Maintain vigilance for environment

The Trump administration rolled out an infamously slow response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but wasted no time in trying to use it as an excuse to diminish environmental regulation.

Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a “temporary enforcement discretion policy.” The agency will not penalize polluters for failing to comply with monitoring and reporting rules if the agency agrees with a company’s claim that the failure is the result of the pandemic.

This administration’s welldocumented animosity toward environmental regulation will make that a very easy sell. In other words, the EPA is prepared to look the other way while inviting polluters to blamed regulatory violations on the public health crisis.

That posture is all the more galling regarding air pollution, which triggers asthma and, therefore, increases the risk for asthma sufferers exposed to the virus.

It’s not clear why the EPA thinks the pandemic would hinder environmental monitoring. Companies, rather than individuals, are regulated. Those enterprises must be prepared for regulatory compliance regardless of whether employees are ill with any disease.

Federal law allows states to regulate polluters to a degree greater than federal standards, but not below federal standards. It’s a credit to the Wolf administration that the state Department of Environmental Protection has rejected the federal decision to look the other way.

A DEP spokesman said the agency would consider regulatory waiver requests on a caseby-case basis but would not adopt the federal blanket policy. And, the agency said it continues to enforce state and federal environmental rules.

That is the correct posture. Now, the challenge will be to maintain environmental vigilance amid the impending state budget deficit — probably in the range of $5 billion — that will result from the pandemic’s economic impact.

— The Citizens’ Voice, via The Associated Press

Keys to momentum

Even though deaths and new cases have increased, state-mandated business lockdowns and physical distancing appear finally to be “flattening the curve” of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The rate of infection has slowed in Pennsylvania, New York and most other places, allowing a ray of optimism that had been as rare as sunshine in a Northeast Pennsylvania February.

Adding to the hope is Gilead Science’s announcement that its drug remdesivir, which it developed to fight Ebola, had proved to be effective against COVID-19 in a clinical trial conducted by University of Chicago Medicine.

And, researchers at Oxford University, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Vaccine Research, and several other research centers around the world have said they have developed promising vaccines.

Such hope is deeply welcome in a nation wracked by health and economic anxiety.

And now, several governors, including Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, have rolled out plans to restart business activity and diminish the staggering unemployment caused by the pandemic.

But normalcy remains well beyond the near horizon. Recovery plans still preclude large gatherings and, therefore, much of the social activity to which Americans are accustomed, from dining out to sports events and concerts.

Vigilance — wearing masks in public places, maintaining physical distance, sound hygiene and especially vigorous hand-washing — remain crucial to finally defeating the virus.

Likewise, test-derived data are crucial to further steering the scope and speed of the recovery.

The nature of the contagion also has ensured that the nation’s social and economic recovery from it would be incremental.

As hope rises for the opening phases of that recovery, it is as important as ever to maintain vigilance, comply with best practices and gather the needed data. — The Scranton Times-Tribune,

via The Associated Press