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Massachusetts Legislature Considers Chemical Restrictions
Aug 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Massachusetts is considering four bills that would restrict, ban, or require additional disclosure for the use of certain chemicals in consumer products. -
Osha Proposes Cut in Occupational Beryllium Exposure Limit
Aug 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration is proposing to reduce the permissible exposure limit (PEL) for beryllium and its compounds, and create a comprehensive health standard for the substance. -
Respiratory Risk Before The First Breath? Household Cleaning Products May Affect Health In The Womb
Aug 7, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Johanna Congleton
We know there is a link between exposure to cleaning products and respiratory problems. But could unborn babies be at risk from their mothers’ exposures even before they’ve taken their first breaths? -
EPA Blamed for Mine Waste Spill in Colo River
Aug 7, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking blame for a spill of one million gallons of mine wastewater into a river in Colorado. -
A Mighty Optimistic Wind Estimate Fuels EPA Rule
Aug 7, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Peter Behr
A strong, sustained growth of U.S. wind power, a cornerstone of the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, is achievable but faces stiff economic and political headwinds, according to government and private analyses. -
EPA, SAB Near Agreement On Alternative Biomass Carbon Framework
Aug 7, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Dawn Reeves
An EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) panel is close to finalizing its advice to EPA for how to estimate biomass carbon emissions using an alternative framework, a document that could eventually help officials develop a policy for how to address biomass as a compliance option under its greenhouse gas (GHG) rule for existing power plants. -
EPA Chief 'Wouldn't Argue' with Laurence Tribe
Aug 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Robin Bravender
U.S. EPA chief Gina McCarthy doesn't want to duke it out with Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe about her agency's new climate rule, but she does think he's wrong. -
Murkowski Sees Rising Democratic Interest in Exports Deal
Aug 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Geof Koss
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she sees increasing interest among Democrats in a legislative compromise to lift the longstanding ban on crude oil exports. -
SAB Urges More State, Utility Involvement In EPA Drinking Water List
Aug 7, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Amanda Palleschi
EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) is urging EPA to gather data from a wider variety of sources when evaluating which contaminants should be considered for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), raising concerns in a new draft report that the agency relies too heavily on the public to submit new contaminant recommendations. -
Focus on Train-Accident Prevention, Report Says
Aug 7, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
The country's crude-by-rail debate has focused too little on preventing accidents, says a former federal transportation official, and too much on reducing their effects.
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Massachusetts Legislature Considers Chemical Restrictions
Aug 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Massachusetts is considering four bills that would restrict, ban, or require additional disclosure for the use of certain chemicals in consumer products.
The bills, subject of a 28 July public hearing, have provisions restricting flame retardants, listed toxic chemicals, asthmagens and solvents.
The affected uses include children's products, upholstered furniture, dry cleaning operations, and cleaning products used in public buildings.
The four bills are as follows:S1139 proposes to establish a toxic chemicals list and would require manufacturers of children's products to submit annual reports, noting the presence of listed chemicals. The initial list would incorporate the Washington and Maine toxic chemicals lists, at a minimum (CW 2 May 2013 and CW 10 February 2015);S1132, a bill covering flame retardants in children's products and upholstered furniture, would ban certain designated substances. It would set a maximum permissible usage of TRIS and PBDEs in covered products at 1,000ppm;H2067, the Safer Cleaning Products Act, would establish a state-run safer cleaning products list, and ban the use of unlisted cleaning products in schools, day care centres and public buildings. The state would list products that satisfy “environmentally friendly purchasing criteria” and that do not contain ingredients that the commissioner deems asthmagens; andH2068 would require dry cleaners to post a sign, informing customers and neighbours if they are using a solvent system. This must include the type of solvent, its manufacturer, and a colour-coded hazard designation, as determined by the state.
“Chemicals in our homes, schools and workplaces have been linked to asthma, cancer, learning disabilities, reproductive damage, and a host of other diseases and disorders,” said Erica Mattison, legislative director to the Environmental League of Massachusetts, in written testimony in support of the bills.
She added: “Current environmental and health policies are outdated and do not offer sufficient protection.”
Other supporters of the bill included several fire fighter groups, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and the Massachusetts Association for the Chemically Injured.
Several testimonies in opposition noted that the federal government already heavily regulates children's products.
“Plainly put, it is already illegal to sell products which expose children to any dangerous hazardous substance,” said the Juvenile Product Manufacturers Association (JPMA).
The American Cleaning Institute (ACI) testified that it “[disagrees] with the general intent” of the cleaning products bill. The state “should not rely on one type of third-party standard, certification or recognition programme”, said the group.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) argued that the measures were more appropriately handled at the federal level. “Dividing the existing federal process into 50 separate regulatory webs will lead only to higher costs for consumers, as industry works to comply with often incompatible regulatory protocol,” it said.
Staff at the Joint Committee on Public Health report that the Massachusetts legislature may not vote on the bills for several more months. It will have until March 2016 to pass them into law.
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Osha Proposes Cut in Occupational Beryllium Exposure Limit
Aug 7, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration is proposing to reduce the permissible exposure limit (PEL) for beryllium and its compounds, and create a comprehensive health standard for the substance.
The current time-weighted average (TWA) PEL for beryllium, adopted in 1971, is 2 micrograms per cubic meter of air (μg/m3) as an eight-hour time-weighted average.
Osha is proposing a new TWA PEL of 0.2 μg/m3 for general industry.
Under a proposed health standard, the agency is setting requirements for:exposure assessment;preferred methods for controlling exposure, respiratory protection, personal protective clothing and equipment (PPE); andmedical surveillance, medical removal, hazard communication and record keeping.
Osha says it conducted an extensive review of the literature on adverse health effects, associated with exposure to the substance, as well as assessed the risk of beryllium-related diseases at the current TWA PEL.
“The available evidence indicates that worker exposure to beryllium, at the current PEL, poses a significant risk of chronic beryllium disease (CBD) and lung cancer, and that the proposed standard will substantially reduce this risk,” it says.
The agency also is looking at regulatory alternatives to the proposed scope of the standard, to the proposed TWA PEL and short-term exposure limit (STEL) of 2 μg/m3.
The following, under consideration, would change the groups of employers covered:to expand the scope to include all operations in general industry, where beryllium exists only as a trace contaminant, that is no more than 0.1% by weight;to exempt operations where the employer can show employees' exposures will not meet or exceed the action level or STEL. [This would not cover employers or employees in construction or shipyards]; andto include employers in construction and maritime.
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Respiratory Risk Before The First Breath? Household Cleaning Products May Affect Health In The Womb
Aug 7, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Johanna Congleton
We know there is a link between exposure to cleaning products and respiratory problems. But could unborn babies be at risk from their mothers’ exposures even before they’ve taken their first breaths?
An analysis of respiratory illnesses in more than 7,000 young British children found that prenatal exposure to common household products, particularly cleaners, was associated with persistent wheezing after birth. Children who suffer from wheezing before age 3 tend to also have respiratory problems later in life.
Pregnant women were queried about their use of disinfectants, bleach, carpet cleaner, window cleaner, dry cleaning fluid, aerosols, turpentine, air fresheners, paint stripper, paint or varnish and pesticides. Researchers estimated total household chemical exposure for each mother-to-be, based on how many times a day they used each product.
Researchers also factored in what are called confounders – other variables that could influence the results, such as if the mothers smoked while pregnant and their history of asthma. After adjusting for these factors, researchers found that while postnatal exposure may also have played a part, prenatal exposure to these products was associated with persistent wheezing.
The association between persistent wheezing and prenatal exposure to household cleaning chemicals was still evident among these children when they reached 7 years of age. The respiratory effects seem to have persisted throughout childhood, which raises the possibility that they could be lifelong.
In a later study, Spanish scientists followed nearly 2,300 pregnant women from their first trimester through birth, and then until their children reached 12-18 months of age. Mothers were questioned about their use of cleaning products before and after giving birth and respiratory symptoms or infections in their child’s first year.
Their findings corroborated the British study. Exposure to cleaning sprays throughout pregnancy and infancy was associated with wheezing. Infants also were more likely to have had a lower respiratory tract infection if there was pre- and postnatal exposure to air fresheners.
The timing of the mother’s exposure was also found to have an influence. Infants were significantly more likely to wheeze if their mothers used cleaning sprays while pregnant; use only after birth did increase the odds of wheezing, but not significantly. This phenomenon may involve the unborn child’s immune system response to chemicals inhaled by the mother.
The Spanish team also found that the use of air fresheners only after birth was significantly associated with wheezing and lower lung infections. The researchers noted that while infections and wheezing do not always lead to asthma, children with asthma or reduced lung function often have lower respiratory infections in the early years of life.
The bottom line is that exposure to chemicals in household products might be harmful to babies both before and after birth. The studies underline the importance of making safer choices—especially in cleaning products. Not only are the ingredients in the bottle important, but the Spanish findings show that the form they come in, particularly sprays, should be carefully considered as well.
According to EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning, more than 1-in-5 products in the database contain substances that can cause asthma. Use the Guide to find products without the potential to cause respiratory problems. If you want to dig deeper, here are the studies mentioned:
Casas L, Zock JP, Carsin AE, Fernandez-Somoano A, Esplugues A, Santa-Marina L, Tardón A, Ballester F, Basterrechea M, Sunyer J. 2013a. The use of household cleaning products during pregnancy and lower respiratory tract infections and wheezing during early life. Int J Public Health. Oct;58(5):757-64.
Henderson J, Sherriff A, Farrow A, Ayres JG. 2008. Household chemicals, persistent wheezing and lung function: effect modification by atopy? Eur Respir J. Mar;31(3):547-54.
Martinez FD, Wright AL, Taussig LM, Holberg CJ, Halonen M, Morgan WJ. 1995. Asthma and wheezing in the first six years of life. The Group Health Medical Associates. N Engl J Med. Jan 19;332(3):133-8.
Sherriff A, Farrow A, Golding J, Henderson J. 2005. Frequent use of chemical household products is associated with persistent wheezing in pre-school age children. Thorax. Jan;60(1):45-9.
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EPA Blamed for Mine Waste Spill in Colo River
Aug 7, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking blame for a spill of one million gallons of mine wastewater into a river in Colorado.
The spill of heavy metals like zinc, iron, copper turned the Animas River orange and triggered warnings Thursday to downstream communities that use the river for agriculture and recreation, the Denver Post reported.
“There’s nothing that can be done to stop the flow of the river,” Joe Lewandowski, a spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, told the Post. “We can only wait until the flows slow down. We had a big heavy spring [of rain’ here.”
The EPA is testing the river to determine whether it is safe for use.
The spill was triggered when the EPA was using heavy machinery to check for pollutants at the abandoned Gold King Mine north of Silverton, the Post said.
EPA workers were removing backfill from the mine to access it and accidentally released a plug that was holding back the mine waste. None of the workers were injured.
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A Mighty Optimistic Wind Estimate Fuels EPA Rule
Aug 7, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Peter Behr
A strong, sustained growth of U.S. wind power, a cornerstone of the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, is achievable but faces stiff economic and political headwinds, according to government and private analyses.
The plan issued Monday predicts that zero-carbon renewable energy -- primarily wind and solar power -- will supply 28 percent of total generation capacity in 2030, the compliance period's end year. The draft rule a year ago projected 22 percent as the estimated renewable power capacity share, and the higher contribution from renewables is key to the deeper cut in greenhouse gas emissions that the new plan requires (ClimateWire, Aug. 4).
The expansion of wind power in the United States has hinged on a crucial federal tax incentive that Congress has not renewed. The federal production tax credit (PTC) has allowed wind generation to compete with fossil fuels and nuclear power.
"The short answer is yes, the PTC is essential," said Rob Gramlich, the American Wind Energy Association's senior vice president for government and public affairs. "It's true that wind is increasingly cost-competitive, but recent experience and studies such as NREL's recent one show that development would fall significantly without the PTC," Gramlich said, referring to a National Renewable Energy Laboratory analysis.
In releasing the final CPP, U.S. EPA air chief Janet McCabe said the agency's analysis shows that wind power can expand throughout the CPP compliance period, from 2022 to 2030, even if the tax credit is not renewed.
If the PTC is not renewed, however, it will fall to state officials implementing the CPP to close any competitive gap between wind and other plan options -- natural gas, solar, energy efficiency and conservation.
"Carbon benefits of wind aren't taken into account until 2020. The Clean Power Plan will change the economics in the 2020s, increasing the value of carbon-free energy," Gramlich said, but that doesn't help project development now. "The value of carbon-free energy will vary based on a number of factors that are hard to predict, such as whether states pursue rate-based or mass-based approaches or choose this or that resource portfolio. It is very hard to put a dollar on that value now."
To demonstrate the potential of wind and other renewables to help bring down power plant carbon emissions, the CPP calculated a trend line based on actual increases in renewable energy sources since 2010, and projected those historical growth rates forward to 2030. Onshore wind dominated the calculation of the increased supply of renewable energy generation in megawatt-hours.
But the past five years have been a feast-or-famine cycle for wind power because Congress has twice let the PTC lapse, and that raises questions about whether wind power can keep on a strong growth path without the tax subsidy. (The credit was 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2013 for a utility-scale project, for the first 10 years of a unit's operation, with an alternative investment tax credit option.)
Two numbers were key in the CPP wind power analysis. EPA noted that wind generator capacity grew by an average 6,200 megawatts a year since 2010, the equivalent of adding three new nuclear power reactors. In the very best year in that span, 2012, wind capacity jumped by a head-turning 13,131 MW with the PTC in place, EPA reported in a CPP technical support document, "Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Measures."
Then the PTC lapsed, and new projects plummeted 92 percent in 2013, totaling just 1,087 MW capacity. A hard push by the industry and its supporters got the PTC restored until the end of 2014, and new projects added 4,854 MW wind capacity last year.
An EPA official, not speaking for attribution, said the purpose of the wind power trend analysis was to demonstrate "that the technology was achievable at a reasonable cost," a showing EPA is required to make. "It's an illustration of the future," but not a prediction, he said. "Our analysis suggests it's possible for new renewable energy to penetrate greater than it does today."Cases for wind growth
A number of high-level government studies and third-party analyses of electric power regions agree that the United States has not approached its potential use of wind energy.
An Energy Department study, "Wind Vision," says nine states are getting more than 12 percent of their annual electricity generation from wind: Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Oregon. Iowa and South Dakota get more than a quarter of their in-state generation from wind.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's "2013 Wind Technologies Market Report" cited a DOE study charting how wind power could reach 20 percent of generation capacity by 2030 through a steadily rising trend of deployment. To hit that path, annual installations would have to hit 16,000 MW of new capacity a year in 2017 and thereafter.
Current projections for wind-power growth without the PTC aren't close to that level. The "Wind Vision" study reported a variety of projections for wind-power growth through 2025 without the PTC: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 3,000 to 4,000 MW per year; American Wind Energy Association, 2,400 MW per year; and Bloomberg, 2,000 MW annually.
Last month, the Senate Finance Committee voted 23-3 to approve a two-year extension of the PTC and an investment tax credit alternative, along with dozens of other expired tax incentives and subsidies, sending the measure to the full Senate. The measure has some bipartisan support from strong wind-power states, but is opposed by some conservatives as corporate welfare, and its future is uncertain. Exelon Corp., the largest nuclear power operator, says its Midwest plants are undermined by Great Plains wind generation that can offer power at night at negative prices because of the PTC.
EPA notes that the cost of new wind units continues to drop, improving its prospects without the PTC. Economists commonly rank the costs to deliver energy from different fuels by calculating their "levelized cost," which estimates in the cost per kilowatt-hour of building an operating generating plant over its expected lifetime.
DOE, in its "Wind Vision" report, noted that the levelized cost of wind declined by more than 33 percent from 2009 to 2013, "and in some markets, wind power sales prices are competitive with traditional fossil generation."
An U.S. Energy Information Administration report says a better view of the competitiveness of fuels -- for example, new wind power versus new natural gas combined-cycle units -- comes from comparing the levelized cost of each energy source with its value, based on the cost of generation from the energy source it replaces or "avoids" (such as coal-fired generation). On that basis, EIA says, natural gas has an advantage over wind that shrinks in the future but doesn't disappear.
The tax cost of the proposed two-year extension of the renewable power PTC and investment tax credit (through the end of 2016) was calculated at $10.5 billion over 10 years by the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Richard Sedano, principal and U.S. programs director of the Regulatory Assistance Project, which advises states on energy and environmental regulation, said, "States have a significant capacity to drive renewable power into their electric systems.
"We know there is a massive amount of low-cost renewable energy in some parts of the country that remains untapped. Long-term contracts for renewable power are coming in at lower prices, so maybe that premium isn't as big as we think it is.
"We see that the RPS [renewable portfolio standard] is a tool that is still getting used and stretched in a few states. It is there for all states. In some states, it has become a partisan issue, and that may take it off the table. It is the tried and true way of putting a thumb on scale and creating room for renewables. There is the feed-in tariff, which really does the same thing," he added.
"My sense is there are lot of ways to comply with the Clean Power Plan without saying 'subsidy'."
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EPA, SAB Near Agreement On Alternative Biomass Carbon Framework
Aug 7, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Dawn Reeves
An EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) panel is close to finalizing its advice to EPA for how to estimate biomass carbon emissions using an alternative framework, a document that could eventually help officials develop a policy for how to address biomass as a compliance option under its greenhouse gas (GHG) rule for existing power plants.
While agency officials are publicly endorsing the panel's alternative framework, they still have a lengthy road ahead before they can use the framework to determine how or whether states and power plants can use biomass as a means of demonstrating compliance with the GHG rule because the framework is policy neutral and only provides methods for calculating biomass carbon impacts.
And industry groups are expressing disappointment with the alternative framework.
The panel during an Aug. 6 call agreed to finalize its alternative framework -- which assesses the impacts of a biomass policy on forest carbon stocks rather than smokestack emissions as EPA had proposed.
Panelists discussed details of the alternative network during the Aug. 6 call, as well as ways to address some outstanding concerns in response to the charge questions. And they also continued to express their disapproval with EPA over its policy-neutral approach in the executive summary, but appeared to move closer to final agreement.
Panelists indicated they could wrap up their work on their next scheduled call, slated for Sept. 9. And Holly Stallworth, the designated federal official for the panel, said she intended to post nearly final documents by Aug. 21 and hoped that the Sept. 9 call could be the last.
Once the panel completes its work, it will end a contentious, years-long process on how EPA should estimate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from biomass.
EPA's 2011 biomass accounting framework (BAF), the agency's first, drew strong criticism from an earlier SAB panel in part over the agency's default decision to assume that biomass is carbon neutral. Many industry groups favor that approach, arguing that the fuel is carbon neutral because forest regrowth sequesters carbon emissions.
But environmentalists have strongly resisted this, saying that biomass combustion, especially of whole trees, can result in significant and immediate releases that take years to be resequestered.
EPA's second proposal, released late last year, laid out a series of formulae to determine whether CO2 emissions from biomass combustion are carbon neutral, must be fully counted, reduce emissions or are somewhere in between. But even that drew criticism from the panel in part over the agency's decision to craft a policy-neutral framework, as well as some of its overall approaches.
The agency has also drawn criticism from environmentalists over its policy decision, released at the same time that it unveiled its second proposal, to allow “sustainable” biomass to be used as a compliance tool under its existing source performance standards (ESPS), though the agency did not define what it meant by that term.
SAB panelists disagreed as to whether sustainable biomass is related to GHGs.
While the final rule, released Aug. 3, generally endorsed that approach, the agency deferred specific decisions on what types of biomass are carbon neutral and eligible to be used to comply with its rule and instead sought comment on climate-friendly biomass in its proposed federal implementation plan (FIP) issued alongside the ESPS.
Alternative Framework
To help address the SAB panel's concerns, two of the panelists, Mark Harmon of Oregon State University and Ken Sog of the U.S. Forest Service, developed an alternative BAF which they touted as a much simple approach than EPA's, while better capturing the cumulative impacts and accounting for any leakage.
EPA officials have said they are receptive to the alternative, with an agency official telling Inside EPA last month that the approach provided a “path forward” on a complex and controversial issue. The official also sought to downplay the differences between the agency's original draft framework and the alternative, saying the new approach in some ways offers “direct answers” posed by the agency's charge questions to SAB and “we very much welcome those answers.”
On the Aug. 6 call, EPA continued to signal its support for the alternative framework, submitting a document that said it “represents four potential improvements over the 2014 framework,” including explicit methodology for calculating the time frame; a different approach to calculating the biomass accounting factor; an explicit use of carbon pools; and the elimination of leakage concerns.
EPA economist Allen Fawcett told the panel that it is “reassuring” that the panel and the agency are seeking to answer the same question in the two frameworks. He also continued to stress the policy-neutrality of the framework, and said regulatory approaches need to be considered separately.
But industry groups appear as disappointed with the alternative framework as they did with the original. Industry has long urged EPA to adopt a simple framework that allows biomass to be considered carbon neutral if forest stocks are stable or growing.
Paul Noe of the American Forest & Paper Association (AFPA) warned on the Aug. 6 call that the alternative framework appears ambiguous on whether it would consider forest product manufacturing residuals to be considered carbon neutral when used for energy, and asked SAB to recognize it as such.
AFPA's comments say the new approach, “which focuses on pools of forest carbon, does not adequately address forest products manufacturing residuals, which constitute the primary source of energy used by the paper and wood products industry, which is the largest industrial producer and user of bioenergy in the United States. If forest products manufacturing residuals were not used for energy, many would be disposed of in industrial landfills and subsequently emit methane, a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more potent than CO2.”
The comments also express concern that the new approach depends on “modeling assumptions and predictions that create significant uncertainty” and reiterates the need to consider “the tradeoffs between simplicity, scientific rigor and policy effectiveness,” citing SAB's draft executive summary.
Dave Tenny of the National Alliance of Forest Owners (NAFO) echoed similar concerns, warning in his comments that the board should fully vet “novel concepts that have not yet appeared in the science literature.” NAFO also noted that science can support a variety of policy options, and that there is no one right answer.
Tenny pointed to EPA's ESPS, which may allow states to determine how to use biomass into their compliance plans. “There is no single approach that is uniquely correct. . . . We urge the SAB to acknowledge that fact in its findings,” he said.
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EPA Chief 'Wouldn't Argue' with Laurence Tribe
Aug 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Robin Bravender
U.S. EPA chief Gina McCarthy doesn't want to duke it out with Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe about her agency's new climate rule, but she does think he's wrong.
Asked how she'd respond to Tribe's criticism that EPA's climate rule represents a "breathtaking example" of regulatory "overreach," McCarthy told PBS talk show host Charlie Rose earlier this week, "I'm not a lawyer. And certainly even if I were, I wouldn't argue with the man."
However, she said, "We have operated under cooperative federalism for the entire time of EPA. This is a total partnership between states and EPA. We're setting a standard, which is what everybody in the world has been telling EPA to do."
Tribe, a former mentor to President Obama, has blasted EPA's efforts to crack down on power plants' greenhouse gas emissions -- particularly the agency's requirements for states to meet specific emissions limits. Such a mandate, he said, exceeds EPA authority and "violates principles of federalism that are basic to our constitutional order" (Greenwire, Jan. 5).
Tribe commented on EPA's draft power plant rule on behalf of himself and Peabody Energy Corp., one of the world's largest coal producers. The agency rolled out its final rule this week.
McCarthy also said during the interview that coal communities' fears shouldn't be the driving force behind setting environmental policies.
"I do feel for the coal industry in terms of the jobs that it has and the people that rely on those jobs and the communities there," she said. "But the truth of the matter is, since the '80s, a lot of those industries have been losing jobs significantly. We are not in the '80s anymore."
She stressed the importance of working with coal-reliant communities to figure out how they can transition. "That's why the president put together a proposal called the Power Plus proposal to really start investing in those communities rather than letting the fear of those communities drive an entire energy and environmental world."
The EPA boss said the power sector is transforming even without pressure from new EPA regulations.
"The power sector, the electricity industry is transforming already," McCarthy said. "We're not making it look at renewables today, it is happening because the market is demanding it; people want them. There is a transition from really heavy-carbon-polluting fossil to natural gas, which is much cleaner. And now we're seeing the growth in renewables that, between last year when we proposed this rule and yesterday when we finalized it, it is beginning to take off."
The unveiling of the climate rule this week marked a major victory for McCarthy, who has been working to craft new climate rules since starting as EPA's air chief at the beginning of the Obama administration.
She told Rose that climate issues were central to her discussion with Obama when he asked her to take the helm of the agency.
"The day that he asked if I would become the next administrator at EPA, I asked him, would he do something on climate, because that was the big unfinished business at this point," McCarthy said. "He talks about it as a moral responsibility, and he means that. He is constantly looking at the science and worried about where the world is heading."
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Murkowski Sees Rising Democratic Interest in Exports Deal
Aug 7, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Geof Koss
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she sees increasing interest among Democrats in a legislative compromise to lift the longstanding ban on crude oil exports.
Sens. Angus King (I-Maine) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) last week floated the idea of supporting crude exports provided the legislation also furthered renewable sources, specifically by extending key tax incentives for wind and solar (E&E Daily, July 31).
Murkowski told Greenwire this week that she's been approached by other senators interested in similar plans.
"There have been conversations about perhaps different ways forward for lifting the ban," she said. "There was discussion from Senator Heinrich and Senator King, and I've talked to other members who are mulling over different proposals."
Murkowski said she hasn't weighed in on any of the plans but called it noteworthy that the discussions are even occurring.
"What I do think is significant is that these conversations are being had right now, that individuals that you might have assumed would just be dead set against lifting the oil export ban are approaching me and saying, 'Hey, have you thought about doing this,' or bringing it up in public discussion, kind of throwing things out on the table," she said. "It's a reminder of how far we've come in this debate."
Murkowski's committee last week passed a bill that would repeal the ban, while also expanding state shares of federal oil and gas revenues from drilling off their coasts. She said she's hoping to find a path for the legislation to the Senate floor, although notably she had to package the provisions into a separate bill just to get it through committee on a party-line vote.
While adding incentives to help renewables could bring along some Democrats, it would likely do so at the expense of GOP support, given the intense pressure by conservative groups against green tax incentives.
Additionally, some Democrats have already signaled they'd like to hit the oil and gas industry in the wallet in exchange for ending the ban. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, last month said a repeal should be accompanied by new fees on exports or by the cancellation of oil and gas tax breaks (Greenwire, July 9).
However, not all Democrats are seeking concessions to end the export ban. Former Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), who is leading repeal efforts in the lower chamber, this week noted that 13 Democrats are among the more than 100 co-sponsors of his bill (H.R. 702) to reverse the ban.
Speaking at an industry event in Houston this week, Barton predicted the measure would move as a stand-alone bill after the August recess or in October.
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SAB Urges More State, Utility Involvement In EPA Drinking Water List
Aug 7, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Amanda Palleschi
EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) is urging EPA to gather data from a wider variety of sources when evaluating which contaminants should be considered for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), raising concerns in a new draft report that the agency relies too heavily on the public to submit new contaminant recommendations.
SDWA requires EPA to develop periodically a list of contaminants not currently subject to drinking water standards, and then make determinations for at least five contaminants as to whether they should be regulated. EPA's draft fourth candidate contaminant list (CCL4), published in the Federal Register Feb. 4, included 100 chemicals or chemical groups and 12 microbial contaminants. Forty items on the draft list were carried over from the CCL3 after the agency failed to make a determination on them.
EPA had asked SAB for recommendations on whether the draft CCL4's support documents were "clear and transparent," whether any additional, peer-reviewed information or data collected should be used in the process, whether any contaminants currently on the draft CCL4 might not merit inclusion in the list and whether there are contaminants not currently included in the draft that should be listed.
In SAB's latest draft of its recommendations on the draft CCL4, dated June 30, the advisory panel is generally supportive of the agency's process for evaluating contaminants although SAB says additional details would aid the reader in understanding and following the decision process for listing contaminants in the draft CCL. SAB members discussed the draft report during an Aug. 3 conference call.
But the advisors are critical of EPA's reliance on public submissions in developing the CCL and say the agency should improve its strategy to "proactively reach out to large utilities, relevant state agencies, and other groups to obtain occurrence information that may be useful in identifying potential candidates for the CCL." Specifically, SAB says EPA should reach out to the Water Reuse Association, the Water Research Foundation, the American Water Works Association and the Water Environment Research Foundation for occurrence data "with an emphasis on contaminants related to water reuse."
The draft report also discusses the role that data from EPA's unregulated contaminant monitoring rule (UCMR) played in creating the draft CCL4 list. EPA uses the CCL process in concert with the UCMR, also required under SDWA, to gather occurrence data for contaminants. It then takes that data to make determinations about what contaminants might be included on the list.
SAB panelist Lloyd Wilson, a research scientist with the New York State Department of Health, questioned the interaction between UCMR and CCL during an April 29 meeting, saying, "It seems a shame we can't use data points from UCMR3 data that already exists and use it to look at the quality of this list."
Ongoing Monitoring
CCL4 team leader Meredith Russell said at the meeting that UCMR 3 data was not used to inform CCL4 because the monitoring is ongoing until December 2015, then laboratories have at least six more months to submit their data and have a chance to review it, meaning EPA won't take a look at the UCMR3 until 2016.
But in the draft report, SAB directs the agency to "make use of the data collected under UCMR 3 as it becomes available." In addition, it directs EPA to "perform a standard literature search to identify new and emerging contaminants, and refer to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey as an additional source of occurrence data."
One of the major topics of discussion during the Aug. 3 conference call dealt with determining when pathogens do not merit inclusion on the CCL. The draft report says the CCL should not include pathogens that are already addressed with "conventional drinking water treatment."
Currently, EPA's process for the CCL looks at "pathogens of emerging concern, including those associated with biofilms and drinking water distribution systems" as priorities for inclusion, and that anaerobic pathogens and "pathogens that are not endemic to the United States" be candidates for exclusion.
But SAB says those should be reconsidered because they may lead to the exclusion from the CCL of other "potentially significant microbial hazards" -- and that the biofilm and drinking water pathogens EPA prefers to be included could be addressed through conventional drinking water treatment.
The focus on exclusion comes after some groups, including the American Water Works Association, had criticized the CCL4 as carrying over too many chemicals from the previous list, CCL3, and its recommendation that EPA narrow its list of contaminants to more thoroughly research their health effects, rather than its existing "carryover" approach.
However, Wilson suggested on the Aug. 3 conference call that making such a recommendation to EPA could be too lenient and should therefore be listed instead a criteria for "lower prioritization."
"I understand that this monitoring is done as an indicator of a general problem, but I think for the SAB to make a recommendation to exclude all for which conventional treatment is effective is a little problematic," Wilson said. "Also, conventional treatment may have different meanings to different people . . . I would not make this as an absolute. [EPA is] not either," he added.
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Focus on Train-Accident Prevention, Report Says
Aug 7, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
The country's crude-by-rail debate has focused too little on preventing accidents, says a former federal transportation official, and too much on reducing their effects.
"We somehow missed the simple and obvious question -- how do we keep the trains from having an accident in the first place?" said Brigham McCown, who headed the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in the George W. Bush administration.
McCown founded and chairs the nonprofit Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure, a think tank that issued its first report yesterday on rail safety.
Citing federal statistics, the white paper says 73 percent of train derailments between 2011 and 2014 were caused by failure in rail integrity or human error.
The report says derailments caused by human error could be reduced by requiring trains to have a crew of at least two people. While freight railroads say they use two-person crews, they've opposed federal efforts to mandate a minimum crew size.
The focus of the report is on technology, such as "alerter" devices to flag problems to the crew. It notes that there are a variety of sensors and automated inspection technologies that are not mandated by federal rules.
"Let's at least have the debate on how we bring the railroad industry into the 21st century," McCown said.
The report also notes that regulations focused on hazardous material standards, such as the width of tanks containing crude oil, don't address passenger and freight safety issues.
Industry groups representing the oil and freight rail industries didn't respond directly to the report but stressed their commitment to safety.
"We take this issue very seriously," said Ed Greenberg, spokesman for the Association of American Railroads. "It's an ongoing commitment."
The industry is expecting to spend $29 billion on equipment and infrastructure upgrades that enhance safety, he said, adding to the hundreds of billions of dollars it's spent over the last few decades.
The industry, he said, has an array of "track-side" safety technology to monitor track and train integrity.
"At any point during the day or night, the nation's rail network is being inspected, maintained or being upgraded," he said.
Brian Straessle, spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, said new rules proposed by the Obama administration do little to prevent derailments.
"Improving safety requires a comprehensive approach to prevent, mitigate and respond to train derailments," Straessle said.
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