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ACC AM June 29
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(ACC Mentioned) Foreign Market Pros Come Together To Launch Caracal Strategies
Jun 29, 2015 | PR Week
By Laura Nichols
Marc Ross, former US-China Business Council communications director, is teaming up with SafeSource Trading CEO Jeremy Haft to form Caracal Strategies. The Washington, DC-based firm is designed to "help clients navigate American business at the intersection of globalization, economics, market access, government, and ... -
(ACC Mentioned) The Campaign to Weaken Worker Protections
Jun 29, 2015 | The Center for Public Integrity
By Jamie Smith Hopkin
America’s flimsy workplace health and safety protections are no accident. Problems that contribute to the daily toll of illnesses, injuries and deaths — from outdated chemical-exposure standards to tiny fines for major violations — come after decades of concerted efforts to delay fixes and weaken the Occupational Safety and Health ... -
(ACC Mentioned) TSCA: EPA Holds Public Meeting on TSCA Section 8(a) Proposed Rule
Jun 27, 2015 | JD Supra Business Advisor
On June 11, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a meeting on its Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 8(a) proposed rule concerning reporting and recordkeeping requirements for certain chemical substances when manufactured or processed at the nanoscale. Jeff Morris, Deputy Director for Programs -
(ACC Mentioned) Big Senate Fight Set on TSCA Reform
Jun 29, 2015 | Occupational Health & Safety
Pending bills to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act are now at the top of Congress' list. The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2576 by a vote of 398-1 last week, and the U.S. Senate will now consider its own version of TSCA reform, S. 697. Many contenting organizations are invested in this contest, from the International Association... -
(ACC Mentioned) Americans Think They Throw Away $640 Of Food Each Year, It's Actually More
Jun 26, 2015 | TODAY Money
By Harriet Baskas
You're throwing away a lot more food than you think. Americans estimate they waste about $640 in household food each year, according to a new survey by the American Chemistry Council. But government figures say our trash bins are much fuller. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a family of four wastes closer to $1,500. -
(ACC Mentioned) 6 Ways to Save Money On (and Stop Wasting!) Groceries
Jun 26, 2015 | SHAPE
By Rachael Schultz
Most of us are willing to spend a pretty penny for fresh produce, but it turns out those fruits and vegetables may actually cost you even more in the end: Americans admit to throwing out roughly $640 of food each year, according to a new survey by the American Chemistry Council (ACC). Even worse, we’re probably guessing low... -
(ACC Mentioned) Americans Waste More Than $600 Per Person Worth of Food Every Year
Jun 27, 2015 | Pioneer News
By April Taylor
Apparently Americans waste, on average, about $640 of food per person per year. This is the data gathered from a new study which also says that not only do we not seem to care so much about wasting this food, but we also seem to be a bit unaffected by the environmental impact of this trashed leftovers that pile up in landfills. -
(ACC Mentioned) Study: Average American Wastes $640 Worth Of Food Each Year
Jun 26, 2015 | CBS 4
By Kylee Wierks
How much money do Americans waste every year throwing out uneaten food? According to a new study by the American Chemistry Council, $640 worth of food is trashed by the average American every year. Food waste is the single biggest item in U.S. landfills, where it rots and releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. -
(ACC Mentioned) Americans Throw Away $640 Worth Of Food Every Year
Jun 28, 2015 | The Bell Jar
A study from the American Chemistry Council has found that the average American wastes $640 worth of food every year. Seventy-six percent of people said that they throw away leftovers at least once a month, and 53 percent said they throw away leftovers every week. We’re throwing out a lot of food here in the USA, a new survey... -
(ACC Mentioned) Smarter Living: Wiping Away Food Waste
Jun 26, 2015 | Kake
By Susan Peters
$640 worth of food is trashed by the average American each year, according to a new study by the American Chemistry Council. The U.S. government puts that figure even higher at over $900 a year. So if you’re tired of throwing money into the garbage bin, I found some interesting ways to wipe out the waste. -
(ACC Mentioned) Family Of Four In US Every Year Wastes About $1,500 Worth Of Food
Jun 27, 2015 | Uncover California
By Lauren Bartholomew
A new survey conducted by the American Chemistry Council revealed Americans estimate they waste about $640 in household food each year. But as per government's data, a family of four in US wastes closer to $1,500. According to the recent survey of 1,000 adults conducted by TNS Global, more than half of American households throw away... -
(ACC Mentioned) Americans Tossing Hundreds In Wasted Food Each Year
Jun 26, 2015 | WIAT
Just how much money do you think Americans waste every year on food they don’t eat? The average American trashes an average of $640 worth of food per year. The American Chemistry Council said 15 percent of people surveyed were concerned about the impact of throwing away so much food. Food is the single biggest item... -
TSCA Reform Likely To Be Compromise Despite Push For House Measure
Jun 26, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
The final Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) legislation that Congress might approve in the coming weeks is likely to be a compromise between the House TSCA bill and the much broader Senate measure, sources say, despite a push by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) for the upper chamber to focus on taking up the House version. -
Toxic Ignorance And The Challenge For Congress
Jun 26, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Noah M. Sachs and Matthew Shudtz
The House of Representatives recently passed a bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a law widely viewed both by industry players and environmental groups as outdated and in desperate need of improvement. But that bill, like a similar bill in the Senate, does not go far enough to protect Americans. -
Broaden EPA Proposed Data-Collection Rule, California Says; EPA Extends Comment Period
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Chemical and other manufacturers that make or use nanoscale chemicals, labor groups and other interested parties will now have another month to comment on a data-collection rule the Environmental Protection Agency proposed in April. As requested by at least one organization, the Environmental Defense Fund... -
Dominguez, Nominee to be PHMSA Head, Now Serving in Deputy Administrator Role
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is now serving as the agency's deputy administrator. Marie Therese Dominguez, whom Obama nominated in May to lead the agency, was listed by PHMSA as of June 22 as the deputy administrator. Meanwhile, Vanessa Sutherland... -
California Pipeline Spill Prompts Scrutiny By Congress on Incident, Rulemaking Pace
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
The May pipeline rupture in Santa Barbara County, Calif., that resulted in a spill of more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil has prompted a House committee to investigate that incident and the delayed implementation of certain federal pipeline safety rules. Eight House Energy and Commerce Committee members wrote to Plains Pipeline LP... -
(ACC Mentioned) Barton: EPA Regulations Will Cripple Economy
Jun 26, 2015 | Burleson Star
By Michael James Barton
Ever wonder what ozone smells like? According to Smithsonian Magazine, it's "the sweet, fresh, powerfully evocative smell of fresh rain." That familiar scent is a combination of plant oils, bacteria and ozone. But when highly concentrated, it can actually be a pollutant. That's why the United States has been working to reduce "ground level"... -
Don't Lift Crude Oil Export Ban, Senate Democrats Urge President Obama
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Lifting the 40-year-old crude oil export ban would harm consumers, businesses and national security, 13 Senate Democrats said in a letter to President Barack Obama. “We are concerned that lifting the crude oil export ban could harm U.S. consumers, businesses and our national security and we urge you to pay close attention to these adverse... -
Democrats To Obama: Resist Oil Exports
Jun 26, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Thirteen Senate Democrats wrote to President Obama Friday asking him to resist calls from Republicans, oil producers and others to ease restrictions on crude oil exports. The Democrats, led by Sen. Ed Markey (Mass.), predicted that changing the 40-year-old ban on exports would hurt consumers, businesses and the country’s... -
Senate Democrats Warn Obama Against Easing Crude Export Ban
Jun 26, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
Thirteen Senate Democrats today emerged as a bloc against ending the four-decade-old crude export ban, warning President Barack Obama that allowing overseas sales of U.S. oil would put refinery expansions at risk and drive gasoline prices higher. The Democrats wrote to Obama as the oil industry and... -
Sabine Pass Expansion Project to Export LNG Gets Energy Department Authorization
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
The Energy Department authorized an expansion project by Sabine Pass Liquefaction LLC, a subsidiary of Cheniere Energy Inc., to export liquefied natural gas to non-free trade agreement countries.The Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Cameron Parish, La., is permitted to export additional volumes of LNG up... -
DOE Approves Sabine Pass LNG Expansion Plan
Jun 26, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The Department of Energy today approved a proposed expansion of the Sabine Pass natural gas export facility, now under construction in Louisiana, to ship up to 1.38 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day of additional LNG to nations with which the U.S. does not have free trade pacts. -
Exxon Mobil, BP Suspend Canadian Arctic Exploratory Drilling Program in Beaufort Sea
Jun 26, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Chester Dawson
An oil industry consortium including Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC on Friday suspended its Canadian arctic exploration program in the Beaufort Sea, citing insufficient time to begin test drilling before its lease expires in 2020. The move represents a setback for oil companies active in Canada’s arctic waters and follows a similar decision by ... -
BP, Exxon Suspend Canadian Arctic Exploration Plan
Jun 26, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Nick Juliano
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a group of oil companies including BP and Exxon Mobil is dropping plans to explore in the Canadian Arctic because they fear too little time remains to drill offshore test wells before their lease expires in 2020. BP, Exxon Mobil and Imperial Oil Ltd., Exxon’s Canadian affiliate... -
Domestic Oil, Gas Boom Changes U.S. Security Posture -- Experts
Jun 26, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Ariel Wittenberg
America's oil and gas production boom has shifted the nation's energy security posture from defensive to offensive, experts said today at the Center for a New American Security's annual conference. Before the advent of hydraulic fracturing, U.S. energy security efforts focused mainly on maintaining the country's... -
Greens Intensify Fight For Higher Energy Royalties
Jun 26, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Progressives and environmentalists are upping the pressure on the Obama administration to increase the fees that energy companies pay to extract oil, natural gas and coal from the federal government’s land. The advocates and their Democratic allies in Congress say they’re out to ensure taxpayers get a fair return... -
Few Surprises Seen in Vote on Legislation By Whitfield to Impede EPA Clean Power Plan
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Even among the handful of Republicans and Democrats who bucked their parties in a June 24 House vote on legislation to impede the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to complete its Clean Power Plan, observers told Bloomberg BNA there were few surprising votes. -
The EPA's Big Land Grab
Jun 29, 2015 | The Hill - Contributors
By Former Rep. Larry Combest (R-Texas)
The EPA just finalized one of the biggest land grabs in American history. Under the Clean Water Rule, all "tributaries" will be categorically regulated by the federal government. Tributaries — which quite literally mean anything with a bed, banks and an "ordinary high water mark" — are now under federal control. -
New York Plan Would Cut Emissions 40 Percent by 2030, 80 Percent by 2050
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
New York state has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030, according to the 2015 New York State Energy Plan. The plan, released June 25, said the 40 percent reduction would come from the power sector, transportation, buildings and industry. -
Alabama Power to Cut Emissions in Proposed Decree
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Electric utility Alabama Power would upgrade or retire some coal-fired power units while investing $1.5 million in electric-vehicle charging stations, under proposed consent decree revisions that the Environmental Protection Agency announced June 25 (United States v. Ala. Power Co., N.D. Ala., No. 2:01-cv-00152, proposed consent decree revisions... -
California Carbon Offset Protocol Approved For Methane-Reducing Rice Cultivation Work
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
The California Air Resources Board approved a new carbon offset protocol for methane-reducing rice cultivation projects, opening the door for rice growers to generate and sell compliance-grade credits under the state's greenhouse gas emissions trading program. At its June 26 meeting in Sacramento, CARB also expanded its existing... -
Gates To Invest $2b In Clean Energy, Rejects Fossil Fuel Divestment
Jun 29, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Katherine Ling
Bill Gates today said he plans to invest $2 billion over the next five years in advanced clean technology to "bend the curve" in efforts to fight climate change. The current versions of green technology work only at certain times and are too expensive, the billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft said in an interview with the Financial Times. -
'Waters' Rule Seen Creating Prospects, Challenges For Wetlands Mitigation
Jun 26, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
EPA's final Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule could boost creation of mitigation banks used to offset damage to wetlands and streams from permitted activities while posing challenges for how to manage compensatory mitigation under the water law, sources say, because the rule is likely to drive more CWA permitting in regions that... -
New Federal Regulations On Tank-Car Trains Face Challenges
Jun 28, 2015 | The Chicago Tribune
By Richard Wronski
he U.S. railroad industry, several environmental groups and two Chicago suburbs are challenging the federal government's recently unveiled regulations intended to enhance the safety of milelong trains carrying volatile crude oil, dozens of which pass through the metro area each week.
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(ACC Mentioned) Foreign Market Pros Come Together To Launch Caracal Strategies
Jun 29, 2015 | PR Week
By Laura Nichols
Marc Ross, former US-China Business Council communications director, is teaming up with SafeSource Trading CEO Jeremy Haft to form Caracal Strategies.
The Washington, DC-based firm is designed to "help clients navigate American business at the intersection of globalization, economics, market access, government, and commerce," according to a statement.
Ross said the firm will work with companies already established in and looking to break into the markets in the EU and China. Whether a company is looking to expand in a foreign country or make its presence known for the first time, Caracal Strategies will provide the tools and insight to support its success.
"A vast majority of [foreign companies operating in China] are facing issues that are challenging them from a variety of pressure points," said Haft. "An issue you face in China, as a company, will have many components to it – it may be government, public affairs, or business strategy."
"Companies really need a wide range of skill sets to fix these problems," added Ross. "You need people to understand these overlaps [and the] role government plays as well as public affairs." The founders’ expertise runs the gamut – Ross noted his background is in communications and public affairs while Haft has long been steeped in business, particularly in China.
The firm came out of Ross and Haft seeing a "need" for the type of multi-layered services Caracal Strategies will offer, Haft added. One recurring misstep he’s noticed among companies moving in to new territory is the inclination to seek out the "similarities in business, as opposed to the differences," which Haft said is "a fundamental mistake that can scuttle your whole business plan."
Caracal Strategies will have partners in Beijing and Brussels, said Haft. Ross added the firm will look to grow over time.
Before his stint at the US-China Business Council – where he will remain in the short-term as a communications consultant, he confirmed – Ross was a political director for the California Republican Party, a VP of business development at Leverage, and a director of grassroots and public affairs at the American Chemistry Council, according to LinkedIn.
Haft was a founder at both the Asia Assurance Group and BChinaB, and a creative director at CKS Group and SiteSpecific, per LinkedIn.
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(ACC Mentioned) The Campaign to Weaken Worker Protections
Jun 29, 2015 | The Center for Public Integrity
By Jamie Smith Hopkin
America’s flimsy workplace health and safety protections are no accident.
Problems that contribute to the daily toll of illnesses, injuries and deaths — from outdated chemical-exposure standards to tiny fines for major violations — come after decades of concerted efforts to delay fixes and weaken the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s authority.
It’s jammed the gears of the regulatory system to the point that they hardly turn. OSHA issued seven health standards in the last two decades — one of which was revoked by Congress — compared with six in 1978 alone. As a result, most of the agency’s exposure limits are more than 40 years old. And tens of thousands of chemicals, including some that the federal government has known for years are hazards, have no limits at all.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. Business interests, lawmakers, federal agencies and the White House have all played a role.
Industry
The metal hexavalent chromium, emitted as a fume during chrome plating and certain welding operations and used in products such as specialty paints, can cause cancer. The risk at OSHA’s original exposure limit was so extreme — as many as one worker in three would likely get cancer from inhaling that much chromium over their entire careers — that advocacy group Public Citizen and a union sued in 2002 to get the agency to act.
Companies, sensing a threat, had mobilized years earlier. They argued there was no significant risk, criticized studies that suggested otherwise and lobbied to keep the standard unchanged.
This is how industries typically react. It’s playing out again as OSHA tries to update its limit for lung-damaging silica. Thousands of lives have been lost to such delays.
What makes the chromium case stand out: Advocates and federal officials eventually got their hands on the chromium lobby’s internal documents. They offer a revealing look at how companies work to beat back protections meant to keep people from dying.
In 1996, according to the minutes of one Chrome Coalition meeting, companies and their consultants discussed how they might “forestall the rulemaking.” The plan included attacking health studies showing harm and preparing for a lawsuit.
No one made even a passing mention of what would be best for workers’ health. Another industry document said only a comparatively modest cut in the chromium limit would be acceptable because it could be handled by modern facilities “without major additional investment.”
According to testimony in an enforcement action later filed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the coalition spent an estimated $500,000 on a lung-cancer study of chrome workers to call into question earlier research. But the results provided “strong support for the inadequacy of the current standard” and even raised questions about whether the limit OSHA proposed was protective enough, according to a 2006 paper co-authored by David Michaels, an occupational health expert who since 2009 has headed OSHA.
The Chrome Coalition withheld that study from federal agencies. Instead, Michaels wrote, it massaged the data and released certain parts that seemed to support its position.
The coalition no longer exists, but the chromium companies did get something for their efforts. OSHA feared that certain firms couldn’t afford to reduce exposures to the proposed limit of 1 microgram per cubic meter of air — as the chromium industry argued — so in 2006 the agency set the new standard at 5 micrograms.
That means workers can still legally be exposed to chromium levels that, by OSHA’s reckoning, would give up to one in 22 of them cancer over a working lifetime. That’s far less protective than OSHA typically aims for.
Adam M. Finkel, who worked on the chromium rule while directing OSHA’s health standards program from 1995 to 2000, calls the adopted limit “shamefully weak.”
The fact that it got through at all qualifies as a rare victory. Few of OSHA’s 470 exposure limits have been changed since they were adopted in 1971.
Trade groups have played an outsize role in that, too. They challenged rule after rule in court, leaving OSHA hemmed in by decisions that contribute to an expensive, years-long slog to update a single health standard.
One turning point came in 1980.
After federal officials concluded that benzene can cause leukemia, OSHA lowered its exposure limit in 1977 from 10 parts per million to 1. The American Petroleum Institute, which three decades earlier conducted an internal toxicological review that concluded “the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero,” sued to get the new standard overturned.
A divided Supreme Court did so, finding that OSHA had not demonstrated that the standard remedied a “significant risk.” The decision — opposed by four of the justices, who contended it endangered workers and disregarded the law — affected more than just benzene. OSHA could no longer declare that carcinogen exposure must be as low as possible. Ever since, the agency has spent time on complex analyses that estimate the number of workers at risk.
OSHA’s later benzene analysis estimated that for every 1,000 people exposed over a working lifetime to concentrations at the original standard, 95 would likely fall ill with leukemia as a result — nearly 1 in 10. Prodded by unions, the Reagan administration adopted a 1 part-per-million standard in 1987 that stuck.
The decade-long wait came at a cost. A former OSHA official and two occupational medicine experts separately estimated that several hundred workers would die of cancer as a result.
The American Petroleum Institute did not respond to requests for comment. But in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling, the group’s then-president, Charles J. DiBona, said the case demonstrated the importance of regulators relying on “scientific facts rather than pure speculation.”
“The issue was never whether benzene is toxic,” he said. “The petroleum industry itself identified it as toxic years ago and imposed its own protective standards long before the government showed any interest in regulating it.”
In the 1980s, frustrated with the slow pace of health rule revisions, Reagan-appointed officials tried to fix everything in one fell swoop.
Most of OSHA’s exposure limits from 1971 were carbon copies of ones recommended by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists, a group of experts that regularly updates its numbers. OSHA decided to launch a rulemaking to adopt the nonprofit’s most recent recommendations.
OSHA’s 1989 rule added new limits or tightened existing ones for 376 chemicals and won praise from big industry groups, including what is now the American Chemistry Council. The early criticism came almost entirely from unions, which contended that standards remained too lax.
But other trade groups, including the American Iron and Steel Institute and the Society of the Plastics Industry, ultimately filed suit to overturn some of the new limits.
The AFL-CIO filed suit, too, but to get OSHA to toughen some of the rules, not toss them.
Business interests upset about tighter limits won that battle in a big way. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta vacated everything. The agency’s economic-impact analysis and other studies, prepared with less detail so all 376 chemicals could be handled at once, weren’t sufficient, the judges ruled.
“It may well be, as OSHA claims, that this was the only practical way of accomplishing a much needed revision of the existing standards and of making major strides towards improving worker health and safety,” the judges wrote in their 1992 decision. But the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act doesn’t allow that flexibility, they added.
As the congressional Office of Technology Assessment noted three years later, “Arguably, OSHA faces rulemaking requirements among the most demanding of all federal agencies with health, safety and environmental regulatory responsibilities.”
OSHA had estimated that the 1989 update would save 683 lives a year at an annual cost of $6,000 per affected plant. The Court of Appeals judges offered a tip: “Before OSHA uses such an approach, it must get authorization from Congress.”
A generation later, Congress has yet to give OSHA that authority. In fact, it’s hobbled the agency even further.
Congress
When Republicans gained control of Congress after the 1994 election, Rep. Cass Ballenger of North Carolina gleefully took the reins of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections. Raising funds in the election campaign had been easy, he told The Washington Post: “This was my sales pitch: ‘Businessmen, wouldn’t you like to have a friend overseeing OSHA?’ ”
Ballenger, who died in February, owned a plastics packing company and saw OSHA as a menace. He was part of a growing tide in Congress. Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, now House speaker and then chairman of the House Republican Conference, said at the time that most employers “would describe OSHA as the Gestapo of the federal government.”
The debate then and throughout OSHA’s history centered on whether the agency treated businesses as adversaries rather than potential partners. Ballenger said OSHA inspectors felt “pressured to issue citations in order to look good.”
His overhaul legislation in 1995, which would have sharply cut back OSHA’s enforcement authority and abolished the country’s workplace-hazard research institute, didn’t make it out of committee after the Clinton administration threatened to veto it. But OSHA spent years on the defensive, battling budget-cut proposals and congressional efforts that delayed the ergonomics rule begun by a Republican labor secretary in 1990.
Businesses hated the rule, which would have affected broad swaths of industry because it was supposed to protect against disabling injuries caused by repetitive movements. In 2001, shortly after OSHA issued the standard, Congress revoked it — the first (and so far only) regulation undone by the Congressional Review Act.
Eric Frumin, former health and safety director for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, pushed hard for a standard and remains distraught about its demise.
“Tens of millions of workers who are not covered by a union contract would have had a grievance procedure for abusive workloads,” said Frumin, now with Change to Win, a labor consortium. “The biggest single safety and health problem [could have been] wiped off the agenda.”
There’s no sign that OSHA will get congressional help anytime soon. Worker-safety advocates in Congress are focused on the Protecting America’s Workers Act, which would add teeth to enforcement with tougher civil and criminal penalties. Now, OSHA bemoans, companies can get into far more trouble for killing fish than killing workers. The typical employer penalty after an OSHA fatality investigation last fiscal year came to about $5,000, the AFL-CIO calculated.
Lawmakers have proposed the bill this year and for each of the last six Congresses. It made it as far as hearings only once, in 2010 — when Democrats were in control — and couldn’t get traction that year.
The measure faces deep skepticism among Republicans.
“Policies that impact our workplaces virtually always carry with them a cost, and we must be mindful not to impose any unnecessary or unnecessarily costly new requirements,” Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., now chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said at one of the 2010 hearings.
Kline’s campaign contributions from business interests in 2009-2010 totaled about $930,000, according to the Center’s analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics. He took in nearly 90 percent more from such sources in 2013-2014, as committee chairman.
But Public Citizen doesn’t see wide differences between Democrats and Republicans over the last two decades when it comes to improving worker health.
“Both parties are essentially corporate-funded,” said Dr. Sammy Almashat, a researcher with Public Citizen’s Health Research Group. “In addition to the donations, the actual donation itself, it’s infused a culture in the regulatory process of extreme deference to industry.”
Still, businesses aren’t uniformly opposed to more protections. Jim Thornton, a manufacturing safety and health professional active with the American Society of Safety Engineers, said many employers already keep exposures lower than OSHA requires because they don’t want to sicken their workers.
Industry groups as well as unions came to the table when the American Industrial Hygiene Association, which represents occupational-health professionals, tried to develop a better standards system about 15 years ago. They got as far as writing draft legislation before the effort petered out, said Aaron Trippler, the association’s director of government affairs.
“There has been some talk about, ‘Maybe we could put a group together again,’ ” he said. “But I don’t think you could get anywhere unless you have Congress behind it.”
Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat from Connecticut who’s sponsoring the House version of the Protecting America’s Workers Act this year, thinks reform will come eventually.
“There’s this narrative that OSHA is an impediment to job creation and economic growth,” said Courtney, whose biggest single source of campaign contributions is labor, though industry sectors have donated more combined. “My experience is that more enlightened employers out there understand that it’s to their advantage to protect workers from preventable illnesses and accidents — that it actually increases productivity, that it works for both sides. But still, there’s this sort of kneejerk opposition to anything the federal government touches.”
Office of Management and Budget
OSHA has tried, in fits and starts, to reduce its exposure limit for silica since the 1970s. But its long-awaited proposal, ready in OSHA officials’ eyes in 2011, had to go to another agency for review before the public could weigh in.
And there it sat for 921 days — 2 ½ years.
The White House's Office of Management and Budget is supposed to complete its reviews in 120 days, unless the rulemaking agency asks for more time. Critics say OSHA rules frequently languish during review while business interests work to undermine the proposals. The OMB can demand changes from agencies.
The OMB did not respond to repeated requests for comment about its review process. But Cass R. Sunstein, who headed the OMB office responsible for reviews from 2009 to 2012, said in written congressional testimony that the process helps improve rules, ensure that benefits outweigh costs and make “agencies ‘look before they leap.’ ”
Susan Dudley, Sunstein’s immediate predecessor, wasn’t involved with the silica-rule review but has followed the issue as director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center. Vetting details such as health risks under current law and how much the proposal will help is a highly complex affair, she said. Even so, the length of time strikes her as “a sign that there was a lot of controversy on it.”
“There clearly was some debate about the right way to go,” she said.
The latest delay involves a rule for beryllium, which is used in industries ranging from defense to golf-club manufacturing and can trigger a deadly lung disease. It’s a rare case in which a big company has championed better protections after decades of efforts to impede them.
OSHA sent a proposal for a tighter limit to the OMB after the substance’s major producer, Materion, and the United Steelworkers union joined together to urge such an action. The OMB has had the proposal since September — nearly 10 months — despite that agreement and the fact that the U.S. Department of Energy has required stronger protections for its contractors’ workers since 2000.
Four members of Congress wrote the OMB in April to ask that it turn the proposal loose in light of the “public health urgency.”
The members, all Democrats, noted in their letter that any concerns people might have about the proposal could be raised during the hearings OSHA would hold.
Those are public. OMB meetings are not. All that can be gleaned from them is who attended — and what documents were shared, if any.
Silica is a fairly typical example. Not counting government representatives, 80 percent of the people who attended the 11 OMB meetings on that proposal were affiliated with companies and trade groups — far outnumbering attendees there to advocate for worker health. (It’s agency policy to accommodate everyone who wants to meet.) The American Chemistry Council came with a document that predicted the rule would “eliminate countless jobs and small businesses.”
The OMB’s key charge in reviews, handled by its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is to delve into costs and benefits. Industry generally argues that the expense will be far higher than OSHA expects. As it happens, OSHA usually does get it wrong — by overestimating.
That’s what the Office of Technology Assessment found in 1995 when it analyzed OSHA rules, five of them health standards. Some of the overestimates were huge: The vinyl chloride rule ultimately cost about a quarter of what OSHA’s consultant expected; the cotton-dust standard cost less than a third of what the agency had estimated.
Delays have happened in Democratic and Republican administrations alike, though Public Citizen says they’ve worsened under President Barack Obama. Celeste Monforton, who worked at OSHA in the 1990s, sees OMB gridlock as a statement on the low priority presidents assign to worker health.
When OSHA is faced with deadlines set by judges or Congress, it’s able to meet them, Monforton said — perhaps because the deadline operates as a battering ram through executive-branch logjams. She thinks the agency could do better if it had more White House support.
“There’s certainly procedural issues and outside parties … that play a role and have played a role in delaying protections for workers, but you also don’t have the strong political desire to issue these regulations,” said Monforton, a lecturer at George Washington University’s School of Public Health.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Information on how chemicals are used in the workplace — which occupations handle what, the number of people exposed, the ways they’re exposed — is surprisingly hard to come by. Yet these are the details officials need to protect health and prioritize standard-setting.
“There are no systems that capture it,” said Julia Quint, a toxicologist who ran California’s Hazard Evaluation System and Information Service before retiring in 2007.
Workplace-hazard research is the purview of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The problem isn’t that NIOSH hasn’t conducted a national survey of workplace exposure across industries — it’s that the agency hasn’t done it for more than 30 years.
From 1981 to 1983, NIOSH collected information by visiting nearly 4,500 workplaces, updating a survey conducted a decade earlier. That produced rich data that regulators and health researchers relied on for years. But the data are old, and NIOSH doesn’t have funding to do that work again.
Health advocates say NIOSH has few champions in Congress — it was even targeted for closure in the 1990s — and is an afterthought at its parent agency. Founded as the Communicable Disease Center in 1946 to fight malaria, the CDC must respond to public-health crises as varied as tornadoes and bioterrorism.
NIOSH’s funding tells the tale. It equated to 20 percent of the CDC’s budget in the late 1970s but has hovered around 5 percent for the last decade.
The American Industrial Hygiene Association and American Society of Safety Engineers have called on Congress to consider other parent agencies for NIOSH, whose budget they said in a 2013 letter “continues to fall short of its commitments to occupational safety and health research and education as an ever-increasing amount … is forced to be given back to CDC for administrative costs.”
The CDC would not make its director, Tom Frieden, available for an interview. In a statement, the agency said its public-health responsibilities and budget have ballooned in the last generation, but NIOSH’s funding rose, too — nearly sixfold since 1983. (That doesn’t account for inflation, which ate a substantial chunk of the increase. Much of the rest was earmarked for tasks the agency didn’t have 30 years ago, such as miner-health research.)
The CDC believes NIOSH is fulfilling its mission.
“CDC supports NIOSH’s work in leading strategic surveillance of injury and illness on the job, allocating its resources for maximum return,” the CDC said.
NIOSH, for its part, would love to conduct an updated workplace survey. Roughly 15 years ago, officials had discussions with OSHA about sharing the cost, estimated at $21 million to $33 million in today’s dollars. But NIOSH Director Dr. John Howard said that idea was unraveling by the time he arrived in 2002.
“Our NIOSH folks couldn’t figure out what was going on,” he said. “I remember sort of forcing the issue with [then-OSHA Director John] Henshaw about are we going to do this or not? ‘No, we’re not going to do it.’ ”
Henshaw said he doesn’t recall discussions about OSHA co-funding a new survey, but he thinks it’s possible such an idea reached less-senior officials and they nixed it.
“I think probably one of the reasons why it never came to my level, why I don’t recall it, is it was thought to be a NIOSH responsibility, not an OSHA responsibility,” he said. “The agency may have communicated [that] to NIOSH.”
NIOSH can’t shoulder the cost alone, Howard said, so the agency decided to focus its survey efforts on one big and growing industry — health care. It’s also spent the last decade and about $90 million delving into the complex health implications of nanotechnology, making recommendations for the burgeoning field of materials made at a scale far smaller than the human eye can see.
Given OSHA’s difficulties regulating old hazards, Howard said, NIOSH recommendations could be all that workers have to protect themselves from new ones.
“We lament like everybody else, ‘It’s a broken system,’ … but it doesn’t stop us,” Howard said. “We have to go on. Because if we don’t go on, there’s nothing there.”
OSHA
The driving force that pushed the chromium standard to completion in 2006 wasn’t OSHA but a court order. Though the agency knew in 1975, thanks to NIOSH’s work, that the exposure limit needed to be dramatically tightened, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia noted in 2002 that OSHA had dragged its feet “in the face of an admittedly grave risk to public health.”
“Indeed, at oral argument, OSHA's counsel admitted the possibility that OSHA might not promulgate a rule for another ten or twenty years, if at all,” the court wrote in its decision.
Forces outside OSHA’s control make its job much harder. But the agency could do more, its critics say.
“They’ve sort of given up,” said Rena Steinzor, a University of Maryland law professor who is a past president of the Center for Progressive Reform, a left-leaning think tank. “They’re suffering from battered-agency syndrome.”
In the 1990s, despite the benzene court decision and other challenges, OSHA issued 11 health rules. In the 15 years since, it’s issued four — one during the Obama administration, one during the George W. Bush administration and two at the end of the Clinton administration. That includes the overturned ergonomics rule.
Finkel, the former OSHA director of health standards, said the mid-1990s were more productive because the agency’s leaders supported his division’s work and didn’t back down when the OMB or industry groups applied pressure. Even so, he said, there was a pervasive fear of lawsuits within the agency.
“There’s something about OSHA through all its history — it’s been too deferential,” said Finkel, now executive director of the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Monforton, the former Labor Department official, said OSHA keeps asking the public for input about what it should do — what chemicals to focus on, how to streamline the standard-setting process — and then seemingly does nothing with the information.
“There are obstacles for OSHA, but in some ways, they’re their own worst enemy,” she said.
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(ACC Mentioned) TSCA: EPA Holds Public Meeting on TSCA Section 8(a) Proposed Rule
Jun 27, 2015 | JD Supra Business Advisor
On June 11, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a meeting on its Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 8(a) proposed rule concerning reporting and recordkeeping requirements for certain chemical substances when manufactured or processed at the nanoscale. Jeff Morris, Deputy Director for Programs, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), and Jim Alwood, OPPT Chemical Control Division, provided further insight into EPA's goals, directives, and expected results as related to the proposed rule. Morris stated that EPA is trying to ensure public confidence in the commercialization of nanomaterials, and this proposed rule, through its reporting requirements, will give EPA more information on whether this information is sufficient enough to instill confidence as well as whether further reporting will be necessary. Morris also stated that EPA's broader goal with these requirements is more understanding of nanomaterials, and that EPA is hopeful that the reporting will not be too burdensome so as to not achieve this goal. Alwood emphasized the importance of EPA knowing what is "feasible" in terms of what information can be reported, stating that the proposed rule requires information that is "known to or reasonably ascertainable by" persons subject to the rule; it does not require the development of specific data or a minimum data set. Alwood also stated that the small business exemption, that exempts manufacturers with company sales of less than $4 million, does not include a production volume component because if it did, then 85-90 percent of nanomaterials manufacturers would be exempt. Comments are due by July 6, 2015.
There were five commenters: (1) Steven Gordon, Ph.D., DABT, Staff Scientist at 3M Medical Department, on behalf of the American Chemistry Council; (2) Dan Russell, SVP, Manufacturing and Operations at Pixelligent Technologies, LLC; (3) Jo Anne Shatkin, President, Vireo Advisors; (4) Martha Marrapese, Partner at Keller and Heckman LLP, in capacity as General Counsel to the Nano Manufacturing Association; and (5) Vincent Caprio, Executive Director of the NanoBusiness Commercialization Association. Some of the concerns that the commenters voiced were regarding: (1) the 135-day waiting period; (2) the definition of "novel and unique" characteristics; (3) the definition of "trace amounts"; (4) the financial burden on the industry; and (5) lack of coordination with other governments, Canada for example.
Commentary
Below are some industry insights into the public meeting:
EPA made it clear that it is looking for input and that it is in fact vital that manufacturers provide that input; industry has an opportunity to shape the rule and it should take it. EPA did not comment on how it came up with the list of exempt substances (e.g., zinc oxide, nano clays), nor whether the manufacturers that have previously submitted voluntary reporting information through the Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program would get credit for doing so.
For the definition of a small business, it seems justifiable to remove the production volume threshold for nanomaterials (as few are manufactured over 100,000 kg) but relying solely on the $4 million sales threshold, however, puts significant burden on companies with sales greater than $4 million and less than $40 million that are quite small and may be operating without a profit.
EPA has discretion on when the deadline for reporting should be; it would be helpful if this deadline were set to avoid other significant reporting deadlines (e.g., Toxics Release Inventory and Chemical Data Reporting deadlines) to avoid overloading company environmental health and safety staff, consultant/contract support, EPA staff, or EPA servers.
Finally, given the significant cooperation between U.S. and Canada through the U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council, requirements under this rule should be substantially similar to the requirements in Canada. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be significant collaboration with Canada on this reporting issue. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE HE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
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(ACC Mentioned) Big Senate Fight Set on TSCA Reform
Jun 29, 2015 | Occupational Health & Safety
Pending bills to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act are now at the top of Congress' list. The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2576 by a vote of 398-1 last week, and the U.S. Senate will now consider its own version of TSCA reform, S. 697. Many contenting organizations are invested in this contest, from the International Association of Fire Fighters to the big chemical trade associations and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The law gives EPA authority to restrict chemicals in commerce, and virtually all parties believe it is out of date and ineffective. IAFF reports firefighters who are exposed to multiple toxic substances on a daily basis want to ban and regulate toxic chemicals, such as flame retardants. But the chemical industry for the most part is resisting such changes.
IAFF considers the House bill to be superior to the Senate's bill because the House bill does not preempt state actions until the EPA issues a final determination on the safety of a chemical. "The Senate bill, however, establishes a complicated preemption process which would preempt state actions on certain chemicals during the EPA’s review of such chemicals," according to IAFF.
The American Chemistry Council is another player in this drama. ACC applauded the House vote on the "TSCA Modernization Act of 2015" and previously laid out its policy on TSCA reform:
TSCA modernization must place protecting public health as its highest priority, including consideration of safety for children.
Modernization must derive from core principles, including making sure chemicals are safe for intended use; making sure safety decisions are cost effective and expeditious; prioritizing chemicals to determine which substances warrant additional review and assessment; utilizing all reliable information; and making safety information public while protecting intellectual property.
To ensure confidence in safety regulations, EPA's decisions must be based on a strong scientific framework that uses modern technology, proven safety testing methods, and high-quality data.
EPA's program that approves new chemicals enables innovation in American chemistry by evaluating safety information, requiring testing to fill any information gaps, and protecting intellectual property works well and must be retained.
While the United States should learn from other jurisdictions, Congress must not jump to conclusions about the appropriateness of other chemicals management systems for the United States. For example, the European Union's REACH program is often cited as a model, but its effectiveness has yet to be proven. Canada's approach to prioritization and review may provide an effective model for some changes to TSCA.
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(ACC Mentioned) Americans Think They Throw Away $640 Of Food Each Year, It's Actually More
Jun 26, 2015 | TODAY Money
By Harriet Baskas
You're throwing away a lot more food than you think.
Americans estimate they waste about $640 in household food each year, according to a new survey by the American Chemistry Council.
But government figures say our trash bins are much fuller. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a family of four wastes closer to $1,500.
Further, each week more than half of American households throw away leftovers and groceries purchased but never used, according to the recent survey of 1,000 adults conducted by TNS Global.
53 percent toss out leftovers every week, the survey found, while 51 percent regularly pitch fresh food they've brought home but never touched.
That represents a lot of lost meals, but also a great deal of money.
Add in the amount of food wasted at stores and restaurants, and the costs skyrocket.
According to research by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF), 31 to 40 percent of the American food supply goes to waste. That, the report says, costs Americans $161.6 billion annually and puts a drain on the environment because approximately 30 percent of the fertilizer, 35 percent of the fresh water and 31 percent of the cropland in the U.S. is used to grow food that is eventually wasted.
"Americans perceive themselves as wasting very little food, but in reality, we are wasting substantial quantities," says Roni Neff, director of the Food System Sustainability & Public Health Program at CLF. "It happens throughout the food chain, including both a lot of waste by consumers, and a lot on our behalf, when businesses think we won't buy imperfect food."
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(ACC Mentioned) 6 Ways to Save Money On (and Stop Wasting!) Groceries
Jun 26, 2015 | SHAPE
By Rachael Schultz
Most of us are willing to spend a pretty penny for fresh produce, but it turns out those fruits and vegetables may actually cost you even more in the end: Americans admit to throwing out roughly $640 of food each year, according to a new survey by the American Chemistry Council (ACC). Even worse, we’re probably guessing low, since U.S. government figures say it’s closer to $900 of food waste per household. (Check out these Money-Saving Tips for Getting Fiscally Fit.)
The ACC surveyed 1,000 adults and found that 76 percent of households say they throw away leftovers at least once a month, while over half throw them away every week. And 51 percent admit to tossing food they bought but never even used.
While that sounds incredibly wasteful—and it is—the reality is if you eat healthy, you’re obviously buying fresh fruit and vegetables that will inevitably go bad if you slack on cooking or buy them too far in advance.
Most of us do try and keep food waste to a minimum (a whopping 96 percent, according to the survey). But we’re apparently still dropping a huge chunk of change in the garbage despite our best efforts.
So how can you save money and lower the amount of waste you’re pushing into landfills? For starters, use those leftovers instead of tossing them. (Try these 10 Tasty Ways to Use Food Scraps.) But you can also shop and store smarter. Here’s six ways.
1. Make a List
Writing up a grocery list is a no brainer, but you need to go beyond the Greek yogurt and eggs you just used up. On Sunday, plan out most (or all, if you’re feeling ambitious) of your meals, and create a grocery list of exactly what and how much to shop for, suggests registered dietitians Tammy Lakatos Shames and Lyssie Lakatos, known as The Nutrition Twins. Once you’re at the store, stick to your list. Impulse purchases can lead to an excess of food sitting in your fridge waiting to go bad, they add.2. Adapt Recipes
Type As, listen up: You don’t have to follow every recipe exactly. In fact, sticking to the exact ingredients often leads to splurging on things you’ll only use once, says Jeanette Pavini, Coupons.com savings expert. There’s a substitution for almost every ingredient, so anything that you don’t already have in your pantry, you can Google and find an alternative for, she suggests. Not only will this keep you from wasting money on new products you’ll never touch again, but you can also use up food already in your fridge or pantry that would otherwise go bad. (Start with Better Than Butter: Top Substitutions for Fatty Ingredients.)3. Stock Up on Dried Grains
Grains and dried beans are an inexpensive way to add essential protein and fiber into your diet—plus, they last up to a year if stored properly, says Sara Siskind, a certified nutritional health counselor and founder of healthy cooking class company Hands on Healthy. Buy grains in bulk to save money, then empty them into an air-tight container. Store this in a cool dark place all winter and pop it into the freezer in the summer, which will help elongate their life, she adds.4. Avoid Bulk Produce
Buying a carton of tomatoes may seem like it’ll save you money, but if you really only need one or two, then spoiled produce is no longer a bargain, say the Nutrition Twins. This is especially true if you’re cooking for one, in which case you should always just pluck one tomato off the vine and leave the rest for someone else to purchase.5. Consider Buying Pre-Cut Fruit
Yes, those containers of pre-cut strawberries, pineapple, and mango seem like a rip-off when you can buy double the amount of whole fruit for the same price. But washing, peeling, and slicing whole fruit is a lot more time intensive, which may lead you to put off eating the fruit until it’s gone bad, says Siskind. The pre-cut options may be a bit pricier, but the time saver may be worth it if you’re actually more likely to eat it.6. Buy Frozen
Most of us know to avoid sodium-heavy frozen food, but that’s really only true for frozen meals. “Frozen produce is just as nutritious as fresh since the produce is picked and frozen immediately, keeping the nutrients intact,” explain Shames and Lakatos. Frozen produce is also very economical (you can typically score a 12-ounce bag of frozen raspberries for the same price as 6 ounces of fresh). Plus, they add, frozen produce gives you flexibility to coordinate an impromptu girls night out without having to worry about the veggies spoiling in the fridge. (And check out these 10 Packaged Foods That Are Surprisingly Healthy.) -
(ACC Mentioned) Americans Waste More Than $600 Per Person Worth of Food Every Year
Jun 27, 2015 | Pioneer News
By April Taylor
Apparently Americans waste, on average, about $640 of food per person per year. This is the data gathered from a new study which also says that not only do we not seem to care so much about wasting this food, but we also seem to be a bit unaffected by the environmental impact of this trashed leftovers that pile up in landfills.
This information comes via survey of the American Chemistry Council, on Wednesday.
And this study is somewhat alarming because Americans are more focused on eating organic, natural, and whole foods these days so it is odd that so much appears to go to waste. Similarly, Americans, for the most part, survive on leftovers. The survey shows that more than half of Americans use leftovers to make new meals and roughly two-thirds of Americans repurpose them for other meals (like tomorrow’s lunch, for example). But the worst of, the study shows that approximately 76 percent of Americans throw away leftovers every month.
And the study shows that most Americans are not happy about this waste but only about half of Americans feel like that food could have been given to hungry people on the street but only about 15 percent of Americans are actually bothered by the environmental impact.
“For years we’ve been told to finish your plate, there are hungry people,” explains ACC vice president Steve Russell. He goes on to say, “I just don’t think we’ve done a good enough job yet talking about the environmental impacts of food waste.”
Furthermore, Brian Wansink—the author of Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life—says, “What bothers most people is that it makes them feel foolish … having to admit you were wrong to prepare so much food or serve so much food if we’re not eating it.”
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(ACC Mentioned) Study: Average American Wastes $640 Worth Of Food Each Year
Jun 26, 2015 | CBS 4
By Kylee Wierks
How much money do Americans waste every year throwing out uneaten food?
According to a new study by the American Chemistry Council, $640 worth of food is trashed by the average American every year.
Food waste is the single biggest item in U.S. landfills, where it rots and releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
About half of the 1,000 people surveyed said they felt bad about the amount of food waste in light of world hunger.
But most people were more concerned about how much money they lost from tossing the food.
The results of this study were self-reported, so the actual amount of food waste may be even higher.
The Chemistry Council noted that the U.S. government puts food waste at over $900 a year per household.
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(ACC Mentioned) Americans Throw Away $640 Worth Of Food Every Year
Jun 28, 2015 | The Bell Jar
A study from the American Chemistry Council has found that the average American wastes $640 worth of food every year. Seventy-six percent of people said that they throw away leftovers at least once a month, and 53 percent said they throw away leftovers every week.
We’re throwing out a lot of food here in the USA, a new survey from the American Chemistry Council found. This piled up, rotten trash became a significant source of methane, which is a prominent greenhouse gas. Most said they were bothered by it because throwing out food is a waste of their money or because others don’t have enough to eat.
This leads them to throw perfectly viable food and causes a loss of in between 640 and 900 dollars yearly per household.
To address environmental concerns about food piling up in landfills, several municipalities including Seattle, San Francisco, New York City and all of Massachusetts have implemented composting programs, asking businesses and residents to put food waste in separate bins. Thus, the food waste added to the global warming, to the extent of two percent. “They say they’re wasting very tiny but we know that doesn’t quite match with the actual numbers regarding waste”, said Neff.
It’s worth noting that there are many ways of preserving food without plastic, including freezing, pickling, or using glass or ceramic containers. Some 160 billion pounds of food are thrown away in the US annually, making food waste the single largest contributor of solid waste in landfills, according to the Harvard Law School and NRDC study.
Americans are concerned about wasting food – yet they just cannot seem to stop throwing it out. Eating refrigerated food slightly past its prime may not taste as good as eating it fresh, but in most cases, it’s not going to harm you, according to the report.
Try to store your food portioned into the best size container.
Keep bread and pastas in cool, dry areas.
Prepare less food for the same reason.
To keep your food safe, it’s important to make sure that refrigerated food does not spend too much time in warmer temperatures, which make it more susceptible to bacteria growth. It does not necessarily mean you’ll get sick if you eat it after the date, nor is it a guarantee that the food has even gone bad.
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(ACC Mentioned) Smarter Living: Wiping Away Food Waste
Jun 26, 2015 | Kake
By Susan Peters
$640 worth of food is trashed by the average American each year, according to a new study by the American Chemistry Council.
The U.S. government puts that figure even higher at over $900 a year. So if you’re tired of throwing money into the garbage bin, I found some interesting ways to wipe out the waste.
Be wary of buying in bulk. My husband comes home with bins of stuff a lot. Remember those bulk stores were originally meant for businesses. And although they offer discounts, buying high volume without waste takes a lot of planning.
That brings me to my next tip: Plan ahead. Check your refrigerator and pantry to be sure of what you really need.
Safely store food to prevent spoiling. Certain products such as apples and broccoli are best kept chilled. But others like peaches and tomatoes spoil faster in the fridge.
Learn more about expiration dates. Don't be too hasty about throwing things away. Often times, these are really sell-by dates. It doesn't necessarily mean the food is unsafe to eat.
Shop more frequently. it helps you to not overbuy.
Serve less, dishing out smaller portions at meals. People are less likely to leave food on their plates, and you can always get seconds.
If you buy in bulk and have too much of something, donate it to a food pantry. They will gladly give it to a family in need.
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(ACC Mentioned) Family Of Four In US Every Year Wastes About $1,500 Worth Of Food
Jun 27, 2015 | Uncover California
By Lauren Bartholomew
A new survey conducted by the American Chemistry Council revealed Americans estimate they waste about $640 in household food each year. But as per government's data, a family of four in US wastes closer to $1,500.
According to the recent survey of 1,000 adults conducted by TNS Global, more than half of American households throw away leftovers and groceries purchased but never used.
The survey showed that 53% toss out leftovers every week, while 51% regularly throw fresh food they have brought home but never used.
Another research by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF), 31% to 40% of the American food supply gets wasted.
According to the report, this costs Americans $161.6 billion annually. It even puts a drain on the environment because approximately 30 % of the fertilizer, 35 % of the fresh water and 31 % of the cropland in the U. S. is used to grow food that is eventually wasted.
Roni Neff, director of the Food System Sustainability & Public Health Program at CLF, said in a statement that Americans think that they waste very little food, but in reality they are wasting substantial quantities of food.
"It happens throughout the food chain, including both a lot of waste by consumers, and a lot on our behalf, when businesses think we won't buy imperfect food", said Neff.
Food waste is the single biggest item in U. S. landfills, where it rots and releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, showed study.
About half of the 1,000 people surveyed during the study said that they felt bad about the amount of food wasted in light of world hunger. But most people were more concerned about how much money they lost from tossing the food.
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(ACC Mentioned) Americans Tossing Hundreds In Wasted Food Each Year
Jun 26, 2015 | WIAT
Just how much money do you think Americans waste every year on food they don’t eat?
The average American trashes an average of $640 worth of food per year.
The American Chemistry Council said 15 percent of people surveyed were concerned about the impact of throwing away so much food. Food is the single biggest item in landfills, and when food rots, it releases methane.
Around 79 percent of people were more concerned about the money lost by wasting food.
Over $900 is wasted by families.
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TSCA Reform Likely To Be Compromise Despite Push For House Measure
Jun 26, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
The final Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) legislation that Congress might approve in the coming weeks is likely to be a compromise between the House TSCA bill and the much broader Senate measure, sources say, despite a push by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) for the upper chamber to focus on taking up the House version.
“I don't think there's a scenario where we just get the House bill or the Senate bill,” says one legal source of prospects for the final version of legislation to overhaul the decades-old toxics law.
The House approved its version of TSCA reform, H.R. 2576, in a 398-1 floor vote on June 23, shifting focus to the pending Senate version, S. 697, introduced by Sens. David Vitter (R-LA) and Tom Udall (D-NM).
Vitter has said he wants to allow some amendments during floor debate, and supporters of the measure are working to ensure they have sufficient votes to defeat amendments that could derail the bill -- either riders to block unrelated EPA policies that the GOP opposes but Democrats support, or amendments that change the requirements of the legislation and cause current co-sponsors of the bill to withdraw their support in a final floor vote.
Boxer, ranking member on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW), has previously vowed to push various amendments to address concerns about what she sees as major problems with S. 697, including its sweeping preemption of state chemicals programs. An industry source says that although Boxer is soon to retire, “her influence is strong and her lack of support” for the Senate bill “could be a formidable challenge.”
But the senator appears to be changing tactics following the House's vote to approve H.R. 2576 almost unanimously. Only Republican, Rep. Tom McClintock (CA), voted in opposition of the bill, saying it “greatly increases the burdens on low-regulatory states without easing the burdens on high-regulatory states.”
Boxer in a June 26 statement is now indicating interest in building support in the Senate for the upper chamber to take up the House version of TSCA reform, with amendments, rather than S. 697. The House bill has much narrower preemption than the Senate version, in addition to various other differences.
The senator pointed out that unlike the nearly unanimous vote on the House bill, five senators voted against S. 697: Boxer, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Ed Markey (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Benjamin Cardin (D-MD). If the S. 697 bill is taken up on the Senate floor, Boxer said she “anticipates a long, drawn-out process and that she would object at every opportunity because it is convoluted and will lead straight to the court house door.”
Boxer's Concerns
One of Boxer's biggest criticisms of S. 697 is that she says it would broadly preempt state chemicals programs, and potentially create a regulatory gap for some substances by barring state action once EPA has decided to review a chemical -- even if the agency takes years to regulate that substance.
In contrast, Boxer, the California Attorney General's Office, and the environmental coalition Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, support the House bill because they believe it has narrower preemption of state toxics programs than S. 697. It would "grandfather," or preserve, existing state chemical safety laws that took effect before Aug. 1 and preserve state toxic tort claims, after EPA takes final action on a chemical, unless they "actually conflict" with new federal mandates. New state chemical laws, however, would be preempted once EPA finishes a restriction under TSCA.
The senator says she reached out to Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), lead sponsor of H.R. 2576, to say that “because of the clarity, simplicity, and overwhelming bipartisan support in the House for H.R. 2576, she would push for the Senate to take up the House bill with a few perfecting amendments.”
Shimkus, however, suggested at a June 25 Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) event on TSCA reform in Washington, D.C., that he plans on letting the Senate vote on S. 697 and then launching a process to work out the differences between the bills, and that the two chambers have held “staff to staff meetings” to discuss the bills and options, including “informal conference, negotiating on the same bill, formal conference.”
Shimkus' spokesman adds, “Congressman Shimkus remains focused on the ultimate goal of getting TSCA reform to the President’s desk and is not trying to intervene as the Senate works its will.”
Although Boxer is pushing for adoption of the House measure, the industry source says the “big picture” is that her position on the House bill is unlikely to influence which bill the Senate takes up.
Other Senate Democrats that support S. 697 -- Tom Carper (DE), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Jeff Merkley (OR) and Cory Booker (NJ), as well as Udall -- said in a June 23 statement that while they do not agree with the details of the House bill, they applaud the “bipartisan demonstration” of support for reforming the 1976 TSCA.
If the Senate does hold a vote on S. 697 and the bill clears the upper chamber, lawmakers will have to hold a conference committee to reconcile the differences between it and H.R. 2576.
'Informal' Conference
The legal source says they see an “informal conference” being the most likely option because a formal conference would give Boxer, as EPW ranking member of the Senate environment committee, sway over the Democrats appointed to the conference committee, allowing her to choose opponents of S. 697.
Shimkus and Udall at the BPC event suggested the potential for an informal conference committee, in which lawmakers held informal talks ahead of a formal conference and “outlined the differences” in each bill, Udall said. That could mean that the formal conference would go quickly and smoothly, the senator added.
The legal source says lawmakers are likely to take up an informal process in which “the committee heads figure out where the common ground is and put together a legislative package.”
Both bills would overhaul TSCA in order to give EPA new authority to address risks from existing chemicals in the marketplace, and eliminate legal hurdles in current law that have hindered the agency's ability to restrict dangerous chemicals, such as its 1991 failure to ban asbestos.
Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families director Andy Igrejas says in a June 25 blog post that, in general, the “House bill presents a better framework for the final round of policy-making,” and it would be “easiest” if the Senate took it up and made a few targeted amendments. “If the Senate instead took up its own bill it would still be preferable to work off of the House bill and add key provisions from the Senate in any conference.” Igrejas suggests folding the few provisions of the Senate bill he says are preferable, the confidential business information reforms, language making EPA TSCA rules more defensible in court, and differences in fee structures, into the House bill.
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Toxic Ignorance And The Challenge For Congress
Jun 26, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Noah M. Sachs and Matthew Shudtz
The House of Representatives recently passed a bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a law widely viewed both by industry players and environmental groups as outdated and in desperate need of improvement. But that bill, like a similar bill in the Senate, does not go far enough to protect Americans. Both bills tolerate continued toxic ignorance. Both bills will lead to unnecessary delay.
Because TSCA does not require safety testing for the vast majority of chemicals on the market, we have no idea of the true health risks of chemicals used in consumer products, toys, home construction materials, furniture, and other items.
The problem is that while 85,000 chemicals have been introduced into commerce in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has collected comprehensive toxicity information for less than 1,000 chemicals. This head-in-the-sand situation occurs because the existing law does not require chemical companies to test their own products, and EPA must jump through complex procedural hoops when it chooses to require testing.
The new bills are touted as giving EPA more sweeping powers. But neither bill provides the authority, the mandate, or the money that’s needed to protect Americans.
Both bills, for example, require EPA to move through the backlog of untested chemicals and make safety determinations. A safety determination is a ruling by the agency about whether the chemical poses “unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment – a first step for further regulatory action.
But astoundingly, the House bill requires the agency to initiate only 10 chemical evaluations per year “subject to the availability of appropriations,” and the Senate bill requires EPA to make these safety determinations for only 25 chemicals over five years.
Worse yet, the key phrase “unreasonable risk” is left undefined in both bills. What that means is that when EPA does get around to taking regulatory action, it will be challenged in court. We will likely see a decade of litigation before the courts sort out the ambiguity and decide how much risk is “unreasonable.”
Delay has always been the Achilles heel of American chemical regulation under TSCA – one of the reasons the Government Accountability Office has listed these programs as “high risk” and in need of urgent reform. Yet under these new bills, we’ll have to settle in for decades more of waiting for results. EPA could perhaps choose to review more chemicals, but we rarely see agencies moving faster than Congress requires.
The bill that the House passed is particularly problematic because it allows any chemical manufacturer to propose that EPA test its chemicals for safety, and the bill obligates EPA to do the testing that a manufacturer wants.
The result will be that industry will increasingly set the testing priorities for the agency. Instead of EPA being a watchdog for the riskiest chemicals, industry will clamor for a government blessing of the most profitable ones.
To overhaul TSCA for the 21st century, any new legislation must end our ignorance about the safety of chemicals—on a much faster schedule. Five components are essential:
First, TSCA should require chemical manufacturers to develop and share with EPA a basic set of toxicology data for each chemical on the market and should provide a phase-in period for companies to compile the data. Many manufacturers are already developing that information to comply with European Union regulations, and we need the same information here, audited for accuracy.
Second, the safety standard by which EPA reviews chemicals must be robust and account for the unique risks to the most vulnerable members of our society—children, the elderly, and other sensitive groups.
Third, EPA needs a dedicated funding stream to cover its oversight. The agency has suffered a reduced workforce in recent years, and it will need more personnel to review the new data and expeditiously move through the backlog of untested chemicals. Funding can come partially through fees on chemical manufacturers, but more likely it will require additional appropriations.
Fourth, TSCA needs more ambitious deadlines. The new bills take a positive step by putting deadlines into the statute. But the number of assessments required and the leisurely timetable the bill lays out are not suitable to meet the challenge of near total ignorance about the toxics chemicals surrounding us.
Finally, EPA needs the power to take action once it identifies a chemical that endangers public health – including everything from labeling requirements to complete bans. Both bills would hamstring the agency by requiring more studies, findings, and bureaucratic steps before the agency can regulate a chemical.
Now that the House has moved TSCA reform legislation, the action shifts to the Senate. Some are saying this is the best chance in a generation to reform TSCA. These high stakes make it all the more important to get the reform right.
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Broaden EPA Proposed Data-Collection Rule, California Says; EPA Extends Comment Period
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Chemical and other manufacturers that make or use nanoscale chemicals, labor groups and other interested parties will now have another month to comment on a data-collection rule the Environmental Protection Agency proposed in April.
As requested by at least one organization, the Environmental Defense Fund, the EPA will extend the comment period for the proposed rule (RIN 2070-AJ54), an agency press officer told Bloomberg BNA June 26. The agency will publish a Federal Register notice announcing the extension during the week of June 29, the press officer said. Comments, which were due July 6, will have to be submitted by Aug. 5 under the forthcoming notice, the press officer said.
Completing a final rule will continue to challenge the agency as comments already submitted suggest divergent parties will urge the agency to either broaden such a rule or narrow its scope. It has taken the EPA about a decade simply to issue the proposed rule, which a now-defunct advisory committee recommended in 2005.
The delays the EPA has faced include a more than four-year review by the Office of Management and Budget (55 DEN A-7, 3/23/15).
The proposed data-collection rule would require basic information such as the name of the chemical manufacturer or processor, its location and details on the nanoscale chemical it already makes or uses (80 Fed. Reg. 18,330).
The proposed rule also would require chemical manufacturers and processors to report up to 43 physical and chemical properties such as vapor pressure, solubility, flammability, crystal structure, particle size distribution, particle shape, surface area, porosity, surface chemical composition, surface charge and biodegradation rate, according to a form the agency issued as part of the proposal's background documents.
Broader Range of Companies Would Be Affected
In a break from previous data-collection rules, the proposed rule would apply to both chemical manufacturers and chemical processors, Lynn Bergeson, managing partner of Bergeson & Campbell PC, told Bloomberg BNA after the agency posted the proposal online (58 DEN A-4, 3/26/15).
The California Department of Public Health and the Silver Nanotechnology Working Group already have submitted comments on the proposed rule.
Karen Smith, a physician and director of California's Department of Health, urged the EPA to expand the proposed rule's requirements and make certain information companies submit publicly available.
“A future rule should define all nanosized chemical substances as new chemical substances,” the department said.
“It is imperative to generate meaningful data on engineered nanomaterials to enable risk assessment and risk-management decisions,” Smith wrote.
Worker Data Should Be Public
For example, “the location of exposed workers should be publicly available,” the department said.
“Very little is known about the exposed worker population in regard to nanosized chemical substances,” Smith wrote.
Details the department would like to be public include an estimated number of workers exposed and the locations of those exposures.
The agency should not—as it had proposed to do—exclude nanoscale clay, nanoscale zinc oxide or chemical substances manufactured at the nanoscale as part of a film on a surface from its rule, California's health department said.
“Current data are different from that available in 2009, when this rulemaking began, and new data are rapidly emerging,” the department said, adding that new data mean the health and safety concerns the materials may raise aren't yet known.
Group Seeks Exclusion for Nanosilver
The Silver Nanotechnology Working Group, an industry organization that collects data on uses of silver that involve nanotechnologies, asked that nanosilver be excluded from the proposed rule's requirements.
Much of the information the EPA would collect under its proposed program already is collected by the agency's pesticides office, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the working group said.
“Submitting such information again offers no value and imposes significant burdens on industry,” Rosalind Volpe, executive director of the working group, wrote.
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Dominguez, Nominee to be PHMSA Head, Now Serving in Deputy Administrator Role
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is now serving as the agency's deputy administrator.
Marie Therese Dominguez, whom Obama nominated in May to lead the agency, was listed by PHMSA as of June 22 as the deputy administrator. Meanwhile, Vanessa Sutherland, who served as acting deputy administrator for only a few weeks, is back as chief counsel for PHMSA.
These personnel shifts are the latest in the PHMSA's recent leadership upheavals, which some outside the agency have worried could affect its operations or standing in the administration.
The shake-ups come at a particularly crucial time for the agency, as it's mired in legal challenges over its latest rule that governs movement of crude oil by rail and is coming under congressional scrutiny for its delays in promulgating pipeline safety rules (see related story).
PHMSA has had at least three administrators or acting heads of the department in the past year, and its second-level leadership also has seen change (107 DEN A-12, 6/4/15).
Until June 1, former PHMSA Deputy Administrator Timothy Butters served as the agency's acting administrator; however, he left the agency and is taking on a senior advisor role at the Federal Aviation Administration. At that point, Dominguez served as principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army (Civil Works).
But when Butters left, Federal Railroad Administration official Stacy Cummings joined the agency as “interim executive director,” and Sutherland became acting deputy administrator.
Sutherland Awaiting Confirmation for Another Role
The agency also may have to look to replace Sutherland before long. She is awaiting Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approval before the full Senate can confirm her as the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board's chairwoman (78 DEN A-4, 4/23/15).
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California Pipeline Spill Prompts Scrutiny By Congress on Incident, Rulemaking Pace
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Leven
The May pipeline rupture in Santa Barbara County, Calif., that resulted in a spill of more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil has prompted a House committee to investigate that incident and the delayed implementation of certain federal pipeline safety rules.
Eight House Energy and Commerce Committee members wrote to Plains Pipeline LP June 25 for more information regarding the maintenance and integrity of the ruptured pipeline. Six committee members wrote the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Office of Management and Budget June 25, questioning why nearly 20 mandates from a 2012 pipeline safety law are still incomplete.
“With the nation's pipeline system rapidly expanding to meet increased domestic oil and gas production, this incident, combined with previous incidents … reinforces the importance of robust enforcement of our nation's pipeline safety laws,” committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), ranking member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and four others said in their letter.
Citizen groups and others have complained about PHMSA's approach to regulating pipelines, saying it isn't tough enough on industry. Many, however, including PHMSA officials and industry, have expressed their frustration with the slow rulemaking pace for major pipeline safety regulations.
Letter Details
The letter to Greg Armstrong, the chairman and chief executive officer for Plains Pipeline, requested information on the affected pipeline system regarding the design and construction, maintenance and integrity processes, the May incident timeline and the incidents' effects and subsequent plans to address the effects, including how they plan to move “stranded crude” before bringing the affected pipe back online.
Meanwhile, the letter to Stacy Cummings, the interim executive director of PHMSA, and Shaun Donovan, the director of OMB, questioned why 17 mandates from the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 (Pub. L. No. 112-90) still haven't been completed. For example, PHMSA has failed to issue a rule regarding automatic and remote controlled shut-off valves, according to the letter.
The letter to Cummings and Donovan was signed by Upton, Pallone, Reps. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Lois Capps (D-Calif.). The letter to Armstrong was signed by those six members, along with Reps. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.).
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(ACC Mentioned) Barton: EPA Regulations Will Cripple Economy
Jun 26, 2015 | Burleson Star
By Michael James Barton
Ever wonder what ozone smells like? According to Smithsonian Magazine, it's "the sweet, fresh, powerfully evocative smell of fresh rain."
That familiar scent is a combination of plant oils, bacteria and ozone. But when highly concentrated, it can actually be a pollutant. That's why the United States has been working to reduce "ground level" ozone for decades.
But the Environmental Protection Agency refuses to write implementation guidelines for its last ozone regulations, which it released in 2008. And instead of clarifying what actions it expects states to follow, the EPA has introduced new regulations that could permanently handicap American businesses and undercut the country's incremental economic recovery.
Strange that the EPA has time to write more regulations on ground ozone, but not the time to implement existing regulations on the exact same matter.
Major precursors of ozone production are industrial emissions, electrical providers, vehicle emissions, gasoline vapors and chemical solvents. Ozone molecules close to the Earth's surface can contribute to smog and can cause serious health problems, chiefly lung damage.
Ozone emissions are notoriously difficult to control. Indeed, the United States is still struggling to lower emissions to meet the ozone standard the EPA put in place in 2008.
However, the EPA is determined to curb ozone emissions still further before even knowing the results of the 2008 regulations that await implementation.The agency recently proposed new regulations that would lower the amount of ozone permitted in ground-level air from 75 parts per billion down to between 65 ppb to 70 ppb.
The cost of this rule change to energy producers will be astronomical. The EPA itself concedes that the compliance will cost upwards of $15 billion a year.
And that might be an understatement. A study by the National Association of Manufacturers found that this ozone regulation would cut U.S. GDP by $1.7 trillion from 2017 to 2040, or about $140 billion a year. Researchers also found that it would destroy nearly 1.4 million jobs annually.
Already, the average manufacturer pays about $35,000 in regulatory compliance costs per employee per year. These added costs would be a huge new hit.
These cost upticks will also discourage future investments. According to the American Chemistry Council, 211 shale-related energy projects, totaling $135 billion in capital investment, would likely get shuttered if these new ozone standards are implemented.
Even President Obama has acknowledged that the ozone standards can go too far. In 2011, he halted the EPA from pushing forward new emissions rules that would have cost the country $90 billion per year.
These new rules would choke this industry and throw thousands – if not millions – of jobs into jeopardy.
What's more, these ozone rules are unnecessary. The quality of the air Americans breathe has been steadily improving over the past 30 years. Indeed, since just 2000, lower ozone levels have improved air quality by 18 percent. And carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides emissions have dropped 42 percent and 41 percent, respectively.
These new ozone regulations are gratuitous and will cost American jobs. For the economy's sake, they need to be shelved at once. And doing so may afford the EPA some time to implement existing ozone regulations that are overdue by seven years and counting. -
Don't Lift Crude Oil Export Ban, Senate Democrats Urge President Obama
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Lifting the 40-year-old crude oil export ban would harm consumers, businesses and national security, 13 Senate Democrats said in a letter to President Barack Obama.
“We are concerned that lifting the crude oil export ban could harm U.S. consumers, businesses and our national security and we urge you to pay close attention to these adverse impacts that could result from any efforts to repeal or weaken this longstanding U.S. law,” they wrote in a June 26 letter led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
The letter comes after Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced legislation (S. 1312) that would repeal the export ban. Murkowski may fold the measure into a broader committee energy bill she is writing.
“Repealing or weakening the crude oil export ban could harm our national security,” the letter said. “Despite the production gains we have seen in recent years, the United States still imports roughly 5 million barrels of oil every day from foreign nations.”
Lifting the trade prohibition, which was put in place in the wake of the 1970s Arab oil embargo, is supported by companies such as Hess Corp., Marathon Petroleum Corp. and ConocoPhillips, which argue it no longer makes sense given record U.S. oil production.
Opponents include refiners such as Alon USA, Monroe Energy, PBF Energy and Philadelphia Energy Solutions, which are concerned that changing the law could increase domestic oil prices, decreasing their profits.
The letter also was signed by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Robert Casey (D-Pa.).
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Democrats To Obama: Resist Oil Exports
Jun 26, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Thirteen Senate Democrats wrote to President Obama Friday asking him to resist calls from Republicans, oil producers and others to ease restrictions on crude oil exports.
The Democrats, led by Sen. Ed Markey (Mass.), predicted that changing the 40-year-old ban on exports would hurt consumers, businesses and the country’s national security.“Repealing the crude export ban is opposed by a broad coalition, including the AFL-CIO, the United Steelworkers, environmental organizations and domestic refiners,” the Democrats wrote.
While calls from a wide range of business groups and their allies have grown louder and louder to ease export restrictions, especially as the industry is suffering from historically low prices, the Democrats are holding tough.
Their letter follows arguments from export proponents who say that the very same people and concerns would benefit from opening the United States’s oil market to the world. Those interests have argued that if Congress cannot completely repeal the ban, Obama should exercise his authority to approve exports to specific areas.
But the Democrats told Obama to ignore those arguments. They said that crude exports could make the United States more dependent on foreign oil while raising energy prices for domestic businesses and consumers by billions of dollars.
“We are concerned that lifting the crude oil export ban could harm U.S. consumers, businesses and our national security and we urge you to pay close attention to these adverse impacts that could result from any efforts to repeal or weaken this longstanding U.S. law,” they wrote.
An ad hoc coalition of oil producers that supports exports said the Democrats’ letter does not match with research on the subject.
“The senators’ views are completely at odds with well-established and well-settled fact regarding the relationship between domestic gasoline prices and repealing the crude export ban,” George Baker, executive director of Producers for American Crude Oil Exports, said in a statement.
“Allowing crude oil exports from the U.S. will put downward pressure on domestic gasoline prices — not a matter of opinion but the inexorable result of the laws of supply and demand,” Baker continued.
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Senate Democrats Warn Obama Against Easing Crude Export Ban
Jun 26, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
Thirteen Senate Democrats today emerged as a bloc against ending the four-decade-old crude export ban, warning President Barack Obama that allowing overseas sales of U.S. oil would put refinery expansions at risk and drive gasoline prices higher.
The Democrats wrote to Obama as the oil industry and its allies on Capitol Hill escalate their long-running campaign to roll back 1970s-era limits on crude exports. The American Petroleum Institute vowed this week that victory on the issue is within reach, but Republicans remain split on whether to pursue a legislative remedy for oil producers seeking access to foreign markets, as well as the timing and scope of such legislation.
In addition to gasoline-price concerns, the Democrats pointed to a Government Accountability Office report that raised the specter of financially imperiled refineries in the Northeast and Midwest. “[W]e urge you to pay close attention to these adverse impacts that could result from any efforts to repeal or weaken this longstanding U.S. law,” the senators wrote.
Signing on to the letter were longtime export critics Sens. Ed Markey and Robert Menendez, as well as Sens. Barbara Boxer, Sheldon Whitehouse, Patty Murray, Jeff Merkley, Elizabeth Warren, Bob Casey, Tammy Baldwin, Jack Reed, Mazie Hirono, Ron Wyden, and Al Franken. -
Sabine Pass Expansion Project to Export LNG Gets Energy Department Authorization
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
The Energy Department authorized an expansion project by Sabine Pass Liquefaction LLC, a subsidiary of Cheniere Energy Inc., to export liquefied natural gas to non-free trade agreement countries.
The Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Cameron Parish, La., is permitted to export additional volumes of LNG up to 1.38 billion standard cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas for 20 years, according to the department's June 26 order.
The facility already received one previous LNG export authorizations to export 2.2 Bcf/d of natural gas in 2012. With the latest approval, Sabine Pass is permitted to export a total of 3.58 Bcf/d for 20 years.
“We have been expecting the non-FTA approval and it now takes approved non-FTA volumes to 9.96 Bcf/D by our reckoning,” Christi Tezak, managing director of research at ClearView Energy Partners LLC, told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail June 25.
To date, the department has authorized seven orders permitting LNG facilities to export to non-FTA countries.
Also, there are five export facilities that are under construction that have been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Sabine Pass will be the first of those facilities to export domestic LNG, with expectations to begin LNG shipments in the third quarter of 2018, according to Cheniere's website.
Cheniere didn't respond to a Bloomberg BNA request for comment by deadline.
FERC Actions
In April, FERC granted the third stage of Sabine Pass Liquefaction LLC's expansion of its trains and facilities for the liquefaction and export of LNG(67 DEN A-13, 4/8/15).
The Sierra Club requested a rehearing of this FERC approval, which FERC denied in a June 23 order. This cleared the last hurdle for the Energy Department to issue its authorization of the Sabine Pass facility, Tezak said in a June 24 analyst report.
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DOE Approves Sabine Pass LNG Expansion Plan
Jun 26, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The Department of Energy today approved a proposed expansion of the Sabine Pass natural gas export facility, now under construction in Louisiana, to ship up to 1.38 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day of additional LNG to nations with which the U.S. does not have free trade pacts.
DOE approved Sabine Pass’ initial export bid, for up to 2.2 Bcf of LNG per day, in 2012. With the new authorization, Sabine Pass Liquefaction is authorized to export LNG up to the equivalent of 3.58 bcf per day of natural gas for a period of 20 years. -
Exxon Mobil, BP Suspend Canadian Arctic Exploratory Drilling Program in Beaufort Sea
Jun 26, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Chester Dawson
An oil industry consortium including Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC on Friday suspended its Canadian arctic exploration program in the Beaufort Sea, citing insufficient time to begin test drilling before its lease expires in 2020.
The move represents a setback for oil companies active in Canada’s arctic waters and follows a similar decision by Chevron Corp. in December to halt its own exploratory drilling program in the Beaufort Sea. Those projects have been stymied by regulatory hurdles and some of the world’s highest extraction costs.
Imperial Oil Ltd. , Exxon Mobil’s Canadian affiliate, informed federal regulators in Canada of its decision to suspend its Beaufort Sea exploratory program on Friday and said it would seek to have its current lease extended retroactively to 16 years.
“If approved, the extension would provide sufficient time to undertake the necessary technical studies and develop the technology and processes to support responsible development in the Beaufort Sea,” Imperial Oil said in a letter to Canada’s National Energy Board.
The Arctic holds billions of barrels of untapped oil reserves, but offshore-drilling costs there are among the highest in the world because of its remote location and severe weather. The Imperial-led consortium has been planning to drill a well as deep as 6 miles beneath the floor of the Beaufort Sea, one of the deepest offshore wells in the world and the deepest by far in the Arctic.
The leases where the proposed well would be drilled are located about 110 miles off the coast of the Northwest Territories town of Tuktoyaktuk. Imperial, Exxon Mobil and BP obtained leases for the right to drill in 2007 and 2008. The three companies have since combined their Beaufort programs into an Imperial-led joint venture called Imperial Oil Resources Ventures Ltd.
Imperial and Chevron have asked the NEB, Canada’s national energy regulator, to ease rules designed to prevent undersea well blowouts such as the one involved in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In Canadian Arctic waters, operators must have standby capacity ready to stop a blowout by drilling a relief well within the same season. But wells in the Beaufort Sea need to be drilled so deep it will require multiple seasons to complete, so license holders have sought an exemption allowing alternative measures.
The NEB has said it is reviewing those requests.
The Arctic holds about one-third of the world’s untapped natural gas and an estimated 13% of as-yet undiscovered crude, or roughly 90 billion barrels of oil. More than three-quarters of those deposits are offshore, according to U.S. Geological Survey estimates.
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BP, Exxon Suspend Canadian Arctic Exploration Plan
Jun 26, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Nick Juliano
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a group of oil companies including BP and Exxon Mobil is dropping plans to explore in the Canadian Arctic because they fear too little time remains to drill offshore test wells before their lease expires in 2020.
BP, Exxon Mobil and Imperial Oil Ltd., Exxon’s Canadian affiliate, obtained the leases in 2007 and 2008 to drill wells in the Beaufort Sea about 110 miles offshore from the Northwest Territories. The companies have combined their operations into an Imperial-led joint venture.
Imperial told regulators of plans to suspend operations Friday, the Journal reported, and asked Canadian energy regulators to retroactively extend their lease.
Imperial and Chevron, which announced in December it would suspend exploratory drilling in the Beaufort, also are asking Canadian regulators to ease rules meant to avoid well blowouts like the one that struck BP’s well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, according to the Journal. Canada’s National Energy Board has said it is reviewing the requests. -
Domestic Oil, Gas Boom Changes U.S. Security Posture -- Experts
Jun 26, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Ariel Wittenberg
America's oil and gas production boom has shifted the nation's energy security posture from defensive to offensive, experts said today at the Center for a New American Security's annual conference.
Before the advent of hydraulic fracturing, U.S. energy security efforts focused mainly on maintaining the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve and ensuring energy diversity, said Elizabeth Rosenberg, a senior fellow at the center. That's one reason the Department of Energy was once so invested in carbon recapture and other clean coal technologies.
While research and development of those technologies is ongoing, they are not as critical to national defense, she said.
"The focus on trying to make clean coal work used to be a key plank of our energy security strategy, but now we have this abundant tsunami wave of energy in the United States," Rosenberg said.
Now, America is at a crossroads to determine whether it will keep its oil for itself or export crude as a way to ensure security not just at home but abroad, as well, said David Goldwyn, former special envoy and coordinator for international energy at the State Department.
"The basis for national power has historically been a strong military, a strong economy and a global training network," he said. "The question is, do we see our booming energy market as a new pillar we can leverage for foreign policy, or do we dissipate this boom by inaction and neglect?"
Even as U.S. reliance on foreign oil declines, Goldwyn noted that the globe still relies on oil from the Middle East, so supply disruptions in that region still affect the United States.
"An enormous amount of oil comes out of the Middle East," he said. "Even though oil from Saudi Arabia doesn't come here, if there is a disruption in Saudi production, we will feel it here at home."
Cynthia Quarterman, former administrator of the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, agreed.
"When we are talking about Russia and Iran and Iraq, all of our biggest national security concerns today largely come down to energy security," she said.
Goldwyn advocated for crude exports, saying they would ease "every national security concern we have," from Russian aggression in Ukraine to the Islamic State group.
But Goldwyn stopped short of advocating for the reduction of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Instead, he said, the United States could sell stakes of the reserve to its allies so it could be on standby to help NATO or the European Union as well as the United States.
As America's energy posture has changed globally, former Department of Energy Undersecretary Bud Albright noted, the nation's electric grid also faces significant threats from cyberattacks and physical destruction.
"In Pearl Harbor, we were such sitting ducks; we had our ships amassed in one harbor, making them easy targets for the Japanese," he said. "When I think of our large transformers we have across the country, I think about how easy it would be to get in there and do damage in much the same way."
Cyberattacks pose an even greater danger, in part because the risk is unknown, he said.
"Most in the utility business think if they can handle a Hurricane Katrina, they can handle a disruption from a cyberattack, but the two are not alike," he said. "You can predict a natural disaster; you know when it has ended, you know it will not continue. In a cyberattack, you don't always know who hit you or why, and you don't know the extent of the damage right away."
He said more sharing between the government and industry is necessary to help utilities to prepare for attacks.
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Greens Intensify Fight For Higher Energy Royalties
Jun 26, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Progressives and environmentalists are upping the pressure on the Obama administration to increase the fees that energy companies pay to extract oil, natural gas and coal from the federal government’s land.
The advocates and their Democratic allies in Congress say they’re out to ensure taxpayers get a fair return for the minerals the government owns, while better protecting the environment and being fair to other industries.The coalition pushing for higher rates can now count Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton as one of its allies after she highlighted the issue earlier this month as she formally launched her campaign.
Clinton said at her New York City speech that she would push for “additional fees and royalties from fossil fuel extraction to protect the environment,” with the money going to clean and renewable energy expenses. Campaign spokesman Ian Sams declined to comment further on the policies.
The Interior Department is beginning to work on several fronts to change fees and lease terms.
“A lot of it is driven by the need to create a level playing field among extractive industries on taxpayer-owned lands,” said Matt Lee-Ashley, director for public lands at the Center for American Progress.
Energy companies push back against the proposals, saying they would add unnecessary costs and burdens, causing drillers and miners to take their business to private or state lands.
But to the progressives, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees most of the federal land hosting fossil fuel extraction, is selling itself short.
“The BLM is the outlier with remarkably low royalty rates, which just means hundreds of millions of dollars left on the table,” Lee-Ashley said.
Some taxpayer groups such as Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Project for Government Oversight support the cause as well.
The BLM charges 12.5 percent royalty rates for onshore oil, natural gas and underground coal, and 8 percent for surface coal.
Some states, such as Texas, charge as much as 25 percent royalties for extraction on their public lands, and even the federal government charges 18.75 percent for offshore oil and gas.
“You can make the argument to the American taxpayer that … the companies that are benefitting the most from these rather low-cost and permissive processes, that they need to pay,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the BLM.
“It’s kind of ironic that some of the more conservative states … are the ones that are at least 6, 7, 8 points above what the federal government charges,” he continued.
The Wilderness Society’s main concern is that artificially low rates disadvantage other uses for public land, such as recreation.
“The value of these lands has shifted since these rates were put into place in 1920,” said Joshua Mantell, public lands policy director at the Wilderness Society. “The recreation economy has grown by leaps and bounds in ways that were not apparent way back then.”
Energy extraction can also greatly reduce the value of lands for recreational purposes, Mantell said.
But climate change is another major issue for the progressive groups, who argue that there is a contradiction in the Obama administration trying to cut greenhouse gases at the same time as it is giving away carbon-intensive fossil fuels at a bargain.
For example, Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, the vast majority of which is BLM-owned, accounts for about 40 percent of the United States’ mined coal, and about one-tenth of its carbon emissions.
“It’s largely overlooked in federal energy policy,” said Lee-Ashley. “The coal policy is lagging behind national energy and environmental goals.”
Grijalva said the administration’s policies need to pay closer attention to the climate impact of fossil fuels.
The BLM gathered comments recently for potential changes to oil and gas fee and lease rules, and said it will undertake a similar process for coal. Elsewhere in the Interior Department, officials are trying to prevent coal companies from selling minerals to their own subsidiaries to bring down the costs of the product and avoid higher royalty payments.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell named the reforms as a priority in a wide-ranging March speech on energy development, saying changes to rules “should ensure American taxpayers are getting maximum benefit from their resources.”
But energy companies think the Obama administration’s efforts are misguided.
“It boils down to a straight business decision,” said Jason Hutt, who represents energy companies as a partner at Bracewell and Giuliani. “Oil and gas developers have a business decision to make, whether they want to allocate their development resources to extracting minerals on federal land or doing it on private lands.”
He said that with higher fees, drillers would stop bidding for leases or pay lower bids, reducing the amount of money in the federal coffers.
“It’s a pretty simple adjustment for them to make, because there’s no difference in the resource they’re trying to extract,” Hutt said, adding that other federal rules, like new hydraulic fracturing standards, make drilling more expensive.
“These changes could further disincentivize leasing of federal lands,” the American Petroleum Institute wrote in its July 19 comment.
Among supporters of increased fees, there’s hope that Clinton will carry on the cause even if Obama runs out of time for the biggest reforms.
“Our hope is that the Obama administration moves forward with a lot of this, and that whoever the next administration is that comes in would take a lot of these reforms and modernization, and continue to move the ball forward,” said Mantell.
Grijalva, who has endorsed Clinton, said he was “very glad” to hear her mention the issue in her campaign speech. He added that he would hope the Clinton advisers who are most passionate about the issue would get top jobs at the Interior Department if she is ultimately elected.
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Few Surprises Seen in Vote on Legislation By Whitfield to Impede EPA Clean Power Plan
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Even among the handful of Republicans and Democrats who bucked their parties in a June 24 House vote on legislation to impede the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to complete its Clean Power Plan, observers told Bloomberg BNA there were few surprising votes.
Eight Democrats voted in favor of the Ratepayer Protection Act (H.R. 2042), while four Republicans opposed the measure. Many of those Democrats had backed similar legislation in the past, while the Republicans had either opposed measures like the bill from Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) or publicly indicated support for action on climate change.
The Democrats backing the bill included four co-sponsors: Reps. Sanford Bishop (Ga.), Brad Ashford (Neb.), Terri Sewell (Ala.) and Collin Peterson (Minn.), along with Reps. Andre Carson (Ind.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Ann Kirkpatrick (Ariz.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.).
Republicans opposing the measure were Reps. Chris Gibson (N.Y.), Bob Dold (Ill.), Carlos Curbelo (Fla.) and Frank LoBiondo (N.J.).
Whitfield's bill, which passed on a 247 to 180 vote, would allow states to delay compliance with the proposed Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33) until all legal challenges are exhausted or opt out entirely if a state's governor finds implementing the rule would increase electricity rates or affect reliability .
‘Deeply Disappointed.'
Sara Chieffo, vice president of government affairs with the League of Conservation Voters, told Bloomberg BNA her group was “deeply disappointed” with Kirkpatrick and Sinema, both of whom had voted against a similar bill from Whitfield in March 2014.
“The main surprises from where I sit were Congresswoman Kirkpatrick and Congresswoman Sinema backtracking from their previous support” for action to address climate change, Chieffo said.
Sinema released a statement June 24 stating she supported the Whitfield bill so that “unreasonable regulations” wouldn't adversely affect her constituents.
“The EPA's proposed rule would hit Arizona harder than almost any other state,” Sinema said. “Today's reasonable bipartisan legislation gives Arizona control over our electricity system, protects jobs and keeps electric bills affordable for businesses and hard-working Arizona families.”
Beyond the four co-sponsors of the Ratepayer Protection Act, Chieffo noted that Cuellar had backed previous efforts to impede EPA rulemakings and said Carson may have been swayed by utilities in Indiana supporting the bill.
Bishop Raises Concerns
Bishop, an original co-sponsor of the bill, was the lone Democrat to speak in favor of the legislation on the House floor June 24 using language more frequently heard from Republican lawmakers.
“I have serious concerns that the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed clean power rule will be a vast and unprecedented regulatory overreach, resulting in high energy costs, loss of jobs, and a disruption in the states' ability to generate, transmit, distribute and use electricity,” Bishop said. “I urge my colleagues to support this bill to ensure that ratepayers as well as our nation's economy are protected from an overzealous EPA.”
Chieffo said her organization wasn't especially surprised, but pleased, that freshmen Republicans Dold and Curbelo refused to back efforts to impede the EPA rules.
In a statement, Dold's office said allowing states to opt out of complying with the Clean Power Plan would “create an inconsistent application of federal regulations across the country.”
Dold Called Champion for Conservation Efforts
“As an avid outdoorsman and Eagle Scout, Congressman Dold has long been a champion for conservation efforts and protecting the environment,” James Slepian, chief of staff to Dold, told Bloomberg BNA. “This legislation was inconsistent with what he views as sound policy, which is why he opposed it.”
Curbelo made headlines earlier in 2015 for describing action on climate change as “vital,” and his office defended his vote against Whitfield's legislation in a statement.
“The congressman is supportive of efforts to keep our air clean and safe,” Roy Schultheis, chief of staff to Curbelo, told Bloomberg BNA. “The Ratepayer Protection Act would allow for extended time to comply with this Rule, which he supports. However this bill also provides each state with the option to opt out of the Rule, negating the overall goal of reducing national carbon emissions.”
Both Gibson and LoBiondo have rejected previous efforts from Whitfield to block the EPA regulations. An aide to LoBiondo said his June 24 vote was “consistent” with previous years and said the office would “let the vote speak for itself.”
Republican Opposition Is Rare
Republicans voting for pro-environmental legislation have been few and far between in recent memory. Just eight supported the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, commonly known as the Waxman-Markey bill, to address climate change.
Three of those remain in the House, but LoBiondo is the only of one of them to vote against the Whitfield bill. Republican Reps. Chris Smith (N.J.) and Dave Reichert (Wash.) backed the attempt to undermine the EPA regulations.
Democratic representatives Bishop, Carson, Cuellar and Peterson backed the cap and trade legislation in 2009, while Kirkpatrick opposed it.
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Jun 29, 2015 | The Hill - Contributors
By Former Rep. Larry Combest (R-Texas)
The EPA just finalized one of the biggest land grabs in American history.
Under the Clean Water Rule, all "tributaries" will be categorically regulated by the federal government. Tributaries — which quite literally mean anything with a bed, banks and an "ordinary high water mark" — are now under federal control. Not my words; the Environment Protection Agency's (EPA). This includes ditches and less.
Under the same rule, the word "adjacent" is stretched from the Supreme Court's definition of actually "abutting" what most Americans regard as a real water of the United States to anything "neighboring," "contiguous," or "bordering" a real water, terms which are again stretched to include whole floodplains and riparian areas. Floodplains are typically based on a 100-year flood, but a separate regulation would stretch that to a 500-year flood.And, finally, under the rule, the EPA cynically throws in a catch-all "significant nexus" test meant as a shout out to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in Rapanos v. United States when, in fact, the EPA's rule makes a mockery of Kennedy's opinion and of no fewer than three Supreme Court rulings.
Under the three approaches, no land or "water" is beyond the reach of the federal government, never mind the traditional understanding of private property or state and local control of land use.
Farmers, ranchers, dairymen and others, on and off the farm, are in a widespread panic with the finalization of this rule because not only does it allow the EPA onto their land, but it throws the gate wide open to environmental group-led citizen lawsuits that promise to carry the rule's reach beyond what even the EPA had envisioned. That is because even though the EPA may have intended to show some restraint in the exercise of its newfound powers, the rule itself is virtually boundless and citizen suits are controlled only by the rule. This rule carries with it fines under the law to the tune of $37,500 per day, but comes with absolutely no clarity for farmers as to what side of the law they are now on.
I started work as an legislative assistant covering agriculture for Sen. John Tower (R) of Texas back in 1971 before serving nearly 20 years in Congress, and I have never seen a bigger land grab by the federal government than the Clean Water Rule.
Like Tower, and like most Texans serving in Congress today, I was consistently ranked as one of the most conservative members in Congress. And that is why it appalls me that instead of libertarian groups announcing that their No. 1 objective is to overturn this rule and protect the private property rights of every American citizen — which is at the very heart of a free society — these groups were reported on June 24 in The Washington Post as saying that their No. 1 objective is, of all things, killing U.S. sugar policy.
No wonder rank-and-file conservative Americans are so disgusted. Of all of the maladies in government and society today, the only thing that these groups in Washington, purporting to carry the conservative banner and armed with billions of dollars, can muster is an attack on farmers. What is their next act? To disappear?
Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), one of the most committed conservatives in the House of Representatives, has introduced legislation — backed by conservative groups that make decisions based on principle rather than a rich donor base — that proposes to do what any conservative American would do. Yoho's bill would zero out U.S. sugar policy when America's biggest foreign sugar competitors do the same. Any real conservative and any ordinary American would reasonably wonder if that's really too much to ask of our trading partners. The Yoho bill should be the model legislation for all of American agriculture, which is hit hard every day by high and rising foreign subsidies, tariffs and other barriers to trade imposed by countries like communist China.
Yet some libertarian groups reject this commonsense approach and look instead for new ways to assail a policy that, in the case of sugar, did not cost taxpayers a dime last year, will not cost taxpayers a dime this year and is projected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cost zero dollars for the next decade. The same policy has been demonstrated to have resulted in lower costs on the grocery shelf than what foreign consumers pay.
That's why these libertarian groups were jubilant to read the news in The Washington Post that an agribusiness may be inviting commodities to join in on the attack against one of their own, with the lead of one of these libertarian groups glibly predicting that this division would bring about the fall of all U.S. farm policy. Of course, tragically, such tactics would obviously imperil important farm policies for all of America's farmers and ranchers, including those whom agribusiness depends on for business. What a dangerously shortsighted strategy.
Together, these libertarian groups and this particular agribusiness criticize the political involvement of farm families who participate in the very process they vociferously argue every citizen has an inviolable First Amendment right to exercise, and even when their combined political power and spending would swamp a boat like sugar's.
What is sad is that this enormous fortune that they sit upon is not being used to join in battle for things as important as the defense of private property — an absolutely essential cornerstone of American freedom — but is instead being squandered to wage war on the backbone of a great country: farmers and ranchers.
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New York Plan Would Cut Emissions 40 Percent by 2030, 80 Percent by 2050
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
New York state has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030, according to the 2015 New York State Energy Plan.
The plan, released June 25, said the 40 percent reduction would come from the power sector, transportation, buildings and industry. The plan also sets a goal of reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent over 1990 levels by 2050.
The plan sets a goal of obtaining half of the state's electricity generation by 2030 from solar, wind, hydropower, biomass and other renewable sources.
In addition, the plan's goal is to reduce energy consumption in buildings 23 percent by 2030, which would equal 600 trillion British thermal units.
Conor Bambrick, air and energy director for Environmental Advocates of New York, said the goals represent “an aggressive plan” that will “operationalize” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's (D) commitment to reducing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.
“It is crucial to New York's economic well-being and quality of life that we find ways in the future to provide electricity that costs less and is cleaner, while ensuring grid reliability,” Arthur “Jerry” Kremer, chairman of the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance, said in a statement.
“To get there, we need to attract large capital investments without the use of direct or hidden subsidies, which are extremely burdensome to New York consumers and small businesses,” he said.
The alliance is comprised largely of business groups and labor unions in the New York City region.
The energy plan was released by the New York State Energy Planning Board, a state panel that includes the leaders of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Public Service Commission and other agencies.
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Alabama Power to Cut Emissions in Proposed Decree
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Electric utility Alabama Power would upgrade or retire some coal-fired power units while investing $1.5 million in electric-vehicle charging stations, under proposed consent decree revisions that the Environmental Protection Agency announced June 25 (United States v. Ala. Power Co., N.D. Ala., No. 2:01-cv-00152, proposed consent decree revisions, 6/25/15). The revisions are aimed at reducing air pollution from three Alabama Power plants, particularly sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, according to the EPA. The agency and the company jointly filed a stipulation June 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, proposing modifications to a 2006 consent decree that addressed alleged Clean Air Act violations. The modifications set emissions limits and require emissions-control equipment at certain Alabama Power plants. The proposal also calls for switching some coal-fired units to run on natural gas and retiring other coal-fired units. The company also is required to pay a $100,000 civil penalty. The proposed modifications will be published in the Federal Register and are subject to a public comment period before being finalized. The proposed revisions to the consent decree are at http://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/document/USA_v_AL_Power_Company_et_al_Docket_No_201cv00152_ND_Ala_Jan_12_2/1.
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California Carbon Offset Protocol Approved For Methane-Reducing Rice Cultivation Work
Jun 29, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
The California Air Resources Board approved a new carbon offset protocol for methane-reducing rice cultivation projects, opening the door for rice growers to generate and sell compliance-grade credits under the state's greenhouse gas emissions trading program.
At its June 26 meeting in Sacramento, CARB also expanded its existing forestry protocol to allow forest management projects in parts of Alaska outside of national forests to generate carbon offsets and made technical changes to the protocol.
Both actions update rules governing California's cap-and-trade program, which allow regulated entities to fulfill up to 8 percent of their annual compliance obligations with offset credits to help contain the costs of the program. CARB's protocols prescribe the methodology required for quantifying the greenhouse gas emission reduction benefits of the projects.
Approval of the rice cultivation protocol brings to six the types of offset projects that can generate tradeable credits. CARB previously approved protocols for two types of forestry projects, for projects that reduce livestock-related methane emissions, for projects that destroy emissions of ozone-depleting substances and that capture and destroy methane at certain mining operations (37 DEN A-26, 2/25/15).
CARB said the carbon offset protocols used by California and Quebec, which joined the cap-and-trade program Jan. 1, are the most stringent in the world. The projects are subject to annual audits by accredited, third-party verifiers and CARB staff, the agency said.
Each credit issued is equal to a metric ton of carbon monoxide.
First Crop-Based Protocol
The rice cultivation protocol is the first crop-based carbon offset protocol, which paves the way for a nutrient management protocol to reduce nitrous oxides from fertilizer, Robert Parkhurst, Environmental Defense Fund's director of Agriculture Greenhouse Gas Markets, said at the public hearing preceding CARB's governing board vote.
Agricultural lands are an uncapped sector.
“This is a huge milestone,” Parkhurst said. “Rice growers can now generate additional sources of revenue without sacrificing yields, and the conservation measures they implement will reduce methane emissions and protect important wildlife habitat.”
Conventional rice cultivation practices serve as artificial wetlands, attracting wildlife, but they enhance the production of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
According to CARB, the rice cultivation protocol uses a de-nitrification decomposition model to quantify greenhouse gas emissions and promotes practices that maintain yields and still preserve the ecological benefits of rice farming.
Projects in California, Other States Eligible
CARB Chairman Mary D. Nichols said the rice cultivation offset is designed to be used in California and other key rice-growing states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas.
In California, rice growers who switch from wet seeding to dry seeding and drain fields early and reduce the amount of rice straw left to decompose in water could receive offset credits.
Growers in the mid-South rice growing region could earn credits by cyclical wetting and drying of fields during the growing season and early drainage in preparation for harvest.
The growers could then sell the credits to the entities regulated under the state's cap-and-trade program.
While testimony at the public hearing was supportive of the rice cultivation protocol and expanding the forestry protocol from beyond the 48 states, over two dozen representatives from organizations involved in developing and certifying carbon offset projects, like the American Carbon Registry and Climate Action Reserve, and regulated companies, like Chevron Corp. and Pacific Gas & Electric Co., took issue with some of the proposed revisions to CARB's U.S. forestry protocol.
Revisions to Forest Protocol Raises Concern
A key concern was proposed language to clarify and align requirements for even-aged management of forests with the California Forest Practice Rule and update the calculation for minimum baseline levels.
The changes would discourage and limit the ability of out-of-state forest landowners to develop qualified offset projects, Robert Hrubes, a state-certified verifier of the forest carbon offset projects, said.
Ralph Moran, a senior director of government and public affairs at BP, said the revisions have the potential to cut the future supply of offsets by between 40 percent and 60 percent.
In the end, Nichols and other members of the governing board passed a resolution approving the revisions but also directing staff to form a technical working group to help in the development of a planned guidance document to accompany the protocol.
“We need to bring some closure to these items,” Nichols said of the concerns lodged about the proposed revisions. “Clearly clarification” is needed and should be spelled out in writing, she said.
Most important is that the protocols need to be enforceable and that they can demonstrate that the emissions reductions of the projects are “real and verifiable,” she said.
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Gates To Invest $2b In Clean Energy, Rejects Fossil Fuel Divestment
Jun 29, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Katherine Ling
Bill Gates today said he plans to invest $2 billion over the next five years in advanced clean technology to "bend the curve" in efforts to fight climate change.
The current versions of green technology work only at certain times and are too expensive, the billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft said in an interview with the Financial Times. There must be a significant investment in clean energy research and development to create "zero-carbon" energy -- including tens of billions from governments, Gates said.
"We've got a little stuck on inventions that can take us up to 30 percent of the solution. But because they're subsidized, they're not economically viable," he said.
"They'll take something like solar PVs [photovoltaic panels] and say when the sun is shining that daytime energy will replace hydrocarbons. That is completely uninteresting, because you still want to heat apartments at night."
He added, "There's no battery technology that's even close" to helping provide 24-hour reliable power.
Gates said he has already invested about $1 billion directly in about 15 startups and indirectly in 30 more. "Over the next five years, there's a good chance that will double," he said.
He stressed the importance of high-risk technologies that will truly make a difference in cutting carbon, mentioning fuels from sunlight or "solar chemical" power and high-altitude wind generation -- capturing the jet stream. Gates has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in TerraPower, a company developing a next-generation nuclear reactor that runs on depleted uranium and produces less waste.
As co-chairman of the American Energy Innovation Council, Gates and several other prominent CEOs called on the U.S. government to roughly triple the R&D budget to ensure future economic competitiveness, national security and environmental protection, compared with the current $5 billion annual investment that is about half of what the nation spends on potato chips and tortilla chips (Greenwire, Feb. 24).
More efforts should be focused on research and technology because "sciences change the game," in comparison with the movement to get investment funds to dump fossil fuel holdings, Gates said.
"I don't see a direct path between divesting and solving climate change," he said. "I think it's wonderful that students care and now the pope cares. But that energy of caring, I think you need to direct it towards something that solves the problem."
He also said there should be better incentives for energy companies to take more risks and develop innovative technology, similar to the pharmaceuticals industry.
"They're supposed to provide power at a certain bid cost," Gates said. "Would they get rewarded if they had a breakthrough in technology? Not much."
He compared the clean energy space with that of the software industry 40 years ago, with winners far from clear.
"If I came and talked to you about software in the late 1970s, I would tell you: 'Hey, somebody's going to make a lot of money. Now there's a ton of software companies whose names will never be remembered. ... If you happened to pick Microsoft, Apple or Google, you would have made lots of money," he said.
Gates' comments come a week after the White House announced $4 billion in mission-driven funding commitments to boost early-stage clean energy technology and the creation of several federal programs to support such investment, including a Clean Energy Impact Investment Center supported by the Energy Department's national laboratories and expertise (E&E Daily, June 16).
Despite numerous calls for larger R&D budgets and general support for research on both sides of the aisle, federal spending does not look to be changing much -- at least through next year.
The House passed a fiscal 2016 DOE budget at the beginning of May that would provide $10.3 billion for science and energy programs at the agency, a slight boost over fiscal 2015 enacted levels, with an increase for nuclear and fossil fuel research and cuts to clean energy programs (Greenwire, May 1).
Next year's energy funding bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee last month would cut almost $790 million, or 29 percent, for DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy compared with the White House's requested level (Greenwire, May 21).
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'Waters' Rule Seen Creating Prospects, Challenges For Wetlands Mitigation
Jun 26, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
EPA's final Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule could boost creation of mitigation banks used to offset damage to wetlands and streams from permitted activities while posing challenges for how to manage compensatory mitigation under the water law, sources say, because the rule is likely to drive more CWA permitting in regions that have previously seen scant mitigation.
In particular, the rule could increase interest in stream mitigation banks and other options because it would formally extend CWA jurisdiction to all "tributaries" or waters that contribute flow, either directly or through another water to a jurisdictional waterbody characterized by the presence of the physical indicators of a bed and banks and an ordinary high water mark.
A mitigation banking source says it could help "provide a floor" for Army Corps of Engineers district offices to take a more active approach to approving stream mitigation in accordance with CWA permits, as some states like North Carolina have done.
EPA and the Corps generally require development activities conducted under CWA section 404 permits that impact wetlands to adopt mitigation plans for offsetting the impact to developed areas. For many 404 permitted projects impacting streams, however, because they involve simple stream crossings mitigation is often more limited than wetlands mitigation.
"Stream mitigation has trailed about 10 or 15 years behind wetland mitigation," but has grown as a policy area in recent years, one wetland source says.
An industry source notes that mitigation banking options may be limited in certain regions, and in terms of "providing the right type of mitigation," such as stream mitigation.
The wetland source says the Obama administration should consider crafting a national plan for enhancing stream mitigation policies similar to the 2002 National Wetlands Mitigation Plan, laying out a number of areas in need of further dialogue between stakeholders.
For example, an April 2014 "Report on State Definitions, Jurisdiction and Mitigation Requirements in State Programs for Ephemeral, Intermittent and Perennial Streams in the United States," crafted by the Association of State Wetland Managers (ASWM) for EPA, made a host recommendations for facilitating more widespread and uniform mitigation practices.
The recommendations in the report included developing a list of stream mitigation options and engaging in a national discussion on activities that constitute stream mitigation; identifying models and regulatory frameworks that allow for greater regulation and mitigation of riparian zones/stream buffer areas; helping practitioners develop a better understanding of the fundamental components of streams and their response to stream restoration/preservation/enhancement compensatory activities and helping regulators evaluate the options for and components of compensatory stream mitigation in order to support the expansion of mitigation practices.
Uniform Standards
In their joint 2008 compensatory mitigation rule, EPA and the Corps established uniform standards for such efforts, allowing permittees to use several methods for offsetting lost wetlands services. These methods include either a mitigation bank -- the preferred option -- or third-party broker to replace the lost wetlands with newly constructed wetlands -- provided the new wetlands are placed in the same watershed as the dredge-and-fill activity to address factors like local hydrology, ecological benefits and land use.
Under the wetlands banking program, property owners can build, enhance or restore wetlands meant to offset the destruction of wetlands elsewhere from approval of CWA section 404 permits. When builders seek a CWA section 404 permit to destroy wetlands, they have to include in their application mitigation measures, which demonstrate what the applicant intends to do to offset the destruction of the wetlands.
A seller of wetland bank credits must meet certain criteria, including guarantees that the wetlands that are created through the bank will remain in perpetuity.
The jurisdiction rule, which EPA and the Corps issued May 27 and are slated to publish in the June 29 Federal Register, aims to clarify which waters are protected under the CWA following confusion resulting from competing tests that emerged as a result of the Supreme Court's 2006 ruling in Rapanos v. United States in 2006.
The final rule adopts the language outlined by Justice Anthony Kennedy in a concurring opinion, finding that tributaries and "adjacent waters" share a significant nexus with downstream waters and are jurisdictional, and identifying specific types of other waters, such as prairie potholes, that could share a significant nexus to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
The rule could prompt expansion of compensatory mitigation given that it is likely to require more section 404 permits to be issued, and may expand permitting to areas that previously have not seen much in the way of mitigation activity.
"In theory, most permits now require "in-kind" mitigation," the industry source says, meaning that if the dredge-and fill-activity impacts a forested wetland, it must be offset with benefits to forested wetlands, and the same would go for streams.
But regulators in some states still do not always accept stream offsets in mitigation plans, the banking source says, adding that they hope the final jurisdiction rule will result in a "floor" for how the 2008 compensatory mitigation rule is interpreted and applied on the ground.
The ASWM report found that 13 states have their own formal state-coordinated stream mitigation program, and an additional nine states report having state stream mitigation "practices," but no formal program, and 18 states leave mitigation decisions to the Corps. "Although in thirty-three states, the entity implementing stream mitigation in the state does differentiate between types and uses of streams when they determine mitigation requirements, in only thirteen states has this mitigation requirement been formalized." the report found.
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New Federal Regulations On Tank-Car Trains Face Challenges
Jun 28, 2015 | The Chicago Tribune
By Richard Wronski
he U.S. railroad industry, several environmental groups and two Chicago suburbs are challenging the federal government's recently unveiled regulations intended to enhance the safety of milelong trains carrying volatile crude oil, dozens of which pass through the metro area each week.
The organizations, along with the city of Aurora and the village of Barrington, contend that the regulations announced May 1 by the U.S. Department of Transportation are inadequate and contain a gaping loophole that will allow unsafe tank cars to continue hauling hazardous materials for years to come on the nation's rails.
In addition, the regulations fail to strengthen the "thermal protection" standards for new and retrofitted tank cars. As a result, firefighters responding to the kinds of fiery derailments like those that occurred March 5 near Galena and June 19, 2009, in Cherry Valley, near Rockford, have little time to prevent tank cars with volatile contents from exploding, critics say.
The regulations call for a three- to five-year phaseout of older-model tank cars that the National Transportation Safety Board and other experts have declared unsafe. The cars must be retrofitted or replaced with new ones that have stronger shells and valves, and protective shields to better withstand a collision or derailment.
The Association of American Railroads has filed an appeal with the Transportation Department, contending that its rule "does not sufficiently advance safety and fails to fully address ongoing concerns of the freight rail industry and the general public."
The new regulations apply only to "high-hazard flammable trains," defined as a continuous group of 20 or more tank cars loaded with a flammable liquid, or 35 or more tank cars loaded with a flammable liquid dispersed through a train.
Critics contend that this creates a technicality that allows the older-model tank cars, known as DOT-111s, to continue to be used, albeit not on the milelong "unit" trains with hundreds of tank cars that have become common in the Chicago area and elsewhere.
These trains, like rolling pipelines, haul millions of gallons of highly flammable crude oil daily from North Dakota's Bakken shale fields to refineries, generally on the East Coast, passing through Chicago, the nation's rail hub.
The government also ordered that tank cars on these long trains be equipped with an electronically controlled pneumatic brake system intended to cut the time and distance needed to stop and prevent an accordion-style pileup of the cars.
In its nearly 200-page appeal, the railroad association said there is no safety justification for the brake system, which it called "unproven technology that will not prevent derailments and will not provide meaningful overall safety benefits that our industry and the general public want."
The association also contends that the thermal protection standard for new and retrofitted tank cars is insufficient. The standard requires that tank cars need only withstand being engulfed in a pool of burning liquid for 100 minutes without exploding.
The group and other experts have urged that the U.S. require a tougher standard of survivability, up to 800 minutes, or more than 13 hours, to give first responders more time to react to an incident.
Richard Streeter, the Washington, D.C.-based attorney for Barrington and Aurora, filed a lawsuit June 24 challenging the regulations in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Although DOT-111 tank cars have been deemed unsafe, the Transportation Department's decision fails to remove them completely from service and has satisfied neither the railroad industry nor those calling for safer crude oil shipments, Streeter said.
"Nobody likes the (department's) final result," Streeter said. "They tried to play Solomon with their decision, but they didn't slice the baby correctly."
A coalition of eight conservation organizations and citizen groups also takes issue with allowing older model tank cars to continue hauling hazardous material, said Patti Goldman, an attorney for Earthjustice, one of the groups.
"Trains can have 34 cars of old DOT-111s, unimproved, carrying hazmat forever," Goldman said. "There's no phaseout for that."
A spokeswoman for the Transportation Department's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration defended the regulations, saying that more than 3,200 public comments from more than 180,000 individuals were considered during the rule-making process.
"The … rule is an important safety regulation that, along with enhanced tank car standards, braking improvements and stronger operational controls, will make it safer to transport crude and other flammable liquids by rail," Artealia Gillard said.
The environmental groups have also filed an appeal asking the Transportation Department to formalize its 2014 emergency order requiring railroads to notify each state's emergency response commission of the movements of trains that carry a million gallons or more of crude oil, about 70 tank cars. The appeal also asks the U.S. to expand those provisions to cover all hazardous flammable liquids, not just Bakken crude oil.
The railroad industry has responded by announcing that it has voluntarily developed a smartphone app that allows first responders to identify the hazardous material contained in a tank car.
Two major railroads, the BNSF Railway and the Union Pacific, demonstrated the app and other track inspection and safety equipment for first responders and local officials at recent events in Chicago.
Using the app, firefighters arriving at the scene of an incident can punch in the identification number on a tank car and be told what material is being shipped and the recommended response for fighting a spill or a fire, BNSF officials said.
First responders have complained that federal rules mandate only that a paper manifest of a train's cargo be kept with the engineer. But that engineer could be a mile down the track from a derailed car or could be the victim of an incident.
Glen Lyman, deputy district chief for the Chicago Fire Department, said he has used the app twice to identify hazardous materials involved in train incidents.
"This (app) enables us to get that information about hazardous material in a timely manner," Lyman said. "Everything that goes through the city is a concern to us."
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