Enforcement Discretion Policies in the United States during the COVID-19 Public Health Crisis

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the US Environmental Protection Agency and numerous states offered regulated facilities flexibility in adhering to some monitoring and compliance requirements of environmental regulations. These temporary enforcement discretion (TED) policies provide a recent example of how environmental federalism works in practice in the United States. We examine the relationship between state sociodemographic and political characteristics and the timing and similarity of state-level TED policies. To analyze policy similarity, we use natural language processing tools. Thus, this policy brief illustrates how such techniques can be meaningfully applied to answer questions of relevance to environmental policy.