On March 26, 2020, US EPA issued a temporary policy regarding enforcement of routine monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting violations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.  As discussed in an earlier blog post, US EPA’s temporary policy sets out the Agency’s overall policy to exercise of enforcement discretion during the COVID-19 pandemic and generally not seek penalties for noncompliance with monitoring and reporting obligations if such noncompliance was caused by the pandemic.

On March 31, 2020, US EPA provided further direction to US EPA Regional Offices on how to implement the new temporary policy with respect to NPDES reporting requirements (NPDES advisory), including electronic reporting tracked in US EPA’s Integrated Compliance Information System for the NPDES program (ICIS-NPDES).