Preview Newsletter
acc am july 22
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(ACC Mentioned) Robert L. Wood Joins U.S. Olympic Committee Board Of Directors
Jul 21, 2015 | Swim Swam
By Lauren Neidigh
The United States Olympic Committee today announced the addition of Robert L. Wood to its board of directors. Wood’s nomination was conditionally approved at the USOC’s board meeting on June 30, pending a customary administrative background check. -
Time Available to Complete TSCA Bill Before Recess
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna and Pat Rizzuto
The Senate has enough time to complete work on a major overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act before its August recess, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told Bloomberg BNA July 21. State governments, meanwhile, issued a Green Report July 17 detailing activities they are taking and plan to continue to take while they await TSCA reform. -
Eight More Senators Back TSCA Reform Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Dinesh Kumar
Eight more senators have became bipartisan cosponsors of the bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act this month, taking the total to 52 of the 100 Senate members and boosting its chances of passage. To consider a bill on the floor, the Senate must first agree to bring it up – usually by unanimous agreement or by a ... -
Preliminary Toxics Release Inventory Dataset Released by EPA
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Preliminary 2014 Toxics Release Inventory data received by the Environmental Protection Agency was posted online by the agency July 21. The posted information represents about 99 percent of the total data the agency has or expects to receive, the EPA said. TRI reports were due July 1. -
Court Upholds Revised Standards for Chromium
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
A federal appeals court July 21 upheld an Environmental Protection Agency rule that set more stringent emissions limits for chromium electroplating facilities and phased out use of fume suppressants that use the toxic compound perfluorooctyl sulfonate, commonly referred to as PFOS (Nat'l Ass'n for Surface Finishing v. EPA, D.C... -
Appeals Court Backs EPA's MACT Revision Process In Chromium Ruling
Jul 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Dave Reynolds
A federal appeals court has upheld EPA's maximum achievable control technology (MACT) air toxics standard for the chromium plating sector, rejecting environmentalists' arguments faulting the agency's process for setting such standards as inadequate, as well as industry claims that EPA's 2012 revised standard for the sector is unnecessarily... -
Causation Proof Limited in PFOA Bellwether Trial
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bruce Kaufman
Medical causation experts slated to testify for Dupont Co. in upcoming bellwether trials over whether perfluorooctanoic acid in drinking water near a former Teflon plant harmed residents must limit their testimony to whether the substance injured specific plaintiffs and not discuss whether the chemical was capable of causing... -
EPA Sued Over Hazardous Substances Spills
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The Environmental Protection Agency was sued July 21 by a coalition of environmental justice groups that claim EPA failed to regulate spills of hazardous substances from onshore nontransportation facilities, such as above-ground storage tanks (Envtl. Justice Health Alliance for Chem. Policy Reform v. EPA, S.D.N.Y., 15-05705, complaint, 7/21/15). -
Groups Sue EPA Seeking Regs For Storage Sites
Jul 21, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Sam Pearson
A lawsuit filed today by environmental and public health groups aims to force U.S. EPA to set regulations to prevent the discharge of chemical pollutants from above-ground storage tanks and other industrial sites into bodies of water. The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alleges EPA has violated the Clean... -
Groups Sue EPA To Regulate Hazardous Spills
Jul 21, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Lydia Wheeler
Environmental advocates are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for not issuing regulations to protect communities from hazardous chemicals that spill at industrial facilities. In a joint lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Natural Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC), the Environmental ... -
EPA Flexibility Urged on Oil, Gas Effluent Standards
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
Proposed federal standards that would ban shale oil and shale gas wastewater from publicly owned treatment plants are an overreach, making no allowance for different waste streams or possible future needs, industry groups told the Environmental Protection Agency. Some effluent streams discharged from oil and natural gas wells may... -
Oral Arguments Set in Longmont's Fracking Appeal
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The Colorado Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments for Sept. 24 in the case of a voter-approved ban on hydraulic fracturing in Longmont, Colo. (Colorado Oil & Gas Ass'n v. Longmont, Colo. Ct. App., No. 14-CA-1759, notice of oral argument, 7/17/15). The city of Longmont has appealed a lower court's July 2014 ruling that the Colorado... -
Study: Shallow Fracking May Pose Higher Risk to Water
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
Additional safeguards may be needed to protect underground water supplies from shallow, high-volume hydraulic fracturing operations, according to a study released July 21. Most hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells in the U.S. occurs more than a mile underground, but about 16 percent of the activity occurs less than a mile from the surface... -
Strategic Reserve Oil Sale Would Fund Highway Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Senate legislation to fund highways and other transportation programs would be partially funded by a $9 billion sale of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the latest attempt by Congress to use the emergency stockpile as a funding mechanism. The six-year highway bill, the DRIVE Act, unveiled by the Senate Environment... -
Senate Highway Bill Includes New Crude-By-Rail Safety Standards
Jul 21, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The bipartisan, six-year Senate highway bill set for a key test vote this hour gives the Department of Transportation four months to require “a comprehensive oil spill response plan” for railroads that ship crude, as well as new requirements for reporting oil train accidents. -
Highway Bill Assumes Huge Jump In Oil Prices
Jul 21, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Senate highway bill unveiled Tuesday assumes that crude oil prices will rise by nearly 90 percent in the next 10 years in order to raise money for infrastructure. The bill, introduced Tuesday afternoon, proposes selling oil from the federal government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It’s the result of a deal hashed out by Senate Majority Leader ... -
Shale Gas Heads to Florida as Pipelines Seek to Even Prices
Jul 22, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Christine Buurma and Kelly Gilblom
A glut of cheap natural gas trapped in the U.S. Northeast will be heading south by the end of the year, radically changing the price differences between the regions. Pipeline expansions by Williams Cos., Kinder Morgan Inc. and Spectra Energy Corp. will carry shale gas from the ... -
Utah Approves Revised Permit for Oil Sands Project
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
The Utah Division of Oil, Gas & Mining has approved a revised permit with new conditions for an oil sands extraction project in the state's Uintah Basin. The agency gave final approval July 17 to a “notice of intention” by U.S. Oil Sands Inc. of Calgary, Alberta, to commence large mining operations at the PR Spring Mine in Uintah... -
Fight Over Oil Reserve Sales May Spill Into Senate Energy Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Geof Koss
Senate wrangling over how to pay for the chamber's transportation extension may add a further wrinkle to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee's upcoming energy bill. Energy Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) yesterday voted against proceeding to the highway extension because ... -
FERC's Chair Calls for More Gas, Electric Coordination
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Norman Bay encouraged the natural gas and electric industries to continue working together to coordinate market scheduling. “While progress has been made in the gas/electric coordination, I hope that the gas and electric industries continue to talk, and I hope that they continue to look for... -
Groups Sustain Lobbying Push on Clean Power Plan
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna and Andrew Childers
More than 120 entities reported lobbying Congress on the Environmental Protection Agency's soon-to-be-finalized Clean Power Plan in the second quarter of 2015, maintaining the same level of interest as a year ago and in one of the final chances to get the attention of lawmakers. -
Controversial Measures Left Out of House Energy Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
A repeal of the 40-year crude oil export ban and other controversial measures were left out of an energy package that eaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee released late July 20. The bill, which is scheduled to be marked up in the Energy and Power Subcommittee July 22, includes measures that would streamline the federal ... -
House Dems: More Work Needed On Energy Plan
Jul 21, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darren Goode
House Energy and Commerce Democrats said more work is needed on an energy bill for which Republicans are hoping to win bipartisan support. Panel ranking member Frank Pallone and Energy and Power Subcommittee ranking member Bobby Rush praised the initial bill released Monday night as a “product of months of thoughtful ... -
Whitfield Sees Potential For Political Score; Murkowksi Optimistic
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Hannah Northey and Geof Koss
A top House Republican beginning the process of shepherding energy legislation through the lower chamber said the language is a jumping-off point for deeper, bipartisan negotiations and potential political scores. Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) said during an interview on Capitol Hill yesterday that ... -
Former DOE Official Questions U.S. Emissions-Cutting Pledge
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
The U.S. would likely fall well short of its pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions up to 28 percent by 2025 under a global climate accord even if all of the Obama administration's actions including power plant carbon pollution limits are fully implemented, a former Energy Department official said July 21. -
Environmentalists Press EPA To Strengthen Heavy-Duty Engine GHG Limit
Jul 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Dawn Reeves
Despite early praise for EPA's phase 2 medium- and heavy-duty truck greenhouse gas (GHG) standards, environmentalists are now criticizing the plan's proposed requirements for semi-truck diesel engines, saying the 4.2 percent engine improvement the agency proposed is far short of what can be cost-effectively achieved. -
Methane Studies Should Spur EPA Action, EDF Says
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
Methane emissions from natural gas transmission and storage networks in the U.S. are more than double the Environmental Protection Agency's estimates, which should spur the agency to set aggressive emissions limits on the industry, environmental advocates said. -
New Study Emphasizes Need to Find and Fix Methane Leaks; Reveals Limits of Voluntary Action
Jul 21, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By N. Jonathan Peress
A study published today in Environmental Science & Technology confirms official figures from the Environmental Protection Agency showing that an enormous amount of methane – about 80 billion cubic feet per year – is escaping from thousands of key nodes along the nation’s natural gas interstate pipeline system. -
White House Threatens to Veto House Coal Ash Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
President Barack Obama would be urged to veto House legislation (H.R. 1734) on the management and disposal of coal ash if it reaches his desk, according to a July 21 statement of administration policy. That strong opposition to the bill marks a significant shift for the administration, which has never before threatened to veto similar legislation... -
White House Threatens To Veto McKinley Coal Ash Bill
Jul 21, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillén
The White House today threatened to veto Rep. David McKinley’s coal ash bill, which the House is expected to pass on Wednesday. The White House “strongly opposes H.R. 1734 because it would undermine the protection of public health and the environment,” according to a State of Administration Policy. -
White House Threatens To Veto Mckinley Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Manuel Quiñones
The White House yesterday threatened to veto legislation to change U.S. EPA's new rule governing the disposal of coal combustion waste. West Virginia Republican Rep. David McKinley's H.R. 1734 would create national standards for coal ash disposal to be enforced by states. The House is planning to debate and vote on the bill today. -
States Can Revise Water Standards Using New Criteria
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
States will be able use the Environmental Protection Agency's newly revised national human health criteria for 94 chemical pollutants when updating their water quality standards, the association of state water regulators said. “The criteria will provide states with a starting point that is based upon the latest scientific data and information... -
Environmental Groups Seek Rehearing on Waste Rule
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
A coalition of nine environmental advocacy groups have asked a federal appeals court to rehear challenges to a regulation exempting certain nonhazardous secondary materials from stricter air pollution requirements when burned in solid waste incinerators or boilers (Eco Servs. Operations LLC v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 11-1189, petition ... -
Senators Probe EPA Role in Setting Social Cost of Carbon
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
Senate Republicans are seeking all documents related to the Environmental Protection Agency's participation in the development of the social cost of carbon figure since its inception in 2009. Ten Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works ... -
The Science And Morality Of Climate Change
| The Hill - Contributors
By Amanda D. Rodewald
"The absence of certainty is not an excuse to do nothing," Christine Todd Whitman, President George W. Bush's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, once cautioned. For decades, we have ignored Whitman's advice and done just that when faced with critical, lifesaving decisions about...
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(ACC Mentioned) Robert L. Wood Joins U.S. Olympic Committee Board Of Directors
Jul 21, 2015 | Swim Swam
By Lauren Neidigh
The United States Olympic Committee today announced the addition of Robert L. Wood to its board of directors. Wood’s nomination was conditionally approved at the USOC’s board meeting on June 30, pending a customary administrative background check.
Wood was named chairman of the National Gymnastics Foundation’s board of directors in 2009. He also serves on the board of directors for Praxair Corporation and Jorden Corporation. Previously, Wood served as chairman, president and CEO of Chemtura Corporation from 2006-08 after the chemical company merged with Crompton Corporation, where Wood served in the same role beginning in 2004.
Wood joined Crompton after having spent 27 years at The Dow Chemical Company, where he progressed from the role of sales trainee up to business group president. In his time at Dow, Wood held positions in nearly every business department and worked directly with the CEO to manage a $5 billion portfolio of global businesses.
“Bob has a long and successful career in business and brings to our board a unique background and set of capabilities that will make our organization better,” said Dave Ogrean, chairman, USOC Nominating and Governance Committee. “I look forward to working with Bob and our entire board to help Team USA succeed on and off the field of play.”
Wood maintained an interest in sport throughout his career, serving as vice chairman of the Indiana Sports Corporation from 1992-94, and as a member of the USA Gymnastics board of directors from 1994-2008. In 2009, he was named chairman of the National Gymnastics Foundation’s board of directors. He also served on the NCAA Leadership Advisory Board.
Additionally, Wood held previous stints as chairman of Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the American Plastics Council and the American Chemistry Council.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Michigan.
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Time Available to Complete TSCA Bill Before Recess
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna and Pat Rizzuto
The Senate has enough time to complete work on a major overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act before its August recess, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told Bloomberg BNA July 21.
State governments, meanwhile, issued a Green Report July 17 detailing activities they are taking and plan to continue to take while they await TSCA reform.
The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (S. 697) “shouldn't take very long,” Inhofe said. The bill would be the first to overhaul the U.S. law governing industrial and other commercial uses of chemicals since 1976, when President Gerald Ford signed TSCA into law.
The Senate floor calendar is currently dominated by a six-year highway and transit bill, but Inhofe said S. 697 could easily be approved thereafter.
An aide to Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who introduced S. 697, agreed the Senate is set to move that bill.
“We feel comfortable it will pass easily,” Udall's aide told Bloomberg BNA. More than half the Senate, 52 senators representing 33 states, are co-sponsoring S. 697 (137 DEN A-17, 7/17/15).
Regarding Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a vocal critic of S. 697, Inhofe said, “It's my understanding she has five amendments.
“We can deal with five amendments in a very short period of time. Republicans, to my knowledge, don't have any amendments. So I'd say, yes, we do have time to do this,” Inhofe said.
Bill Selection Said to Determine Amendments
A Democratic aide for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where Boxer is the ranking member, said the senator will have only a few amendments if the Senate takes up the House TSCA-reform bill as the starting point of the Senate's debate.
The aide referred to the TSCA Modernization Act (H.R. 2576), which the House of Representatives approved June 23 by a 398–1 vote (121 DEN A-1, 6/24/15).
Even before that vote, Boxer told Bloomberg BNA she preferred the House bill over S. 697.
“The House bill, in many ways, is better. I feel better about it, actually, given they have really protected my state,” she said (107 DEN A-16, 6/4/15).
Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a coalition of about 450 public health and other advocacy groups, has shared that position in a series of blogs it recently has posted.
If the House bill isn't taken up by the Senate, then Boxer will have “hundreds” of amendments for S. 697, the Democratic aide said.
McConnell: ‘Week or So’ for Highway Bill
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the chamber expects to complete work on surface transportation reauthorization legislation within a “week or so,” although the Senate didn't approve a procedural measure to move onto the bill July 21.
If the Senate proceeds on the highway bill according to McConnell's expectation, that would leave the week of Aug. 3 for possible consideration of S. 697, Inhofe said.
The Oklahoma Republican, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, wouldn't speculate on what would happen to the bill should the Senate not act on it this month, though other supporters believe McConnell would still likely bring it to the floor.
“Isn't the saying, ‘Strike while the iron is hot?' ” Inhofe said. “It's hot, and we're ready to go.”
States Say They're Acting, Not Waiting
State governments repeatedly have urged Congress to modernize TSCA.
“States continue to wait and advocate for TSCA reform,” the Environmental Council of the States said in a recently posted Green Report, “Awaiting TSCA Reform: Ten Actions States are Taking Now.”
“While waiting they have taken the lead in implementing a variety of innovative solutions,” ECOS said summarizing divergent types of chemical management undertaken by diverse state agencies.
Diverse state regulation of chemicals is a key pressure that has driven chemical manufacturers to support TSCA reform.
“While legislative efforts towards TSCA reform are considered in the 114th Congress, states can look to each other for innovative ideas to manage chemical substances,” ECOS's Green Report said.
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Eight More Senators Back TSCA Reform Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Dinesh Kumar
Eight more senators have became bipartisan cosponsors of the bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act this month, taking the total to 52 of the 100 Senate members and boosting its chances of passage.
To consider a bill on the floor, the Senate must first agree to bring it up – usually by unanimous agreement or by a majority of those present voting to adopt a "motion to proceed".
The Senate is likely to take up the bill (S 697) for floor consideration before the August recess.
The new supporters are Democratic Senators Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin), Jack Reed (Rhode Island) and Al Franken (Minnesota), and Republicans Richard Burr and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Pat Roberts (Kansas), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) and Roger Wicker (Mississippi).
The Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee passed the bill in April (CW 29 April 2015).
The full House passed its own version of TSCA reform last month (CW 24 June 2015).
Pointing out that lack of bipartisan support had led previous reform efforts to fail, Senator Tom Udall (D-New Mexico), co-author of S 697, said that an “unprecedented number of senators, from liberals to conservatives as well stakeholders ranging from environmental and health advocates to labour unions”, back the bill.
They are all urging Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) to bring the bill to the floor before the August recess, he added.
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), chairman of the EPW committee, said last week that the 52 cosponsors of the bill represent 33 of the 50 states and he "expects this representation to continue to grow as the bill moves to the Senate floor”. He is “committed to shepherding this legislation to the finish line” as chairman of the committee, he said.
However, the bill faces staunch opposition from Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California), ranking member of the EPW committee, who wants the Senate to ditch it and embrace the House version instead (CW 14 July 2015).
But Mr Udall and others, like Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana), say the Senate bill is a stronger and more comprehensive approach to TSCA reform, and that it contains several important provisions which are absent from the House bill.
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Preliminary Toxics Release Inventory Dataset Released by EPA
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Preliminary 2014 Toxics Release Inventory data received by the Environmental Protection Agency was posted online by the agency July 21.
The posted information represents about 99 percent of the total data the agency has or expects to receive, the EPA said. TRI reports were due July 1.
Additional data, revised information that facilities to submit to the agency and the agency's TRI National Analysis report will be released in coming months, the EPA said. The planned types of information and release times are:
• revised and corrected information for 2014 will be posted in early August;
• pollution prevention data will be available in September;
• TRI online searching tools, such as TRI Explorer, will be available in September;
• the complete TRI dataset will be available in October; and
• the agency's analysis of the complete dataset, called the TRI National Analysis report, will be available in January 2016.
Until the complete dataset is available, however, interested parties can examine the preliminary information to obtain chemical release data from particular facilities and to begin conducting research into specific chemicals or in geographical areas, the agency said. 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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Court Upholds Revised Standards for Chromium
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
A federal appeals court July 21 upheld an Environmental Protection Agency rule that set more stringent emissions limits for chromium electroplating facilities and phased out use of fume suppressants that use the toxic compound perfluorooctyl sulfonate, commonly referred to as PFOS (Nat'l Ass'n for Surface Finishing v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 12-1459, 7/21/15)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Cornelia Pillard, rejected arguments by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups that the EPA ignored a statutory requirement to set minimum standards based on the emissions levels achieved by the best-performing sources.
The groups argued that the EPA decision resulted in standards that were too lax.
Industry Arguments Rejected
The court also rejected arguments from the National Association for Surface Finishing that the EPA acted illegally by setting more stringent emissions limits despite a failure to identify developments in practices, processes or control technologies since the hazardous air pollutants standards were previously reviewed.
The court upheld the 2012 revised air toxics standards (RIN 2060–AQ60), which tightened the limits on allowable hexavalent chromium emissions from hard and decorative chromium electroplating and chromium anodizing tanks, a move that the EPA estimated would reduce emissions by 224 pounds per year (77 Fed. Reg. 58,220).
The environmental petitioners had argued that the EPA ignored the Clean Air Act's stringency requirements and didn't consider setting emissions limits that reflected emissions from the best-performing sources in the U.S.
The EPA should have recalculated maximum achievable control technology (MACT) floors based on the best-performing chromium electroplating facilities when it decided to revise the standards for that source category, the petitioners had argued.
Court Bound by Precedent
During December 2014 oral arguments, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit appeared to be hesitant to reverse precedent on whether the revision of air toxics standards triggers the Clean Air Act's requirement that the EPA must set a maximum achievable control technology floor, commonly known as a MACT floor (233 DEN A-14, 12/4/14).
A newly calculated MACT floor would likely be more stringent than technology or risk-based revisions that take costs and other potentially constraining factors into account, the court noted in its opinion.
The court said it was bound by precedent to reject the environmental petitioners' argument that the EPA was required to recalculate the MACT floor.
Two Cases Referenced
The opinion referenced the following two D.C. Circuit decisions on whether the EPA is required to recalculate the MACT floor when it conducts it periodic review of air toxics standards:
• a 2008 decision that the EPA wasn't required to recalculate the MACT floor at the outset of its technology review, at least where the EPA decided to not revise the standards as a result of the review (Natural Res. Def. Council v. EPA, 529 F.3d 1077, 66 ERC 1897, 2008 BL 120815 (D.C. Cir. 2008)); and
• a 2013 decision that the EPA wasn't obligated to recalculate MACT floors based on the best-performing units in a source category when revising air toxics standards (Ass'n of Battery Recyclers v. EPA, 716 F.3d 667, 76 ERC 1609, 2013 BL 139717 (D.C. Cir. 2013) ).
The three-judge panel that decided Nat'l Ass'n for Surface Finishing v. EPA were Pillard, Thomas Griffith and Stephen Williams.
No Effect by MATS Litigation
The court rejected an argument that those past decisions were “abrogated” by a 2014 decision to uphold the EPA's mercury and air toxics standards (White Stallion Energy Ctr. LLC v. EPA, 748 F.3d 1222, 78 ERC 1757, 2014 BL 103957 (D.C. Cir. 2014) ).
The environmental groups argued that the D.C. Circuit's holding—that the usual standard-setting framework under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act, including the setting of MACT floors, applies once the EPA determines it will set standards under Section 112(n)(1)(A)— was relevant to the chromium electroplating standards.
The court classified that argument as an “incorrect” suggestion about the decision in the mercury ruling, which the court said “simply deferred” to the EPA's interpretation that regulation triggered under Section 112(d)(6) must be promulgated in accordance with the procedures of Section 112(d).
The EPA told the court July 7 that the litigation over the mercury and air toxics standards isn't relevant to the chromium electroplating standards (131 DEN A-1, 7/9/15).
Court Rejects Other Arguments
The court also rejected arguments by the environmental groups that the EPA had unreasonably disregarded emissions reductions and technological advancements achieved by chromium electroplating facilities in California, which has more stringent state requirements.
The court found that the EPA's approach to omit California emissions data was reasonable because extrapolating that data to the rest of the country would have distorted the data set, which was used in cost-effectiveness and risk analysis. The EPA took into account all the statutorily required considerations, including cost and health risk, then provided a reasoned explanation of its decisions, the court ruled.
Three arguments raised by the National Association for Surface Finishing were rejected by the court, including an argument that the EPA had unreasonably determined that “developments” in technology had occurred since the last review of the standards that required revision of the regulations.
The court said the EPA permissibly identified developments in practices, processes and control technologies, including emissions elimination devices, fume suppressants and other specific technologies.
“EPA's decisionmaking was sufficiently clear and rational,” Pillard wrote.
Court Affirms Risk Review of Standards
The court also affirmed the EPA's risk review of the standards, upholding the methodology used to model emissions from all facilities based on data from a smaller subset of facilities.
A claim that the EPA didn't have adequate evidence to demonstrate that use of non-PFOS fume suppressants could meet emissions limits also was rejected by the court. During oral arguments, the panel repeatedly questioned the EPA's counsel on how the agency determined that non-PFOS fume suppressants would be as effective as the PFOS suppressants that the regulations phased out.
The court held that it was sufficient for the EPA to rely on evidence in the record establishing the relationship between non-PFOS suppressants and surface tension. Fume suppressants are used to reduce the surface tension of finishing baths, which also reduce chromium emissions from those baths.
The National Association for Surface Finishing could not be reached for comment on the decision. Counsel for the environmental petitioners also did not respond to a request for comment.
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Appeals Court Backs EPA's MACT Revision Process In Chromium Ruling
Jul 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Dave Reynolds
A federal appeals court has upheld EPA's maximum achievable control technology (MACT) air toxics standard for the chromium plating sector, rejecting environmentalists' arguments faulting the agency's process for setting such standards as inadequate, as well as industry claims that EPA's 2012 revised standard for the sector is unnecessarily strict.
The unanimous July 21 ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in National Association for Surface Finishing (NASF), et al. v. EPA, et al., backs both the agency's September 2012 rule tightening emissions requirements for the sector, as well as its broader policy for revising existing MACT standards.
While environmentalists have tried to use the litigation as a vehicle to get the D.C. Circuit to reconsider prior rulings upholding the agency's approach for setting MACT standards, the three-judge panel at Dec. 3 oral arguments focused largely on the challenges to the chromium rule.
EPA in September 2012 issued its residual risk and technology review (RTR) of its existing chromium MACT, in order to meet a Clean Air Act mandate to review its air toxics rules eight years after their implementation and determine whether lingering health risks from pollution or availability of new air controls warrants a stricter MACT.
In the rule, EPA significantly tightened emissions limits from those applicable under the original National Emissions Standards For Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) rule for the sector. In a fact sheet accompanying the final rule, EPA said its tougher limits would reduce hexavalent chromium emissions by 224 pounds per year.
But both the chromium plating industry and environmentalists challenged the rule, with industry arguing EPA's 1995 chromium MACT was adequate to protect public health, and environmentalists arguing the revised standard was inadequate as well as faulting EPA's broad policy for revising MACT standards.
Environmentalists' Arguments
Environmentalists say EPA's method of conducting RTRs using the same “floor,” or minimum standards of pollution controls, as the original MACT is erroneous and leads to insufficiently strict standards. Instead, they argue the air law requires EPA to recalculate the floor every time it does an RTR, though the D.C. Circuit has upheld EPA's approach twice.
In the lawsuit, the environmental petitioners -- California Communities Against Toxics, Clean Air Council and Sierra Club -- also pushed for EPA to impose California's chromium standards, which are more stringent than the national rule, on the rest of the United States.
But the D.C. Circuit finds the agency reasonably weighed issues, including the costs and benefits of the stricter standard. The ruling, written by Circuit Judge Cornelia T. L. Pillard, cites deference to EPA's interpretation of ambiguities in implementing the Clean Air Act, and invokes D.C. Circuit precedent for rejecting some arguments.
The industry coalition NASF argued in the lawsuit that in tightening the MACT standard in 2012, EPA failed to specify new technologies that had been developed for reducing emissions from the sector. The group also argued that 2012 rule conflicted with EPA's 2010 determination that the existing 1995 MACT standards provided an “ample margin of safety.”
Industry also faulted EPA's decision to phase out a pollution control technology containing perfluorooctyl sulfunate (PFOS), despite a lack of data correlating alternative controls with reduced emissions. And the coalition argued EPA's risk review was flawed because it relied on an inadequate statistical method for estimating chromium emissions, and because the agency failed to find that a revised standard was required to protect public health.
The D.C. Circuit, however, backs EPA arguments that the agency specified improvements in performance of existing pollution control technologies, and that those improvements, rather than simply new technologies, can justify further emissions reduction requirements.
New Data
The judges also backed EPA's 2012 decision to reverse its 2010 determination that a revised standard was unnecessary, finding that the reversal was based on new information showing tighter emissions controls were feasible.
“The agency thus concluded, based on the improved data, that more stringent technology-based standards were cost effective and otherwise appropriate,” Pillard writes.
Furthermore, the judges faulted industry arguments that EPA needed to provide evidence showing non-PFOS based pollution controls could reduce emissions, saying that the agency has long held that provided controls are sufficient to alter certain conditions in the facility, reduced emissions are assumed to correlate with that change.
And while industry faulted aspects of EPA's RTR, including a statistical method for estimating emissions, and consequently cancer risk, the judges ruled that the agency had corrected flaws in its data, and reasonably explained and defended its analysis.
“Keeping in mind the 'wide latitude' we afford EPA’s expertise-informed choice of data-gathering methodology, we find that EPA’s data-collection process was reasonable,” Pillard writes.
The panel also rejected environmentalists' arguments that the Clean Air Act requires EPA to calculate a new MACT floor when revising existing standards, citing circuit precedent and a need to defer to EPA's reasonable interpretation of the Clean Air Act.
“EPA itself has not so read the statute, and our precedent binds us to reject the environmental petitioners’ argument,” the order says.
Judges also rejected environmentalists' assertion that EPA's risk review “unreasonably disregarded” technology advancements and emissions reductions reached in California, finding that EPA considered that information but found that applying California's standards nationwide would result in insufficient benefit to justify the costs. “EPA also did not ignore California’s technological advances in assessing the cost effectiveness of applying nationally the standards in effect in California,” the order says. “The agency weighed the costs and benefits of requiring those controls nationally, and concluded that the relatively minimal reductions in emissions and risk that could be expected from extending California-like controls across the country would not warrant the associated expense.”
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Causation Proof Limited in PFOA Bellwether Trial
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bruce Kaufman
Medical causation experts slated to testify for Dupont Co. in upcoming bellwether trials over whether perfluorooctanoic acid in drinking water near a former Teflon plant harmed residents must limit their testimony to whether the substance injured specific plaintiffs and not discuss whether the chemical was capable of causing general harm, as the latter question was resolved in a 2004 class action settlement (In re E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. C-8 Pers. Liab. Lit., S.D. Ohio, No. 2:13-md-2433, 7/20/15).
Judge Edmund Sargus of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio used a portion of the July 20 order to caution experts for co-defendants Chemours Co. and Dupont Co. Chemours, which was once DuPont's performance chemicals arm, absorbed liabilities related to Dupont Co.'s production of Teflon products, including potential tort damages in PFOA litigation.
The court said four defense experts—epidemiologist Douglas L. Weed, toxicologist Robert W. Rickard, pathologist Samuel M. Cohen and gastroenterologist Stephen B. Hanauer—can't testify that toxicological or epidemiological data on PFOA (or C-8) shows the substance is incapable of causing kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, hypercholesterolemia, and pregnancy-induced hypertension and preeclampsia. Those six diseases were identified by a science panel set forth in the settlement agreement.
The defense experts may still argue on specific causation principles that the conditions complained of by test plaintiffs Carla Marie Bartlett (kidney cancer) and John M. Wolf (ulcerative colitis) weren't caused by their alleged exposure to PFOA in drinking water from Dupont's Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, W.Va.
The court also largely rebuffed efforts by DuPont to restrict the testimony of three plaintiffs' experts: urologists Robert Bahnson and Vitaly Margulis and gastroenterologist Robert Gross.
With one exception, the court said challenges to the plaintiffs' experts were better suited for cross-examination.
However, the portion of Margulis's testimony contending Wolf's kidney cancer may have been caused by “synergistic action”—exposure to C-8 combined with obesity—wasn't grounded in science and must be excluded as speculation under the admissibility standards set forth in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).
On July 6, the court ruled DuPont can't force plaintiffs to prove the level of their individual exposure, but it may refer to dosage levels in bellwether trials set to begin in September(130 DEN A-9, 7/8/15).
The $340 million settlement resolved Leach v. DuPont, W.Va. Cir. Ct., No. 01-C-608, 2/28/05 (39 DEN A-11, 3/1/05).
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EPA Sued Over Hazardous Substances Spills
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The Environmental Protection Agency was sued July 21 by a coalition of environmental justice groups that claim EPA failed to regulate spills of hazardous substances from onshore nontransportation facilities, such as above-ground storage tanks (Envtl. Justice Health Alliance for Chem. Policy Reform v. EPA, S.D.N.Y., 15-05705, complaint, 7/21/15).
Led by the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, the coalition filed its complaint on grounds that the EPA has violated Section 311(j)(1)(C) of the Clean Water Act that imposes a “non-discretionary” duty to issue hazardous-substance spill regulations.
The coalition claimed the EPA has satisfied only half of the Section 311(j)(1)(C) mandate by issuing spill prevention and containment countermeasure regulations to “prevent and contain” discharges of oil—but not hazardous substances—from non-transportation-related onshore facilities.
“As a result, onshore facilities that store hazardous substances are often left unregulated, exposing the public and the environment to serious harms from spills,” the coalition said in its complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The coalition said the EPA did propose regulations for spills for hazardous substances in 1978 but never issued them in final form (43 Fed. Reg. 39,276).
Hazardous substances spills include the 5,000-gallon spill of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol into West Virginia's Elk River when an above-ground storage tank owned by Freedom Industries ruptured in January 2014 and contaminated drinking water supplies for the state's nearly 300,000 residents (13 DEN A-12, 1/21/14).
The coalition also cited as examples the 2006 spill in Garyville, La., involving 2,500 gallons of sodium hypochlorite, the 2007 spill in Madera, Calif., involving 13,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), and the 2013 spill in Petersburg, Va., involving 257,782 pounds of iron chloride, 32,595 pounds of ammonium chloride, and 73,754 pounds of hydrochloric acid.
The U.S. Coast Guard data indicate that hazardous-substance spills from such facilities pose a “disproportionate threat” to low-income areas and communities of color, with a nationwide trend of such spills “more likely to occur” in majority nonwhite counties than majority white counties.
According to the coalition, the spills noted above reflect this nationwide trend. Madera, Calif., has a population that is more than 75 percent Hispanic or Latino; Petersburg, Va., is nearly 80 percent African American; and Garyville, La., has a population that is more than 50 percent African American. “In each of those communities, over one quarter of the population lives below the poverty line,” the coalition said.
The coalition of groups suing the EPA also includes the Natural Resources Defense Council and People Concerned about Chemical Safety.
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Groups Sue EPA Seeking Regs For Storage Sites
Jul 21, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Sam Pearson
A lawsuit filed today by environmental and public health groups aims to force U.S. EPA to set regulations to prevent the discharge of chemical pollutants from above-ground storage tanks and other industrial sites into bodies of water.
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alleges EPA has violated the Clean Water Act by failing to issue regulations to prevent spills of hazardous substances from non-transportation-related onshore facilities, such as above-ground storage tanks, as specified in the 43-year-old law.
EPA has issued regulations for oil discharges from these facilities, but not other substances, the filing said.
"As a result, onshore facilities that store hazardous substances are often left unregulated, exposing the public and the environment to serious harms from spills," the groups said in their filing.
The Environmental Justice and Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, People Concerned About Chemical Safety, and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed the suit.
Though the law states that EPA was to issue the regulations "as soon as practicable," the agency has not taken action to specify what safeguards must be in place to prevent the discharge of chemicals from these sites into bodies of water, the lawsuit claims.
EPA's failure to conduct the rulemaking "exposes the public, particularly low-income communities and communities of color, to environmental and health risks from preventable hazardous-substance spills," the lawsuit said.
Citing data from the U.S. Coast Guard, the groups said that between 2005 and 2014, these facilities saw 18,764 chemical discharges, which reached bodies of water 1,294 times.
"We need strong prevention regulations for hazardous substance spills," Richard Moore, the national coordinator of the Environmental Justice and Health Alliance, said in a statement. "Today we have none."
The group found in a report last year, titled "Who's in Danger? Race, Poverty and Chemical Disasters," that residents living near these facilities were more likely to be black or Latino, and to have lower home values, incomes and education levels than average Americans (E&ENews PM, May 1, 2014).
A rulemaking process would likely face industry opposition if it requires plant owners to make costly upgrades to their facilities.
EPA, which doesn't typically comment on pending lawsuits, didn't respond to a request for comment this afternoon.
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Groups Sue EPA To Regulate Hazardous Spills
Jul 21, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Lydia Wheeler
Environmental advocates are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for not issuing regulations to protect communities from hazardous chemicals that spill at industrial facilities.
In a joint lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Natural Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC), the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform and People Concerned About Chemical Safety asked the court to require EPA to issue regulations that prevent hazardous substance spills from these facilities, which include above-ground storage tanks.
Congress mandated EPA to issue these regulations in 1972, but NRDC said the agency has yet to do so.
Citing data from the Coast Guard, the group said there were 18,764 spills between 2005 and 2014, and in 1,294 of those cases hazardous substances reached bodies of water.
"We need strong prevention regulations for hazardous substance spills. Today we have none,’’ Richard Moore, co-coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance, said in a news release. “Without such protections, all communities are at risk—but especially residents of disadvantaged communities. It’s time for EPA to clean up its act.”
EPA said it does not comment on pending litigation.
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EPA Flexibility Urged on Oil, Gas Effluent Standards
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
Proposed federal standards that would ban shale oil and shale gas wastewater from publicly owned treatment plants are an overreach, making no allowance for different waste streams or possible future needs, industry groups told the Environmental Protection Agency.
Some effluent streams discharged from oil and natural gas wells may indeed be too laced with natural or artificial pollutants to be allowed into publicly owned treatment works (POTWs), the industry groups said in comments filed July 16 and 17.
But some streams may not be too polluted, they said. The EPA should apply risk-based limits rather than effectively prohibiting all streams as if all were untreatable, said the American Exploration & Production Council, an industry association.
Put another way, the EPA should develop numerical pretreatment standards that would allow some effluent streams to be treated—or simply tested and found acceptable—for sending to POTWs, the Independent Petroleum Association of America said in comments joined by six other national associations in 43 regional trade groups.
An association of water supply professionals didn't see it that way. The American Water Works Association filed comments July 17 saying, “AWWA supports this proposed regulation and believes it should be adopted in its current state.”
The EPA proposed the standards to deal with the flowback and produced waters from unconventional oil and gas wells, meaning wells drilled into shale or “tight sands” where hydraulic fracturing is used to allow hydrocarbons to flow to a well (62 DEN A-17, 4/1/15).
The proposed standards and guidelines (RIN 2040-AF35) were published in the April 7 Federal Register (80 Fed. Reg. 18,557).
Use of POTWs Increased Disinfection By-Products
The AWWA noted that the former use of POTWs for wastewater from Marcellus Shale oil and gas wells was suspected of increasing disinfection by-products for downstream drinking water treatment facilities in Pennsylvania. Disinfection chemicals for drinking water can produce undesirable by-products through their interactions with minerals in source water.
In its proposal, the EPA said it didn't identify any existing onshore facilities that were discharging wastewater from unconventional oil and gas wells to POTWs.
The alternatives for disposing of the effluents, if they can't go to POTWs, usually are disposal well injection or recycling for use in hydraulic fracturing. Evaporation from holding ponds also eliminates some wastewater.
The AWWA suggested the agency should consider tightening its standards for disposal wells, too, through the Underground Injection Control program of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Limitations of Options Noted
The industry groups criticizing the proposed standards said it was not valid to assume that deep injection wells and recycling will be sufficient in the future.
Some regions—notably Pennsylvania, in the heart of the Marcellus Shale—lack the geology for waste injections wells, the joint comments from the 50 trade groups said.
Other areas won't necessarily find it easy—legally or economically—to drill as many new injection wells as needed, the groups said.
EPA's reliance on the past success of the Underground Injection Control program to serve as the basis for a zero-discharge effluent standard is misplaced, the groups said.
Recycling is only economically practical where new wells are being drilled near existing wells, allowing the transportation costs to be kept down for movement of effluent from the existing wells to the new ones.
EPA Urged to Assess Technologies
“EPA needs to fully assess a variety of technologies—most of which have been developed as a part of the industry recycling and reuse initiatives—to determine their capacity to manage waste water in the context of pretreatment,” the groups said.
They said the technologies might include sedimentation, filtration, chemical precipitation, dissolved air flotation, biological treatment, reverse osmosis, forward osmosis, evaporation (no recovery), evaporation with condensation, membrane distillation and crystallization.
Their costs and effectiveness will differ, the groups said. But until the EPA evaluates them, no one will know which may constitute the best available technology economically achievable for pretreatment, the groups said.
The 50 groups and the American Exploration & Production Council noted that some parts of the U.S., especially in the West, often endure strained water supplies. It's advisable to regulate effluents in a way that encourages innovation in cleaning up water supplies for possible consumption, the industry commenters said.
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Oral Arguments Set in Longmont's Fracking Appeal
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The Colorado Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments for Sept. 24 in the case of a voter-approved ban on hydraulic fracturing in Longmont, Colo. (Colorado Oil & Gas Ass'n v. Longmont, Colo. Ct. App., No. 14-CA-1759, notice of oral argument, 7/17/15). The city of Longmont has appealed a lower court's July 2014 ruling that the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act preempts local attempts to ban fracking, a drilling technique to expedite extraction of oil and natural gas (143 DEN A-16, 7/25/14). Both the city and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association will have 15 minutes to present arguments, Kevin Lynch of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, attorney for the city, told Bloomberg BNA July 21.
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Study: Shallow Fracking May Pose Higher Risk to Water
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
Additional safeguards may be needed to protect underground water supplies from shallow, high-volume hydraulic fracturing operations, according to a study released July 21.
Most hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells in the U.S. occurs more than a mile underground, but about 16 percent of the activity occurs less than a mile from the surface, researchers said in a study published in Environmental Sciences & Technology.
Stanford University environmental scientist Robert B. Jackson led and co-authored the paper that examined a national database of hydraulic fracturing activities at more than 44,000 oil and gas wells between 2008 and 2013 to quantify the depths of fracking and accompanying water use.
As for water use, the researchers discovered that “the volume of water and chemicals used for shallower wells was indistinguishable from those used for deeper wells.”
The new study suggests there is “a greater potential threat to underground water sources because there is so little separation between the chemicals pumped underground and the aquifers above them.”
In a written statement, Jackson said his research focuses on how to reduce the risks of fracking to underground sources of water.
“There's a lot at stake economically,” he said. “My interest is in trying to make the process as safe as possible.”
Jackson and his co-authors recommended a series of measures to safeguard underground sources of drinking water, including:
• requiring oil and gas operators to provide more information about the distances between groundwater resources and potential fractures;
• conducting state assessments of safety measures for wells fracked 3,000 feet or less from the surface;
• maintaining a mandatory registry of shallow fracking locations;
• disclosing all chemicals used in fracking operations; and
• pre-drilling testing of nearby groundwater sources.
Most of the shallow fracking occurs in Arkansas, California, Texas and Wyoming, according to “The Depths of Hydraulic Fracturing and Accompanying Water Use Across the United States.”
Only two states, Texas and Colorado, have special requirements for shallow hydraulic fracturing, the study said.
Most state regulators assume an adequate vertical separation between fracking and drinking water aquifers guards against contamination as long as rules focus on the integrity of the concrete well casings, according to the study.
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Strategic Reserve Oil Sale Would Fund Highway Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Senate legislation to fund highways and other transportation programs would be partially funded by a $9 billion sale of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the latest attempt by Congress to use the emergency stockpile as a funding mechanism.
The six-year highway bill, the DRIVE Act, unveiled by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee July 21, proposes a drawdown of 101 million barrels during fiscal years 2018 through 2025. The bill is expected to be taken up on the Senate floor this week.
House legislation (H.R. 6), passed earlier in the month and is intended to speed the approval of innovative drugs and medical devices, included a provision to allow the sale of 80 million barrels of oil from the SPR to help pay for the $98 billion legislation, drawing a rebuke from the White House.
While the idea of using the nearly 700 million barrel SPR has drawn the support of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, critics include Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
Murkowski said in a statement after a July 17 visit to one of the reserve's four storage stations near Baton Rouge, La., that the stockpile shouldn't be used as an “ATM.”
“Any potential revenue raised through the ‘rightsizing’ of the SPR should be used to improve our nation's energy security,” Murkowski said. “Ensuring the operational effectiveness of the reserve should be our first priority.”
The SPR—established in the aftermath of the 1970s Arab oil embargo—holds nearly 700 million barrels and is made available in case a disruption in commercial oil supplies threatens the U.S. economy, according to the Energy Department.
Despite the opposition, analysts such as ClearView Energy Partners have said sales from the SPR “seem increasingly likely,” especially if a sale is used to fund a proposed $2 billion modernization of the SPR the administration proposed in its Quadrennial Energy Review earlier this year.
“We would not rule out the possibility that White House support for the first legislative vehicle to cross the finish line might be predicated upon another $2B to fund SPR ‘modernization' efforts,” ClearView said in a July 16 research note.
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Senate Highway Bill Includes New Crude-By-Rail Safety Standards
Jul 21, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor
The bipartisan, six-year Senate highway bill set for a key test vote this hour gives the Department of Transportation four months to require “a comprehensive oil spill response plan” for railroads that ship crude, as well as new requirements for reporting oil train accidents.
The transportation authorization bill, released today by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell after talks with Sen. Barbara Boxer, the Environment and Public Works Committee’s ranking member, also would OK a new a hazardous materials emergency preparedness fund, a DOT study on oil-train liability coverage, a GAO study on advanced braking systems set for expanded use in crude by rail, and reporting on the number of tank cars used for fuel service that are modified to comply with new federal safety rules.
The highway legislation also would ensure that the findings of an in-progress research effort by DOT and the Department of Energy on the behavior of different crude oils in transport are integrated into future regulations by requiring recommendations to Congress on potential new safety measures.
The highway bill may yet fall short of a procedural hurdle later today, as Democratic leaders object to the short period of time they have to review the thousand-plus-page bill. -
Highway Bill Assumes Huge Jump In Oil Prices
Jul 21, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Senate highway bill unveiled Tuesday assumes that crude oil prices will rise by nearly 90 percent in the next 10 years in order to raise money for infrastructure.
The bill, introduced Tuesday afternoon, proposes selling oil from the federal government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It’s the result of a deal hashed out by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).Lawmakers project that selling 101 billion barrels from the 693-billion-barrel stockpile would raise $9 billion if the federal government sells the oil between 2018 and 2025. In the bill, the price of crude oil is estimated to average $89.10 per barrel.
But crude oil prices settled at $50.68 at the end of the trading day Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, far below what would be needed to hit the $9 billion mark.
The Senate’s forecast would have been less of a leap as recently as 2014, when oil traded for more than $100 per barrel for much of the first half of the year.
But a global glut in oil supply, combined with anemic demand, caused oil prices to crash last year, and they have yet to recover.
The oil sales ares one of numerous creative provisions that the bill uses to fund infrastructure without raising the gas tax, which has historically been the main source of funding for federal highway programs.
Other offsets include tweaks to Social Security, payments the Federal Reserve makes to banks and customs fees.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said they oppose any sales from the oil stockpile that are not used to pay for energy security or related purposes, a position with which the White House agrees.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that prices will rise slowly in the coming years, but not enough to meet the Senate’s needs.
In the EIA’s latest forecast, released in February, it said that oil will average $76.25 in 2018, and rise to $91.13 by 2025.
The Senate failed Tuesday to pass a procedural vote to move forward on consideration of the legislation.
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Shale Gas Heads to Florida as Pipelines Seek to Even Prices
Jul 22, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Christine Buurma and Kelly Gilblom
A glut of cheap natural gas trapped in the U.S. Northeast will be heading south by the end of the year, radically changing the price differences between the regions.
Pipeline expansions by Williams Cos., Kinder Morgan Inc. and Spectra Energy Corp. will carry shale gas from the Marcellus reservoir to southern states as early as the fourth quarter. That’ll narrow the premium for gas in the Southeast to as little as 30 cents per million British thermal units from more than a dollar versus the Northeast, Genscape Inc. and Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. said July 20.
New pipelines are closing the divide between the winners and losers of America’s shale revolution as long-awaited supplies from tight-rock formations move to southern states and other regions. Without a Marcellus of its own, the Southeast, including Florida, where demand is booming, has missed out on the cheap fuel that has come with increased output.
“These projects will definitely reduce the spread between the Northeast and other regions,” Tony Franjie, senior natural gas analyst for Genscape in Sugar Land, Texas, said July 20. “Everyone but those near the shale plays has kind of missed out on the boom. It’s just crazy what’s happened in the Northeast.”
Spot gas in Florida rose 2.8 percent on the Intercontinental Exchange to $2.94 per million British thermal units on Tuesday, while Marcellus supplies at the Leidy hub slumped to $1.2615. Price Difference
The difference between the two has averaged $1.48 this year and will shrink to about 30 cents as pipelines come online over the next three years, Franjie said. Tudor Pickering analyst Jeff Schmidt similarly forecast between 20 to 30 cents.
Natural gas futures lost 0.5 percent to $2.868 on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 10:52 a.m. London time on Wednesday.
Gas output in the Marcellus has jumped more than 14-fold since January 2007, reaching a record 16.5 billion cubic feet a day in June, U.S. Energy Information Administration data show. Some of that will be shipped overseas in the form of liquefied natural gas, with average daily exports from the U.S. reaching 9.6 billion cubic feet by 2025, according to IHS CERA.
An expansion of Williams’s 10,200-mile Transcontinental Gas Pipeline system on the East Coast may enter service in December. Other proposals totaling as much as 7.5 billion cubic feet a day of capacity are scheduled to come online in 2016 and 2017. One billion cubic feet of gas is enough to heat about 10,000 U.S. homes for a year. Shrinking Discount
The new capacity will allow so much gas to leave the Marcellus that the discount for supplies at the Leidy hub will shrink by as much as 50 cents versus gas at the U.S. benchmark Henry Hub in Louisiana, said Charles Blanchard, a Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst in New York. The spread was $1.62 on July 21.
Projects capable of carrying as much as 2.1 billion cubic feet a day, or about 17 percent of Southeast demand, are scheduled to begin service by the end of the year. Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline system will boost deliveries beginning in November. Spectra’s Ohio Pipeline Energy Network will start shipping to the South and Midwest in the fourth quarter.
Some of that shale gas will flow to Florida, where power plant demand for the fuel hit a record for April, up 13 percent from a year earlier, based on the latest EIA data. The state is home to six of the 20 fastest-growing U.S. metropolitan areas. Gas flows to the Southeast have more than doubled since 2007, according to LCI Energy Insight in El Paso, Texas. Disney Benefits
The Reedy Creek Improvement District, which supplies power to Walt Disney World in central Florida, is already benefiting because of Northeast shale gas. The district, which has a gas-fired cogeneration plant and operates its own electric grid, is connected to Kinder Morgan’s Florida Gas Transmission pipeline system.
Reedy Creek customers “have seen lower electric energy supply costs as a result of shale gas supply,” Ann Blakeslee, the district’s deputy administrator, said by e-mail July 17. Southern Co., which has 4.3 million customers in Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, also buys gas from suppliers “active in the Marcellus region,” spokesman Jack Bonnikson said by e-mail.
The shipments underscore how quickly the Marcellus shale formation -- spread across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio -- has dominated the gas market. It has become America’s biggest producer in less than a decade and is now spreading its wealth across the country.
The pipelines coming online over the next three years will mark an “opening of the floodgates” to the U.S. Southeast, Schmidt said. “It’s a little bit of the best of both worlds. The producers should see some relief and consumers should see some relief in the heaviest demand season.”
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Utah Approves Revised Permit for Oil Sands Project
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
The Utah Division of Oil, Gas & Mining has approved a revised permit with new conditions for an oil sands extraction project in the state's Uintah Basin.
The agency gave final approval July 17 to a “notice of intention” by U.S. Oil Sands Inc. of Calgary, Alberta, to commence large mining operations at the PR Spring Mine in Uintah and Grand counties in the eastern part of the state, provided the company meets two conditions.
First, the company must establish a monitoring program for potential effects to the possible subsurface water system, John R. Baza, director of the division, wrote in the decision. Second, it must include further evidence of the company's compliance with appropriate state and federal air quality regulations, the decision said.
U.S. Oil Sands originally obtained an oil sands mining permit in 2012 to mine ore and extract bitumen, a thick, semisolid form of hydrocarbon. The permit applied to 213 acres of land on the border of Uintah and Grand counties at the watershed divide of the Green, White, and Colorado rivers.
In 2014, the company submitted a revision to its existing mining plan calling for the addition of another 104 acres to the project. The division held an informal conference in June under the Utah Mined Land Reclamation Act to hear from those who opposed the expansion, according to Living Rivers, a primary opponent of the project.
The company must add the two conditions to its plan for the mine by Nov. 1, Living Rivers said in a July 17 statement. The company may not process oil sands ore until the division has approved both conditions, the group said.
A spokesman for U.S. Oil Sands didn't respond to Bloomberg BNA's requests for comment. In June 2014, the Utah Supreme Court dismissed a challenge by Living Rivers to the original discharge permit (Living Rivers v. U.S. Oil Sands Inc., Utah, No. 20121009, 6/24/14; 123 DEN A-11, 6/26/14).
The court said the environmental group's petition for review of a determination by the Utah Board of Water Quality was untimely and therefore it lacked jurisdiction to consider the merits of the petition.
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Fight Over Oil Reserve Sales May Spill Into Senate Energy Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Geof Koss
Senate wrangling over how to pay for the chamber's transportation extension may add a further wrinkle to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee's upcoming energy bill.
Energy Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) yesterday voted against proceeding to the highway extension because of the decision to pay for it in part by selling 101 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over a seven-year period.
"It's just wrongheaded," she told reporters after the vote.
While Murkowski has argued against SPR sales as a matter of policy, it also would complicate her committee's energy bill by eliminating a revenue source to pay for upgrades to the reserve.
"One of the things that we have in our infrastructure piece is a subtitle on the SPR, recognizing that the SPR has some maintenance issues, some upgrades that are necessitated," she said. "Does that make sense? You sell from the SPR to maintain the SPR. I'd say that's a pretty clear nexus back."
She also suggested that other provisions could meet the "energy-security nexus" test she's laid out for using SPR revenues, including her long-sought goal of expanding offshore revenue sharing with coastal states.
"When you think about it, you've got increased production coming in, that's an energy security component," she told E&E Daily when asked about the issue. "So if you're selling off from your reserve, but by increasing your production, you have the ability to cover that reserve loss, there's connection there."
Murkowski has been up in arms for weeks since the House passed a health-care-related bill paid for in part by selling SPR oil, warning lawmakers against using the reserve as a "piggy bank" (E&ENews PM, July 7).
She argues it's shortsighted to sell oil from the reserve to fund unrelated programs, especially when oil is selling for far less than when the U.S. government purchased it.
"This is not just moving something from one bucket to another," she said. "When we sell that, we have to sell that at what you can find somebody to pay for it today. And when you fill it back up, you have to pay for it at whatever the going rate is and keep in mind what you paid for the oil that's in there now."
In a statement, Energy Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) -- who also voted against moving forward with the highway extension -- also denounced the notion of tapping the SPR.
"Senator Cantwell agrees with Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who has said he has 'considerable concern about using [the oil reserve] for anything other than energy security and resilience issues for which it is intended,'" Cantwell spokeswoman Rosemarie Calabro Tully said in an email. "The SPR is currently our most important federal energy security asset. The Quadrennial Energy Review includes an analysis of the energy security value of the SPR in modern global oil markets, examining ways to ensure that we maximize its energy security value for the American taxpayer. Rather than raiding the SPR, we must modernize it."
The tussling over the reserve ironically comes just days after Murkowski made a previously scheduled visit last week to the Bayou Choctaw Strategic Petroleum Reserve site near Baton Rouge, La., where she said she witnessed firsthand the maintenance needs of the facility.
Murkowski said Moniz in a phone conversation Friday reiterated his reservations about tapping the SPR to offset unrelated legislation. "He is in complete agreement with me," she said. "We're coming from the same place on this."
The White House referenced the House's SPR offset in a statement of administration policy earlier this month but stopped short of a veto threat.
"The administration reiterates the critical importance of making the investments necessary to modernize the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and ensure it continues to support U.S. energy security," said the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Murkowski said lawmakers should slow the rush to tap the SPR until the Department of Energy completes its ongoing review of the reserve, expected next spring.
"This is what the people at the [SPR] are doing, this full assessment," she said. "But no, you think we're going to wait for that, we're going to wait for next May or whenever it comes out? No, we're just going to cannibalize it right now. How short-term is that? I want a multiyear highway bill, but you've got to be smart about how you're finding your pay-fors, and this is not smart."
Murkowski said she hopes the failed procedural vote will prompt lawmakers to reconsider the SPR offset but said amendments targeting it are likely if it remains.
She also noted that Republicans have traditionally been the "guardians" of the SPR. "So what are we doing now?" she asked.
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FERC's Chair Calls for More Gas, Electric Coordination
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Norman Bay encouraged the natural gas and electric industries to continue working together to coordinate market scheduling.
“While progress has been made in the gas/electric coordination, I hope that the gas and electric industries continue to talk, and I hope that they continue to look for additional efficiencies,” Bay said at the Natural Gas Roundtable luncheon July 21 in Washington.
He said he would like to see the industries develop innovative, market-based solutions for products or services that could provide “greater flexibility to shippers and generators.”
Bay also discussed an April order that FERC sent asking for the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB), an organization that develops industry standards, to coordinate with the gas and electric industries to explore the potential for faster computerized scheduling where shippers all submit electronic nominations.
Bay said the goal of the computerized scheduling between the two industries is to streamline the process.
He said NAESB recently voted to delay work on the FERC request until next year.
“This issue remains an important one, and I will be following it closely,” Bay said.
Pipeline Cyber Security Addressed
Bay highlighted the country's growing reliance on natural gas for electricity, noting that natural gas surpassed coal in April as the top source of electric power generation.
“Given the importance of gas for power generation, it is particularly important for pipelines to adopt best practices with respect to cyber security,” he said.
“In the absence of robust cyber defenses, not only is infrastructure potentially at risk, but so is everyone who depends upon these essential services provided by that infrastructure—[local distribution companies], industrial end-users, generators and the public,” he added.
He said FERC is committed to information-sharing with industry and state regulators. He said FERC will share expertise and work with the Oil and Natural Gas Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which aims to provide intelligence on cyber incidents and vulnerabilities in the oil and natural gas industries.
Need for New Infrastructure Cited
Bay acknowledged the increasingly contentious process of siting new natural gas pipelines and encouraged the industry to proactively reach out to FERC for assistance.
He said FERC staff has developed a best practices manual for the siting of new pipelines that will be published in the upcoming weeks.
“The goal should be to create meaningful, two-way communication and the development of mutually beneficial relationships,” he said.
He said best practices in the development of new pipelines would need to involve management commitment, internal collaboration, training, stakeholder engagement and education and documentation of outreach to facilitate transparency and communication.
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Groups Sustain Lobbying Push on Clean Power Plan
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna and Andrew Childers
More than 120 entities reported lobbying Congress on the Environmental Protection Agency's soon-to-be-finalized Clean Power Plan in the second quarter of 2015, maintaining the same level of interest as a year ago and in one of the final chances to get the attention of lawmakers.
The 126 groups lobbying Congress about the carbon dioxide limits for existing power plants ranged from large publicly traded energy corporations to regional agricultural interests to national environmental groups, according to disclosure documents.
“I don't think [the lobbying numbers are] surprising at all, given the size and scope of the proposal,” Brian H. Potts, a partner in the Environmental Practice Group at Foley & Lardner LLP, told Bloomberg BNA. “And I would expect at least that number of parties to be involved in the ensuing litigation once the rule is finalized.”
Bills Target EPA Authority
Many of the energy and coal groups reported lobbying in favor of a House bill (H.R. 2042) and Senate legislation (S. 1324) that would impede or outright kill the EPA's regulatory efforts under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. Public health and environmental groups reported strongly opposing those legislative approaches.
The totals further show the sustained interest across various sectors in the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's efforts to address climate change. One-hundred-twenty groups reported lobbying on the Clean Power Plan a year ago, shortly after the agency proposed the regulation (141 DEN A-2, 7/23/14).
Companies lobbying on the rules were identified by Bloomberg BNA through a search of lobbying records with the keywords “Clean Power Plan,” “EPA power plants,” “111(d)” and the numbers of the Senate and House bills.
Groups Lobbying
Among the major energy corporations that reported lobbying on the rule to limit carbon emissions from existing power plants were Duke Energy Corp., Entergy Corp., Xcel Energy Inc., Peabody Energy Corp., Covanta Energy Corp. and Ameren Corp.
Other business and industry groups lobbying on the regulation include the Dow Chemical Co., Arch Coal Inc., Patriot Coal Corp., the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Chevron Corp., Caterpillar Inc., Koch Industries and BP America Inc.
Environmental and public health groups that disclosed lobbying on the EPA rules include the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association, the American Public Health Association, Earthjustice, Ceres Inc., the National Wildlife Federation and Environment America.
Several large unions, including the AFL-CIO and the United Mine Workers of America, also reported lobbying on the regulation.
The final rule is expected in August. The regulation (RIN 2060-AR33) would establish unique carbon dioxide emissions rates for the power sector in each state. State regulators would then develop their own plans to comply with the emissions rates. The EPA would issue federal plans for states that choose not to develop plans.
Groups Pressure White House
Major companies, advocacy organizations and industry groups have launched a full-court blitz ahead of the rule's expected release. Many of the same groups lobbying on the regulation have flocked to the White House to press for changes to the final regulation (133 DEN A-10, 7/13/15).
All that lobbying of Congress and the EPA is expected to have an effect. Observers from all sides are predicting the final rule could incorporate changes to state emissions targets, compliance deadlines and the tools regulators will use to achieve carbon dioxide reductions.
Despite any revisions to the proposal, Thomas Lorezen, a partner at Crowell & Moring LLP who has represented the power industry in meetings with the EPA and Office of Management and Budget to discuss the rule, predicted the agency will hold to its target of reducing carbon dioxide from power plants by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.
That goal has been the centerpiece of the Obama administration's efforts to rally support for an international climate agreement to be finalized in Paris later this year.
“They are touting that number to their negotiating partners as to what the United States will achieve,” Lorenzen told Bloomberg BNA July 21.
Power Group Pushes EPA
Beyond its lobbying efforts in Congress, the American Public Power Association (APPA) has been pushing the EPA for changes to the rule, including a reliability safety valve, changes to the interim emissions targets and setting standards based on a multi-year baseline.
“Our general over-arching theme with regard to the changes we'd like to see is we think the rule tries to do too much too quickly,” Joe Nipper, APPA senior vice president for regulatory affairs and communications, told Bloomberg BNA. “There's really not enough time in really every aspect of the rule.”
Environmental advocates also have lobbied Congress and are pressuring the EPA to set the most protective standards possible.
Paul Billings, vice president for policy and advocacy at the American Lung Association, which has been lobbying in support of the rule, told Bloomberg BNA the group hopes the EPA will issue a standard that is at least as protective as its proposal, if not more so.
“Hopefully, if they have made changes, they have made changes to make the rule stronger and more robust,” he said.
Congress Pressed for Action
The disclosures also show that opponents of the Clean Power Plan have been lobbying Congress to halt the rule.
Toward that end, the House on June 24 passed the Ratepayer Protection Act (H.R. 2042), sponsored by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.). In addition, Sen. Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) has pushed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for a hearing on her Affordable Reliable Electricity Now (ARENA) Act (S. 1324) before Congress recesses in August.
The House bill, which the White House has threatened to veto, would allow states to opt out of compliance with the Clean Power Plan, while the Senate bill would immediately kill off the regulation and set strict requirements for any future rules.
Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association, which has been lobbying against the rule, said the group will pursue appropriations riders as one method to oppose the Clean Power Plan.
“We have riders here in both Houses that will help send a message,” Popovich told Bloomberg BNA. “Of course, the president will no doubt veto any legislative effort that impedes his climate agenda and his ability to burnish his legacy when he leaves here, so obviously that's a major obstacle.”
Though the Clean Power Plan will likely spur renewed calls for legislation, environmental and public health advocates predicted Congress won't be able to overturn the rule.
“I think [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell [R-Ky.] is going to continue to lambast EPA at every turn,” Billings said. “It's hard to imagine a pathway where they get a bill to the president's desk, let alone sustain a veto. I think it's more for key constituency groups folks on the Hill are trying to appeal to.”
Fight Moves to States
Industry groups also have been lobbying state governments to oppose the EPA rule, Popovich said. State regulators would be tasked with developing their own compliance plans, but some governors have already expressed opposition to the rule.
“That's the arena this will be fought in,” Popovich said. “We're encouraged so far by a handful of governors who have already stated their outright opposition and more governors who have voiced real concern.”
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) has said her state won't comply with the rule, while Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), a presidential candidate, said it would be difficult for the state to comply unless the rule is substantially revised to prevent steep hikes in electricity rates.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) also has said the state wouldn't comply with the Clean Power Plan unless the final version is significantly revised. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) also has voiced opposition to the rule.
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Controversial Measures Left Out of House Energy Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
A repeal of the 40-year crude oil export ban and other controversial measures were left out of an energy package that eaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee released late July 20.
The bill, which is scheduled to be marked up in the Energy and Power Subcommittee July 22, includes measures that would streamline the federal citing process for interstate natural gas pipelines and allow the Energy Department to take emergency measures during “grid security emergencies.”
Measures that drew opposition from committee Democrats, such as language that would have blocked the DOE from implementing energy efficiency standards for furnaces or repealed a 2007 law requiring federal buildings to phase out the use of fossil fuels by 2030, weren't included in the final version.
“This latest draft reflects input from both sides, with proposals from Democratic members included and significant improvements made to more concerning provisions in earlier iterations,” Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), the respective top Democrats on the full committee and the Energy and Power Subcommittee, said in a joint statement following weeks of negotiations on the 95-page bill.
In addition to reinforcing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's role as the lead agency for siting interstate natural gas pipelines, the legislation also would require the commission to establish an Office of Compliance Assistance, which would be responsible for promoting improved compliance with commission rules and orders, according to a bill summary.
While a draft version of the bill would have blocked the Energy Department from finalizing residential furnace energy efficiency standards (RIN 1904-AD20) estimated to cost $11.6 billion, the new version of the bill seeks to encourage compromise through consensus negotiations.
Other provisions that were left out of the updated bill include a measure that would have expedited the Energy Department's approval process for liquefied natural gas export projects by setting a 30-day deadline for the DOE to issue a final decision on applications to export LNG following the conclusion of the National Environmental Policy Act environmental review.
While members are expected to hold off on offering amendments during the July 22 markup, amendments are anticipated when the full committee considers the legislation, probably later this fall, Andrew Goldberg, managing director of government relations for the American Institute of Architects, told Bloomberg BNA.
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House Dems: More Work Needed On Energy Plan
Jul 21, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darren Goode
House Energy and Commerce Democrats said more work is needed on an energy bill for which Republicans are hoping to win bipartisan support.
Panel ranking member Frank Pallone and Energy and Power Subcommittee ranking member Bobby Rush praised the initial bill released Monday night as a “product of months of thoughtful consideration in the Committee and ongoing bipartisan negotiations.”
The draft “reflects input from both sides, with proposals from Democratic members included and significant improvements made to more concerning provisions in earlier iterations,” they said in a joint statement. “While progress has been made, though, there is much work still left to be done.”
The energy and power subcommittee is scheduled to mark up the bill tomorrow.
Democratic members are concerned with provisions to streamline approvals for cross-border infrastructure projects and “would like to see actual funding in this bill” to modernize the electric grid and upgrade aging infrastructure, a Democratic aide said today.
Tomorrow’s markup is expected to focus primarily on areas of bipartisan agreement, the aide added, “and afterwards we will continue to negotiate on the rest of the provisions where we still have some disagreement.” -
Whitfield Sees Potential For Political Score; Murkowksi Optimistic
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Hannah Northey and Geof Koss
A top House Republican beginning the process of shepherding energy legislation through the lower chamber said the language is a jumping-off point for deeper, bipartisan negotiations and potential political scores.
Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) said during an interview on Capitol Hill yesterday that he doesn't expect members to introduce amendments to an energy bill the subcommittee released this week and that contentious provisions haven't been tacked onto the bill yet. The panel will mark up the legislation this morning.
But going forward, Whitfield said Republicans have a long list of asks, including language that would lift a decades-old ban on exporting domestic oil, reauthorize a pipeline safety law and repeal Section 433 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that mandated that federal buildings reduce reliance on fossil fuels, with 100 percent reduction by 2030.
The GOP also wants to expand the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's authority to address capacity markets and manage pipeline reviews, but Whitfield left off placing a time frame on approvals of domestic gas exports, saying that process is moving forward on its own. Overall, Whitfield said the legislation, stripped of contentious language, is really just a starting point, and he's hopeful that between now and when the full committee takes up the measure in September, discussions across the aisle will continue.
"We're going to have two options. One, we're going to have a bill that doesn't accomplish what we want to accomplish or what the other side wants to accomplish, or we're going to have a bill where we give up some significant things and they give up some significant things," Whitfield said. "Or we're going to have a bill that has everything we want in it, and we use that for the presidential year for setting up contrast."
While Whitfield was expressing optimism about the House legislation, the chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee remained hopeful yesterday that her panel's comprehensive energy bill could begin moving soon.
Some suggested the House bill is notable for what it leaves out. Republican political operative Michael McKenna, president of MWR Strategies said the House language at this stage is not the legacy project that Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) should have wanted because the language doesn't change the debate.
"In the desire to make it noncontroversial, it's noncontroversial," McKenna said. "The problem with that is that anything everywhere in the history of mankind that's worth doing has to anger people."
House Republicans' efforts to scrub the long-awaited language of any points of contention appeared to satisfy some, while continuing to trigger complaints among some industry and environmental groups and attract only tepid support from Democrats.
Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Power Subcommittee, said in a statement yesterday that while the bill includes significant improvements -- and input from both sides of the aisle -- challenges remain.
"While progress has been made, though, there is much work still left to be done," Rush said in a joint statement with Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the full House committee's ranking member.
Rush later said during an interview that negotiations surrounding the language will continue past the August recess and that he hopes to beef up the bill's efficiency provisions. "Frankly, I want to get more robust ideas from the Democratic side," he said.
America's Natural Gas Alliance applauded the committee's bipartisan workmanship in a statement, but complained the measure left out language that would have put a timeline on federal decisions for the export of domestic natural gas to foreign shores. Environmentalists were even more critical.
Friends of the Earth climate and energy campaigner Kate DeAngelis outlined a host of problems with the bill during an interview, arguing that provisions would encourage the use of fossil fuels while doing nothing to curb climate change or foster renewables.
DeAngelis said a provision in the bill that aims to put a clock on federal pipeline reviews could be interpreted to give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission more authority in shaping -- and possibly undermining -- environmental reviews of proposed natural gas pipelines. The bill would require federal and state agencies to "give deference" to FERC's recommendation for the scope of environmental reviews.
Another sore point among green groups is the bill's silence on climate change.
DeAngelis noted that the "Energy Security and Diplomacy" title of the bill calls for coordination with Canada and Mexico on oil and gas, transmission and storage, but not renewables.
"I think they were trying to neuter this as much as possible, and obviously, the main authors are against taking any action on climate change," she said. "I think this is really just a vehicle to advance the fossil fuel industry."
But Whitfield dismissed those complaints.
"Environmental groups are always concerned about everything, that's the reality," he said. In Senate, small items 'need to get ironed out'
In the Senate, Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said yesterday that discussions continue with ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) over the committee's comprehensive energy bill.
Speaking ahead of a meeting with Cantwell, Murkowski continued to maintain that the remaining issues are relatively minor.
"Some of them are just little things that we just need to get ironed out but most everyone agrees that we'll be able to work through," she said, noting that there were more than 100 bills referred to the committee for consideration in the package. "As you get closer to producing something both sides want to make sure that we're really all together now. So that's what we're working through now."
While Murkowski said she hopes to get to a markup this week, the clock continues to tick on her goal.
She also reiterated that the bill as introduced is unlikely to address hot-button issues such as opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
"It's not the bill that I would have designed," Murkowski told reporters. "I would have had my favorite, ANWR, in there, but you're not going to see ANWR."
However, she added, more contentious issues are fair game once the bill is open to amendment.
"The process can be very fluid after this," she said. "We can't control a lot once it gets to the committee and people want to introduce amendments; that's the beauty of a committee that's allowed to function, where you have members say, 'Hey, this is my priority. I want to run an amendment, I want to see where the votes are.'"
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Former DOE Official Questions U.S. Emissions-Cutting Pledge
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
The U.S. would likely fall well short of its pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions up to 28 percent by 2025 under a global climate accord even if all of the Obama administration's actions including power plant carbon pollution limits are fully implemented, a former Energy Department official said July 21.
Stephen Eule, who headed DOE's office of climate change policy and technology during the Bush administration, said his calculations—many of them drawn from the Obama administration's own projections—suggest the regulatory actions would leave the U.S. 29 percent to 34 percent short of its 2025 pledge.
President Barack Obama first announced the U.S. pledge—vowing to cut U.S. emissions 26 percent to 28 percent over the next decade from 2005 levels—at a joint announcement with China's president Xi Jinping in Beijing late last year (219 DEN A-8, 11/13/14).
The U.S. pledge, formally submitted to the UN in March in preparation for the end-of-year climate summit in Paris, would translate into a cut of 1.79 billion metric tons of emissions from the 6.39 billion tons the U.S. emitted in 2005, according to Eule, who spoke at a forum held by the American Council for Capital Formation that focused on whether the pledge is realistic.
The March U.S. offer was largely unchanged from the joint November 2014 announcement, although the U.S. pledged its “best efforts” to cut emissions closer to the 28 percent range by 2025.
But adding up projected cuts from more than a half-dozen regulatory actions launched by Obama, from methane limits for the oil and gas sector to more stringent vehicle efficiency requirements for large trucks, still leaves an estimated shortfall of 610 million metric tons of emissions, according to Eule, now vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy.
Administration Projections Lacking
Eule and other speakers at the forum said the administration has been vague at best on how its ongoing actions add up to the 26-to-28 percent cut, noting that the formal U.S. submission, known in UN parlance as its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution, offers little detail on how the U.S. will get to those levels of reductions.
The INDC submitted by the U.S. stated that its actions would target a broad array of greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride.
It offers the following explanation of how it will make reductions of those emissions: “Several U.S. laws, as well as existing and proposed regulations thereunder, are relevant to the implementation of the U.S. target,” including the Clean Air Act, the Energy Policy Act, and the Energy Independence and Security Act. It also lists the ongoing regulatory actions the U.S. will use to meet its pledge, although it does not attach estimated emissions reductions for each of those regulations.
Congressional Democrats, environmental groups, and other supporters of the president's climate actions note that the Environmental Protection Agency, DOE, and other agencies and departments have in fact detailed the projected emissions reductions in each of their proposed regulatory actions.
But the Republican chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), said at a July 8 committee hearing that the U.S. pledge relies “on an exaggerated stretch of current and future regulatory actions” and doesn't allow for the reality that regulations are often delayed and face multiple court challenges (131 DEN A-1, 7/9/15).
Final EPA Rule Imminent
Roger Martella, a partner with Sidley Austin LLP who was named EPA general counsel during the Bush administration, said the EPA's carbon pollution limits for existing power plants faces multiple court challenges in the months ahead.
Martella said he expects the EPA to finalize the rule during the first week of August. Few expect any significant changes in the “fundamental structure” of the final requirements from what the agency proposed in June 2014, he said.
Proposed under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, the EPA's Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33) would establish unique state-by-state carbon dioxide emissions rates for the power sector. As proposed, the requirements would cut power sector carbon dioxide emissions between 29 percent and 36 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, according to an Energy Information Administration report issued in June (100 DEN A-1, 5/26/15).
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Environmentalists Press EPA To Strengthen Heavy-Duty Engine GHG Limit
Jul 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Dawn Reeves
Despite early praise for EPA's phase 2 medium- and heavy-duty truck greenhouse gas (GHG) standards, environmentalists are now criticizing the plan's proposed requirements for semi-truck diesel engines, saying the 4.2 percent engine improvement the agency proposed is far short of what can be cost-effectively achieved.
But the environmentalists may face a tough sell getting the agency to strengthen the standard when it issues a final rule later this year. “It is hard to increase stringency a great deal after a proposal comes out,” says one industry source. “Except maybe when the engine standard is so low.”
While environmentalists believe EPA has underestimated the potential penetration rate for new engine technologies, the issue has split industry groups, with some engine makers agreeing with advocates that advanced technologies will become widespread in the coming years, while other industry groups are less optimistic.
Jason Mathers, a senior manager at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), calls the proposed engine standard “woefully inadequate” in a July 16 interview with InsideEPA/climate. The 4.2 percent engine improvement proposed for the duration of phase 2, which will run from model year (MY) 2019-2027, is far less than what was achieved in prior rules.
For example, a 2010 truck standard for conventional emissions improved engine efficiency 3-4 percent. The phase 1 GHG rule, which covers model years (MY) 2014-2018, included two additional step downs, a 3-4 percent improvement in MY2014 and another 3-4 percent in MY2017. That means only an additional 4 percent improvement would be required over the next decade through MY2027.
“It seems the agency left a lot of cost-effective reductions on the table,” Mathers says. “There is a lot of technology on the market today that we don't think is fully deployed, and the agency did not push to bring emerging technology into the market over this time period.”
It is “not clear to me why the agency did not do that,” he says, pointing to findings by the Southwest Research Institute, the National Academy of Sciences and some manufacturers who say they can achieve up to a 15 percent engine efficiency improvement by 2025.
At issue is EPA's proposed rule, issued jointly with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, that sets heavy-duty truck and engine standards. For diesel engines, which power the vast majority of heavy-duty trucks, EPA proposed standards that require a 4.2 percent improvement in carbon dioxide (CO2) and fuel efficiency than a 2017 baseline. “We are also proposing standards for MY2021 and MY2024, requiring reductions in CO2 emissions and fuel consumption of 1.5 to 3.7 percent better than the 2017 baseline. The agencies project that these reductions could be feasible based on technological changes that would improve combustion and reduce energy losses,” EPA's proposal says.
When EPA issued its proposal June 19, environmentalists generally praised it, with EDF officials on a June 18 preview call suggesting the rule would boost tractor-trailer fuel mileage from an average of 5 miles per gallon (mpg) to 9.5 mpg when fully implemented.
New Technologies
However, after the proposed rule was issued, and environmentalists had a chance to review it, they began to criticize the measure, especially the engine standard and the agency's assumptions about the potential penetration rate of new efficiency technologies.
Dave Cooke of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says in a July 16 interview, “We think . . . it is very important to continue to see improvements [in the engine standard] and that's the best way to capture real reductions. . . . So the fact that it was so much lower than we anticipated is a point we're going to be very focused on.”
UCS noted that it fell short of the 40 percent improvement the group called for between MY2010 and MY2025, instead requiring only a 36 percent improvement by MY2027. “Obviously, we believe we can improve at a faster rate, so one of the things we'll be working with over the coming months is to strengthen” the rule, a UCS source said the day the proposal was released.
The International Council on Clean Transportation notes in a fact sheet released after the proposal was issued that while “Phase 1 would reduce diesel (compression ignition) engines’ fuel use by 5 percent to 9 percent, Phase 2 would bring a further 4 percent reduction for diesel engines, and together the standards would result in an approximate 9 percent to 12 percent fuel consumption reduction from 2010 baseline engines by model year 2027.”
The proposal projects that most manufactures will begin applying the technologies to half of their heavy-duty engines by MY2021 and ultimately apply them to 90 percent by MY2024.
“However, for some of these improvements we project more limited application rates. In particular, we project a more limited use of waste exhaust heat recovery systems in 2027, projecting that about 10 percent of tractor engines will have turbo compounding systems, and an additional 15 percent of tractor engines would employ Rankine-cycle waste heat recovery. . . . Although we see great potential for waste heat recovery systems to achieve significant fuel savings and CO2 emission reductions, we are not projecting that the technology could be available for more widespread use in this time frame.”
EPA's conclusion about the market penetration of waste heat recovery and other technologies is turning into a major disagreement between some environmentalists and has split the industry, with some engine manufacturers projecting far higher market penetration while other companies do not.
EDF's Mathers says EPA is “undershooting the potential” for market penetration of many technologies. “Waste heat recovery is something that we think can help drive significant fuel consumption reduction, and you can get significantly more reduction than the agency has put forward before even getting to waste heat recovery.”
UCS' Cooke adds that environmental groups believe that a 15 percent heavy-duty engine efficiency improvement is achievable, though it would be reflected as a 10 percent improvement because of how EPA tests using a stand-alone engine dynamometer. That engine-only testing procedure would not capture some improvements associated with the engine that are within the powertrain, such as downspeeding. These powertrain improvements are credited to the vehicle side of the rule's standard.
“That means the most we would expect an engine standard, based directly on our analysis, to reflect is probably more like 10 percent, even if we attribute 15 percent of the improvements to tractor-trailers from the engine,” Cooke says. The bottom line is that we look at the low stringency of the engine standard as an area where the agencies are not helping to drive technology in the market. By setting such a low bar, we have concerns that this will not result in the full spectrum of cost-effective technologies being applied in the time frame of the rule, particularly on the engine side where there is considerable time and money needed for research and development, and thus even more need for a clear market signal.”
'Locked In'
Another problem is that while the rule goes out to MY2027, the standards are “locked in” through 2029 because of the “stability” of the rule, Cooke says. “We'll continue to dig in and try to understand how they arrived at that, but it's a lot lower than what manufacturers have publicly stated they can get to.”
However, these environmentalists say their disappointment with the engine standard does not torpedo their support for the rule.
EDF's Mathers says groups will work to try to convince EPA to strengthen the rule, but “we still see the proposal as a step in the right direction. Freight trucks are the fastest growing source of GHGs and this helps reduce the growth, and that's critically important. The agency has taken a lot of very good steps in this proposal.”
As evidence for why the engine standard can be strengthened, Mathers points to an April 22 Cummins presentation that says, “Engine[s] can provide significant improvement in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions” between 9 and 15 percent over the life of the rule, through a variety of technologies such as combustion and air handling, friction and parasitics, heat transfer management, and waste heat recovery.
A Cummins source says the company continues to review the proposal but notes it is “important to have a strong rule. . . . Although we have a lot more of the proposal to digest and understand, our initial review has found that it builds upon the successful foundation of Phase I. We are also confident that we have the right engine technology to meet and exceed the proposed standards.”
However, a second industry source warns that the quick praise from environmental groups for the massive proposal may have been premature, given that some groups now appear to be changing their stance, and says “people need to be very careful about their public statements” before digesting a 3,000-page regulation. This source also calls the 4.2 percent engine improvement “pretty aggressive” and one that will “force technology into the marketplace that is not in existence today.”
One industry consultant references technical discussions between EPA, industry and environmentalists happening now and is not optimistic that the agency will strengthen the engine standard. “From what I understand, EPA would argue that they have maxed out what they think is reasonable for the engine standard. . . . EPA honestly feels this is an aggressive standard.” However, the source expects environmentalists to press the White House and EPA to strengthen the standard in the final rule, possibly by adopting a more stringent alternative proposal, which would end phase 2 in MY2024 rather than MY2027.
Other industry groups say they will need more time to adequately comment on the 3,000-plus page proposal, but it remains unclear whether EPA will grant an extension to its Sept. 11 deadline, given that it needs to finalize the rule in spring 2016 to avoid it becoming a part of presidential election politics. Meanwhile, the Small Business Association Office of Advocacy has scheduled a July 29 “environmental roundtable” on the rule's small business impacts.
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Methane Studies Should Spur EPA Action, EDF Says
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
Methane emissions from natural gas transmission and storage networks in the U.S. are more than double the Environmental Protection Agency's estimates, which should spur the agency to set aggressive emissions limits on the industry, environmental advocates said.
Transmission and storage facilities emit 260 percent more methane than they report through the EPA's greenhouse gas reporting program due to overlooked emissions sources and a handful of so-called “super emitters” that account for a significant portion of the industry's methane emissions, according to the study, “Methane Emissions from the Natural Gas Transmission and Storage System in the United States,” published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology July 21.
The Environmental Defense Fund, which put together the study along with industry groups and academics, said the results should spur the EPA to set stringent emissions limits for the natural gas industry. Standards are particularly needed for equipment leaks as part of performance standards expected in August. The study of transportation and storage systems found that 4 percent of the equipment studied, the so-called “super emitters,” were responsible for 23 percent of total methane emissions.
“That definitely would inform the need for there to be rigourous leak detection program and repair requirements flowing from that leak detection program,” Jonathan Peress, the air policy director for natural gas at the Environmental Defense Fund, told reporters July 21.
The study produced the last in a string of reports from the Environmental Defense Fund with assistance from industry groups that examined methane emissions from across various points of the natural gas production process. The studies consistently found the EPA is overestimating or underestimating emissions from various points in the natural gas supply chain, because it is relying on outdated emissions models from the early 1990s (63 DEN A-6, 4/2/15).
Methane is a short-lived greenhouse gas that is 28 to 36 times more potent than carbon dioxide when measured over a 100-year period, according to the EPA.
The agency is expected to propose in August new source performance standards for methane emissions from new oil and natural gas wells. The White House Office off Management and Budget is reviewing the rule (122 DEN A-8, 6/25/15).
Industry Touts Efforts
Though researchers have found that the EPA may be underestimating total methane emissions from the natural gas sector, the industry touted findings that its emissions are 27 percent lower on a percentage basis than the agency estimates as it has turned to newer, more-efficient equipment.
“As in the first study released in February by the same groups, the new study indicates that a small number of leaks account for a disproportionally large share of overall methane released into the atmosphere,” Don Santa, president and chief executive officer of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, said in a statement. “This finding indicates a need to focus methane management measures at sites and equipment with the highest emissions profile.”
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New Study Emphasizes Need to Find and Fix Methane Leaks; Reveals Limits of Voluntary Action
Jul 21, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By N. Jonathan Peress
A study published today in Environmental Science & Technology confirms official figures from the Environmental Protection Agency showing that an enormous amount of methane – about 80 billion cubic feet per year – is escaping from thousands of key nodes along the nation’s natural gas interstate pipeline system. This equals the 20-year climate impact of 33 coal-fired power plants and more than $240 million worth of wasted natural gas per year, enough to meet the yearly heating and cooking needs of over a million U.S. households.
The study also shows the limitations of voluntary measures to address the industry’s methane problem. Companies that volunteered for this study, for example, reported emissions 30 percent lower than companies that were not involved. For some equipment, the difference was more than seven-fold. The performance gap between volunteer and non-volunteer companies reinforces doubt about industry claims that it can manage methane emissions on its own, underscoring the need for standards that create a level playing field across the sector.
Major Challenge, Big Opportunity
The study also confirms that major emission sources are widely distributed, intermittent, and unpredictable. In this case, a relatively small number of large leaks from ill-performing equipment and facilities accounted for 40 percent of the methane leaking from the country’s pipeline transmission and storage infrastructure.
The problem is that it’s incredibly hard to predict when and where these emissions sources occur – at any time, various pieces of equipment can be leaking, so the real-world challenge for operators is finding and fixing malfunctions quickly. Once again, this finding suggests the need for a broad-based monitoring and repair requirement.
The oil and gas industry is the nation’s largest industrial source of methane pollution, with emissions leaking out from various points across the supply chain (production, gathering, transmission and distribution). This latest study reports emissions for the transmission and storage sector, the industry’s hub and spokes, that includes over 2,000 compressor stations distributed along 300,000 miles of pipeline traversing the nation with underground storage facilities and other associated equipment.
Evidence for Action Builds
Methane is a short-lived, powerful greenhouse gas pollutant, and because it is the main ingredient in natural gas, also represents a waste of a valuable energy resource. The study release comes at a time when federal and state regulatory agencies are considering a range of measures to potentially limit emissions from oil and gas operations.
The new study is the second published based on research led by Colorado State University, which involved the most comprehensive on-site measurement campaign to date of this sector. It was organized by EDF as part of a groundbreaking series of 16 studies examining how much methane is escaping from the natural gas supply chain and where it’s coming from.
Proof of What’s Possible
The results of this study suggest that transmission companies have made site improvements since the 1990s like replacing old reciprocating compressors with newer devices that emit substantially less methane. Determining the rationale for those changes (i.e., whether they were intended to reduce leaks or for other purposes) was outside the study scope. Efforts by companies to upgrade infrastructure are nevertheless encouraging, and show what can be achieved through technology improvements – when and if those steps are actually taken.
The researchers’ model also indicates facilities subject to EPA reporting — those with annual greenhouse gas emissions greater than 25,000 metric tons carbon dioxide-equivalent – actually emit over twice the methane they reported. Researchers attribute this to the program’s reporting requirements, suggesting opportunities exist to ensure significantly more complete accounting from the transmission and storage sector.
Good News/Bad News
While this study reveals some encouraging findings, it also indicates that not all in the industry are making the same effort. The best way to ensure that all companies are taking necessary steps to best identify leaks and update equipment is through comprehensive regulation. BLM, EPA and several leading states are already in the process of developing regulations, and as this study indicates, it is important to include in those rules rigorous requirements for finding and fixing the leakiest equipment.
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White House Threatens to Veto House Coal Ash Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
President Barack Obama would be urged to veto House legislation (H.R. 1734) on the management and disposal of coal ash if it reaches his desk, according to a July 21 statement of administration policy.
That strong opposition to the bill marks a significant shift for the administration, which has never before threatened to veto similar legislation on the Environmental Protection Agency's coal ash rule.
Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.), sponsor of the current bill, spearheaded similar efforts that passed the House during previous sessions of Congress.
“While the administration supports appropriate state program flexibility, H.R. 1734 would allow states to modify or waive critical protective requirements found in EPA's final [coal ash] rule,” the statement says. “Because it would undercut important national protections provided by EPA's 2014 [coal ash] management and disposal rule, the administration strongly opposes H.R. 1734.”
Specifically, the administration said the legislation would “substantially weaken” drinking water and structural integrity protections in the rule, undermine retrofitting and closure requirements for unlined coal ash impoundments and delay implementation of certain other requirements from the final rule.
Ambiguity in EPA Rule
The McKinley bill would permanently bar the EPA from regulating coal ash, a residue from coal-fired power generation, as a hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The legislation also would give states a greater role in establishing the regulatory frameworks for the material and establish consistency for enforcement of the standards, according to the West Virginia Republican.
“It's a response primarily to the ambiguity of the rule that the EPA promulgated,” McKinley told reporters July 21. “I think the EPA actually tried to do a pretty good job in establishing a response to this issue.”
The EPA's top waste official, Mathy Stanislaus, would not endorse McKinley's bill during the committee process (57 DEN A-19, 3/25/15).
In April, the EPA formally published the first federal standards for the management and disposal of coal ash (80 Fed. Reg. 21,302). That regulation goes into effect on Oct. 19.
McKinley Hopeful About Senate
McKinley said he believes the Senate will be more willing to move legislation on coal ash management now that the rule has been finalized. He welcomed the introduction July 19 of companion legislation (S. 1803) by Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
Hoeven has expressed skepticism that the Senate could advance the measure by itself, but he has said he would consider attaching it to other legislative vehicles. McKinley said he would be open to any approach to resolve the uncertainty in the coal ash recycling market (138 DEN A-1, 7/20/15).
“This is one that could be a standalone or it could be attached to something,” McKinley said.
Separately July 21, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released letters from a number of groups supporting the bill. Those groups include the American Public Power Association, the Association of State and Territorial Solid Waste Management Officials, Edison Electric Institute, the Environmental Council of States, the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.
Accomplishes What EPA Couldn't
“[The EPA's approach] does not result in a single set of requirements implemented through a state program, but rather a set of dual regulatory requirements that have the potential to diverge as site-specific application of the requirements are challenged,” a letter from four of the groups states. “H.R. 1734 will accomplish what EPA could not” in the rule.
Environmental advocates have criticized the McKinley bill for delaying compliance deadlines, eliminating critical protections from the final regulation (RIN 2050-AE81) and creating an inconsistent patchwork of state programs that they say will endanger human health and the environment.
Late July 21, the House Rules Committee met to determine how to structure floor debate on the McKinley bill.
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White House Threatens To Veto McKinley Coal Ash Bill
Jul 21, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillén
The White House today threatened to veto Rep. David McKinley’s coal ash bill, which the House is expected to pass on Wednesday.
The White House “strongly opposes H.R. 1734 because it would undermine the protection of public health and the environment,” according to a State of Administration Policy. The document specifically cites coal ash spills like the 2008 Tennessee disaster and the 2014 spill in North Carolina's Dan River as indicators of the need for EPA's rule.
McKinley's bill, the White House warns, would "substantially weaken" protections by cutting out a restriction on how close coal ash ponds can be located to drinking water sources. The White House also argues that the bill would let states create permit programs that don't meet national standards.
It is the first time the White House has explicitly waved its veto pen at McKinley’s perennial coal ash legislation, which has previously passed the House but died in the Senate when it was controlled by Democrats. Companion legislation was recently introduced in the Senate.
McKinley’s bill would permanently designate coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity, as a non-hazardous waste. It would also give states more control to manage coal ash, some of which is recycled into drywall and concrete.
The coal ash rule is slated to take effect in October. A number of groups and companies sued over the rule this month. -
White House Threatens To Veto Mckinley Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E Daily News
By Manuel Quiñones
The White House yesterday threatened to veto legislation to change U.S. EPA's new rule governing the disposal of coal combustion waste.
West Virginia Republican Rep. David McKinley's H.R. 1734 would create national standards for coal ash disposal to be enforced by states. The House is planning to debate and vote on the bill today.
The White House wants EPA's rule to stand and echoed environmental groups in calling the bill dangerous to the environment and human health.
Notably, the administration's veto threat is a departure from its previous statements of policy on similar legislation. Before, the White House had only expressed strong concerns.
"EPA's rule articulates clear and consistent national standards to protect public health and the environment, prevent contamination of drinking water and minimize the risk of catastrophic failure at coal ash surface impoundments," said the White House yesterday.
Even though EPA decided to regulate the material as nonhazardous -- as many utilities, coal ash recycling firms and their allies wanted -- the agency left open the possibility of changing its mind.
Regulation of coal ash disposal as nonhazardous also means states don't have to implement EPA's rule. Citizens and states can enforce it through litigation.
"I think the EPA tried to do a pretty good job in establishing a response to this [coal ash disposal] problem," said McKinley during a conference call. But he complained about the "ambiguity of the rule the EPA promulgated."
During a Rules Committee meeting yesterday to discuss the parameters of debate for the bill, Republicans also criticized the EPA rule's enforcement mechanisms.
"The enforcement in the bill seems better than what's in the federal rule," said Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio). Other GOP lawmakers seized on the same point.
Even though the bill includes significant parts of EPA's new rule, environmental advocates object to many of the changes, including pushing back compliance deadlines. And even though they don't like the rule's enforcement mechanism, they prefer it to the legislation.
The White House said the bill "would eliminate restrictions on how close coal ash impoundments can be located to drinking water sources. It also would undermine EPA's requirement that unlined impoundments must close or be retrofitted with protective liners if they are leaking and contaminating drinking water."
In the Senate, Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) introduced S. 1803 as a companion to McKinley's bill. Backers have also spoken about including the measure as an amendment to broader legislation.
McKinley said there appeared to be "more willingness to look at this legislation in the Senate." Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) recently held a hearing on the coal ash issue, the first in years.
"I always felt it should be a stand-alone," McKinley said about the legislation, but he recalled how a previous version almost made it into the 2012 transportation bill. "It potentially could be attached to a highway bill again," he said.
Either way, McKinley said, "we need to put this to rest." With EPA's rule scheduled to go into effect this fall, he asked, "why not resolve it now, legislatively?"
The Rules Committee last night voted to allow for the consideration on the House floor of several amendments to McKinley's bill. One by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), a key co-sponsor, would make technical changes to the legislation. Others are by Democrats looking to add environmental protections to the bill.
An amendment by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) would require post-closure monitoring standards for impoundments to conform with EPA's rule. Another by Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) would keep cleanup requirements that are in the rule.
An amendment by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) would incorporate the rule's information transparency requirements. Another by Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.) would require companies to study drinking water wells within a half-mile of ash impoundments.
An amendment by Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) would allow EPA to block the legislation if the agency finds it jeopardizes vulnerable populations, including children and the elderly.
Beyond the legislation, groups and companies have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to revise parts of EPA's rule.
Petitions for review have come from the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, Earthjustice, Associated Electric Cooperative Inc., Beneficial Reuse Management, Lafarge North America Inc. and the city of Springfield in Missouri.
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States Can Revise Water Standards Using New Criteria
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
States will be able use the Environmental Protection Agency's newly revised national human health criteria for 94 chemical pollutants when updating their water quality standards, the association of state water regulators said.
“The criteria will provide states with a starting point that is based upon the latest scientific data and information as they begin to develop state specific criteria limiting toxic substances such as metals, pesticides and other organic compounds from getting into the states’ waterways in order to protect people who consume water, fish, and shellfish from a states’ surface waters,” Julia Anastasio, executive director of the Association of Clean Water Administrators, told Bloomberg BNA in a July 20 e-mail.
The EPA has not updated its national recommended water quality criteria for human health since the 1980s. Section 304(a)(1) of the Clean Water Act requires the EPA to develop and periodically revise criteria that accurately reflect the latest scientific knowledge for protection of water quality and human health. States base their water quality standards on the EPA criteria. States have the option of modifying the criteria to reflect site-specific conditions or adopt different criteria based on other scientifically defensible methods. The EPA must approve any new water quality standards that states develop prior to their use to meet Clean Water Act obligations.
On June 29, the agency published its updated human health criteria for 94 chemical pollutants, reflecting the latest science and EPA policies. In calculating the impact of these chemicals on human health, EPA relied on updated values such as fish consumption rates, body weight, average daily water consumption, health toxicity values and bioaccumulation factors. Also figured in the calculation are the relative source contributions of pollutants that the EPA has used to recommend water quality criteria for the pollutants that are protective of human health (80 Fed. Reg. 36,986).
The EPA sought comment on the draft updated criteria from May to August 2014.(92 DEN A-13, 5/13/14).
These final updated human health criteria recommendations supersede the EPA's previous ones, according to the agency.
According to the EPA, the agency has used the methodology it developed in 2000 to recalculate the human health criteria, but used new cancer potency factors and new reference doses that have been peer reviewed. A reference dose is an estimate of a likely, daily oral exposure of a chemical to humans (including sensitive subgroups) but without an appreciable risk of deleterious effects during a lifetime.
Citing technical reasons, the EPA said it chose not to update human health criteria for arsenic, selenium, thallium, chromium, methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), or 2,3,7,8-TCDD (dioxin), among other heavy metals, inorganic and organic compounds.
In addition, states would be required to consider any new or updated section 304(a) criteria as part of their triennial reviews to ensure that state or tribal water quality standards reflect current science and protect applicable designated uses of fishing, swimming and drinking, the agency said. If the states are unable to use the new criteria then they would have to provide a science-backed justification for it.
Five-to-Fifty Times More Stringent Criteria
The National Association of Clean Water Agencies said in its August 2014 comments on the draft criteria that the recommendations were in some cases five to 50 times more stringent than the existing criteria. “In a number of cases, the criteria values have changed so significantly, that pollutants which were previously not a concern for some clean water agencies, could overnight become potential compliance issues,” the association said.
Chris Hornback, NACWA senior director for regulatory affairs, told Bloomberg BNA July 20 that the class of organic compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and trihalomethanes (THMs) that include bromoform could pose a compliance challenge for wastewater utilities in the West, where water reuse is prevalent and these disinfection byproducts are a concern. He also pointed to the organic compound, bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate – which could be an issue where plastic sampling containers are used).
More importantly, Hornback said, there will be widespread impacts to the association's members when the EPA works to apply these updates to the more problematic pollutants like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and mercury that the EPA didn't update in this round.
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Environmental Groups Seek Rehearing on Waste Rule
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
A coalition of nine environmental advocacy groups have asked a federal appeals court to rehear challenges to a regulation exempting certain nonhazardous secondary materials from stricter air pollution requirements when burned in solid waste incinerators or boilers (Eco Servs. Operations LLC v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 11-1189, petition for en banc rehearing filed 7/20/15).
The organizations filed their petition for rehearing en banc with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on July 20.
They argue the issue of burning waste is of “exceptional importance” due to its potential human health and environmental impacts, but they also said the court's decision to dismiss all challenges to the final rule conflicts with prior Clean Air Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act precedence.
“Because EPA's definition excludes almost all solid waste from the regulatory definition, facilities operating in thousands of communities across the country can now burn scrap tires, used oil, and other wastes, including processed household waste, without controlling, measuring, or reporting the toxic pollution that results,” the groups argued.
In an unpublished June 3 opinion, the D.C. Circuit dismissed challenges to the 2013 regulation (78 Fed. Reg. 9112) from both industry and environmental groups. The court concluded the Environmental Protection Agency appropriately used its discretion in writing the final rule.
The EPA's final nonhazardous secondary materials rule outlined what materials could be considered “solid wastes,” which are subject to stricter emissions control standards when burned, and what items could be considered “fuels,” which are subject to less strict air control requirements under the Clean Air Act.
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Senators Probe EPA Role in Setting Social Cost of Carbon
Jul 22, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
Senate Republicans are seeking all documents related to the Environmental Protection Agency's participation in the development of the social cost of carbon figure since its inception in 2009.
Ten Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the Obama administration's response to comments on the social cost of carbon figure has been “delayed and lax,” according to a July 21 letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. The senators are seeking documents from the agency as a participant in the interagency working group that helps calculate the figure.
“The Environmental Protection Agency is one of the primary users of the [social cost of carbon] in its regulatory analyses,” the senators said. “It is the linchpin of all the agency's purported climate benefits even though the SCC is based on global benefits while the costs are borne solely by Americans.”
The EPA is reviewing the letter, a spokeswoman told Bloomberg BNA.
The administration announced July 2 it would be setting the social cost of carbon at $36 per ton, down from $37 per ton previously (129 DEN A-3, 7/7/15).
The social cost of carbon estimate is an estimate of the long-term damage done by one ton of carbon pollution and, in practice, federal agencies use it to tally the benefits of actions they are considering to cut carbon in rules such as the EPA's proposed carbon dioxide standards for power plants.
The letter was signed by Inhofe and Sens. David Vitter (R-La.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
The senators asked the EPA to provide the requested documents by Aug. 11.
The House Natural Resources Committee will have a hearing on the social cost of carbon figure July 22.
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The Science And Morality Of Climate Change
| The Hill - Contributors
By Amanda D. Rodewald
"The absence of certainty is not an excuse to do nothing," Christine Todd Whitman, President George W. Bush's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, once cautioned.
For decades, we have ignored Whitman's advice and done just that when faced with critical, lifesaving decisions about how the U.S. should respond to climate change. Despite years of scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human activities and will have dire social and environmental consequences — some of which we are already experiencing — we've been stymied at the policy level by counterarguments built almost exclusively around exaggerations of "scientific uncertainty" about the causes of climate change and the exact level of problems we will face.Recently, however, there has been a shift in the conversation from largely scientific and technical grounds to morality and ethics. Last month, Pope Francis released an encyclical — a formal statement of the Vatican's views on an issue — that highlights the impacts that climate change will have on humanity, especially poor and vulnerable populations. In his statement, Francis warned that human activities are changing the climate, chastised "obstructionists" for blocking action, and called for global leaders — and each one of us — to meet our "moral obligation" to fight it.
Governments are using moral frames as well. Along with a visit to the Vatican, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Kenneth Hackett noted in a blog post that the EPA's forthcoming rule to limit carbon dioxide emissions by power plants is consistent with Francis's moral call to action. They wrote:
Climate impacts like extreme droughts, floods, fires, heat waves, and storms threaten people in every country — and those who have the least suffer the most. No matter your beliefs or political views, we are all compelled to act on climate change to protect our health, our planet, and our fellow human beings.
The Obama administration similarly heralded its new commitments to reduce carbon emissions as a moral imperative. Internationally, a Dutch court ordered its government to do more to fight climate change because a failure to do so was a human rights violation.
This framing is likely to resonate well with the general public. A poll in February found that 66 percent of respondents said that world leaders are morally obligated to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change, and 72 percent believed they as individuals shared the moral obligation to fight carbon pollution.
What does this shift signal about the role of science in decision-making? Even though the recent frame is one of morality and ethics, there is no doubt that the science brought us here. Science-based decision-making is not about science telling us what to do. Science elucidates the consequences of different actions and helps us to better understand the likely outcomes of our choices, but in the end, it cannot prescribe decisions because our values guide those as well. For example, science can tell us that we are likely to avert 69,000 premature deaths by swiftly responding to climate change, as did a recent EPA report, Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action, but it is up to us to decide if 69,000 lives are important enough to save.
Looking back, science has appropriately informed the international conversation about climate change. Science can and should help shape our beliefs by providing information and helping us to understand tradeoffs and uncertainties. But science can neither dictate nor safeguard our values; that responsibility rests with us. Let's hope that we rise to the occasion.
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