...The Environmental Protection Agency issued a sweeping suspension of its enforcement of environmental laws Thursday, telling companies they would not need to meet environmental standards during the coronavirus outbreak.

...Cynthia Giles, who headed EPA's Office of Enforcement during the Obama administration, called it a moratorium on enforcing the nation's environmental laws and an abdication of EPA's duty.

..."This EPA statement is essentially a nationwide waiver of environmental rules for the indefinite future. It tells companies across the country that they will not face enforcement even if they emit unlawful air and water pollution in violation of environmental laws, so long as they claim that those failures are in some way 'caused' by the virus pandemic. And it allows them an out on monitoring too, so we may never know how bad the violating pollution was," she wrote in a statement to The Hill.The EPA has been under pressure from a number of industries, including the oil industry.

..."It is not clear why refineries, chemical plants, and other facilities that continue to operate and keep their employees on the production line will no longer have the staff or time they need to comply with environmental laws," Eric Schaeffer, a former director of civil enforcement at EPA who is now with the Environmental Integrity Project, wrote in a letter signed by a number of environmental groups in anticipation of the memo.

..."The Environmental Protection Agency has not shown the same concern for the impact the coronavirus has had on the ability of community and public interest groups to respond to various proposals to weaken environmental standards," Schaeffer wrote in the letter.