COVID-19 – Impact On Environmental Compliance And Due Diligence

As these strange times continue to evolve, it is important to ensure that all companies whose operations raise environmental compliance issues try to think through and plan for what might happen in the coming weeks and perhaps months. In particular, both self-imposed and regulatory quarantine protocols may have a significant impact on critical staff levels at a facility. While we are all deep into implementation of directives about working from home when we can, there are, of course, a number of essential jobs that require physical presence for a plant to operate properly.

Despite all the dramatic changes going on in our lives, all conditions of operating permits such as Environmental Compliance Approvals remain in full force, and all obligations such as spill prevention, spill remediation, spill reporting and regular compliance reporting continue to apply. It is never an excuse to say something happened due to a staff shortage. If there are insufficient resources to