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Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) Hot Topics at ALEC’s 2015 Meeting in San Diego
Jul 22, 2015 | San Diego Free Press
By Brendan Fischer

This week, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or “ALEC,” will bring together hundreds of corporate lobbyists with state and local politicians at a posh hotel in San Diego for the group’s annual meeting.

Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) Fond of Bonds: Summer’s Most Infamous Chemical
Jul 22, 2015 | Chem Info
By Meagan Parrish

Ah yes… bright sun, warm temps, lazy rivers and the sweet smell of chlorine — that’s when you know it’s summer. But there’s more to the notorious CI #17 than just its role in disinfecting swimming pools.
Preemption isn’t a Dirty Word
Jul 22, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Joseph Perrone, Sc.D.

No state wants to cede authority to the federal government. But when it comes to key scientific policies that directly impact both interstate commerce and public health, Congress has the responsibility to intervene.
EPA Receives Test Data on Flame Retardant Substance
Jul 22, 2015 | Chemical Watch

The US EPA has received test data on the substance phosphorochloridothioic acid, O,O-diethyl in a response to a test rule. The data relates to aquatic toxicity.

Chemical Security News

Drug-Making Possible Cause of Laboratory Explosion
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

A security guard's attempts to make methamphetamine appear to have caused an explosion at a government science laboratory in Maryland, a federal law enforcement official said.

Energy and Environment News

Industry Heavyweights Call for Lifting Export Ban
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Geof Koss

Top refining officials from the world's largest oil companies are urging lawmakers to repeal the crude export ban, arguing that doing so will boost U.S. production and supply for refiners.
'Super-emitters' Responsible for up to 40% of Methane Leaks -- Study
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Pamela King

More than $240 million worth of natural gas leaks from the country's interstate pipeline network each year, according to new research led by Colorado State University.
House Subcommittee Clears Energy Bill
Jul 22, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darren Goode

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee unanimously advanced an energy bill today but delayed consideration of lawmakers’ most controversial priorities until after the August recess.
Energy Bill Sails through Subcommittee, But Tough Talks Loom
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Hannah Northey and Daniel Bush

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee unanimously approved a comprehensive energy bill today, making clear the stripped-down measure will serve as a vehicle for policy riders down the road.
Pallone Optimistic for Energy Bill Deal
Jul 22, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darren Goode

House Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone said he isn’t worried that Republicans will torpedo fragile energy legislation.
White House Conspicuously Absent at Cost of Carbon Hearing
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jean Chemnick

After years of clamoring for additional information about the closed-door process that led to the Obama administration's social cost of carbon estimates in 2010 and 2012, a House committee held a hearing today to consider the controversial estimate without including any administration witnesses.
Foundation Floats Interstate Compact to Fight Clean Power Plan
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Edward Klump

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) yesterday unveiled a potential interstate compact aimed at U.S. EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan, which seeks to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.
Shallow Wells Could Present Groundwater Contamination Risks -- Study
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Pamela King

Sixteen percent of U.S. wells planted between 2010 and 2013 were hydraulically fractured less than a mile below ground, according to new research out of Stanford University.
New York, San Francisco Mayors Use Vatican Appearance to Roll Out New Climate Goals
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Scott Detrow

At a Vatican conference attended by mayors from around the world, executives from San Francisco and New York City unveiled aggressive new pushes to lower their cities' greenhouse gas emissions.
Global Warming 'Not Science Fiction' -- Arnold Schwarzenegger
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

Arnold Schwarzenegger was part of a group of Nobel prizewinners, U.N. secretary generals, spiritual leaders, theologians and philosophers chosen by the French government to persuade the world to act quickly on climate change ahead of December's U.N. meeting in Paris.
FERC to Issue 'Best Practices' Manual on Infrastructure
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Rod Kuckro

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the next few weeks will release a "best practices manual" to guide the natural gas and electric sectors in the siting of new infrastructure.
Md. Sets Aggressive Mandate for Utilities to Cut Electricity Consumption
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Energywire

Maryland utility regulators directed the state's electric utilities to step up efforts aimed at cutting electrical consumption statewide with one of the most ambitious targets nationwide.
EPA 'Out of Control' with Regs -- Bobby Jindal
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

GOP presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal rebuked a controversial U.S. EPA water rule at a campaign event in Iowa this week.

Transportation News

Regulators: Railroads Must Disclose Oil Train Data
Jul 22, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama

Federal regulators are reminding freight railroad companies that they are obligated to tell states and tribes when they plan to move large volumes of crude oil through the areas.
FRA Presses Railroads on Oil-Train Notification Rules
Jul 22, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Elana Schor

The Federal Railroad Administration today put railways on notice about their responsibility to inform state-level first responders about the movement of oil trains within their borders.
New Ozone Limit Could Halt D.C. Road, Rail Fixes -- Chamber
Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka

A more stringent ozone standard could threaten transportation projects in and around the nation's capital, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a report released today.

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Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) Hot Topics at ALEC’s 2015 Meeting in San Diego

Jul 22, 2015 | San Diego Free Press

By Brendan Fischer

This week, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or “ALEC,” will bring together hundreds of corporate lobbyists with state and local politicians at a posh hotel in San Diego for the group’s annual meeting.
ALEC alum Scott Walker, who has signed over 20 ALEC bills into law, will address this month’s meeting, as well as Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, who participated in ALEC meetings before he joined the U.S. Senate. Community groups are planning on bringing a little transparency to the proceedings, by welcoming the candidates and ALEC participants on July 22.
ALEC has had a mixed year. Over a dozen companies, including tech giants Google and Facebook, stopped funding the group over its role in promoting climate change denial, yet after the 2014 elections gave Republicans control of 68 out of 98 state legislative bodies, some states have had few impediments to the corporate-friendly legislation that ALEC peddles. For example, in just the first half of 2015, Wisconsin became a “right to work” state and repealed the prevailing wage; Michigan blocked local control over minimum wage and paid sick days; and Texas banned cities from regulating fracking.
A look at the San Diego ALEC agenda tells us more about what ALEC has planned for 2015 and beyond.Attacking Federal Efforts to Rein in Carbon Pollution
Even though California is suffering from a historic drought, the climate change deniers on the Environment and Agriculture Task Force will be working on new ways to stymie action addressing carbon emissions.
In recent years, ALEC has targeted the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Clean Power Plan,” which is a set of rules limiting carbon dioxide pollution from coal plants. At the behest of its funders like Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and American Electric Power, ALEC has been organizing a state-level campaign against the rules: the group organized legislators to press their state attorneys general into joining litigation backed by the energy industry that challenges the regulations, adopted a model resolution attacking the plan, and last December adopted a model bill that would create new hurdles for the Plan’s implementation.
At this month’s meeting, the Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force–which is chaired by American Electric Power– will consider a “State Power Accountability and Reliability Charter (SPARC),” which seeks to undermine the Clean Power Plan by declaring that state agencies cannot implement it. And, the task force’s “Energy Subcommittee” will hold a discussion on “State Responses to EPA’s Proposed Clean Power Plan.”
Another model bill on the ALEC agenda is the “Environmental Impact Litigation Act,” which effectively allows corporate interests to hire a state’s Department of Justice as their own private attorneys. The bill creates a corporate-backed fund for states to sue over federal environmental laws–such as the EPA’s Clean Power Plan–guided by an “environmental impact litigation advisory committee” made up of political appointees and representatives of “individuals representing agriculture and energy trade commissions.”Undermining Renewable Energy
ALEC will also double-down on its attacks on rooftop solar and renewable energy.
For the last few years, ALEC and funders like Edison Electric Energy have promoted bills to repeal state Renewable Portfolio Standards, which require utilities to provide some power from renewable sources. Despite support from the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity, ALEC has had limited success in pushing these bills into law, so the group is looking for new ways to undermine renewable standards.
The latest effort is called an “Act Providing Incentives for Carbon Reduction Investments.” The industry-friendly bill would free utilities from the requirement that they produce more energy from renewable sources, as long as they claim to make “carbon reduction investments”–which includes controversial programs like carbon sequestration, or campaigns to encourage consumers to reduce energy use. This would undermine the purpose of the renewable standards, which is to promote a shift to renewable energy.Thwarting Rooftop Solar
Solar will also be on the agenda. ALEC has tried in a variety of ways to reduce incentives for individuals and businesses to build rooftop solar panels by raising the costs. Over the last few years, ALEC and its utility industry funders have promoted bills to eliminate “net metering,” which gives solar users a credit for excess energy they feed back into the grid, and have been behind efforts to impose a surcharge on rooftop solar users. With few exceptions, these efforts have failed, thanks to strong support for solar from conservatives who like the self-sufficiency that rooftop solar provides, and the fact that in many states the solar industry is creating manufacturing and construction jobs.
In San Diego, ALEC will consider a proposal called a “Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales” that aims to prop-up the monopolies enjoyed by traditional utilities and oppose direct-to-consumer solar sales. It will be coupled with a presentation called “Consumer Protection Concerns Surround Rooftop Solar Model Policy.” In many states, solar developers are allowed to install panels on a customer’s home or business for free, then sell the power directly to the consumer, rather than through a monopoly utility provider like Peabody Energy.
Direct-to-consumer energy sales that bypass heavily-regulated monopoly utilities might be viewed as the sort of “market disruption” that free market adherents claim to support. After all, ALEC has celebrated the emergence of ride-sharing companies like Uber because they disrupt taxi monopolies and allow direct-to-consumer ride sales.
The key difference is that ALEC is bankrolled by utility companies. ALEC funders like Peabody Energy, Duke Energy, and Murray Energy are not pleased about the threat to profits posed by direct-to-consumer solar, so therefore it must be crushed, free market principles be damned. Incredibly, the “Resolution Concerning Special Markets for Direct Solar Power Sales” declares that direct-to-consumer solar is “antithetical to free markets.”
The proposal appears to come from the climate change deniers at the Heartland Institute.“Beepocalypse Not”
At this meeting, ALEC is denying more than climate change. It also is apparently denying the mass die-off of bees, which threatens food supplies–two-thirds of crops require bee pollination–and which scientists have linked to type of insecticide produced by ALEC member Bayer and other companies. Until recently, Bayer had a representative on ALEC’s corporate board and has been listed as the ALEC corporate co-chair in states like Massachusetts, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Texas.
Bayer has been actively pushing back on the notion that its products contribute to a bee colony collapse. According to a report from Friends of the Earth, Bayer recently launched a “Bee Care Tour” as well as a children’s book “in which a friendly neighborhood beekeeper tells young Toby that the bees are getting sick, but ‘not to worry’ it’s just a problem with mites, and there is special medicine to make bees healthy”–medicine that Bayer produces, of course.
At this month’s ALEC meeting, bee die-off denialists took a clumsy stab at being clever: in an apparent reference to “Apocalypse Now” (or perhaps Wayne’s World), they titled their presentation, “‘Beepocalypse Not.”Preemption Hypocrisy
ALEC’s new offshoot focused on local government, the American City County Exchange(ACCE), will also meet in San Diego.
Local democracy has led to some significant policy wins in recent years, with cities like Philadelphia guaranteeing workers paid sick days, and places like Denton, Texas banning fracking. ALEC’s response to cities and counties acting as laboratories of democracy has traditionally been to crush it, through state “preemption” laws that prohibit local governments from raising the minimum wage, or regulating GMOs, or building municipal broadband.
With ACCE, ALEC and its corporate backers are taking the fight directly to the local level, urging city and county officials on the one hand to give up their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents, and on the other to push policy measures to advance corporate interests.
The biggest proactive ACCE initiative is a push for local right to work laws. In the months following a local right to work workshop at ACCE’s meeting last December, twelve Kentucky counties have enacted the anti-union measures, and similar proposals have been floated in states like Illinois and Pennsylvania. But enacting right to work on the local level likely violates federal law, so groups like the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the state Chamber of Commerce are bankrolling the legal defense of counties that get sued.
Local right to work is again on the ACCE agenda for this month’s meeting, with the group expected to officially adopt a Local Right to Work model bill.
It will also hold a workshop aimed a propping up another ACCE funder, the payday loan industry: the presentation is titled “Payday Loans; ‘Local Free Market Solutions for a Difficult Policy Problem.’”
Besides pushing policy measures that advance the interests of ACCE’s funders, ACCE is also urging local electeds to accept state preemption laws.
In a workshop titled “Understanding State Preemption Laws,” ALEC and ACCE will pitch local officials on why they should let state legislatures steamroll their authority to protect the health and economic well-being of their constituents. The workshop will be moderated by Libby Szabo, a former Colorado state legislator and ALEC state chair who is now a local official: she resigned from the state legislature just two months after winning reelection to take a county commissioner appointment, leading to charges from the editorial board of the conservativeDenver Post that she was “thumbing her nose at voters.”
The lesson here is that ALEC supports local control when it advances the interests of its funders, yet actively works to undermine local democracy when it threatens corporate profits.
ALEC’s hypocrisy around the idea “government that is closest to the people governs best” isn’t just limited to city-state relations. Even though ALEC has fought federal policies like healthcare reform and the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon emissions under the guise of “state’s rights,” at this month’s meeting it will push policies that run contrary even to that notion. Here again, corporate profits trump anything resembling principles.
ALEC will hold a workshop telling state legislators that they should embrace federal preemption of state chemical regulation, which happens to benefit ALEC funders like the American Chemistry Council. The “Environmental Health and Regulation Subcommittee” will hold a presentation titled “Supporting Chemical Regulation Preemption Supports Manufacturing,” where legislators will apparently be told it is just swell that the federal Toxic Substances Control Act will prohibit states from enacting tougher chemical regulations.
And, the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will consider a proposed “Resolution Urging Congress to Eliminate Discriminatory State and Local Taxes on Automobile Renters,” which calls on Congress to preempt discriminatory state and local taxes on car rentals. It is hard to imagine a more blatant piece of corporate-friendly legislation, yet ALEC continues to insist that only legislators can propose model bills at its meetings.Amending the Constitution
In recent years, one of ALEC’s top priorities has been to add a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And it will be a major focus of this month’s meeting.
A balanced budget amendment is an idea that has been bouncing around for decades–even though it would cripple the federal government’s ability to spend on earned benefit programs like Social Security, and block Congress from responding to economic downturns or natural disasters–but what is unique about ALEC’s push is that they are trying to do it via an Article V Constitutional Convention.
Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths). Although this seems like a tall order, in the past year over a dozen states have passed resolutions calling for an Article V convention, adding to at least twelve other states that enacted resolutions years ago. The proposal has been supported by Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).
Key to the Article V push has been the “Jeffersonian Project,” the 501(c)(4) group that ALECformed in 2013 amidst complaints from Common Cause and CMD that ALEC was violating its 501(c)(3) charitable status by engaging in excessive lobbying. In order to deflect allegations of lobbying, the “Jeffersonian Project” is now used to urge legislators to pass ALEC model legislation, an activity that ALEC used to do directly.
This year, the Article V strategy dominates the agenda of ALEC’s Task Force on Federalism and International Relations, with five presentations and two pieces of draft legislation. The task force’s private sector chair is a representative of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group founded by Grover Norquist. And, there will be two separate ALEC-wide policy workshops on the Article V effort, as well as a reception and dinner titled “States Constitutionally Saving “The American Dream” Summit Via Balanced Budget Amendment Convention.”
Throughout U.S. history, the Constitution has only been amended through a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress on a specific amendment, which is then ratified by two-thirds of state legislatures. In contrast, the Article V strategy triggers a full constitutional convention, and it is unclear whether the delegates could be confined to only passing one amendment. This fear of a “runaway convention” has led critics on both the right and left to oppose the Article V strategy.
ALEC has tried to quell these fears through a companion bill declaring that delegates to a convention may not vote on other issues besides a balanced budget amendment. Yet, at least some amendment supporters want to open up the Article V process and amendment the constitution to address an array of issues, like limiting the Commerce Clause, banning international law in the U.S., and placing term limits on the Supreme Court, among other items from a right-wing wishlist.
The key driver of the broader Article V amendment effort is Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), a group led by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler, and whose board includes Wisconsinite Eric O’Keefe. CSG, which receives most of its funding through foundations such as DonorsTrust that cloak their donors’ identities, has also backed multiple lawsuits related to the “John Doe” investigation into coordination between Governor Walker’s campaign and Wisconsin Club for Growth, where O’Keefe is a director.
CSG’s Convention of States effort has been endorsed by Mike Huckabee (who will be addressing the ALEC conference) and also attracted support from the likes of Glenn Beck. CSG’s “Compact for America” appears on the ALEC agenda with both a presentation and a model bill, and Meckler will also address the conference on July 24.
Another group pushing an Article V amendment is Compact for America, a Texas-based group advised by Nick Dranias, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, and chaired by former Goldwater chair Thomas C. Patterson. This group also is promoting a model bill at the ALEC meeting, and will hold a full breakout session on July 23.
Wisconsin State Rep. Chris Taylor attended a session on ALEC’s Article V plans at the group’s 2013 conference. When she expressed hesitation that the public would support the effort, she was told, “You really don’t need people to do this. You just need control over the legislature and you need money, and we have both.”Continuing to Fight “Obamacare”
ALEC has long tried to undermine the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act. It produced the “State Legislators’ Guide to Repealing Obamacare,” and has promoted bills to try blocking the individual mandate in states, and to prohibit insurers from providing subsidies to low-income residents, and to reject the insurance “exchanges” where individuals can buy insurance (which would have had serious repercussions if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled differently in King v. Burwell).
Despite repeated failures to overturn the Affordable Care Act through Congress and the courts, ALEC is continuing to fight the law through the states.
At this month’s meeting, the Health and Human Services Task Force will consider a bill to limit expansion of Medicaid benefits within the state, and the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force will have a resolution on the purported negative impact of Medicaid expansion under the healthcare law. The task force will also consider a resolution opposing federal “maintenance of effort” requirements, like those in Obamacare and also with education funding.Fighting to Protect Dark Money
After spending hundreds of millions of undisclosed funds on state and federal elections, ALEC’s corporate members will also demand that state legislators preserve their “right” to anonymously spend money on politics and buy influence in state legislatures.
A July 23 workshop titled “Dark Money Debate: What Lawmakers Need to Know about the First Amendment and Anonymous Political Speech” will promote the idea that transparency in elections is a bad thing. David Keating of the Center for Competitive Politics and Jon Riches of the Goldwater Institute are listed as presenters.
It is little surprise that corporate interests would peddle secrecy to the hundreds of Republican state legislators at ALEC.
ALEC’s funders, like the billionaire Koch brothers, have spent millions in “dark money”–electoral spending that evades donor disclosure laws–in recent years, secret spending which has increased exponentially since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision.
Disclosure of electoral spending has widespread support among the public, and it still has support among many Republican state lawmakers. ALEC, it seems, is trying to change that.
This isn’t ALEC’s first foray into this issue. Its 2010 “Resolution in Support of Citizens United” opposes both the disclosure and shareholder participation endorsed by the majority in Citizens United. In 2011, ALEC lobbied legislators in states like New York urging them to reject a proposal requiring corporations get shareholder approval for political spending. And at ALEC’s meeting last December, ALEC held a similarly themed workshop called “Playing the Shame Game: A Campaign that Threatens Corporate Free Speech.”

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Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) Fond of Bonds: Summer’s Most Infamous Chemical

Jul 22, 2015 | Chem Info

By Meagan Parrish

Ah yes… bright sun, warm temps, lazy rivers and the sweet smell of chlorine — that’s when you know it’s summer. But there’s more to the notorious CI #17 than just its role in disinfecting swimming pools. Chlorine chemistry is the building block for a staggering amount of manufactured goods including pesticides, paper, pharmaceuticals, paints and more. Here’s more on our chemical of the week:
The 101:

On the periodic table,chlorine is in a group of halogens — or elements that form salts when combined with metal. It’s one of the most abundant chemicals on earth. At room temperature it’s a yellow-green gas that’s highly toxic to humans.
Chlorine was formally discovered in 1774 when a Swedish scientist Carl Wilhelm Scheele accidentally produced it by releasing a few drops of hydrochloric acid onto a piece of manganese dioxide. But for decades scientists thought it was a compound of oxygen — until 1810 when an English chemist named Sir Humphry Davy recognized it as a pure element. By then the chemical was already making its way into mass manufacturing.
‘The Element of Surprise’

In the 18th century a French textile producer whipped up a bleaching agent by dissolving chlorine in water — a process he soon improved by adding the chlorine to a caustic potash solution, according to The Chlorine Institute.
Pretty soon the bleaching solution was sweeping through the Western world and technology was evolving to produce it on a bigger scale.
Today chlorine is one of the most produced chemicals in the U.S. The American Chemistry Council calls it “the element of surprise” because of its wide-scale use in manufacturing. According to the ACC, chlorine chemistry is an essential building block for more than 90 percent of pharmaceuticals, and is used in everything from common painkillers to surgical stitches and medical devices.
Chlorine chemistry is also utilized in just about every major industry in too many products to list — from light-weight cars, to 80 percent of crop protection compounds, to paints, solar panels, household cleaners and even bullet-proof vests for the military.
Fun Facts:According to Live Science: “Some frogs have a chlorine compound in their skin that is a very strong painkiller, according to Los Alamos National Laboratory. The compound, called epibatidine, has no side effects in small doses, but in large doses, it is fatal to humans.”Chlorine can show up in chicken because many U.S. factory farms bathe chicken in the chemical to help decrease fecal contamination.The chlorine industry contributes more than $46 billion annually to the North American economy, according to the ACC.
Myth Busting at The Swimming Pool:When it comes to pools, chlorine gets a bad rep. Those zombie red eyes you sometimes have after taking a dip? They’re not just from chlorine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they’re actually caused by — prepare for an ick factor — pee, poop and other human grossness. When chlorine binds with nitrogen in urine it forms a derivative of ammonia called chloramine, which can cause red eyes, runny noses and coughing.That chemical aroma at the pool? It’s also not just chlorine, but chlorine reacting with other substances in the water. According to the CDC, the more pee, poop and dirt in the pool, the worse it smells.If you also believe that swimming in chlorinated pools can turn blonde hair into unflattering green locks, you’d be wrong again. The real culprit is copper, which is released into the water through old pipes or with other chemicals that are added to fight algae. An acid base imbalance can also be to blame. According to one local news report: “If the pool's pH is too high, the positively charged copper particles floating in the water look for anything that has a negative charge (opposites attract) and that includes your silky strands.”Too much chlorine, however, can wreak havoc. Just a few weeks ago about 25 kids at a North Carolina pool got sick with nausea and vomiting after too much chlorine was added to a public pool. And while that kind of news might make you want to stay out of the water or avoid drinking water disinfected with chlorine, consider this: Without it, bacteria such as E. coli can thrive. In 2000, seven people died and more than 2,300 fell ill after the water supply in a town in Ontario got contaminated by E. coli and other bacteria. Officials said that proper chlorine levels could have prevented the disaster.
Not-so-Fun FactsLike many chemicals, chlorine has a dark side. Some studies have attempted to show that drinking chlorinated water can lead to an increased risk for cancer. But the chemical has not been labeled a carcinogen by public health officials.Frequent trips to the pool have also been linked to higher asthma rates among children and some scientists believe that higher rates of exposure to chlorine in cleaning products are part of the catalyst behind increased allergies over the last 50 years.Worst of all, chlorine has been used in chemical weapons since World War I when Germans began producing a chlorine gas known as bertholite. Because chlorine can react with water in the mucosa of the lungs and form hydrochloric acid, the gas can be lethal. More recently, chlorine bombs were used by insurgents in the Iraq War and in the Syrian Civil War, and now many have alleged that ISIS has gotten its hands on ‘chlorine-filled rockets’ that they’re using to attack civilians. Days ago, reports emerged that ISIS also has “industrial grade” gas masks, which has many worrying that they’re readying themselves for large-scale chemical warefare.

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Preemption isn’t a Dirty Word

Jul 22, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog

By Joseph Perrone, Sc.D.

No state wants to cede authority to the federal government. But when it comes to key scientific policies that directly impact both interstate commerce and public health, Congress has the responsibility to intervene.
As a scientist, I find the debate surrounding the safety of genetically modified foods extremely frustrating. After thousands of studies from around the globe, there is still no compelling scientific evidence the GMOs on the market have any adverse impact on our health or the environment.
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Instead of debating the issue of GMO safety using science (which they’d lose), advocates of mandatory GMO labeling insist consumers have a “right to know” what’s in their food. But a “contains GMOs” label doesn’t actually tell consumers anything.
Studies show the nutritional content of GMOs and their conventional counterparts is virtually identical. Nor are GMO crops the only ones treated with pesticides—conventional crops are still grown using insecticides and herbicides. In fact, even organic farmers can use specific pesticides.
These basic facts failed to stop Vermont (and other states) from passing laws requiring GMO labeling. But they should be enough to convince Congress to stop the proliferation of similar laws.
The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act strikes a sensible balance—states wouldn’t be able to pass myriad, competing laws requiring GMO labeling, but the federal government would develop a voluntary program to certify foods as GMO-free.
For consumers who want more GMO-free choices than the organic options on the market, they would have them. And just like organic is regulated by the federal government, a GMO-free label would mean the same thing in Vermont as it does in California. Since few companies sell their products in just one state, that uniformity is crucial.
In fact, we’ve already seen the problems created when a state creates its own labeling program. For 25 years, California’s Proposition 65 has created headaches for businesses and consumers alike. The law requires products containing even traces of one of more than 800 chemicals to come with a warning label.
The law has allowed California’s regulators to directly contradict the scientific findings of federal agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as it’s done with the state’s rulings on mercury in fish and bisphenol-a. The scientific basis for many of California’s decisions is highly questionable, yet businesses failing to slap a label on their products can be sued by California attorneys to the tune of millions.
This patchwork of chemical policies isn’t sustainable. As with GMOs, it’s time for the federal government to step up to the plate and take the lead on chemical regulation. Legislation to update the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 is sponsored by more than half of the Senate. The bill (along with similar legislation already passed by the House) would strengthen the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to test chemicals for safety and ban those that pose health risks, without considering how expensive they’ll be for industry. It’s an extremely important (and long overdue) move towards ensuring more rigorous testing of the thousands of chemicals on the market.
This reform legislation would also stop other states from passing laws like Proposition 65 (though Prop 65 itself would stay on the books). It also gives the authority to regulate high priority chemicals to the EPA, ensuring that more chemicals receive safety assessments and making it easier for businesses to work with regulators to create safe products for consumers in all 50 states.
The federal government is far from a perfect arbiter of scientific data—the FDA and EPA have certainly made mistakes. But avoiding a confusing regulatory patchwork on important food and chemical safety issues is by far the best way to assure consumers the products on store shelves are safe to consume and use.

Perrone is the chief science officer at the Center for Accountability in Science, a project of the nonprofit Center for Organizational Research and Education. CORE is supported by a variety of businesses and foundations, including those in the hospitality, agriculture and energy industries.

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EPA Receives Test Data on Flame Retardant Substance

Jul 22, 2015 | Chemical Watch

The US EPA has received test data on the substance phosphorochloridothioic acid, O,O-diethyl in a response to a test rule. The data relates to aquatic toxicity.
The substance is used in flame retardants, an intermediate for pesticides and as an oil and gasoline additive.

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Chemical Security News

Drug-Making Possible Cause of Laboratory Explosion

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

A security guard's attempts to make methamphetamine appear to have caused an explosion at a government science laboratory in Maryland, a federal law enforcement official said.
The explosion occurred Saturday night at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one of the country's major physical science centers.
The law enforcement official, who asked to remain anonymous as potential charges are pending, said pseudoephedrine, Epsom salts and other materials were found at the Gaithersburg facility about 15 miles north of the nation's capital.
Montgomery County police spokesman Capt. Paul Starks said a chemical reaction might have caused the explosion.
Laura Harris, a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is jointly investigating the incident, only confirmed an investigation was ongoing.
The explosion occurred in a part of a building where combustion research was previously conducted but that isn't currently used for scientific research, said laboratory spokeswoman Gail Porter.
Charges have not been filed against the security officer, who was treated for significant burns. He has resigned, Porter said (Matthew Barakat, Associated Press, July 21).

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Energy and Environment News

Industry Heavyweights Call for Lifting Export Ban

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

By Geof Koss

Top refining officials from the world's largest oil companies are urging lawmakers to repeal the crude export ban, arguing that doing so will boost U.S. production and supply for refiners.
In a letter sent yesterday to the chairmen and ranking members on the House and Senate energy committees, senior officials from Exxon Mobil Refining & Supply Co., Chevron Corp.'s manufacturing operations, BP Fuels North America and Shell Oil Co. say lifting the ban will boost the refining sector and the overall economy.
"Allowing the export of U.S. crude oil will promote increased investment in domestic crude production and greater domestic supply for U.S. refiners," they wrote. "Further, it will allow for a healthy and vibrant global oil market which will not only benefit our refining sector but aid our economy, keep our skilled workers going strong and add to our tax revenues. Repealing the current artificial market constraints will have long term economic and energy security benefits."
The letter comes as export backers work to build up support for lifting the ban, which may start to see some legislative traction in the coming weeks and months as both chambers move energy packages.
The crude export repeal wasn't included in the bipartisan energy bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power this morning (see related story), although Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) has signaled it's among the list of issues Republicans are likely to bring up as the measure moves forward (E&E Daily, July 22).
Lifting the ban is a top priority of Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), although she's hinted it won't be included in the committee's bill as introduced. Putting it into the base bill, which could emerge this week, would run into resistance on the Democratic side of the dais.
Supporters of ending the ban are aggressively pushing back against arguments by opponents as they look to win over lawmakers wary of taking positions on the issue.
Earlier this month, House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats expressed doubts about a repeal, in part because of the fears of hurting U.S. refiners (E&E Daily, July 10).
Jay Hauck, executive director of the anti-export Consumers & Refiners United for Domestic Energy, called the letter "a smoking gun that proves that crude-export legislation is nothing but a gift to big oil companies."
"Exxon, Chevron, BP, and Shell are some of the largest companies in the world, and they stand to profit handsomely from crude exports on the backs of American consumers, who will pay more at the pump," he wrote in an email this morning.
Hauck also took issue with a number of points in the letter, including its reference to the United States' "scarcity of domestic oil production" in the 1970s, noting that American oil production peaked in the middle of the decade.
Additionally, he said that BP, Exxon and Shell have refining operations in the Netherlands that would likely absorb some U.S. crude if the ban is lifted.
"Those companies will make more on each U.S. barrel that comes out of the ground, then ship it cheap to Europe, refine it there and ship it back as fuel," he said.

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'Super-emitters' Responsible for up to 40% of Methane Leaks -- Study

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Energywire

By Pamela King

More than $240 million worth of natural gas leaks from the country's interstate pipeline network each year, according to new research led by Colorado State University.
Published yesterday in Environmental Science & Technology, the paper is part of an ongoing effort by the Environmental Defense Fund to study how much methane is bleeding out of the U.S. gas supply system. In the latest installment of its project, the research team found that natural gas infrastructure loses about 1,503 gigagrams of the potent greenhouse gas per year, compared to U.S. EPA's greenhouse gas inventory figure of 2,071 gigagrams annually.
The study suggests a small group of "super-emitters" could be responsible for up to 40 percent of those emissions.
"While this study reveals some encouraging findings, it also indicates that not all in the industry are making the same effort," EDF Air Policy Director N. Jonathan Peress wrote in a blog post yesterday.
Firms that volunteered to partner on the study reported emissions 30 percent lower than nonparticipants, he wrote, which indicates that better regulatory standards are needed.
"The best way to ensure that all companies are taking necessary steps to best identify leaks and update equipment is through comprehensive regulation," Peress wrote. "[The Bureau of Land Management], 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."
Because leaks can spring from a number of places, finding and fixing faulty mechanisms can be a challenge, Peress wrote. Technology upgrades can help with those improvements -- since the 1990s, transmission companies have switched out old reciprocating compressors for less emissions-intensive equipment, he said.
The trade group Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) highlighted the CSU team's conclusion that average methane emissions from the gas transmission and storage sector were 27 percent lower than EPA figures.
"This finding is important," INGAA President and CEO Don Santa wrote in a statement. "It underscores why the EPA needs to update the emissions factors it uses to estimate its inventory to reflect more accurately how the transmission and storage sector operates today. EPA largely relies on data from a nearly 20-year-old study to calculate its greenhouse gas inventory. While EPA has appropriately updated emission factors and estimation methods in select cases for other industry sources, including wells in the exploration and production sector, it has not for transmission and storage sector sources."
During a conference call yesterday, Peress cautioned against assertions that emissions from the sector are on the decline. CSU's results are not statistically distinguishable from what has been reported in the EPA inventory, he said.

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House Subcommittee Clears Energy Bill

Jul 22, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard

By Darren Goode

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee unanimously advanced an energy bill today but delayed consideration of lawmakers’ most controversial priorities until after the August recess.

“While a lot of work remains, I am pleased that today’s draft starts on the right foot with broad bipartisan support,” Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton said. He said talks would continue over the summer with the goal of advancing a bill through the full committee when lawmakers return in September.

No amendments were offered in the energy and power subcommittee, but lawmakers in both parties floated numerous items they would like to see included in the bill. Some Republicans have proposed lifting the 40-year-old crude oil export ban. Democrats have said the bill should include additional funding to update the electric grid and that it should do more to address climate change. Members of both parties have called for provisions to expedite liquefied natural gas exports. And lawmakers are negotiating over how to reverse a requirement for new federal buildings to stop using fossil fuels by 2030.

Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone said he and Upton have agreed that both sides would have to agree to any additions to the bill in committee, a stipulation that would keep out controversial items like lifting the crude export ban.

“That’s the only way for us to move forward,” Pallone said.

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Energy Bill Sails through Subcommittee, But Tough Talks Loom

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

By Hannah Northey and Daniel Bush

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee unanimously approved a comprehensive energy bill today, making clear the stripped-down measure will serve as a vehicle for policy riders down the road.
In a voice vote, the Energy and Power Subcommittee advanced the legislation that its sponsors say would modernize energy infrastructure, boost energy jobs, and address security, diplomacy, efficiency and accountability.
Committee leaders quickly noted a broader energy package is in the works. That is likely to trigger tough negotiations over the fate of fossil fuels and renewables in U.S. energy markets, potential changes in infrastructure oversight, and whether and how the country should export domestic oil and gas (see related story).
Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said his committee will work on a larger energy package after the August recess. He said Republicans are keen on including provisions for liquefied natural gas and oil exports, more predictable permitting rules for cross-border energy infrastructure, provisions on electric reliability and wholesale power markets, and hydropower reform and efficiency.
"Working on many of these remaining issues will be challenging, but this markup helps move this process forward to form a bipartisan foundation for some of the tough decisions ahead," Upton said.
Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the committee's top Democrat, said language added to the bill would need to have bipartisan consensus. While nothing's off the table, he said, he hopes Republicans won't tack on controversial provisions.
"We're encouraging everyone to come forward with what they would like to address, and then we're going to see if we can come to a consensus," he said.
Whether or not lifting a decades-old ban on exporting crude oil will land in the final package is unclear. Another wild card is whether U.S. EPA's release of its Clean Power Plan in August -- before negotiations begin again -- will affect the panel's focus.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) noted that Democrats on the committee had fought to keep out language that would lift a decades-old ban on crude oil exports. He added that he'd continue to build support for a stand-alone bill he introduced earlier this year that would lift the ban.
So far, more than 106 House members have signed onto the bill, H.R. 702, including 11 Democrats.
Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), who is helping Barton build support for the bill, said that they would like to include it in the broader energy package but are moving forward with plans to bring the stand-alone bill to the floor when lawmakers return from their August recess.
"Our hope is to have it on the floor in September," Flores said in a brief, post-hearing interview. "We're working it pretty hard. It depends on how quickly we sign members up."
Still, Barton noted that previous efforts to lift the ban have failed to gain traction in the past. Barton said he tried to include a crude exports provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, when he was serving as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, but couldn't drum up enough votes.
Things could be different this time around, however, as political momentum to lift the ban grows in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal, which would allow Iran to restart its oil exports industry. At the hearing, Republicans argued that if Iran is allowed to export crude oil, the United States should, as well.
"I'm concerned that the longer we wait to repeal this ban the more we risk losing American jobs," said Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.Baking up a wish list
The bulk of the hearing served as a platform for Republicans and Democrats to outline their wish lists for the policy items they'd like to see in a final bill.
Issues like fast-tracking federal approvals of applications to export domestic gas appeared to have bipartisan support.
Reps. Gene Green (D-Texas) and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) bemoaned the fact that language addressing LNG exports in an earlier version of the bill was scrapped. A prior iteration of the measure would have, among other things, required the Energy Department to make a final decision on LNG export applications within 30 days of completion of National Environmental Policy Act review requirements (Greenwire, May 19).
Green also said he hopes to see a return of language that aims to coordinate cross-border energy infrastructure projects with Canada and Mexico and language that was stripped that would have obviated the need for a presidential permit to construct liquid and natural gas pipelines, as well as electric transmission facilities that cross U.S. borders.
Other issues appeared to be more partisan.
A host of Democrats called for language in the final package that bolsters energy efficiency and renewables, streamlines hydropower licensing and cuts greenhouse gas emissions. Those are mirrored concerns that groups like the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and Earthjustice outlined in letters to House members in recent days.
Democratic Rep. Paul Tonko of New York criticized the bill for not being forward thinking and said committee members haven't done enough to gauge real fixes to the country's capacity markets.
Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Energy and Power Subcommittee, said the bill is an "improvement" from the original measure but more work needs to be done on efficiency and other areas.
Rush also told his colleagues that the legislative process reminded him of something his grandmother said as she baked cakes.
"It smells good," he said, "but it ain't done."

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Pallone Optimistic for Energy Bill Deal

Jul 22, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard

By Darren Goode

House Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone said he isn’t worried that Republicans will torpedo fragile energy legislation.

“We’re determined to work bipartisan, so I’m not concerned that they’re going to try to change it later,” he told reporters after the Energy and Power Subcommittee approved the four-part bill by voice vote. The next step is a full panel markup in September, and lots of changes are possible over the next couple of months. Pallone said he and Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton have agreed to only add language that both sides can accept.

Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield said he didn’t know what Upton and Pallone have agreed to but noted “it’s going to be extremely difficult to agree on everything” in a final bill.

“We are motivated to do that but we do have some deep philosophical differences,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters.

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White House Conspicuously Absent at Cost of Carbon Hearing

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

By Jean Chemnick

After years of clamoring for additional information about the closed-door process that led to the Obama administration's social cost of carbon estimates in 2010 and 2012, a House committee held a hearing today to consider the controversial estimate without including any administration witnesses.
Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said at the top of the hearing that the committee had asked the White House Office of Management and Budget three weeks ago to provide a witness to discuss the interagency working group process that led to the figure, which measures the monetary cost of warming. Committee staffers were told they had not allowed enough time, Bishop said.
Bishop noted that OMB clears testimony from other administration officials when they appear before congressional panels. "Perhaps they didn't have enough time to clear their own testimony with themselves," he quipped.
But committee Democrats claim Bishop's office only asked OMB for a witness one week ago. Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.), speaking for the panel's Democrats, said the GOP majority apparently preferred to provide a platform for contrarian scientists and anti-regulatory advocates rather than gain answers to their policy questions. The majority had not given the White House enough time to send a representative, he said, and instead filled the dais with members of the "climate denier campaign."
"Instead of having a reasonable debate on the proper costs to assign climate change damages, the majority appears to be attacking the entire premise of the existence of climate change damages," he said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the hearing in time for publication.
Lowenthal also said Republicans seemed to be abandoning their oft-cited commitment to cost-benefit analyses for rulemakings by refusing to consider that CO2 emissions come at a price.
"With each ton of carbon emitted we are deciding now between the well-being of current and the well-being of future generations," he said.
The SCC is an input in the cost-benefit analyses of numerous administration rules, including U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan proposal. The White House Council on Environmental Quality also recommends its use when agencies consider the causes and effects of climate change when evaluating projects under the National Environmental Policy Act. Bishop and other Republicans on his panel say CEQ's NEPA draft guidance, which was released last December, is an effort by the administration to stymie economic development on public lands, including resource extraction.
The committee heard from three majority-invited witnesses who questioned either the process that led to the SCC or its premise that climate change will cost the economy.
The Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels, a long-established contrarian scientist who disputes the consensus that human emissions are driving harmful warming, said that higher atmospheric carbon levels would deliver benefits including as a fertilizer for crops.
The three models the administration's working group used to deliver its SCC figure produced a flawed result, he said, because the administration did not update them to include new studies after 2011 that he said showed the climate is less sensitive to man-made greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought.
"Those that deny this are denying science," he said, borrowing his opponents' language.
Michaels also took aim at predictions for warming-driven sea-level rise, which is a major input of the administration's estimate.
Kevin Dayaratna, a statistician for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the administration's effort to estimate the future costs of man-made warming relied on a variety of questionable assumptions chosen by administration bureaucrats.
"It's basically nothing but garbage in, garbage out," Dayaratna said.
The administration's choice to use a 300-year time horizon to calculate its SCC artificially inflated the figure, he said. And it uses a relatively low discount rate to assess the value of the damage done by each incremental ton of carbon dioxide released today to the economic well-being of society nearly three centuries from now despite established practices that it consider a higher one, he said.
The administration uses a 3 percent discount rate in its central figure of the SCC, which delivers a SCC estimate of $37.75 per metric ton for 2020 over a 300-year time horizon. But OMB usually requires that a 7 percent discount rate be considered together with lower discount rates. A 7 percent discount rate -- which values economic activity today more and economic damage years from now less than the 3 percent rate the administration uses -- would drop the SCC to less than $6 a ton in 2020. That figure would provide much less justification for costly regulations than the value the White House is using.
Scott Segal, who represents industry clients at Bracewell & Giuliani, said the administration was inappropriately using its estimate to repurpose NEPA as a tool to advance its climate agenda.
The administration skirted the requirements laid out in the Administrative Procedure Act, he said, by saying its SCC is not a rule. But it has the effect of a rule, Segal argued, because it works to prop up rules by defining the value of the emissions reductions they will deliver as set against the cost of compliance. Segal predicted that the negative side of the ledger for a rule like the Clean Power Plan would be very substantial.
If OMB opts to consider social costs when weighing the costs and benefits of EPA's forthcoming existing power plant rule, he said, the White House office must first go through all of the procedural steps prescribed for a rulemaking to support its SCC -- something it will not have time to do before the EPA rule is released in the coming weeks.
The White House has cast its Climate Action Plan broadly as a way to spur effort by other countries ahead of this year's high-stakes round of U.N. climate change talks in Paris. But Segal disputed that it would have the desired effect.
"There is no evidence that our leadership will be copied by other countries, who in fact are our economic competitors," he said.
Segal also said Congress should set U.S. carbon policy, not the administration. "That's usurpation of power contrary to the Constitution," he said.
But panel Democrats noted that removing the SCC from cost-benefit analyses of rulemakings would reduce to zero the benefit of avoiding warming, when in fact climate change poses costs ranging from health care expenses to infrastructure damage to crop loss.
"If we opted not to value the cost of carbon, the cost would still be there," said Michael Dorsey, interim director of the energy and environmental program for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
The costs of carbon are already coming due, he said. Alaskan villages are requiring infrastructure overhauls and even relocation. People are falling ill due to climate-driven factors like warming and disease, he added, and damaging storms are becoming more frequent and severe.
"We do indeed pay these costs whether we choose to make this assessment or not," he said.

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Foundation Floats Interstate Compact to Fight Clean Power Plan

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Energywire

By Edward Klump

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) yesterday unveiled a potential interstate compact aimed at U.S. EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan, which seeks to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.
The Interstate Power Compact could be used to protect states from "EPA's unconstitutional and overreaching" carbon proposal, Doug Domenech, director of TPPF's Fueling Freedom Project, said in a news release.
The concept, he said, would let states work together to prevent a takeover of "affordable and reliable electricity production capacity" and would help avoid a "plan managed by bureaucrats" in Washington, D.C.
"The interstate compact is a powerful Constitutional device that permits states to maintain their sovereignty by allowing them to act collectively outside the confines of federal legislation or regulation," Domenech said, adding that this compact would let "states develop a dynamic, self-regulatory system that remains flexible enough to address changing needs."
EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan seeks to cut carbon emissions from power plants 30 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. Targets vary by state, and some interim goals could start in 2020. The proposal, which is expected to be finalized soon, envisions a state's involvement in developing a plan, or a federal plan could be put in place.
The potential interstate compact begins with a discussion of a separation of powers among branches of the U.S. government as well as between federal and state authority.
It mentions EPA's proposed use of Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power generation, but the compact says the proposed rule wouldn't have an effect on global climate. The document says the plan infringes on states' powers and would reduce the efficient operation of power markets and hurt reliability while boosting the cost of electricity to consumers.
The compact envisions states working to formulate plans to restore the "primary responsibility" of states and local governments in preventing air pollution and controlling it at its source.
A pledge section states that no state agency or official would submit a filing to fulfill some or all of state plan requirements under a 111(d) rule, unless it uses "emission limits or budgets derived only from assumptions of what is technically achievable inside the physical boundaries of the electrical generating units using the same fuel and boiler design that is currently in place at those units consistent with" certain provisions of the Clean Air Act.
The pledge suggests that, upon "Congressional assent" to the compact, EPA wouldn't be able to impose a federal plan's measures if a member state didn't file a state plan for approval.
The compact suggests it would be effective once two or more member states adopt it, although some parts might require consent from Congress.
Domenech, in an interview, said he thinks the prospects for the compact are good because a number of states have shown opposition to the Clean Power Plan. Some states, including Texas, have indicated litigation over a carbon rule is likely.
A state legislature would need to act on a compact, Domenech said, noting that Texas could be a challenge because of timing. The Lone Star State doesn't have another regular legislative session scheduled until 2017.
While states can agree not to make filings beyond certain limits, Domenech said Congress would need to agree to a compact that seeks refusal of a federal plan. He suggested compact law could be unclear on whether a presidential signature would be needed, although any resolution on that could come later.
Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, called the TPPF compact idea "another desperate ploy." He said TPPF doesn't necessarily represent average citizens but instead can be a mouthpiece for industries such as coal and oil.
"They're living in fantasyland again," Smith said in an interview yesterday, adding that the Supreme Court has backed EPA regulation of gases tied to climate change.
Smith said Texas' "leadership isn't smart enough to realize that they could reduce energy costs for everybody by replacing old, clunker coal with new, cheaper renewables and put more people to work."

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Shallow Wells Could Present Groundwater Contamination Risks -- Study

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Energywire

By Pamela King

Sixteen percent of U.S. wells planted between 2010 and 2013 were hydraulically fractured less than a mile below ground, according to new research out of Stanford University.
The proximity of those wells to the surface raises concerns about the potential for fractures to extend into overlying aquifers, environmental scientist Rob Jackson wrote in his study, published yesterday in Environmental Science & Technology. Even fractures that do not reach underground water can link to those pockets via natural faults and fissures in rock layers, the paper says.
"The closer hydraulic fracturing occurs near the surface, the greater the chance that chemicals could come in contact with drinking water," Jackson said.
He also noted that his paper, which relies on incomplete data from the FracFocus registry, underestimates the number of shallow wells that have been drilled in U.S. shale plays.
According to Jackson's analysis, no states impose a minimum depth on fracking, and just two -- Texas and Colorado -- have special rules or permitting procedures for shallow fracking. Texas requires different casing and cementing processes for those types of wells, and Colorado mandates additional geological, hydrogeological and engineering assessments, the paper says.
But additional rules aren't necessary if shallow fracking doesn't pose a risk to groundwater, said Katie Brown, a spokeswoman for the industry research group Energy in Depth.
"The researchers' suggestion that shallower wells pose a higher risk doesn't hold up with the facts," Brown wrote in an email to EnergyWire. "In California, hydraulic fracturing is often shallower, but a 2,300-page study by the California Council on Science and Technology found no evidence of water contamination. Likewise, coalbed methane wells are typically shallower than deep shale wells, yet the EPA also found no contamination from this practice."
CCST said earlier this month that it has not found clear human health or environmental impacts from fracking but recommended further examination of the extraction method (EnergyWire, July 10).
Jackson also looked at water use from fracking and found that 5 percent of wells shallower than 1 mile were fracked with more than 1 million gallons of water. The most water-intensive sites were in Arkansas, New Mexico, Texas, Pennsylvania and California, according to the study.
"Shallow hydraulic fracturing is surprisingly common," Jackson said in a statement yesterday. "The places where hydraulic fracturing is both shallow and water-intensive may need additional safeguards."

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New York, San Francisco Mayors Use Vatican Appearance to Roll Out New Climate Goals

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire

By Scott Detrow

At a Vatican conference attended by mayors from around the world, executives from San Francisco and New York City unveiled aggressive new pushes to lower their cities' greenhouse gas emissions.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to cut his city's carbon footprint 40 percent over the next 15 years. That's an acceleration of an already-announced goal of an 80 percent reduction by 2050.
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee's announcement wasn't as ambitious, but it will be achieved sooner. He vowed that, by year's end, "our city and our county of San Francisco will completely phase out the use of petroleum diesel in our municipal fleet -- all of our fire trucks, all of our municipal buses, all of our heavy-duty trucks -- and replace it with renewable diesel." Lee predicted the shift will lower the fleet's carbon footprint by about 60 percent.
Lee and de Blasio were part of a long parade of mayors who spoke at the Vatican conference, which is focused on both climate change and human trafficking. Addressing the group of politicians at the end of the day, Pope Francis said cities need to take the lead if the world is going to lower its carbon footprint and avert the worst effects of climate change.
"The Holy See or individual countries might be able to make nice speeches at the United Nations, but if the work doesn't come from the periphery moving to the center, there is no effect," Francis said, comparing cities to the limbs of a body. "And that is the responsibility of you mayors of cities."
It was a sentiment echoed by another onetime Jesuit seminarian who attended the conference. California Gov. Jerry Brown has made greenhouse gas reductions a centerpiece of his fourth and final term. Brown told the collection of politicians that in order to keep the rise in global temperatures to a minimum, "one-third of the oil that we know exists as reserves can never be taken out of the ground. Fifty percent of the gas can never be used, and over 90 percent of coal."
"Now that is a revolution," the former Oakland mayor said. "And if you look at our national leaders, we're not going to get there. Mayors, you are at the bottom of this power chain, and you've got to light a fire, if I may use that metaphor -- in terms of climate change, it's probably the wrong one."
Brown has pushed hard to position California as a global leader when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases and bolstering renewable energy. Earlier this year, he pledged to build on the state's existing cap-and-trade program, energy efficiency codes and other efforts, and get to a point where half of the state's energy comes from renewable sources.
The effort is apparently working. Announcing New York's new carbon reduction goals, de Blasio took pains to credit Brown for leading the way on that front, calling him "the leading voice in our nation" on climate issues.
The meeting of mayors, which continues today, is the latest sign that Francis is following his landmark environmental encyclical with an aggressive political push. He spoke about the need to transition to a lower-impact, lower-carbon economy several times during a recent trip to South America, and will likely repeat that theme during a September visit to the United States.
De Blasio said he has high hopes that Francis will bring up climate change when he addresses a joint session of Congress. "The pope's message needs to be heard in Washington," de Blasio told reporters after the Vatican conference. "So much of the challenge of global warming has gone unaddressed by the Congress. I think the timing couldn't be better. I think he has the ability to cut through all that and really be a wake-up call for the Congress."

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Global Warming 'Not Science Fiction' -- Arnold Schwarzenegger

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

Arnold Schwarzenegger was part of a group of Nobel prizewinners, U.N. secretary generals, spiritual leaders, theologians and philosophers chosen by the French government to persuade the world to act quickly on climate change ahead of December's U.N. meeting in Paris.
Speaking at the world's first summit of "Conscience for the Climate" yesterday, the former California Republican governor said there is no more debate about climate change, and ethical action is needed to avoid disaster.
"I've starred in a lot of science fiction movies, and, let me tell you something, climate change is not science fiction, this is a battle in the real world, it is impacting us right now.
"I believe the science is in. The debate is over and the time for action is now," he told an invited audience of intellectuals and spiritual leaders from all faiths. "This is bigger than any movie, this is the challenge of our time. And it is our responsibility to leave this world a better place than we found it, but right now we are failing future generations.
"This year alone, we will dump 40 billion metric tons of carbon emissions into our atmosphere," Schwarzenegger said. "The World Health Organization says that air pollution causes over 7 million premature deaths every year, and all over the world we can see flooding, monster storms, droughts and wildfires that are completely out of control."
The meeting was convened by French President François Hollande to put pressure on world governments by mobilizing millions of people to declare their care for the Earth (John Vidal,London Guardian, July 21).

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FERC to Issue 'Best Practices' Manual on Infrastructure

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Energywire

By Rod Kuckro

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the next few weeks will release a "best practices manual" to guide the natural gas and electric sectors in the siting of new infrastructure.
FERC Chairman Norman Bay made the disclosure yesterday at a Natural Gas Roundtable luncheon in Washington, D.C.
Bay told the packed room at the University Club that he had three "asks" of its members, one of which had to do with infrastructure.
"I continue to believe there is an important need for infrastructure in different parts of the United Sates. But unfortunately, the siting of infrastructure you know has become increasingly contentious.
"Here you can help yourself and FERC by engaging in proactive outreach with stakeholders," Bay said.
"FERC staff has been working on a best practices manual," he said, waving a draft of it in his left hand. "It will be issued within the next few weeks," and focus on outreach, transparency and "meaningful two-way communication" among stakeholders.
"As one gas pipeline CEO explained to me recently, while you certainly want to receive a certificate from FERC, you also want to earn a social license from the communities along the path of the pipeline," Bay said.
His other "asks" had to do with gas-electric sector coordination and cybersecurity.
"While progress has been made in 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, perhaps innovative market-based solution for products or services that can be developed and provide greater flexibility for shippers and generators," such as faster computerized scheduling, Bay said.
And "given the importance of gas for power generation, it is particularly important for pipelines to adopt best practices with respect to cybersecurity," he said.
"In the absence of robust cyber defenses, not only is infrastructure potentially at risk, but so is everyone that depends upon the essential services provided by that infrastructure -- [local distribution companies], industrial end users, generators and the public."

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Md. Sets Aggressive Mandate for Utilities to Cut Electricity Consumption

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Energywire

Maryland utility regulators directed the state's electric utilities to step up efforts aimed at cutting electrical consumption statewide with one of the most ambitious targets nationwide.
The Public Service Commission ordered Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and other utilities to boost electricity efficiency offerings created over the past seven years under the EmPOWER Maryland program and set a goal to net an annual savings equivalent to 2 percent of their sales.
"It's aggressive but achievable," said Paula Carmody, head of the Office of People's Counsel, about the 2 percent savings goal. Carmody added the decision "continues to put the pressure on the companies" to offer consumers ways to save.
Environmentalists and advocates lauded the move, but BGE described it as a "challenging" mandate, unsure whether it was possible to implement (Timothy B. Wheeler, Baltimore Sun, July 20)

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EPA 'Out of Control' with Regs -- Bobby Jindal

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

GOP presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal rebuked a controversial U.S. EPA water rule at a campaign event in Iowa this week.
"The EPA is out of control," the Louisiana governor said yesterday in West Des Moines. "Time and time again, the EPA is one of the biggest obstacles with growing our economy."
Speaking at a town-hall-style event, Jindal had been asked about EPA's Waters of the U.S. rule, which the agency has said provides clearer definitions of waters protected by the Clean Water Act. Louisiana and other states are suing EPA over the rule.
Jindal argued that an independent entity should evaluate EPA rules for costs and benefits and that Congress should vote on rules with high costs.
Throughout the event, Jindal advocated for reducing the role of the federal government.
But he broke that trend when it came to genetically modified foods, saying a federal standard for GMO labeling may be necessary to avoid confusion.
"What we don't need is a patchwork of contradictory and confusing and expensive label requirements that don't help us," he said (Linh Ta, Des Moines Register, July 21).

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Transportation News

Regulators: Railroads Must Disclose Oil Train Data

Jul 22, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire

By Timothy Cama

Federal regulators are reminding freight railroad companies that they are obligated to tell states and tribes when they plan to move large volumes of crude oil through the areas.
The mandate was first handed down in May 2014 for trains carrying 1 million gallons or more of oil, and was retained in the new comprehensive oil train rules from the Department of Transportation in May.
But railroads have fought the requirement, saying that exposing the data in a way that subjects it to public records disclosures can compromise security and competitive information.
In a Wednesday letter, the Obama administration cracked down, saying that while it thought about removing the disclosure rules, they are still in place.
“Although the preamble to the May 2015 final rule contemplated that the emergency order would end in early 2016, the department has since announced that the emergency order will remain in full force until DOT makes the notification requirements permanent through rulemaking,” Sarah Feinberg, acting head of the Federal Railroad Administration, said in the letter sent to major railroads.
“To be clear: railroads transporting crude oil must continue to provide the information required by the emergency Order to [states],” she said. “These notifications should also be updated in a timely manner, as specified in the order and subsequent frequently asked questions.”
Officials will continue making random audits and compliance checks to make sure railroads are sticking to the rules, Feinberg wrote.
In a statement, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said transparency is a key component of the way the Obama administration regulates oil train safety.
“DOT is committed to making certain that states and local officials have the information they need to prepare for and respond to incidents involving hazardous materials, including crude oil,” he said. “The emergency order that requires these notifications still stands, and we expect railroads to fully comply.”

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FRA Presses Railroads on Oil-Train Notification Rules

Jul 22, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard

By Elana Schor

The Federal Railroad Administration today put railways on notice about their responsibility to inform state-level first responders about the movement of oil trains within their borders.

In a letter to railroads, acting FRA chief Sarah Feinberg said the agency would keep probing their compliance “with random spot checks and regular compliance audits.” Railways were first required to notify State Emergency Response Commissions of Bakken crude cargoes greater than 1 million gallons in May 2014, and the mandate became permanent in May of this year.

Some railroads have resisted the notification requirements, however. Norfolk Southern filed suit last year in an attempt to stop the release of oil train data to news organizations that filed a freedom-of-information request in the state of Maryland.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement on the letter that his department “is committed to making certain that states and local officials have the information they need to prepare for and respond to incidents involving hazardous materials, including crude oil.”

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New Ozone Limit Could Halt D.C. Road, Rail Fixes -- Chamber

Jul 22, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

By Amanda Peterka

A more stringent ozone standard could threaten transportation projects in and around the nation's capital, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a report released today.
U.S. EPA in November proposed to tighten the national ozone limit from 75 parts per billion -- last set in 2008 during the George W. Bush administration -- to between 65 and 70 ppb.
The Chamber said that the Washington, D.C., region would likely be found out of compliance with EPA's proposed range and that the agency could withhold federal transportation funding if the area does not meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act.
EPA's proposal could affect several proposed projects in the region, including a railway express line in Virginia and interchanges in Maryland, the report said. The D.C. Regional Transportation Priorities Plan includes at least 13 new projects that will require $511 million in funding in fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2020.
"Just as there is finally some momentum in Maryland and Virginia thanks to new state funding, EPA's proposed ozone regulations threaten to halt progress," said Janet Kavinoky, executive director of transportation and infrastructure at the Chamber, in a statement. "Ironically, withholding funding for road and public transit projects will actually result in increased ozone emissions by failing to reduce congestion and emissions from idling traffic."
The D.C. report is the first in a series that the Chamber intends to release "detailing the negative impacts" of EPA's proposal, according to a press release.
EPA's decision on where to set the final ozone standard, expected by an Oct. 1 court-ordered deadline, is among the agency's most controversial decisions this year. The agency says a tighter standard is needed to guard the public against the negative health effects associated with ozone pollution. Ozone is a key component of smog that has been linked to reduced lung function.
According to EPA, the D.C. region had an ozone level of 79 ppb based on data from 2011 to 2013. The agency, however, expects the area to meet its proposed range by 2025, when most other areas of the nation are also expected to be in compliance.
If it's named in nonattainment with the new standard, the region will have to demonstrate that transportation projects won't cause new air quality violations in a process known as transportation conformity. The analysis is required as a condition of receiving federal transportation funding.
The Chamber's report warns that the area will have difficulty complying with the conformity requirements.
"EPA's strict new ozone standards could mean that badly needed transportation improvements in the Washington area will truly be grinding to a halt," said Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the Chamber's Institute for 21st Century Energy.
Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an advocacy group in favor of a tighter ozone limit, called the report "appalling."
"This report is pure fearmongering. And it is fiction," he said.
According to the Congressional Research Service, although EPA commonly threatens to impose sanctions on areas for not meeting Clean Air Act requirements, the agency has rarely used its authority to follow through with the punishments.
The Federal Highway Administration lists only one small area in Montana as having highway sanctions in effect; EPA imposed the sanctions there in the mid-1990s.
"Highway sanctions have almost never been used," O'Donnell said. "Areas are not penalized simply because they are located in nonattainment areas."
The Chamber acknowledged that highway and transit sanctions are rare in the Clean Air Act's history but predicted that sanctions "are likely to rise dramatically" under a new standard.
At a recent hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, a D.C.-area transportation planning official said the area is on track to attain the 2008 ozone standard within a year or so. Kanathur Srikanth, director of transportation planning for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, did not comment at the hearing on whether a lower standard would result in a disruption of federal funds.
He said, however, that meeting a tighter standard would be difficult and that the transportation sector would "have to do its part." He called on the federal government to provide more funding for transportation planning agencies that must conduct transportation conformity analyses.
Srikanth also pressed for increased federal rules over transportation emissions and fuels to help local areas meet national air standards (E&E Daily, June 4).

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