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Potsdam's Clarkson University Gets $6.5 Million Grant for Fish Monitoring Surveillance Program
Aug 12, 2015 | North County Now
Clarkson University has been awarded $6.5 million to continue its partnership with SUNY Fredonia and SUNY Oswego to conduct the Great Lakes Fish Monitoring and Surveillance Program. -
EPA Urged To Weigh Industry Data To Inform Naphthalene Risk Assessment
Aug 12, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
The petrochemical industry is urging EPA to consider the results of the sector's recently completed multi-year research program into the toxicity of naphthalene in the agency's decade-long assessment of the chemical's risks, which could boost the industry's push for a potentially less-stringent non-linear threshold review of the substance. -
Colorado River’s Pollution Levels Fall After Spill
Aug 12, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Colorado state officials said pollution appears to have cleared from the Animas River after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) caused a massive mine waste spill. -
Greens Seek Ban on Natural Gas Exports
Aug 12, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Three environmental groups formally petitioned the Obama administration to immediately ban all exports of natural gas. -
Greens Petition Obama Admin to Halt Exports
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Hannah Northey
Environmentalists asked the Department of Commerce today to halt the export of natural gas, an issue that has wide bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. -
Conservative Group Goes to Bat for Alaska LNG Megaproject
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
Political wrangling among Alaska state leaders is threatening a public-private effort to commercialize the North Slope's abundant natural gas supplies and could jeopardize the state's long-term economic future, according to a report by a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank. -
Carter-Era DOE Official Backs Lifting Crude Export Ban
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Daniel Bush
A former Energy Department undersecretary from the Carter administration has joined the growing chorus of people calling on Congress to lift the 40-year-old crude export ban. -
Senator Seeks Stay Of 'High-Impact' EPA Rules Pending Suits
Aug 12, 2015 | InsideEPA
Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) is pushing a new bill that would automatically stay EPA and other agencies implementing “high-impact rules” if legal challenges to the regulations are pending, which could affect a host of EPA policies such as its power plant greenhouse gas (GHG) standards and Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule. -
17 States Launch Legal Assault Against Startup-Shutdown Rule
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka
Seventeen states are challenging U.S. EPA's recent rule that changed the way states are required to address excess air pollution that occurs during plant startups and shutdowns or industrial equipment malfunctions. -
Clean Power Plan Ratchets Up Burdens on Coal States
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Jean Chemnick and Emily Holden
When U.S. EPA released its long-awaited final Clean Power Plan last week, it was immediately clear that states would face vastly different obligations than they had been preparing for under the 2014 draft rule. -
EPA's McCarthy Touts Final Clean Power Plan's Focus on Emissions Trading
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Elizabeth Harball
During her first public appearance since the release of the final Clean Power Plan last week, U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy talked up the role emissions trading will likely play in states' plans to comply with first-ever limits on CO2 instituted for U.S. power plants. -
Pa. Weighs Options to Meet Clean Power Plan Target
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
Pennsylvania is about halfway to meeting its final target under President Obama's plan for cutting carbon emissions from the country's power plants, according to a calculation by an environmental group. -
Bipartisan Policy's Grumet Says McConnell Strategy on EPA Plan 'Disappointing'
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - TV
Is U.S. EPA's final Clean Power Plan legally vulnerable because it is seen by many as a significant departure from the agency's proposed rule? -
N.D. Hires Safety Inspector in Wake of Fiery Derailments
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
North Dakota regulators are hiring a BNSF Railway Co. employee for a new rail inspection program following a series of oil train derailments and fires.
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Potsdam's Clarkson University Gets $6.5 Million Grant for Fish Monitoring Surveillance Program
Aug 12, 2015 | North County Now
Clarkson University has been awarded $6.5 million to continue its partnership with SUNY Fredonia and SUNY Oswego to conduct the Great Lakes Fish Monitoring and Surveillance Program.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provided the funding.
The money is a five-year Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grant and continues funding for the surveillance program to monitor Great Lakes fish for contamination from legacy pollutants such as PCBs, banned pesticides, mercury and from emerging chemicals of concern like flame retardants and personal care products.
Principal investigators Thomas M. Holsen, Jean S. Newell Distinguished Professor in Engineering of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Clarkson; Philip K. Hopke, director of the Center for Air Resources Engineering at Clarkson; and Bernard S. Crimmins, research associate professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Clarkson, are responsible for the overall management of the program.
James Pagano, director of the Environmental Research Center in the Department of Chemistry at SUNY Oswego, and Professor Michael Milligan in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at SUNY Fredonia, are also principal investigators in this study.
"Protecting our Great Lakes water resources for both recreation and commerce is of vital importance to both our nation and state," said Clarkson President Tony Collins, co-chair of the North Country Regional Economic Development Council. "This EPA funding will enable our university researchers from New York State laboratories at Clarkson, SUNY Oswego and SUNY Fredonia to apply their scholarly expertise to issues that directly affect our environment and economy."
The new funding will continue analysis for contaminants to assess temporal trends in bioaccumulative organic compounds and mercury in open waters of the Great Lakes, using fish as biomonitors. In addition, the project will screen for new compounds of concern entering the lake ecosystems and assess the ecological health of the Great Lakes through interpretation of chemical analyses and other food web studies.
“We are excited about continuing our collaborative work with EPA to assess pollutant concentrations and trends in the Great Lakes,” said Holsen. “Over the next five years we’ll be adding new state-of-the art analytical instruments to help identify both current and emerging contaminants, such as flame retardants, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, present in the Great Lakes ecosystem. With these additional capabilities, the Great Lakes Fish Monitoring and Surveillance Program will continue its status as a world leader in the science of contaminant cycling in aquatic ecosystem.”
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative was launched in 2010 to accelerate efforts to protect and restore the largest system of fresh surface water in the world. Great Lakes Restoration Initiative resources are used to strategically target the biggest threats to the Great Lakes ecosystem.
The EPA has awarded this same partnership team $8.25 million since 2006 to monitor for contaminants in the Great Lakes.
Information about the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is available at:http://www.glri.us.
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EPA Urged To Weigh Industry Data To Inform Naphthalene Risk Assessment
Aug 12, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Maria Hegstad
The petrochemical industry is urging EPA to consider the results of the sector's recently completed multi-year research program into the toxicity of naphthalene in the agency's decade-long assessment of the chemical's risks, which could boost the industry's push for a potentially less-stringent non-linear threshold review of the substance.
The conclusion from the industry data suggests that naphthalene's cancer risk should be modeled using the threshold, or non-linear approach. Such an approach is generally considered less stringent than EPA's traditional linear default, which assumes that any level of exposure is accompanied by some level of cancer hazard. By contrast, a non-linear or threshold approach assumes that there is a threshold of exposure below which there is no harm.
EPA has largely re-started its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) review of the chemical, which has been underway for a decade. The agency re-started the assessment with the promise that it will be one of the first to undergo from scratch the new IRIS approach, which the program has been in the process of adopting since a critical National Academy of Sciences report in 2011 led to a series of ongoing changes.
EPA released a scheduling update in June indicating that preliminary planning and scoping documents for the assessment will be released this summer or fall. But a public IRIS meeting scheduled in September, where the naphthalene assessment was scheduled to be discussed, has been canceled and it is unclear whether naphthalene will be on the agenda for the scheduled October meeting.
EPA last published an assessment of naphthalene in 1998, providing non-cancer risk estimates and dubbing the chemical a "possible human carcinogen."
But the agency released a draft re-assessment which underwent peer review in 2004, which was widely criticized by industry and the Department of Defense (DOD). The chemical is a component of jet fuel, and with others have contaminated soil and groundwater, creating significant cleanup liability for DOD.
That draft included strict first-time cancer risk numbers, which led the industry group, the Naphthalene Council, to create its research program, an industry source says. The agency has since re-started the IRIS re-assessment.
"The cancer numbers [in the 2004 draft] indicated naphthalene was a more potent carcinogen than chemicals characterized as known human carcinogens," the source says, adding that such potency is not seen in workers exposed to the chemical. "Naphthalene has never had any indication in human epidemiology [studies] of disease associated with exposure."
Naphthalene Toxicity
Consultants to the Naphthalene Council late last month had their final study published on the website of the journal Critical Reviews of Toxicology, where they sought to aggregate their own and other new naphthalene toxicity information in recent years and analyze its portent to naphthalene's carcinogenicity.
A key issue in the paper, one consultant says, is the relevance of a toxicology study of rats that the National Toxicology Program published in 2000, a few years after EPA's last published naphthalene assessment. That study indicated that exposure to the chemical could cause nasal tumors in rats, and the consultants' publication strives to show that information is not relevant to human health risk.
The publication explores potential modes of action (MoA), or the biological pathway through which naphthalene causes cancer -- information that is important to IRIS assessments.
The program's assessors use such determinations to decide how to extrapolate human cancer risk from high-dose laboratory animal studies to the lower doses of the chemical that humans experience in the environment. The decision affects how stringently cancer potency is estimated.
The consultants' study concludes, "[i]mportantly, although the mechanism of action may not be entirely clear, a non-mutagenic threshold MoA for naphthalene-induced rat nasal tumors should be considered to determine human relevance and to guide regulatory and risk management decisions."
EPA, however, has been reluctant to depart from the health-protective linear risk approach. The agency's 2005 cancer risk assessment guidelines direct agency risk assessors to use linear modeling to assess the cancer risk of any environmental contaminant shown to have a mutagenic mode of action or an unknown mode of action.
Linear Default
In the case of the naphthalene study, as in many other instances, the question will be whether industry's contractors have provided sufficient information to assuage EPA assessors' concerns about naphthalene's MoA to step away from the linear default.
"We're all very interested to see how EPA will approach this," the industry source says of the research program, adding that the latest publication has been sent to IRIS officials. "It's reaching conclusions . . . that the IRIS program is reluctant to reach."
The consultant says that the new study "ought to get over the hurdle, but of course it has been hard for EPA to give up on non-threshold. It often seems to observers that the dividing line . . . gets pushed very far toward needing detailed and overwhelming evidence of specific molecular mechanisms whenever the MOA question could be used to propose a threshold."
Of the study, the source explains that it presents both evidence "against a mutagenic MOA," including a negative genotoxicity test and other data, plus "what we think is a good positive case for the necessity of tissue toxicity that comes from looking at responding and non-responding tissues in different species . . . it is compelling that the target tissues for carcinogenesis are in all cases places where there is evidence of cytotoxicity and that pronounced local metabolism at a level sufficient to overwhelm local defenses such as glutathione is the common syndrome for all responding tissues (and is lacking in non-responding tissues).
"Since the human PBPK model shows that humans cannot get local metabolism up to the needed levels, this means that the processes observed in the animal bioassays would not be expected to act in humans, whatever the underlying details of their operation in rodents might be."
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Colorado River’s Pollution Levels Fall After Spill
Aug 12, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Colorado state officials said pollution appears to have cleared from the Animas River after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) caused a massive mine waste spill.
Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) and Larry Wolk, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said Tuesday that their latest sampling show that the river is back to the pollution levels it had before the spill of 3 million gallons of heavy metals last week, The Durango Herald reported.
“Isn’t that amazing? That’s much better than what I would have hoped for,” Hickenlooper said in Durango, according to the Herald.
“The indications are that the threat to the human health is returning back to pre-event levels, if not already there now,” he continued.
Wolk said his agency does not believe there is any risk to human health.
The test results mean that officials could potentially reopen the river to recreation, fishing and drinking water intakes before the Aug. 17 target that was initially planned.
The EPA, meanwhile, said it was encouraged by the new findings but wanted to verify the results itself before giving its blessing.
The spill caused the river to turn bright orange and shined a spotlight of attention and embarrassment on the EPA.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy was due Wednesday to visit Durango and Farmington, N.M., which is downstream.
She and other officials have repeatedly apologized for the spill, which was caused accidentally when EPA contractors moved soil that was holding back a tailings pond from the gold mine that was abandoned decades ago.
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Greens Seek Ban on Natural Gas Exports
Aug 12, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Three environmental groups formally petitioned the Obama administration to immediately ban all exports of natural gas.
The request challenges the recent tenfold increase in exports of natural gas, mainly as liquefied natural gas (LNG).
That’s been spurred largely by unconventional drilling techniques such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which have increased domestic gas supplies exponentially, to the dismay of green groups.
“Exporting natural gas worsens global warming, harms local communities, raises domestic energy prices and benefits only multinational fossil fuel corporations,” Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, said of the petition his group filed with Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace.
“If the Obama administration’s really serious about addressing the climate crisis, it has to rein in the gluttonous natural gas industry,” he said in a statement.
“The Obama administration needs to comply with the law and not export a fuel that has higher carbon emissions than coal,” said Ben Schreiber, climate and energy program director at Friends of the Earth.
The formal petition to the Department of Commerce could lead to a lawsuit if the agency does not act in a way that the groups desire.
LNG exports have been the subject of bipartisan praise in recent years as a way to compete with other global energy giants, such as Russia, and provide United States allies with an alternative source.
Some lawmakers have demanded that the Obama administration take steps to make it easier to export LNG, and last year, the Energy Department streamlined its process for approving export applications.
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Greens Petition Obama Admin to Halt Exports
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Hannah Northey
Environmentalists asked the Department of Commerce today to halt the export of natural gas, an issue that has wide bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.
The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned Commerce to immediately craft a rule to ban exports of liquefied natural gas under the Energy and Policy Conservation Act of 1975.
The law was passed to conserve domestic energy supplies in the face of an oil embargo imposed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace also signed the petition.
The groups argue that Commerce failed to issue a rule barring LNG exports -- yet did so for crude exports -- under the law, even though gas production is booming and exporters are lined up to secure applications to sell overseas.
"The time is now to end the environmental and economic disaster of natural gas exports," said Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. "Exporting natural gas worsens global warming, harms local communities, raises domestic energy prices and benefits only multinational fossil fuel corporations."
Snape said in an email that the group could file a lawsuit if Commerce doesn't act on the petition.
"The Obama administration, however, can fix this illegality on their own," he said.
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Conservative Group Goes to Bat for Alaska LNG Megaproject
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
Political wrangling among Alaska state leaders is threatening a public-private effort to commercialize the North Slope's abundant natural gas supplies and could jeopardize the state's long-term economic future, according to a report by a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank.
Without mentioning Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) by name, the study by the American Council for Capital Formation concludes that the governor's proposal to advance two separate natural gas pipeline projects is "among the greatest threats Alaska faces" in hopes of becoming a major player in world liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets.
Margo Thorning, senior vice president and chief economist at ACCF, argues that the state's best hope of developing its gas resources lies with the proposed multibillion-dollar Alaska LNG export venture that the state is partnering on with Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Alaska PLC, ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. and TransCanada Corp.
That project, which has an estimated price tag of $45 billion to $65 billion, includes a North Slope gas treatment plant, an 800-mile natural gas pipeline, a liquefaction plant and LNG export terminal.
"The Alaska LNG Project has the potential to help maintain solid economic growth and state budget revenues" at a time when a sharp drop in world oil prices has resulted in a $3.5 billion state budget deficit for this fiscal year, said the report, which is due to be released later today.
"Alaska's prosperity hinges on the state meeting the rapidly rising global demand for LNG, particularly in Asia," according to Thorning.
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"Alaska has abundant resources that can be harnessed and moved securely by ship to the energy-hungry, growing markets of Asia. The time has come for the state's leaders to decide on an LNG project that can meet this demand profitably and maximize benefits to Alaska and its people."
The study echoes criticism expressed by Alaska Republican lawmakers against Walker's proposal to expand a small, in-state gasline project known as the Alaska Stand Alone Pipeline as an alternative to the massive state-industry joint venture.
More recently, Walker also suggested buying out TransCanada's contract in the Alaska LNG project. That move would cost roughly $100 million and require approval of the reluctant Republican-controlled state Legislature (EnergyWire, June 17).
In addition, the governor is pushing to increase the size of the proposed Alaska LNG pipeline to accommodate future natural gas discoveries and to reroute the project closer to the state's population centers (EnergyWire, June 29).
Walker has hired an outside consultant to review the legal agreements that his predecessor, former Gov. Sean Parnell (R), signed with the three oil producers and the pipeline company. That assessment has not yet been released.
In her report, Thorning argues that Walker's proposed changes could doom efforts to finance construction of any natural gas pipeline project.
"Since Alaska has to compete for investment in its energy sector with states in the lower 48, as well as with other countries, it is important that Alaskan officials avoid policy shifts that increase uncertainty and make the Alaska LNG Project potentially less attractive for the private sector investors in the project," the report noted.
Instead, the state should "refine its partnership with the major producers involved in the Alaska LNG Project for mutual benefit and success in a high-stakes global competition," she concluded.
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Carter-Era DOE Official Backs Lifting Crude Export Ban
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Daniel Bush
A former Energy Department undersecretary from the Carter administration has joined the growing chorus of people calling on Congress to lift the 40-year-old crude export ban.
John Deutch, who held several top DOE posts from 1977 to 1980, said allowing exports would "increase U.S. jobs and increase the country's influence in world oil markets, with little risk of higher gasoline prices for consumers."
"The U.S. oil and gas industry has changed dramatically in the several years, and with it this country's dependence on foreign oil," Deutch wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-edpublished last night.
Deutch also backed energy legislation now moving through the House and Senate that could lift the ban. House Republicans are expected to attach language lifting the ban to a broad energy bill slated for a floor vote as early as September.
The Senate's energy package did not address the issue, but the Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed a separate bill last month that would lift the export ban (Greenwire, July 30).
That measure, which also includes language that would increase coastal states' share of federal revenue from offshore energy development, passed 12-10 along party lines, with every Democrat opposing the bill.
But Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, both indicated that they might be willing to support lifting the ban in exchange if Republicans back an extension of renewable energy tax credits.
"Let's hope the ban is lifted with broad bipartisan support," Deutch wrote.
Deutch also argued that the United States should count the oil it purchases from Canada and Mexico as part of its domestic supply, a move he said would lower the country's project liquid fossil fuel imports in 2040 from 3.3 million barrels a day to less than 500,000.
Integrating North America's energy markets would bolster the U.S. economy and ease efforts to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions, Deutch said.
"It's a mistake to separate the U.S. from the rest of North America when assessing the economic and political consequences of alternative energy policies and trends," Deutch wrote.
After leaving DOE, Deutch went on to serve on the White House Science Council from 1985 to 1989 and later served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Clinton. Deutch is an emeritus professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Senator Seeks Stay Of 'High-Impact' EPA Rules Pending Suits
Aug 12, 2015 | InsideEPA
Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) is pushing a new bill that would automatically stay EPA and other agencies implementing “high-impact rules” if legal challenges to the regulations are pending, which could affect a host of EPA policies such as its power plant greenhouse gas (GHG) standards and Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule.
S. 1927, which Coats introduced Aug. 4, would block implementation of any rule with an annual cost of $1 billion or more until court challenges against the policies conclude, as long as the suits are filed within 60 days of the rule being formally issued.
“In general . . . an agency shall postpone the effective date of a high-impact rule of the agency pending judicial review,” the bill says. It defines “high-impact” as any rule that the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs “determines may impose an annual cost on the economy of not less than $1,000,000,000.”
If enacted, S. 1927 would make automatic the stays that EPA critics are hoping to win of both the CWA jurisdiction rule and the power plant GHG standards, known as the Clean Power Plan.
Opponents of high-profile agency regulations have charged that even when major rules are found partially or completely unlawful, regulated entities are still forced to take expensive, sometimes irrevocable compliance measures if the policies remain in effect during litigation.
For instance, during an Aug. 4 hearing of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee's (EPW) panel on Superfund and regulatory oversight, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said EPA's administrator “comes and . . . says 'we're following the law,' the Supreme Court eventually says 'no you're not,' but they go ahead and do it anyway, and it takes years to litigate. At the end of the day even though you've won at the Supreme Court in some ways you're already checkmated."
He pointed to the agency's maximum achievable control technology (MACT) rule to curb power plants' air toxics emissions as an example of that pattern. The Supreme Court recently found that EPA acted unlawfully in failing to consider costs when it found the rule was “appropriate and necessary,” but EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said after the ruling that since the rule remained in effect during litigation many plants are already in compliance regardless of the justices' decision.
Meanwhile, states and industry groups suing over the CWA rule are asking courts for a preliminary injunctionthat would bar EPA from implementing the regulation, arguing that it would irreparably harm states by placing under federal authority waters that under prior rules were regulated exclusively at the state level.
Litigation over a stay is likely to be complicated by the fact that there are many challenges to the rule proceeding in parallel in federal district courts, and a separate consolidated suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. Judges will have to rule on which is the proper venue for challenging the rule before they can address substantive arguments.
In district court suits, state plaintiffs are seeking a stay based on arguments that the rule violates constitutional protections for state sovereignty by imposing costly regulatory burdens on waters previously governed solely under state laws, the Commerce Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Meanwhile, Senate opponents of the newly finalized power plan are backing a bill, S. 1324, that would vacate the rule and automatically stay any eventual replacement until the courts have weighed its legality. That bill cleared EPW at an Aug. 5 full committee markup.
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17 States Launch Legal Assault Against Startup-Shutdown Rule
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka
Seventeen states are challenging U.S. EPA's recent rule that changed the way states are required to address excess air pollution that occurs during plant startups and shutdowns or industrial equipment malfunctions.
In a petition for review, the states argue that EPA "erroneously concluded" that their plans to reduce pollution were "inadequate" to address emissions that occur during those times.
Led by Florida, the states filed the petition yesterday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
"We will not step aside while the EPA, through heavy-handed federal overreach, threatens to upend a system that the EPA has approved multiple times and has provided a consistent, reliable framework to safely provide electricity to millions of Floridians across the state," Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. "Furthermore, the agency's action could result in higher utility bills for Florida consumers."
EPA's final rule published in June rescinded long-standing state provisions known as "affirmative defense" that shield industrial facilities from civil penalties for violations of National Ambient Air Quality Standards that occur during startups, shutdowns and malfunctions.
The final rule also found that states cannot automatically exempt facilities from emission limits during those times. EPA required that 36 states reopen Clean Air Act state implementation plans, or SIPs, and revise them within 18 months to comply with the changes (Greenwire, May 22).
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The rule arose out of a petition by the Sierra Club, which has long argued that affirmative defense and exemptions during "SSM" events constitute a loophole that allows facilities to release emissions in excess of permit limits.
EPA has said the decision to eliminate affirmative defense from state plans was also in response to a ruling last year by the D.C. Circuit that found the agency lacked authority to grant cement kilns an affirmative defense for pollution violations occurring during malfunctions (Greenwire, Oct. 16, 2014).
In the statement, though, Florida's attorney general said EPA's decision to require states to change previously approved plans violated states' rights under the Clean Air Act. The state also argued the rule would stall progress in improving air quality.
Along with Florida, the states challenging the rule are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina's Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
"Once again, the EPA is choosing to put the political interests of the Sierra Club ahead of Arkansans," said Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge in a statement. "In yet another 'sue and settle' case, the EPA is rushing to appease the interests of the Sierra Club."
EPA is facing several legal challenges over the final startup, shutdown and malfunction rule.
Free-market law firm Southeastern Legal Foundation and Walter Coke Inc. challenged it in June in the D.C. Circuit, while several entities, including the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, have filed separate petitions against the rule in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In court documents, EPA has argued that the Texas challenge should be either dismissed or transferred to the D.C. Circuit because the rule is national in scope.
Environmental groups have moved to intervene in the legal action in both courts (Greenwire, July 21).
"EPA is required to close these loopholes because they are inconsistent with the Clean Air Act," Sierra Club senior attorney Andrea Issod said in a recent statement. "The loopholes also have the real-world consequences of compromising air quality and public health."
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Clean Power Plan Ratchets Up Burdens on Coal States
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Jean Chemnick and Emily Holden
When U.S. EPA released its long-awaited final Clean Power Plan last week, it was immediately clear that states would face vastly different obligations than they had been preparing for under the 2014 draft rule.
Many coal-heavy states originally faced relatively lax targets, based on a formula EPA had devised to account for current clean energy policies and infrastructure. But the draft rule's algorithm was left on the cutting room floor and replaced by uniform standards applied directly to fossil-fuel power plants, no matter where they're located -- 771 pounds of carbon per megawatt-hour of power for natural gas plants, and 1,305 pounds of CO2/MWh for coal or oil plants.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told a Washington, D.C., audience yesterday that the uniform standards "guarantee equity and fairness across the board."
States with more coal power than natural gas disagreed, seeing themselves on the losing end of the new calculations.
"If the rule was a book, the draft would be a murder mystery and the final rule would be a comedy," said Kentucky Energy and Environment Secretary Leonard Peters.
The result of the new math is stricter goals for the coal-reliant Midwest, Appalachian and Rust Belt regions -- areas that weren't fans of EPA's bid to curb emissions anyway. Meanwhile, states with cleaner power fleets got some relief. Many find themselves easily within reach of targets or with room to grow mass emissions of CO2 between 2012 and 2030. Those early movers have the happy choice of either selling credits back to the power market or setting them aside as further contributions to climate change mitigation.
The changes are likely to further entrench states supporting and opposing the rule, fueling political and legal pushback from some that had previously avoided taking sides. They also may affect which states work together to reach targets.
North Dakota saw its reduction responsibilities quadruple compared to the draft rule, and state officials say they will likely join other states challenging the regulation in court. The Republican-run state hadn't joined previous lawsuits. North Dakota had perhaps the least stringent goal under the draft rule -- an 11 percent reduction in the power-sector emissions rate between 2012 and 2030. Under the final rule, North Dakota has one of the toughest goals -- representing a 45 percent cut in the emissions rate.
By 2030, North Dakota must emit no more than 1,305 pounds of CO2/MWh of power produced -- which is a significant drop but is also the most lenient emissions rate EPA will allow any state.
"I do think we don't have much choice but to seek some legal recourse," said Dave Glatt of North Dakota's Department of Health, adding that the state will likely still develop its own implementation plan, rather than refuse to comply.22 states headed to court
Bill Bumpers, a partner at law firm Baker Botts LLP, where he represents power companies, said at a Washington, D.C., event yesterday that few states will respond to tougher state goals by announcing new plans to sue over the rule. He estimated that 22 to 26 states are looking at suing, and he said the decision is "more political than practical." Soon after the final rule came out, 16 state attorneys general asked EPA to stall the rule, pending judicial review.
But some states run by Democratic governors were also thrown off-guard by higher goals.
"At first glance, it looks as though the Obama administration has moved the goal post on us. I am extremely disappointed by this," said Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D). "I understand that we need to address climate change, but how we do so has to work for Montana."
Montana's 2030 goal is also 1,305 pounds of CO2/MWh -- a 47 percent reduction from the state's 2012 emissions rate. That is the steepest shift required of any state. By comparison, the draft rule would have required a 21 percent cut.
The drastic changes in percentage cuts required aren't good for political optics. But in some states, the percentages aren't necessarily the best indicator of goal stringency.
South Dakota's emissions rate change is 38 percent under the final rule, compared with 35 percent under the draft rule.
The percentages are similar, but South Dakota's goals are actually much easier under the final rule. The state must reach an emissions rate of 1,167 pounds of CO2/MWh of power, far less stringent than a proposed 741 pounds of CO2/MWh.
The percentages are nearly the same only because EPA revised South Dakota's 2012 emissions level up, compared with the draft rule. EPA set new "adjusted" baseline emissions rate levels for many states, to account for a bigger-than-usual year for hydropower and to include power plants that were under construction.
The difference for South Dakota is stark. With the regular "historic" baseline, South Dakota would need to cut its emissions rate 48 percent. With the adjusted baseline, which is depicted on E&E's Power Plan Hub, South Dakota faces a rate cut of 38 percent.
The numbers also don't always tell much about the ease with which a state may be able to comply. Minnesota, for example, must cut its emissions rate 42 percent, near the higher end of shifts required. But the state has an aggressive renewable energy standard and has great wind power potential, said David Thornton, assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.New focus on emissions trading
The final rule emphasizes opportunities for trading far more than the draft, and EPA chief McCarthy has encouraged states to consider the option (ClimateWire, Aug. 12). And states with tougher standards might be studying trading options with fresh eyes.
"States facing more stringent standards under the final rule will generally find it more attractive to trade with other states, as it will be more expensive to meet the standard alone," noted Brian Murray, director of the Environmental Economics Program at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. "Trading with other states will typically give the states with more stringent standards access to credits at a price that will be lower than the most expensive reductions in state."
Generators in states that do not write plans will likely end up with requirements resembling market-based carbon trading anyway (ClimateWire, Aug. 4).
Every state (except Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont and the District of Columbia) must reduce the rate at which power plants reduce emissions. But some states will be allowed to let overall emissions grow, according to mass-based goals.
Nine states' power sectors can contribute more tons of carbon per year by 2030 -- California, Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, South Dakota, Virginia and Washington. Most of those nine states have among the lowest starting emissions rates in the country. South Dakota's starting rate is much higher, followed by Washington and then Virginia. States that can increase mass emissions may be in a position to sell credits to states that must cut emissions.
States that found themselves on the winning end of the final rule say it is fairer than the draft, because it takes into account work they have done for years to bring down emissions.
Angus Duncan, who chairs the Oregon Global Warming Commission, said coal-heavy states shouldn't be complaining about the final rule because it addresses an imbalance of goals.
"They're probably as upset now as we were when we saw the original draft targets," Duncan said. "We were being asked to do substantially more, and a lot of what we had already done and would continue to do wasn't going to get counted."
Fourteen early-mover states, coordinated by the Georgetown Climate Center, last December asked EPA to maintain the overall stringency of the Clean Power Plan but to ease the interim compliance period and give more credit for early action. The signatories included California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. And EPA appears to have heeded their request.Winners and losers (as revised)
Perched in the hydropower-driven northwestern corner of the country, Washington andOregon both saw their responsibilities significantly eased under the final rule and are now on track to overshoot their goals.
Washington had the highest proposed rate reduction in the nation -- 72 percent, based largely on plans to shutter its last remaining coal plant. Oregon would have been required to cut its emissions by 48 percent in the draft. But the final rule assigned them cuts of 37 percent and 20 percent, respectively.
Both states will be allowed higher total emissions in 2030, which raises questions about whether they will join an interstate trading scheme that would allow them to capitalize on their surplus or whether they will sit on those emissions allowances for the good of the planet. Both states have already adopted nonbinding greenhouse gas reduction targets.
"We know that there will be a lot of pressure from our utilities and some of the customers to in effect trade that away in return for easing pressure on some of our coal-by-wire supplier states," said Duncan, referring to states like Montana and Wyoming. But those excess credits could also leverage more renewable energy production in those supplier states, he said, shifting the West's portfolio further away from coal use.
Opportunities for trading in Appalachia, meanwhile, have reversed.
Virginia now has an easier goal, while neighboring Kentucky and West Virginia have tougher targets. Both states' goals are nearly twice as tough under the final rule (Greenwire, Aug. 4).
Kentucky's Energy and Environment Cabinet believed the state could have met the original requirement mainly with shifts to natural gas that were already planned.
But along came the final rule, which Secretary Peters said is a whole different genre from the draft his agency was preparing to accommodate during the last 14 months. His staff was preparing a blueprint it called an "80 percent plan" to hand off to the next administration; Gov. Steve Beshear (D) departs from office at the end of this year. And while Peters said he still thinks it will be better for Kentucky to formulate his own state plan, he said he was unsure whether the new, tougher standard will fuel calls by many in the state's power elite that it should "just say no" to implementation.
Peters noted that thriving manufacturing sectors in Kentucky, the Rust Belt and the South could suffer if higher electricity rates drive aluminum and auto companies overseas in search of cheaper operating costs.
West Virginia is in the same boat. Fred Durham, who heads the Division of Air Quality of West Virginia's Department of Environmental Protection, said the change in responsibility surprised him. "None of this was disclosed beforehand," Durham said.
Durham notes that one of the main pieces of feedback EPA received on the draft was that the interim compliance period would phase in too swiftly, creating a regulatory "cliff" that would force the premature shutdown of fossil fuels plants as states scrambled to comply.
EPA responded by pushing the start of the interim compliance period back two years to 2022, but Durham said West Virginia's "cliff" got steeper. The Mountain State must now drop its emissions to an average of 1,534 pounds of CO2/MWh between 2022 and 2030, while the draft rule would have allowed emissions to be averaged at 1,748 pounds of CO2/MWh from 2020 to 2030 -- a level that would have compelled far less drastic changes.
"That two years really doesn't seem to buy us much," Durham said. Other states, meanwhile, have said they're happier with their new interim goals.
Virginia is in a much stronger position under the final rule, not just because of its comparatively easier emissions rate goal, but because it will be allowed to emit more tons of carbon per year by 2030. Virginia can grow its mass CO2 emissions to almost 70,000 more short tons per year -- making it one of the region's potential sources of allowances.
Reporters Evan Lehmann, Mike Lee and Krysti Shallenberger contributed.
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EPA's McCarthy Touts Final Clean Power Plan's Focus on Emissions Trading
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Elizabeth Harball
During her first public appearance since the release of the final Clean Power Plan last week, U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy talked up the role emissions trading will likely play in states' plans to comply with first-ever limits on CO2 instituted for U.S. power plants.
Along with the 1,560-page rule rolled out last week, EPA proposed a federal plan, with which states that refuse to submit implementation plans will have to comply. But the agency is also selling the federal plan, which leans heavily on carbon emissions trading, as a model for states that aren't opposed to the rule but are seeking increased flexibility (ClimateWire, Aug. 4).
The federal plan "is focused on emission trading so states and plants can leverage the power of the market to multiply options and to minimize costs," McCarthy said yesterday during an event hosted by the think tank Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C. "It's a ready-made option guaranteed to get states where they need to be -- that's why the economists like it."
The administrator went on to argue how the agency's decision to impose uniform carbon pollution rates for power plants across the country will give states a "common currency," making it easier for states to trade emissions without having to submit formal multi-state proposals. In the final rule, the agency established one rate for all coal-fired power plants and another rate for all gas-fired power plants, no matter what state they are in.
"There are states that don't want to link arms with other states," McCarthy said. "They want their own independence, and we allow that to happen in a number of different ways.
"If you want to go it yourself and get the reductions within your own state, you can, but you can still have linkages into markets without having formal mechanisms to do that because we now have a common currency," she added. "States can enter into markets that EPA will help manage and keep track of and account so we know that the states are meeting their obligations, but it doesn't require the same level of collaboration that anybody would have anticipated when we proposed this."
AdvertisementFor states opposed to multi-state pacts
Several groups that worked with multiple states on the proposed Clean Power Plan had advocated for states to have the ability to use emissions trading without having to enter into a formal, multi-state agreement. The Midwestern Power Sector Collaborative, which includes as members state officials, utilities and public power producers, told EPA in itscomments that "multi-state cooperation is most likely to arise among states that have individual state plans that recognize reductions or credits from other states."
The Georgetown Climate Center also thought this would be a good idea because states that didn't enter into a multi-state agreement at first could opt in at a later date.
Experts that had pushed for more flexible interstate emissions trading options said last week the final rule opened a clearer path for states choosing this approach (ClimateWire, Aug. 5).
The same experts said this is especially the case for states that take a mass-based approach, meaning the state sets a cap on the maximum amount of CO2 that can be put out by affected plants in a given time period. Both McCarthy and emissions-trading experts say trading under a rate-based approach -- which would mean a state's goal is based on pounds of CO2 emitted per megawatt-hour -- would be more complicated, though doable.
McCarthy acknowledged that the final Clean Power Plan that emerged last week is dramatically different from the proposed rule, and argued this is because EPA listened and responded to the millions of comments it received from states, utilities and other affected parties.
"I think one of the things I'm most proud of is how much this rule changed between proposal and final," she said.
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Pa. Weighs Options to Meet Clean Power Plan Target
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
Pennsylvania is about halfway to meeting its final target under President Obama's plan for cutting carbon emissions from the country's power plants, according to a calculation by an environmental group.
Rob Altenburg, the director of PennFuture's Energy Center, did a few quick calculations based on recent and planned coal-fired power plant retirements and existing state programs for energy efficiency and renewable energy standards, to reach the halfway progress mark.
"What's it going to take to get the other half? There are a ton of options," he said.
Pennsylvania will have to cut its emissions 26 percent from where business-as-usual behavior would put the commonwealth in 2020 to comply with the Clean Power Plan, according to an analysis by SNL Energy. That's a lower target than those of neighbors Ohio or West Virginia, but harder than New York's.
The lowest-cost path could be for Pennsylvania to craft a regional policy along with neighboring states, which could end up being 30 percent cheaper than if it struck out on its own, Altenburg said.
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's secretary of policy and planning, John Hanger, is likely to have a central role in developing the state's plan, according to Kevin Sunday, manager of government affairs at the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry. He expects Hanger -- a former state Department of Environmental Protection secretary and former president of PennFuture -- to aggressively pursue adopting more sources of renewable energy.
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"But renewables are the most expensive way to reduce carbon emissions," Sunday said. It would cost around $24 to cut back on 1 ton of carbon emissions by burning natural gas instead of coal, and $37 to do it by adopting renewables like wind and solar, according to estimates by U.S. EPA. Cutting emissions by boosting energy efficiency could cost $23 per ton.
"The question isn't really are we going to have less carbon emissions in the future. We're going that way anyway," said Sunday. "The question is, how painful and expensive is the government going to make it on ratepayers and industry?" (Laura Legere, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 11). -- CVK
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Bipartisan Policy's Grumet Says McConnell Strategy on EPA Plan 'Disappointing'
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - TV
Is U.S. EPA's final Clean Power Plan legally vulnerable because it is seen by many as a significant departure from the agency's proposed rule? During today's OnPoint, Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, discusses the biggest winners and losers following last week's release of the plan and talks about his organization's next steps for engaging states on crafting compliance mechanisms.
Transcript
Monica Trauzzi: Hello, and welcome to OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. With me today is Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center. Jason, it's great to have you here.
Jason Grumet: It's good to be back. It's been a while.
Monica Trauzzi: Jason, we've all had just about a week to digest EPA's hefty Clean Power Plan. Who have you identified as the biggest winners and losers?
Jason Grumet: So, you know, there's something in there for everybody. I think, you know, a couple of winners. State planners. Very significant for the states to have enough time now to really kind of hunker down, think through these regulations. I think EPA was smart to give states that have legislative interest an opportunity to work that through. Also clearly the cleaner states have a lower obligation in this final rule. I think if you look back to the proposal, it was, like, from -- North Dakota was at, like, 11 percent and Washington was, like, 72 percent. Now I think the range is, like, 7 to 47, so actually the range of compliance has been compressed by about a third. And there's some, you know, I think, winners and losers that you might not have anticipated, so new nuclear, winner. Existing nuclear, loser. But I guess when I think about it, as we were actually joking before we got started, I think the biggest winners on, you know, absolute are the law firm partners, and I'd say the biggest losers are the poor folks who are sitting on beaches in Martha's Vineyard with a 1,500-page stack of papers while their spouses give them the Godzilla glare for not playing with their kids. So it's -- everybody's a winner.
Monica Trauzzi: And such is life for Washingtonians.
Jason Grumet: Yes, it is.
Monica Trauzzi: What do you make of the change on natural gas? Is the administration retracting on its long-standing support of the fuel?
Jason Grumet: So, you know, I think they're -- you know, obviously mitigating a bit of their kind of narrowed enthusiasm, but pretty important to recognize that what EPA projects in the kind of reduction expectation may or may not have anything to do with what actually happens. So I still believe that natural gas is going to continue to increase in its market share. I also think we're going to see a lot more energy efficiency than EPA might have imagined, and so, you know, the notion that renewables are going to get up to almost, you know, 30 percent, possible, but it depends on a lot of other market conditions. If natural gas prices stay low, if the production tax credit is not reauthorized, I think you'll see natural gas actually have a larger role in compliance than the rule might imagine.
Monica Trauzzi: But isn't the agency, the administration trying to push this to be a rule that's more about renewables rather than natural gas?
Jason Grumet: No question. I think there is certainly quite a bit of concern that you had this, you know, incredibly high reliance on natural gas in the early years, and I think it's reasonable to agree that diversity is a strength in our energy system. But again, I think, you know, the administration's been pretty pro-natural gas. They certainly have avoided regulatory efforts that would have diminished its production, and so there may, again, be a little more narrative swirl here than reality.
Monica Trauzzi: This final rule is significantly different from the draft. Do you think the agency yielded too much to some stakeholders on certain points?
Jason Grumet: You know, so when we had a forum on the rule a couple years ago, Administrator McCarthy, I think, telegraphed pretty strongly that there were going to be big changes between the proposal and the final. And she made a point which, I think, from a process standpoint, you know, I fundamentally agree with, which is that the administrative procedures process is supposed to be dynamic. It's really become almost like the election process where all the action is in the primary, and then, you know, you just roll forward. And so usually agencies will put out a, you know, proposal and then kind of hunker down and just try to defend it. I think it's pretty impressive that they've made this number of changes. Now, obviously that, you know, also can make them vulnerable legally if the final rule is seen as such a departure from the proposal that it didn't have a chance for people to actually comment on the ideas.
Monica Trauzzi: Right. Mitch McConnell continues to urge states not to file compliance plans. How many states do you think will actually do that, not just talk about it, but seriously move forward with no compliance?
Jason Grumet: It's an interesting, and I think, frankly, a little bit of a disappointing strategy because just to step back, Senator McConnell has done a really terrific job bringing regular order back to the Senate. He promised he was going to do it, and I think as we've seen in the first, you know, half of this year, we have had far more amendments -- we have three times as many amendments in the Keystone bill then they had all of the prior year, right. Harry Reid didn't want tough votes for his caucus, and so I think McConnell deserves a ton of credit for that. The committees are functioning, so I mean, he's really expressed the notion that we have to have kind of the spirit of the way the rules are supposed to be engaged, and so this is, frankly, a little bit outside the lines, you know, urging states -- I mean, he should pass legislation, he should pass riders. I mean, he has a lot of tools if he wants to interrupt this. So I actually don't think it's a great suggestion that states don't comply. In terms of how many don't, you know, it's anybody's guess. I have been very impressed that the states have been able to have their political figures express their vehement opposition while their EPA and their PUC folks really hunker down and try to understand these rules. You know, BPC's doing a lot of work with a lot of the Midwest states, and they are, you know, trying to have the best options if, in fact, the rules are upheld.
Monica Trauzzi: So what are BPC's plans, then, moving forward to sort of influence the conversation on the plan as we get into this period of aggressive legal action and potentially also congressional action to take the rule down?
Jason Grumet: So the idea behind the Bipartisan Policy Center is the good fight, right. We're non nonpartisan or postpartisan. We don't want people to hold hands and sing "Kumbaya." This is going to be an aggressively debated issue. Our sense is that when people have a shared sense of fact, you then can advance the conversation. So we've been doing a lot of gritty economic analysis. We've been working with states so they understand the different compliance options. We've been pretty surprised that the extent to which the states are focused on mass-based trading, you know, after the 2010 legislative debacle, the whole notion of cap and trade was really quite disfavored, and the extent to which, when the state officials look at their different options, they look at the mass-based stuff and kind of just say this is a hot mess. I mean, it's hard to even figure out how it works and while, you know, there may be a couple of places where it's advantageous, the fact that regions are coming together, looking at those kinds of kind of shared approaches is something that we're going to continue to encourage.
Monica Trauzzi: The public seems to have a growing interest in some type of action on climate change, but do you think that we'll see public opinion get behind this rule specifically?
Jason Grumet: So yeah, I don't think the public is focused a lot on, you know, updating output-based allocations and the rest. I think there's a general sense in the debate that the issue's moving forward. I think the pope is going to have a pretty significant influence on this discussion. A lot will depend on what happens in the presidential primary, but there does seem to be a growing asymmetry between the continued, kind of really strong opposition from a lot of political leaders and the shift from the industry. You know, I think that we're starting to see the industry -- I mean, this has been going on for a while, right. It was 2007 when Mass. v. EPA was passed. So I think there's generally a sense that over time something here is going to happen. I don't think the power sector can stay outside the boundaries of a climate proposal.
Monica Trauzzi: What does this rule and the controversy surrounding it tell you about the potential for bipartisanship on climate, energy, other issues moving forward?
Jason Grumet: So, you know, there really again is a really strong separation between bipartisanship, which is traditionally always kind of accompanied energy legislation and the partisanship around climate. So we're very encouraged to see Senator Murkowski and Cantwell, Congressmen Upton and Pallone moving forward on bipartisan legislation. You know, we recognize that there's a lot of stuff that got left on the floor, but if Congress can demonstrate its capacity to legislate, we think that builds momentum. And, you know, I do think that you may see in 2017 some people start to talk about multi-pollutant legislation. That clearly didn't work when the White House threatened Congress and said if you don't pass this piece of legislation, we're going to get you with this, you know, regulatory approach, but once it's in place, I think you might see people step back and say is there a better, more bipartisan way to kind of approach this.
Monica Trauzzi: Very interesting. Thank you for your thoughts. I appreciate your time.
Jason Grumet: Always fun. Thanks.
Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
[End of Audio]
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N.D. Hires Safety Inspector in Wake of Fiery Derailments
Aug 12, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
North Dakota regulators are hiring a BNSF Railway Co. employee for a new rail inspection program following a series of oil train derailments and fires.
Karl Carson, a longtime rail worker who has been in BNSF's management since 2004, will be responsible for overseeing 3,000 miles of train tracks across the state when he starts work next week.
"[Carson's] background gives him significant technical credibility within the industry and will give him a strong start as a regulator," said Julie Fedorchak, chairwoman of the Public Service Commission, which will house the Railroad Safety Program.
The PSC is also in the process of hiring a mechanical inspector.
North Dakota has seen a 233 percent uptick in freight rail traffic from 2000 to 2012, according to official estimates, with the bulk of the increase coming from shipments of flammable liquids such as crude oil and ethanol. In December 2013, a train hauling oil from the state's Bakken Shale play collided with another derailed train, sending huge fireballs into the sky near Casselton, N.D. No one was injured, but the incident made national headlines and drew heightened scrutiny on rail safety in the state (EnergyWire, Jan. 6, 2014).
In May, another BNSF oil train jumped the tracks and caught fire near Heimdal, N.D., prompting evacuations (EnergyWire, May 7).
Earlier this year, the state Legislature approved funding for the rail safety positions now being filled at the PSC.
The Federal Railroad Administration, the agency responsible for regulating rail safety at the national level, employs its own inspectors but said it welcomes extra participation from states. FRA has 46 active inspectors spread from the Dakotas to the Pacific Northwest, including three track specialists based in North Dakota. Thirty-one states including North Dakota now deploy additional inspectors that are trained through an FRA program. Railroads also hire their own inspectors to keep an eye out for track defects.
Fred Millar, a hazardous materials consultant and oil train safety advocate, questioned the efficacy of state-level inspection programs in an interview yesterday, citing the scope of rail infrastructure and limitations on what regulators can demand from railroads.
"So many of the states that do have state rail safety offices don't have secure budgeting -- they have to go to the state legislature every year and beg for [funds]," Millar said. "That's not being taken seriously."
He added, however, that simply hiring more inspectors might not solve the problem either in the absence of data showing their impact on safety. He suggested the "most important" way to improve oil train safety would be to reroute milelong trains around major cities, which falls beyond the jurisdiction of state regulators.
Carson did not respond to a request for an interview yesterday.
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