This piece was originally published in Grist and appears here as part of our Climate Desk Partnership. The predominantly black and low-income communities living near the back-to-back petrochemical refineries of Louisiana’s “cancer alley” have long suffered compromised immune systems and high rates of disease. Now, the state’s fast-growing COVID-19 outbreak is poised to hit them especially hard. Yet behind the veil of the pandemic, last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a temporary policy—with no end date specified—to suspend its enforcement of key environmental regulations, allowing industries like Louisiana’s petrochemical giants to make their own determinations as to whether or not they are complying with requirements to monitor pollution levels.