During an April 14 webinar hosted by the Environmental Law Institute on "Workplace Risk Management & Response to COVID-19," Rosemarie Kelley, director of the EPA Office of Civil Enforcement, said "it's not possible for us to specify in advance" what documents facilities will need to provide to prove that the public-health emergency helped cause any particular pollution release or regulatory violation. "For example, the nature of a facility's operations — how complex it is, how simple it is; the specific environmental requirement that's affected; the extent of noncompliance; the decisions made to manage the noncompliance; what steps were taken to address the problem. All these kinds of things could be needed as documentation," she said.
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