WHILE the COVID-19 pandemic has hampered the customary operations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the pause in normal activities has given the Agency time to organize some 2,000 projects and begin the rewriting of the outdated Environmental Protection Act.

Head of the EPA, Dr. Vincent Adams, told the Guyana Chronicle, on Sunday, that a new record-keeping system has been developed by the EPA and, based on a one-week rotation, workers are carrying home files to addresses them while practising social distancing.

“We’ve established a Registry because we never had any record keeping before. So, now we’re getting everything in place and we’ve got a new team that is looking over that and now we’ve got an opportunity for the officers to go through every single file and we even found that we have like 2,000 projects and we did not even know we had so many. We’ve got everything organized, we’ve got them categorized,” he said.

While the EPA’s work regarding inspections has been stymied, being able to better organize its files will give the Agency a head start when the coast is clear on the COVID-19 front.

“It’s definitely affecting us because one of our core functions is to go out and do inspections and visit all over the country, so we basically had to shut that down,” he said.

“It [COVID-19] has slowed down one aspect of the work but at least what we’re going to do is use the opportunity to really focus on these [projects] and see where the deficiencies and gaps are. We were doing it on-and-off but now we can focus on it to identify gaps where people are out of compliance, where there are expired permits, etcetera, so that we can identify where we need to take enforcement action.”

When the virus passes, the EPA Head is certain that a number of field actions in light of the findings will be executed immediately.

Added to this, the time has given the Agency a head start in the revamping of the Environmental Protection Act of 1966 which is in need of amendment.

In 2019, the World Bank stated that the Act — amongst some others — was “outdated” and needed to be adjusted to support the enhancement of the transparency, governance, legal, regulatory and institutional frameworks for the oil and gas sector.

“One of the things that we’re going to be focusing on is the rewriting of the Environment Protection Agency Act that was written since 1996 and is outdated. Lots of things have to be changed and so we’re rewriting the whole Act. We’re doing interviews, we’re hiring people like lawyers etcetera to re-write the Act; to come up with regulations so when this thing is over we’re going to be ready to launch,” Dr. Adams said.

Meanwhile, when it comes to certain time-sensitive matters which were in play prior to COVID-19, the EPA Head said that itself and stakeholders are somewhat helpless to the course of the virus.

For example, at the beginning of March, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that EEPGL had applied to undertake the Hammerhead Development Project.

It marks the pursuit of Exxon’s fourth development project, with Liza Phase I and Liza Phase II already approved, and Payara awaiting approval.

In keeping with the Environmental Protection Act No. 11, 1996, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for development must first be provided before any decision is made as the project could have significant impacts on the environment.

Adams said progressions in this regard are either moving slower or have been hampered altogether and no one truly knows when normalcy will return.

“I can’t tell you what the effects are going to be because I don’t know how long this thing is going to last for; they don’t know either so everything is up in the air now,” he said.