Blog: Enforcing Air and Water Pollution - Laws Promotes Public Health, Trump Administration Must End the Enforcement Holiday
The Trump administration should be proactively helping the most vulnerable people during the COVID-19 pandemic. At a minimum, they should not proactively put people in harm’s way. Yet, during this public health crisis, the administration has acted against public health-- from suspending enforcement of environmental protection laws to concealing information about how much pollution will be released into our air and water. The administration has even advanced a strategy to mine for uranium mining at the Grand Canyon, despite the toxic legacy, contamination, and public health crisis that already exists in the nearby Navajo Nation.
With no indication of when the EPA will start enforcing our environmental protection laws again, the Trump administration has very effectively taken advantage of this public health crisis to carry out a polluter wish of rendering our country’s environmental protection laws completely voluntary and unenforceable. The EPA must end this policy now and enforce our environmental laws.
No enforcement of environmental air, water, and toxic pollution laws is bad for public health and it is a free-for-all for polluters that, without proper regulation and enforcement, are only beholden to shareholders to maximize profits. In the middle of a pandemic, it is unacceptable.
In the state of Texas, where it has been reported that “[a]ir pollutants in Houston’s most heavily industrialized areas have surged as much as 62%,” polluters can now submit compliance waiver requests in order to avoid legal requirements to monitor, report, and reduce pollution. These waivers are documented and the information is made available to the public. However, in other states, like Arizona, the public is afforded no transparency about which polluters request and are granted waivers.
Right now, at least two regulated facilities located in Phoenix, Arizona have well-documented violations of pollution laws, unaddressed for at least three years. These facilities are located in Latino communities, like Estrella Village, where families bear the brunt of these long-standing violations. Adding insult to injury, these same families may be breathing dirtier air and drinking dirtier water without knowing it simply because Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believes that polluters should be allowed to break the law with no consequences.
These actions are negligent and abdicate the responsibility and legal mandate of the EPA. The mission of the EPA is “to protect human health and the environment”, yet its new policy of waiving environmental law compliance indicates otherwise. With the “go-ahead” from the EPA to pump toxic pollution into our air and water without any controls or oversight, families, like those in Estrella Village, will pay the price, with their health and well-being.
Even more, this could not come at a worse time. With a study from Harvard University showing a connection between increased exposure to pollution and higher COVID-19 mortality rates, the decision to not enforce any pollution laws is unconscionable and hurts the most vulnerable people first. It is a direct attack on Latino families, low-income people, and other communities of color and communities who already shoulder the disproportionate burden of pollution. This year the American Lung Association ranked the Phoenix-Mesa area the 10th most polluted in the U.S., with the dirtiest air being found in areas most densely populated by Latinos and communities of color, like south and west Phoenix. It’s no coincidence that Maricopa County is also one of the areas hit hardest by COVID-19 in the country.
These environmental and public health safeguards were put in place by law to protect our access to clean air and water. Deciding to not enforce these protections threatens the basic ability of communities to stay safe both during this crisis and at any other time, rendering them essentially useless.
It is absolutely unacceptable that communities who are struggling to pay the bills and stay healthy should now have to worry about even more toxins in neighborhoods where it is already dangerous to breathe. We are calling on the EPA to follow the letter of the law, uphold its mission to protect public health, and start enforcing our pollution safeguards again now.