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(ACC Mentioned) Polymer Points: Most Resins Take Summer Vacation
Aug 21, 2015 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
Maybe it was the summer heat or the lure of an exotic vacation. Whatever it was, polypropylene and solid polystyrene were the only two North American commodity resin markets to show any movement in July. -
(ACC Mentioned) Lecture to be Given on Worst Eastman Explosion in its 95-year History
Aug 21, 2015 | Herald Courier
Longtime Eastman Chemical Company employee and safety expert Peter Lodal will host an informational lecture on the 1960 Eastman Chemical Company aniline manufacturing facility explosion on Aug. 25. -
(ACC Mentioned) Controversial Chemicals Pass to Infants Through Breast Milk -- Study
Aug 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
A controversial class of chemicals may be passed from mothers to their infants through breast-feeding, a previously unknown exposure path, according to a new study. -
(ACC Mentioned) More Bad News For DuPont: Teflon Chemical Builds Up In Breast-Fed Babies
Aug 21, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Bill Walker
If you’re a chemical industry spin doctor trying to discredit the scientific evidence on the dangers of a compound that contaminates the drinking water of millions of Americans, Thursday was a bad day. -
Breastfeeding Major Exposure Pathway for Perfluorinated Compounds
Aug 21, 2015 | Chemical Watch
A group of Danish, US and Faroese researchers have demonstrated that breastfeeding is an important route for children’s exposure to perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), such as PFOS and PFOA. -
How Toxic Is Your Breastmilk?
Aug 21, 2015 | Forbes
By Tara Haelle
Contrary to popular belief in some circles, breastmilk is not the pure and magical serum of the Earth goddess which ensures an eternal life of prosperity and good health to all who partake. That’s unicorn milk — it doesn’t exist. -
New York, GE Pressured To Support Further Dredging Of PCBs In Hudson
Aug 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
New York and General Electric (GE) are facing pressure from stakeholders to conduct more extensive dredging of toxic polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) hotspots in the Hudson as GE nears the end of its more than $1 billion, six-year sediment cleanup of the river, with dredging advocates arguing it could help accelerate the cleanup. -
EPA’s Hypocrisy and Lawlessness
Aug 21, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By By Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.)
The events surrounding the recent disaster caused by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado are alarming and reveal a staggering lack of competency in the agency charged with keeping our air and water clean. -
On Gulf Coast, LNG Projects Run Up Against Wildlife -- and Opposition
Aug 21, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
Sandwiched between the Bahia Grande wetlands and the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area at the southern tip of Texas lies the Brownsville Ship Channel, a narrow, 17-mile waterway carrying traffic into and out of the Port of Brownsville. -
Crude Exports Would Devour Land, Fragment Habitat -- Report
Aug 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Phil Taylor
Lifting the crude export ban would drive up demand for drilling in the United States, resulting in a loss of land larger than Delaware to oil and gas infrastructure over the next 15 years, according to a report released today by the Center for American Progress. -
Texas AG Seeks EPA Halt of Carbon Rule as Litigation Threat Looms
Aug 21, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Edward Klump
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) yesterday called on U.S. EPA to issue a stay and stop its plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions in the power sector from taking effect while courts examine legal challenges. -
Republicans Don't Regret Sinking Waxman-Markey
Aug 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jean Chemnick
In the fierce congressional fight over comprehensive climate change legislation in 2009-10, the Obama administration warned it would act to curb heat-trapping emissions if lawmakers faltered. -
CASAC Suggests EPA Weigh NO2 Exposures Below Existing NAAQS Level
Aug 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) is suggesting that EPA consider assessing the public's exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at levels below its current national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for the pollutant, saying it might provide greater scientific data on NO2's health impacts to inform the standard.
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(ACC Mentioned) Polymer Points: Most Resins Take Summer Vacation
Aug 21, 2015 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
Maybe it was the summer heat or the lure of an exotic vacation. Whatever it was, polypropylene and solid polystyrene were the only two North American commodity resin markets to show any movement in July.
Regional PP prices dipped a penny per pound as solid PS prices shot up 6 cents per pound. Prices for polyethylene, PVC and PET bottle resin maintained their June levels, although some PET buyers saw part of the 3-cent June increase take hold in July.
PP’s 1-cent July drop was the third straight month that the market moved by that amount. The drop followed a 1-cent June hike, which in turn had followed a 1-cent May drop. Even with these mini-moves, regional PP prices are down a net of 15 cents per pound so far in 2015, mainly from a 10-cent drop that hit the market in January. Prices also had taken a 10-cent plunge in December 2014.
In the first half of 2015, North American PP sales were up 6.3 percent, according to the American Chemistry Council. A domestic sales gain of almost 7 percent was tempered by a drop of almost 6 percent in export sales.
July also saw the PP market receive confirmation that Formosa Plastics Corp. USA will build a new PP production line at its site in Point Comfort, Texas. That line is expected to use new propylene monomer feedstock produced by Formosa and others using propane dehydrogenation (PDH) technology.
The regional solid PS market has kept buyers guessing all year, mainly because of volatility in pricing for benzene feedstock. July was no different, as the 6-cent July increase followed a drop of 5 cents in June. That 5-cent decline had come after a combined 8-cent increase in April through May. Even with the 6-cent July hike, regional PS prices remain down a net of 2 cents per pound in 2015.
The 6-cent hike looks to be short-lived, however, as the region’s three major PS makers already have announced price decreases for August. Total Petrochemicals has announced a 3-cent decrease, while Americas Styrenics and Styrolution each have announced decreases of only 2 cents.
Market sources were uncertain if the latter two firms would match the Total move. It’s the second time this year that Americas Styrenics — based in The Woodlands, Texas — has made the rare move of officially announcing a price drop, as opposed to letting the market play itself out during the month. The firm previously announced a 9-cent decrease for Jan. 1.
The July hike was tied in to an 80-cent per-gallon surge in price for benzene. That 35 percent increase lifted benzene prices to $3.05 per gallon. Prices for the material for August are expected to be down about 8 percent to $2.80, prompting PS makers to issue pre-emptive decrease announcements.
North American PS sales were up 0.4 percent in the first half of 2015, according to ACC. Sales of PS into its leading food packaging/food service end market were up 3 percent for the half.
The North American PE market is living up to buyers’ expectations of a sleepy summer. Prices were flat again in July, as they were in June. Market sources, however, now are anticipating that prices will fall at least 3 cents per pound in August.
For the year, regional PE prices are down a net of 4 cents per pound, as a 5-cent May increase partially offset decreases from earlier in the year. In the first half of 2015, HDPE sales grew 7.1 percent, with LLDPE up 6.1 percent. Regional sales of low density PE edged up 1.5 percent.
Top growth end markets for HDPE in the first half included retail bags, where sales were up 4.6 percent. Regional LDPE market growth was led by sales into non-food packaging film, which were up 8.4 percent. For LLDPE, sales into food packaging film were up 7 percent.
PVC continued its slumber as well in July, with prices flat for the fourth consecutive month. For the year, prices are up a net of 1 cent per pound, with a 3-cent March increase eclipsing an earlier 2-cent decline.
First-half PVC sales grew 0.1 percent to 7.3 billion pounds. Among end markets, first-half sales into siding and related uses led the way with growth of 10.1 percent.
The 3-cent June increase for PET caught some buyers by surprise, while others were able to push some of it back into July. It was the third straight monthly hike for the material. Buyers who took the full three cents in June saw flat prices in July.
Some PET buyers had thought the string of hikes would stop at two months, as beverage firms filled their resin inventories in advance of high-demand summer months. For the year, North American PET prices are up a net of 6 cents per pound.
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(ACC Mentioned) Lecture to be Given on Worst Eastman Explosion in its 95-year History
Aug 21, 2015 | Herald Courier
Longtime Eastman Chemical Company employee and safety expert Peter Lodal will host an informational lecture on the 1960 Eastman Chemical Company aniline manufacturing facility explosion on Aug. 25.
The lecture will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Tennessee Room on the third floor of the Kingsport City Schools Administrative Support Center located at 400 Clinchfield Street. The lecture is free and open to the public.
According to a written statement, the explosion happened on Oct. 4, 1960 and is considered the worst accident in the company’s 95-year history. Sixteen people were killed and more than 400 were injured.
Lodal's lecture will analyze the incident and its aftermath using both historical records and modern analytical techniques, the statement says. A question and answer session will follow the lecture.
Lodal currently serves as a Technical Fellow and group leader of the Plant Protection Technical Services group at Eastman. He has been with Eastman in various positions for more than 37 years - 17 years in process engineering and 20 years in process safety and loss prevention.
He is also Eastman’s representative to the Center for Chemical Process Safety Technical Steering Committee, is the chair of the CCPS Planning committee, chairs the Process Safety Committee for the American Chemistry Council, and serves on the International Editorial Board for the Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries.
Lodal is also a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and of the Center for Chemical Process Safety. He was awarded the 2014 Outstanding Engineer of the Year by the Upper East Tennessee Chapter of the Tennessee Society of Professional Engineers.
He is a past director of his local AIChE section, East Tennessee, and was the 2010 Chair of AIChE’s Safety and Health division. Lodal is also the author or co-author of over 20 papers and publications and was the 2013 Trevor Kletz Merit Award Winner, which is given by the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University.
Lodal holds a bachelor's degree and master's in in chemical engineering from Purdue University.
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(ACC Mentioned) Controversial Chemicals Pass to Infants Through Breast Milk -- Study
Aug 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
A controversial class of chemicals may be passed from mothers to their infants through breast-feeding, a previously unknown exposure path, according to a new study.
The study published yesterday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that while researchers already knew small amounts of perfluorinated alkylate substances, or PFAS, could be present in breast milk, "our serial blood analyses now show a buildup in the infants the longer they are breastfed," Philippe Grandjean, an adjunct professor of environmental health at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a statement.
Grandjean and Danish researchers followed 81 children born in the Faroe Islands between 1997 and 2000, measuring five types of PFAS in their blood at certain intervals. The researchers also measured levels of the chemicals in the children's mothers at week 32 of pregnancy.
Grandjean said the findings should not discourage breast-feeding but suggest it is a major source of exposure to PFAS for infants.
Jessica Bowman, the executive director of the FluoroCouncil, a branch of the American Chemistry Council, said in a statement the substances examined in the study are already being phased out by manufacturers and will be gone by the end of this year.
"To help support that phase-out, our member companies developed alternatives, based on short-chain PFAS," Bowman said. "The alternatives are some of the most robustly studied new chemicals introduced into the market. These alternative chemistries have been reviewed by regulators and approved for use."
The findings come on the heels of a June study by Granjean and Richard Clapp, a professor of environmental health at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, in the journal New Solutions, which identified 0.001 parts per billion as the approximate safe level of exposure to the chemicals in drinking water -- or 400 times less than U.S. EPA's guideline of 0.4 ppb.
In a separate report, the Environmental Working Group warned the findings of Grandjean's earlier study raise troubling questions about whether EPA's guidance levels for the chemicals in public water systems may be "at least two orders of magnitude" above what is safe. The EWG report also argued that the approximate safe level of exposure was closer to 0.0003 ppb.
"This stuff is dangerous at far lower levels than we previously have thought," said Bill Walker, EWG's investigations editor and an author of the report.
Many scientists are especially concerned about the health impacts of certain PFAS because of their persistence in the environment. Companies are phasing out long-chain PFAS over concerns about these health impacts. But some public health organizations are concerned the substances replacing these compounds may break down faster in the environment while still exhibiting some of the same health properties.
Earlier this year, a group of environmental scientists called for an international phaseout of a broader group of the substances, but industry groups argued the action is not necessary (Greenwire, May 1).
DuPont also faces legal challenges from residents of West Virginia and Ohio, where the company manufactured a type of perfluorooctanoic acid called C8 that contaminated area groundwater. The first personal injury case tied to the company's actions is scheduled to go to trial at the U.S. District Court in Columbus, Ohio, next month.
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(ACC Mentioned) More Bad News For DuPont: Teflon Chemical Builds Up In Breast-Fed Babies
Aug 21, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Bill Walker
If you’re a chemical industry spin doctor trying to discredit the scientific evidence on the dangers of a compound that contaminates the drinking water of millions of Americans, Thursday was a bad day.
That morning, EWG reported on new research by two leading environmental health scientists who concluded that PFOA, which DuPont used for 50 years to make Teflon, is much more dangerous than previously thought. PFOA can cause cancer, birth defects and heart disease and weaken the immune system. It’s no longer produced in the U.S., but the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it’s in the blood of virtually all Americans – even those who weren’t yet born when it was used to make hundreds of nonstick, stain-resistant and waterproof products. PFOA and other chemicals in its class, known as PFCs, can be passed from mother to unborn child in the womb.
Using data from a paper by Philippe Grandjean of Harvard and Richard Clapp of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, EWG calculated that the federal government’s recommended “safe” level for PFOA in drinking water is more than 1,000 times too high to fully protect people’s health. Their findings suggest that PFOA is akin to asbestos or lead – hazardous at any level of exposure.
That’s alarming news for people living near DuPont’s plant in Parkersburg, W. Va. Some water supplies in the area are contaminated with PFOA at 160 or more times the level the new research says is safe. It’s also alarming for the 6.5 million Americans in 27 states whose water is contaminated with PFOA at 5-to-174 times that level.
Asked about the new science, a spokeswoman for Chemours, the recent DuPont spinoff company that inherited responsibility for PFOA contamination, told VICE News: “We don’t believe the (Grandjean) paper includes data to support a conclusion that the interim health advisory level set by EPA in 2009 is not low enough.”
To which Grandjean responded: “They should read my paper . . . and the report from EWG released today.”
Later in the day, Grandjean and his team at Harvard published another paper, which looked at the blood of babies born in the Faroe Islands, whose mothers eat a seafood diet heavily contaminated with PFOA and similar chemicals.
The Huffington Post reported: “For every month that a mom exclusively breast-fed, (researchers) found her baby’s blood levels of these common water- and stain-proofing chemicals increased by an average of 20 to 30 percent.”
That’s not just alarming but shocking. As Grandjean told Huffington Post, “It’s really an absurd situation that women who are breast-feeding have to think about what chemical exposures they might contribute to their child. Breast milk is supposed to be the best possible nutrition for the infant.”
Grandjean and other health experts emphasized that the benefits of breast-feeding far outweigh the dangers of passing toxic chemicals from mother to baby. “There is no reason to discourage breast-feeding, but we are concerned that these pollutants are transferred to the next generation at a very vulnerable age,” he told The Charleston Gazette-Mail. “Unfortunately, the current U.S. legislation does not require any testing of chemical substances . . . for their transfer to babies and any related adverse effects.”
DuPont or Chemours didn’t comment on the second study. Instead, a spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s lobby, told Huffington Post that the problems with PFOA and similar chemicals are in the past: “Voluntary industry efforts have resulted in reduction of these substances in the environment. To help support that phase-out, our member companies developed alternatives . . . (that) are some of the most robustly-studied new chemicals introduced into the market.”
Come again? Voluntary? Sure, if that’s what you’d call the phase-out deal DuPont was forced to make in 2006 after the EPA was alerted to evidence that the company had covered up PFOA’s hazards for decades. Robustly studied? As EWG reportedin May, the broken and outdated Toxic Substances Control Act has let DuPont and other companies market alternative non-stick chemicals without ever proving that they’re safe.
This policy is untenable. It flies in the face of common sense – better safe than sorry – and is out of step with the way things are done in the European Union, where new chemicals must be proven safe before they’re allowed to be used.
Even when EPA has overwhelming evidence that a chemical is dangerous, it lacks the authority to ban the chemical outright and can only negotiate protracted phase-outs, largely on the manufacturer’s terms. It takes years, even decades, for EPA to set a legal allowable limit on hazardous chemicals: The truth about PFOA started to come out in 2001, but it could be 2021 before the agency even decides whether it will try to set a legal maximum for drinking water.
The result is a continual stream of alarming revelations about the dangers of chemicals in household products, food and drinking water. But for every new piece of bad news, the chemical industry’s PR flacks have an answer: Trust us.
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Breastfeeding Major Exposure Pathway for Perfluorinated Compounds
Aug 21, 2015 | Chemical Watch
A group of Danish, US and Faroese researchers have demonstrated that breastfeeding is an important route for children’s exposure to perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), such as PFOS and PFOA.
The compounds are used in non-stick and oil- and water- resistant packaging, textiles and coatings. They are highly persistent in the environment, bioaccumulative in food chains and their half-life in the human body may be several years.
The researchers studied blood serum levels of five PFAS compounds in a group of 81 Faroese children. Blood samples were taken from them at the age of 11, 18 and 60 months and from their mothers at week 32 of pregnancy.
“We knew that small amounts of PFAS can occur in breast milk but our serial blood analyses now show a build-up in the infants the longer they are breastfed,” said researcher professor Philippe Grandjean from Harvard Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
The results show a build-up of most PFAS in infants, by 20%–30% for each month they are breastfed.
The PFAS monitored were perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS) and perfluorodecanoic acid (PFDA). The only substance which did not increase, during breastfeeding, was PFHxS.
The results confirm previous research in the US, which showed that children close to manufacturing sources, accumulated PFOS and PFOA during breastfeeding (CW 11 December 2013).
PFAS compounds have been associated with health effects such as cancers, thyroid problems and raised cholesterol levels (GBB May 2012).
The paper is published in Environmental Science and Technology.
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Aug 21, 2015 | Forbes
By Tara Haelle
Contrary to popular belief in some circles, breastmilk is not the pure and magical serum of the Earth goddess which ensures an eternal life of prosperity and good health to all who partake. That’s unicorn milk — it doesn’t exist.
I jest, but the benefits of breastfeeding — which I not only strongly support but have done for both my children — are not infrequently exaggerated. Yes, your body calibrates your milk to include precisely the nutritional proportions your growing baby needs. Yes, nursing confers undeniable benefits seen at the population level, such as reduced rates of breast cancer among mothers and reduced ear infections and GI infections in infants, among other advantages. But at the individual level, with the exception of certain groups such as preemies, breastfeeding your baby cannot guarantee your child will be thinner, fatter, smarter, healthier, faster or stronger than a baby fed any of the increasingly more sophisticated baby formulas on the market.
One of the few benefits that can be quantified at the individual level is the transfer of maternal antibodies, the suspected main reason for those reduced GI problems and ear infections. Yet, in an ironic twist, it may be that very property that chemicals in breastmilk threaten to undo. Or so claims a new study about a commonly used group of industrial compounds called perfluorinated alkylate substances, or PFASs.
These two breastmilk samples from the same woman show foremilk on the left and fattier hindmilk on the right. Photo by Azoreg at Wikimedia Commons
Manufacturers have used PFASs for more than a half century in products ranging from waterproof clothing to food packaging to paints and lubricants. These compounds make products waterproof or grease- or stain-resistant. But, like many other compounds designed to improve people’s lives in some way or another, these chemicals stick around for a really long time in the environment and in animals’ bodies, including those of humans. And, like a variety of other classes of manmade compounds, PFASs have been linked to a range of unsettling health effects, such as interference with reproduction in animals, disruption of hormones in human endocrine systems and, yes, interference with human immune systems.
“Perhaps most importantly, we have recently found that children respond more poorly to vaccinations if they have elevated levels of PFOS, PFOA and other perfluorinated compounds in their blood,” said the study’s lead author, Phillippe Grandjean, a professor of environmental health at Harvard School of Public Health. “So there is a risk that the vaccination will not ‘take’ and help protect the children against the diseases.”Recommended by ForbesMOST POPULARPhotos: The World's Highest-Paid Actresses 2015+91,322 VIEWSLocation, Sensors, Voice, Photos?! Spotify Just Got Real Creepy With The Data...
Whoa, whoa, whoa — so breastfeeding now hurts kids’ immunity? That is, in fact, what Grandjean suggests. The World Health Organization, CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics all recommend exclusive breastfeeding for six months and continued breastfeeding for up to one to two years, but the best evidence for breastfeeding, Grandjean points out, lasts through the first three months. He therefore recommends supplementing breastfeeding with formula after three months and hopes that the CDC, WHO and other agencies “will reassess the situation and revise their recommendations.”
“I find it paradoxical that we have to worry about industrial chemicals in human milk,” Grandjean said. He points out that the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 does not require industrial chemicals to be tested for effects on human health even though we have the ability to test whether a compound can be secreted through milk. “It is absurd that we allow toxic chemicals to find their way to the most sacred form of nourishment and put the health of the next generation in danger.”
Say what? That sounds like serious chemophobia. Let’s back up.
First, what did Grandjean and his colleagues actually find? They found that the build-up of PFASs in children’s blood increased by 20% to 30% for each additional month of exclusive breastfeeding. Children supplemented with formula had lower levels, and the levels dropped when exclusively breastfed children were weaned. But here’s the thing: the study is very small and very geographically limited: the researchers tracked just 81 children living in the Faroe Islands and tested their PFAS blood levels when the children were 11 months, 18 months and 5 years old.
“This was a study of a very specific group of women, with very specific diets, which may have led to increased exposure of their infants to PFAS through breastmilk,” said Dr. Henry Farrar, a clinical pharmacologist at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. “Therefore, this study may present a setting in which there are valid concerns in a very specific group of people.”
But that’s one small population — in an island nation, much less — whose breastmilk composition cannot necessarily be extended to that of women living elsewhere in the world. “This is a well-done study but more studies need to be done in other groups of women before there can be concern that the risks outweigh the benefits of breastfeeding,” Farrar said. “Currently there are very few circumstances in which the risks of exposure of an infant to chemicals in breastmilk outweigh the many benefits of breastfeeding.”
Further, the data we have on PFASs and their effect on humans is sparse and inconsistent — and the risks appear quite modest. Although Grandjean provided a hefty list of concerns that these compounds have been linked to, theepidemiological evidence base in humans shows small and inconsistent effects in those populations with the highest levels of exposure, such as industrial workers in manufacturing plants and communities near industry who consumed contaminated drinking water. In fact, more than 95% of people in the U.S. have PFASs in their blood because it’s pretty hard to avoid them in modern society.
It seems more than a little paranoid, then, to suggest that women the world over should cease exclusive breastfeeding at three months on the basis of a single study involving fewer than 100 people and finding increases in compounds that may or may not have serious health effects.
The real take-away, it would seem, is that there is no perfect, “right” way to feed a baby. There are risks and benefits and advantages and drawbacks to breastfeeding and formula feeding and mixed feeding. We have a lot more to learn about the compounds in our environment, how they affect our children, the interactions of gut bacteria in breastfed and formula-fed children and a host of other scientific questions. But breastfed and formula-fed children all across the world are all leading happy, productive lives. So carry on. Feed your baby.
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New York, GE Pressured To Support Further Dredging Of PCBs In Hudson
Aug 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
New York and General Electric (GE) are facing pressure from stakeholders to conduct more extensive dredging of toxic polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) hotspots in the Hudson as GE nears the end of its more than $1 billion, six-year sediment cleanup of the river, with dredging advocates arguing it could help accelerate the cleanup.
GE over the past six years has during the warmer half of each year been dredging the Upper Hudson River to remove more than 2.6 million cubic yards of sediment contaminated with PCBs stemming from two electrical capacitor manufacturing plants that operated along the river for decades, according to the company. EPA required the Superfund cleanup, estimating that GE had discharged 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the river.
The Hudson River dredging project is widely considered unprecedented in terms of the scope of contamination and technical challenges it involves, with GE claiming it is one of the biggest and most "logistically complex" cleanups in the country's history.
While the agency has indicated the dredging project, to be completed this fall, is achieving the goals of the cleanup plan, many stakeholders are pressing GE to continue dredging or at least leave the dredging infrastructure in place. They are pointing to natural resource trustees' indications that much contaminated sediment remains and without its removal the river's recovery will be slowed.
The federal and state trustees in a fact sheet also point this out, saying that while EPA has determined that more dredging is not needed to achieve Superfund goals, the agency "believes that the cleanup goals could be achieved more quickly if additional dredging were carried out, particularly where there are more PCBs in the surface sediment than originally known at the time of the [Record of Decision (ROD)]."
The agency "supports efforts by the Trustees to address such greater potential injury," the fact sheet says.
Federal natural resource trustee agencies have in the past disputed GE's assertions in a 2013 report that additional dredging of the Hudson River would not lower the company's liability for natural resource damages (NRD) and that decades of pollution have not injured natural resources. Department of Interior and National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration trustees in early 2014 sent a letter to GE refuting the company's claims on NRD, calling them inaccurate.
A source with the environmental group Scenic Hudson says the hope now is that GE will take advantage of the trend in NRD agreements to marry up the existing cleanup effort with natural resource recovery, noting trustees' move toward additional dredging as a restoration project.
Dredging Infrastructure
The source points to letters from 140 New York Assembly members and separately from 25 state senators who have written to GE and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to push for more dredging and halt the company from dismantling the dredging infrastructure this fall.
"GE is now slated to complete the dredging required under the EPA-cleanup plan and thereafter permanently dismantle its multi-million dollar cleanup infrastructure," the Assembly members say in a June 9 letter to GE. "Allowing this infrastructure to be dismantled now, however, would be a tragedy, because the EPA cleanup does not go far enough toward making the Hudson the safe and accessible resource New Yorkers deserve."
The lawmakers contend the current dredging plan leaves hundreds of acres of contaminated sediment in place, slowing the river's recovery -- something they say the trustees have confirmed.
In a nearly identical letter to Cuomo, the Assembly members ask him "to direct GE to remedy this situation by dredging additional toxic PCB-hotspots in the river." At a minimum, the dredging infrastructure should be left in place while additional dredging is negotiated with the trustees, they say.
"Using the state's full legal power, and the authority and influence of your office, can lead to an effective cleanup and restoration of the Hudson River, bettering the lives of millions of New Yorkers who visit, use, or live along it every day," the letter to Cuomo says.
Similarly, 25 New York state senators wrote to Cuomo and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt urging the company to go beyond the Superfund cleanup plan's requirements and expand dredging to include the Champlain Canal and other parts of the river needing restoration. "G.E. has only cleaned up 65 percent of the Hudson River," Sen. Brad Hoylman (D) said in a press statement on the matter.
"While we are grateful the company has fully met the requirements of Phase 2 dredging, we are deeply concerned by reports from federal, state and independent natural resource scientists indicating that significant PCB 'hot spots' will remain after the company's dredging operations shut down later this year," the senators say in a June 26 letter to Cuomo.
"If left behind, these Superfund-caliber sediments falling just outside mandated dredging areas will undermine efforts to reduce threats to public health and reestablish damaged habitats," they say.
GE's Defense
But GE defends its plans in a July 15 response to the senators. The company points to remarks by EPA that the cleanup project has been a success and points out that its work will have addressed 100 percent of the PCBs EPA targeted for dredging in 2002.
The calls for more dredging are not new, GE Vice President for Environment, Health & Safety Ann Klee says in the letter. EPA carefully considered additional dredging in 2002 and again in 2012 during a five-year Superfund cleanup review. "The agency determined that a balanced approach -- bank-to-bank dredging in some areas, more targeted dredging in others -- achieves the agency's goals of reducing PCB levels in fish, and meets their mandate of protecting public health and the environment while minimizing the risk of unnecessary harm to the river and natural resources and disruption for local communities," Klee says.
Under the agreement with EPA, GE is required to dismantle support facilities once dredging has been completed, which the company plans to do, she points out.
She declines to speculate about the theory that more dredging will speed the river's recovery, noting that GE will continue data collection on river water, sediment and fish to evaluate the cleanup's impact. "Expanding the dredging project now, before substantial data are collected to analyze the work done thus far, runs counter to the careful approach that EPA has followed with promising results," she says.
Cuomo at press time had not responded to the senators' letter, according to Hoylman's office. Cuomo's press office did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the letters.
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EPA’s Hypocrisy and Lawlessness
Aug 21, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By By Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.)
The events surrounding the recent disaster caused by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado are alarming and reveal a staggering lack of competency in the agency charged with keeping our air and water clean. Stunningly, it took the EPA more than 24 hours to notify local residents after causing the mine blowout that directly led to the release of 3 million gallons of contaminated water and sediment filled with high levels of toxic waste into Cement Creek.
To make matters worse, local elected officials had to find out about the incident through news reports. Since Aug. 5, the EPA has refused to make public the results of the water quality testing it is performing in a timely manner. Even more disturbing, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy waited a week before she visited the site, and President Obama has refused to comment on the matter, demonstrating a lack of genuine concern from Washington. Americans should be alarmed at this most recent act of incompetence by this inept federal agency, but by no means should they be surprised.
Under Obama, the executive branch has swelled into a monolithic web of lawmaking agencies. Rather than working with Congress, the president has implemented his radical Leftist agenda by repeatedly issuing new regulations through executive branch agencies. And no agency has been more aggressive and lawless in pushing the president’s misguided agenda than the EPA.
For example, in January 2014, the EPA sent a letter to Wyoming couple Andy and Katie Johnson claiming that the stock pond they built on their own property violated the Clean Water Act. The EPA threatened the couple with fines of $75,000 per day, even though these homeowners received approval from the state and their permit was in good standing. This is only a foreshadowing of things to come under the EPA’s new Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule.
WOTUS is an overreaching regulation that contradicts prior Supreme Court decisions and seeks to expand agency control over 60 percent of our country’s streams as well as millions of acres of wetlands that were previously non-jurisdictional. Shockingly, we recently learned that the EPA used taxpayer dollars to unleash a propaganda campaign in an attempt to rally comments and support for this WOTUS regulation, despite the Anti-Lobbying Act’s bans on such actions. This job-killing water grab by Washington bureaucrats will significantly harm local economies.
Furthermore, memos obtained in July written by senior Army Corps of Engineers staff detail significant legal and scientific flaws with the final version of the WOTUS. Major General John Peabody, Deputy Commanding General for Civil and Emergency Operations, warned that the EPA disregarded the Corps’ input and was putting forth a new regulation not based on sound science that would not withstand judicial scrutiny.A Senate report released at the beginning of August alleges that the EPA colluded with extremist environmental groups through sue-and-settle tactics to allow the EPA to put forth a new regulation which requires unrealistic standards for our nation’s power plants. An economic analysis found that this overreaching Washington mandate will kill 226,000 jobs annually and cost our economy $50 billion each year. The only reason the new EPA carbon regulations are even on the table is because of this administration’s War on Coal and close coordination with self-interest environmental groups.
While the lawlessness being used to implement the agency’s agenda is despicable, let’s not forget about the culture of corruption that exists within the EPA. Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was forced to resign in 2012 amid multiple investigations and after using fake emails to conduct official government business. Another former EPA employee, John Beale stole more than $900,000 from the EPA and fooled the agency into believing he was a CIA agent for more than 15 years. A different employee at the EPA was allowed to sexually harass at least 16 women and keep his job even after these actions were revealed to the employee’s supervisors.
So here we stand. An agency charged with protecting our environment has placed enormous burdens on law-abiding citizens and has itself engaged in environmental destruction. And all the while, the White House and environmentalists have been silent. The EPA has forced businesses to close their doors and has punished hard-working Americans for much lesser infractions. Americans should be outraged at the hypocrisy and lawlessness of this gutless and incompetent agency. Something stinks. It’s far past time that we cleaned house at the EPA.Gosar has represented Arizona’s 4th Congressional District since 2011. He sits on the Natural Resources and the Oversight and Government Reform committees.
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On Gulf Coast, LNG Projects Run Up Against Wildlife -- and Opposition
Aug 21, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
Sandwiched between the Bahia Grande wetlands and the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area at the southern tip of Texas lies the Brownsville Ship Channel, a narrow, 17-mile waterway carrying traffic into and out of the Port of Brownsville.
There, plans to develop a handful of liquefied natural gas terminals are drawing intense scrutiny as locals weigh the jobs and investments of a new industry against disruption to habitats and viewsheds at a spot known as one of the Texas coastline's few pristine areas.
Five developers have proposed to export LNG from greenfield sites along the channel, which lies just a few miles from the Mexican border and boasts deepwater ship access and proximity to key Texas natural gas plays.
Three projects -- Annova LNG, majority-owned by electricity generation and utility giant Exelon; Rio Grande LNG, owned by The Woodlands, Texas-based LNG developer NextDecade; and privately owned Texas LNG -- started pre-filing procedures with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this year.
At a FERC "scoping meeting" earlier this month, comments poured in as local residents had their first chance to formally raise concerns about the developments.
"This is one of the biggest stretches of undeveloped coastal habitat and coastal land" in the state, said Stefanie Herweck, a volunteer with the group Save RGV from LNG, which represents communities throughout the Rio Grande Valley.
Other beaches are in heavily industrialized regions where "you have to drive through refineries to get to the beach," she said, adding that visitors come to nearby South Padre Island for a more pristine nature experience.
Today, commerce at the Port of Brownsville includes shipments of steel, petroleum products, metal, wind turbine components and oil rigs, and several ship salvage companies dismantle old vessels along the channel.
If several LNG projects were to go forward, it would dramatically increase the port's industrial footprint. The projects include electric generation plants to power chillers that supercool natural gas to minus 160 degrees Celsius, forcing it into a liquid state for transport on giant tankers, as well as large storage tanks and other equipment.
Critics are concerned the projects would cause irreparable harm to native habitat at the LNG sites themselves and change the character of an area known for birdwatching and saltwater fishing.Endangered ocelots, and acres of wetlands
Some of those concerns center on the plot of land under lease option by Annova LNG. Under a separate lease with the port dating back almost 40 years and terminated last year, that plot was managed together with other nearby wetlands as a refuge by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"What's critical about this piece of property is, it's one of the only known areas where ocelots are documented as having crossed the ship channel," said Robert Jess, senior refuge manager for FWS's South Texas Refuge Complex.
Ocelots -- endangered cats that resemble miniature leopards -- once ranged from Arkansas west to Arizona, but today the only remaining population in the United States is a limited number of animals in South Texas, Jess said. Mexico has a larger, healthier breeding population, he explained, and interbreeding among those groups is key to the health of the U.S. animals.
"Genetic diversity is really critical to the success of any species," Jess noted. "This species goes all the way down to South America, so we're really looking at the northernmost range. ... If the northern population is eradicated, the species certainly isn't extinct, it's just eradicated in the U.S., but that would be a shame."
Beyond the ocelot, Jess pointed to the larger ecosystem as a special resource, with two migratory bird flyways, native vegetation and rare jaguarundis, another native cat.
Today, 5 percent of the Rio Grande Valley is native habitat, he said, and less than 1 percent of brackish wetlands like the Bahia Grande and Bolsa Chica wetlands, where LNG developments are planned, remain. If all three of the leading LNG projects are developed, he said, half that land would be affected.
Among the most sensitive features are ancient, scrubby, dune-like formations known as lomas, which form gradually and are highly sensitive to disruption.
"Some of these lands have been impacted already through the ship channel, but some [lomas] are not impacted," Jess said. "These lomas are very similar to old-growth forests, in concept -- they may not look like much, but they take several thousand years to develop."Ecotourism at risk?
Jess pointed to a study prepared by Texas A&M University in 2011 to assess ecotourism in the valley, which said it "is often considered the number two birdwatching destination in North America," with almost 500 bird species sited in its four counties.
The study conservatively estimated that nature tourism generates about $344 million per year and more than 4,400 temporary and permanent jobs.
"People are going to have to weigh the impacts and consequences of one, two or three LNG plants in an area that is currently under, or was under, some form of protection. So there may be an impact to that ecotourism dollar," Jess said. "One thing that we're doing is being very proactive with the three proposed LNGs; we're meeting with them, we're listening to their concerns, we're trying to learn the whole process of an LNG and ... long-term, how these things work."
"But it still boils down to, if you look at the mission of the Fish and Wildlife Service, and you look at the mission of a [developer], those are two missions that are going in very different directions," he added.
As part of its environmental review of the proposed projects, FERC will be working with FWS to weigh what impacts the developments would have on local species and ecosystems, and how those might be minimized and mitigated. Jess said he has faith in the process.
"I could say that I have to believe in it, but I actually do believe in it," he said. "I've been involved in processes where [National Environmental Protection Act review] has stopped the development on very sensitive lands.
"If someone came to me or to a conservation entity down here and said, 'You know what, one or two of these is going to be developed, you tell me which one won't be developed,' I'd say, 'The most important one to protect is that loma and that [ocelot migratory] corridor; that's the one that has the most significant detrimental impact.'"Workforce development and local support
Herweck, of Save RGV from LNG, said that in addition to the conservation and ecotourism issues, her group has concerns from safety and environmental justice perspectives.
One of the projects would be less than 2 miles from the local Wal-Mart store, she said, which could put nearby communities and visitors at risk in an accident. She pointed to an explosion last year at a Washington state LNG facility that resulted in the evacuation of people within a 2-mile radius (EnergyWire, April 1, 2014).
Redeveloping an existing industrial site, as other U.S. LNG export projects have done, is often less expensive than starting from scratch, and Herweck said she suspects the companies eyeing Brownsville see its local government as desperate for investment.
"Brownsville is one of the poorest cities in the U.S.," she noted, and jobs are sorely needed. "This is what happens to communities where people are poor and large polluting industries move in," she added. "We don't think that these few hundred jobs are worth transforming our beautiful, paradise-like area into an industrial sacrifice zone."
The companies see those issues differently, of course.
James Markham-Hill, communications manager for the Rio Grande LNG project, noted that the FERC review encompasses more than two years of review, including detailed reports on a wide range of highly specialized subjects. Markham-Hill welcomed FERC's pre-filing scoping meeting as "an important part of this process."
"The idea behind that is to get the local public's concerns voiced and to incorporate that into the [environmental impact statement]. So we actually look at it as a very beneficial part of this process ... because they bring up issues that perhaps we hadn't identified yet," he said.
"Given a large industrial project like ours, you're always, no matter where you are, going to come across some individuals or groups that are opposed to any kind of industrial project going up in their region," he added, noting that opponents are often more outspoken than supporters.
One of Markham-Hill's priorities is to lay the groundwork for the project to support local workforce development.
The Rio Grande project, which is expected to cost $8 billion for its first development phase and as much as $20 billion if later proposed stages of the project are built, is anticipated to create 4,000 to 6,000 jobs during construction and more than 200 jobs in operations mode.
"We're working hard to set up systems so we can hire and buy locally as much as possible," he said, including pre-qualifying local companies for needed services and working with schools, colleges and trade schools to ensure that would-be workers have access to the training they would need.
Bill Harris, a spokesman for Annova, said comments at the FERC scoping meeting ran about 8-to-1 in favor of the project, with locals welcoming the prospect of new jobs and industry.
"We went through lots and lots of different sites, not just in Brownsville but other places, as well," before deciding on the final project location, he said. "We specifically chose the south side of the channel because it takes us further away from residents, populations of people -- the south side of the channel is further away from all established communities."
Harris said the Annova project is a first foray into LNG for Exelon, but the company is known in its other business areas for its focus on public outreach. "This is kind of like a three-legged stool for us," he added, pointing to the necessary elements as getting through the FERC review, signing up long-term LNG customers and ensuring broad public support.
As far as the sensitivity of Annova's property and its former status as a protected area, Harris said questions about how it was managed before Annova signed a lease option should be directed to the Port of Brownsville.Silence on fracking
One issue that has not loomed large in the community, at least so far, is hydraulic fracturing.
Elsewhere in the country, concern about the safety of fracking has driven opposition to many natural gas projects, including some LNG terminals.
At Dominion Resources' Cove Point LNG project, environmental groups have charged that federal regulators should have considered "induced production" of natural gas from project demand, and the associated impacts from fracking, before giving it a green light (EnergyWire, Oct. 4, 2014).
Herweck said Save RGV from LNG is less concerned than some other groups, including the Sierra Club (with which she also volunteers) about fracking and the extent to which building new gas export terminals would encourage new domestic production.
"We are in Texas, so I think in our coalition there are people who are, you know, more concerned with the actual sites and see LNG exports as not necessarily a bad thing, but that it doesn't make sense to destroy and degrade these sites and these existing economic drivers," she said.
"Building whole new facilities in a greenfield development, especially when the cost of producing this gas is something like $9 [per million British thermal units], and it's selling in Japan for $8 [per MMBtu] right now -- we're talking about destroying something that is valuable and irreplaceable for a speculative endeavor."
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Crude Exports Would Devour Land, Fragment Habitat -- Report
Aug 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Phil Taylor
Lifting the crude export ban would drive up demand for drilling in the United States, resulting in a loss of land larger than Delaware to oil and gas infrastructure over the next 15 years, according to a report released today by the Center for American Progress.
The liberal think tank said new drilling pads, pipelines and roads would consume an area larger than Arches National Park each year, while producing enough oil to fill more than 4,500 addition rail cars per day.
While much of the debate over the 1970s-era exports ban in Congress has revolved around impacts to U.S. refineries, the report urges lawmakers to examine how increased production could affect open space and wildlife habitat, the risk of spills during transportation, and emissions of greenhouse gases.
"The potential environmental impacts of facilitating more U.S. crude oil exports are far-reaching and costly and would affect communities in the United States and around the world," CAP's Matt Lee-Ashley and Alison Cassady wrote. "Lawmakers should gain a better grasp of these consequences before rushing ahead with a decision that would have such profound effects on U.S. energy, economic, and environmental policy."
The report said data from information and analysis firm IHS Inc. suggest oil companies in the United States would drill an average of 7,600 additional wells annually if the crude export ban were lifted.
CAP also cites a study by University of Montana scientists published this year in Science magazine that found that the drilling of about 50,000 new oil and gas wells annually between 2000 and 2012 resulted in the loss of 11,600 square miles of land to well pads, roads and storage facilities -- an area three times the size of Yellowstone National Park.
If that rate of land disturbance holds true, the new wells projected by IHS would consume 2,054 square miles of land between 2016 and 2030, CAP found.
Disturbances could extend beyond the immediate footprint of wells and roads, CAP said.
"Its infrastructure would disrupt not only the land on which wells and roads are built, but also the areas around it -- access roads for drilling, for example, can impede wildlife migration and fragment surrounding wildlife habitat," the report says.
Increased production could also result in greater emissions of carbon dioxide, CAP concluded, citing a report by NERA Economic Consulting from September 2014. Washington, D.C.-based NERA estimated as much as 3.3 million more barrels per day could be produced between 2015 and 2035 in the absence of an export ban.
Combustion of that crude would result in greenhouse gas emissions equal to more than 100 coal-fired power plants, CAP estimates.
However, the CAP report acknowledges it's unclear whether more U.S. exports would result in more crude being consumed globally. That would depend in part on whether U.S. exports result in a drop in world oil prices, which itself would depend on production decisions made by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, CAP said.
"Given the urgent threat posed by unmitigated climate change, Congress should not make energy policy choices without considering the potential climate impacts of those choices," the report says.Adding fuel to Hill fire
The CAP report adds to a fierce debate in Congress over whether to lift the 40-year-old crude export ban in response to the spike in U.S. production of light, sweet oil streaming from tight oil plays.
Such a move would be a boon to domestic producers, as much of the light, sweet crude would go to other countries where existing refining capacity is a better match for the oil's characteristics, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in May. That would raise prices paid to domestic producers, which currently see a discount for their product relative to the world market.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a proponent of lifting the export ban, said earlier this month that she sees increasing interest among Democrats in a legislative compromise to lift the ban (Greenwire, Aug. 7).
A spokesman for Murkowski could not be reached this morning.
Sens. Angus King (I-Maine) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) last month 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).
But CAP's report is likely to bolster a liberal bloc of more than a dozen Democrats led by Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts who in June urged President Obama to resist calls to lift the ban, which they argue is needed to protect U.S. consumers, businesses and national security (E&ENews PM, June 26).
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Texas AG Seeks EPA Halt of Carbon Rule as Litigation Threat Looms
Aug 21, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Edward Klump
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) yesterday called on U.S. EPA to issue a stay and stop its plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions in the power sector from taking effect while courts examine legal challenges.
If EPA denies the stay request, Paxton indicated he plans to file suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
"The Obama Administration and EPA are attempting to take over America's electrical grid through regulation and without legal authority and Texas plans to vigorously challenge EPA's 'power grab,'" Paxton said in a statement.
Paxton has been a critic of EPA's Clean Power Plan for months, and his letter follows a formal challenge in federal court earlier this month from a number of states, including West Virginia (EnergyWire, Aug. 14).
Liz Purchia, an EPA spokeswoman, said yesterday via email that the Clean Power Plan was "based on a sound legal and technical foundation, and it was shaped by extensive input from states, industry, energy regulators, health and environmental groups, and individual members of the public." She called the rule fair, flexible and affordable, adding that "EPA and the Department of Justice will vigorously defend it in court."
Paxton's letter outlined Texas' views on four factors at play in a request for a stay: that the state is likely to succeed on the merits of its claims, such as that the rule exceeded EPA's statutory authority; that Texas would suffer irreparable injury without a stay; that no harm would occur because of a stay; and that the public interest favors a stay.
A final version of the rule was announced this month, with an aim of lowering carbon emissions from power plants 32 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. Initial compliance is envisioned in 2022, and state targets vary. States can develop a response under the rule or face a possible federal plan.
Under the rule, Texas would need to cut its power-sector carbon emissions rate about 33 percent below 2012 levels by 2030, compared with an earlier draft target of more than 38 percent.
But Paxton's office touted past efforts to make air cleaner in Texas, mentioning levels of nitrogen oxides and ozone. His release said the expansion of EPA's regulatory power would harm Texas families, "with little to no benefit to the environment."
Having affordable and reliable power, the attorney general said, "is the foundation of the nation's economic prosperity, but it also means comfort and security for all American families." He added that "Texas has proven that you don't have to destroy industry and jobs in order to protect the environment."
Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization, wasn't impressed by the attorney general's announcement. He said state resources would be wasted in a lawsuit, and he said Texas has the renewable resources to meet and perhaps exceed its carbon rule target.
"Paxton should be given a head-in-the-sand award for his attempts to continue to delay the cooling of the climate," Smith said, adding that the "cost of inaction is higher than the cost of action."
Paxton also has been in the news for another reason: charges related to securities fraud. Outlets such as The Dallas Morning News reportedrecently that a lawyer for Paxton took issue with that legal process, which has included the reissuing of indictments.
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Republicans Don't Regret Sinking Waxman-Markey
Aug 21, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Jean Chemnick
In the fierce congressional fight over comprehensive climate change legislation in 2009-10, the Obama administration warned it would act to curb heat-trapping emissions if lawmakers faltered.
Enter the Clean Power Plan, U.S. EPA's regulatory push to overhaul the nation's power grid.
With Capitol Hill Republicans slamming the new rule as a looming economic catastrophe and an illegal administrative overreach, GOP staffers who led the charge against climate legislation say they're still glad they torpedoed the cap-and-trade bill five years ago (Greenwire, Aug. 20).
"I've been talking with friends of mine who were on the Hill at the time with me, and we were sort of joking, 'Well, hey, should we have taken the deal?' And no, we should not have," a former Republican staffer said.
That former staffer and others express confidence the courts will limit EPA's rule or rescind it. And no matter what happens in the courtroom, they say, the power plant rule still isn't as bad as the massive bills championed by then-Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the House and then-Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) in the Senate.
The 1,400-page "Clean Energy and Security Act" that cleared the House in the summer of 2009 would have authorized EPA to regulate emissions from the far reaches of the economy that now might never see carbon dioxide curbs. The bill would have spawned new programs and spending outside the cap-and-trade provision, which the former aide called "a big-government nightmare on steroids."
"If I were forced to choose, I would take the Clean Power Plan in a minute," the former aide said.
Fifteen states have already asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for an emergency stay of the rule, claiming that the Clean Air Act bars EPA from regulating carbon dioxide from power plants under Section 111(d) of the statute because it is already regulating the same sources for toxic emissions under a different section of the law (Greenwire, Aug. 14). A climate law would have disarmed this legislative "glitch" issue.
"No, I don't think you're going to get anybody to say there's some advantage to Waxman-Markey over the Clean Power Plan," a current senior Republican aide said.
Republicans express confidence that they will keep the final EPA rule from taking effect.
Their weapons: resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, riders on appropriations bills and stand-alone legislation.
Their hope: The next president might be a Republican.
"We've also got time," the senior aide said.
The final Clean Power Plan calls for states to submit compliance plans by 2018 and start enforcement in 2022.
"They've already punted this outside of the Obama presidency," the senior aide said. "If you have a Republican president, it changes everything."
Another GOP aide said the rule's movement from EPA to the states will begin to attract the grass-roots opposition.
"You're going to see that awakening in the states that you really haven't quite seen yet," the aide said.
Republicans will spend time this fall tarring the power plant rule as "cap-and-trade repackaged," the aide said, highlighting warnings by Waxman-Markey's proponents and EPA that Clean Air Act rules would be a second-best option.
The aide pointed to a September 2009 newspaper story that quotes then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson warning her agency was poised to release its endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions, setting the stage for regulation.
"Legislation is so important, because it will combine the most efficient, most economy-wide, least costly [and] least disruptive way to deal with carbon dioxide pollution," Jackson is quoted as saying, adding that a bill would be preferable to "top-down regulation."Remembering how sausage was made
Republicans staffers past and present are also quick to add that their party alone did not scuttle cap and trade. Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not bring the Kerry-Lieberman package to the floor, they note, adding that it would have failed even in a year when Democrats enjoyed a rare 60-vote supermajority in the Senate.
Aaron Cutler, who was an aide to Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, then-ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee when Waxman-Markey was moving through committee, said the bill was a product of an "unruly legislative process" that excluded Republicans.
"At the time, we just thought it was a giveaway, and it was based on who negotiated the best and who was in the room and what kind of allocations it got and when," said Cutler, who's now a partner in the legislative group at Hogan Lovells.
Waxman, who was then Energy and Commerce chairman, was still promising his more reluctant Democratic colleagues concessions even as his bill was on the floor, Cutler recalled.
"There really wasn't a clean way to do it if you were going to do it at all," he said, adding that Congress shouldn't have done it.
But former Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) said the two-year process that led to the June 2009 House passage of the Waxman-Markey bill included substantial outreach to Republicans.
The coal-district Democrat was chairman of an Energy and Commerce subcommittee in 2007 and 2008, and his ranking member was the then-freshly ousted Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boucher remembered meeting with Hastert and other top Republicans on a white paper he co-authored with then-Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.).
That paper, Boucher said, made up the core of the bill co-sponsored by Waxman, who succeeded Dingell as chairman.
"Denny was very much a part of the process," said Boucher, who now leads the government strategies practice at Sidley Austin LLP.
In 2009, Boucher also led negotiations with Waxman and Markey to make their bill friendlier to states that rely heavily on coal-fired generation. Those concessions, together with changes won by oil-patch Democrats and other voting blocs, allowed the measure to finally clear the House, 219-212.
"We negotiated to the point where we achieved a comfort level with it," Boucher said. "I was comfortable with it, and the utilities were comfortable with it."'Reality was very clear in 2007'
The Waxman-Markey bill allocated the vast majority of its emission allowances for free in the early years, and that considered utilities' historical emissions when distributing allowances. States can do the same under a Clean Power Plan implementation strategy, but EPA would not control those decisions.
The bill also provided two features that EPA can't give utilities under its Clean Air Act rule: the ability to offset emissions by funding unrelated reduction projects domestically and abroad, and $10 billion to be used to develop and deploy carbon capture and storage technology to keep as many coal-fired power plants online as possible. A new power plant rule that was finalized alongside the Clean Power Plan on Aug. 3 all but requires the use of CCS to limit new coal plants' emissions, but that technology would be applied at the utility's expense.
The measure also pre-empted some Clean Air Act requirements that would have affected coal-fired units, including possible Clean Air Act Section 111(d) rules and New Source Review requirements.
EPA predicted in 2009 that coal-fired generation would expand under Waxman-Markey, while its regulatory impact statement for the Clean Power Plan has coal dwindling to 27 percent of the nation's power supply by 2030 (although market changes undoubtedly play a role in that shift).
In the end, most major coal-fired utilities endorsed Waxman-Markey with the exception of Southern Co., which wrote in an email to Greenwire last night that the administration should have bowed to Congress and not tried to regulate carbon emissions under existing law.
Not generally a fan of new regulations for his state's coal sector, Boucher said he and Dingell accepted the science of man-made climate science. And they realized there was little hope to avoid new emission curbs after the Supreme Court's 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA ruling that directed the agency to consider whether greenhouse gases endangered human health.
"That reality was very clear in 2007," Boucher said. "And so if Congress did not act, EPA was going to do it on its own, and it simply did not have adequate tools under the old Clean Air Act to do a good job."
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CASAC Suggests EPA Weigh NO2 Exposures Below Existing NAAQS Level
Aug 21, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) is suggesting that EPA consider assessing the public's exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at levels below its current national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for the pollutant, saying it might provide greater scientific data on NO2's health impacts to inform the standard.
A CASAC panel in recent months has evaluated two draft documents EPA has developed as part of its Clean Air Act-mandated five year review of its NO2 NAAQS, which the agency last set in 2010 using a first-time one-hour format of 100 parts per billion (ppb) compared to the prior standard of 53 ppb annually that also remains in effect.
The new one-hour standard required a shift in the national NO2 monitoring network to capture exposure accurately. The agency in its requirements for NO2 monitoring has shifted toward near-road monitoring, on the assumption that NO2 levels are highest near roadways, although early results from the new monitoring network, which will inform the current NAAQS review, show that NO2 levels can be highest further away from the road.
On an Aug. 13 teleconference, some members of CASAC's NO2 panel suggested that EPA should seek to expand a proposed exposure review to assess the exposure of the public to NO2 levels below the current NAAQS, on the basis that evidence exists for adverse health effects below the 100 ppb threshold.
Some public health groups, such as the American Lung Association (ALA) which presented public testimony on the conference call, back this position though industry opposes such an approach.
CASAC members on the call discussed a draft letter to EPA that once final will convey their advice on an EPA "planning document" that considers whether the agency should conduct a full quantitative risk and exposure assessment (REA), or skip this step of the NAAQS review.
Reviews start with an integrated science assessment (ISA) synthesizing policy-relevant data on a pollutant, and as a next step EPA can craft an REA to "develop quantitative characterizations of exposures and associated risks to human health or the environment associated with recent air quality conditions and with air quality estimated to just meet the current or alternative standard(s) under consideration. This assessment includes a characterization of the uncertainties associated with such estimates," says EPA's website.
Finally, EPA uses the findings in the ISA or REA, or both, to inform its policy assessment in which it outlines the scientific justification for either retaining or revising its existing NAAQS.
The agency in its planning document leans toward not attempting a full REA, due to a lack of sufficient new data.
Draft Recommendations
In their draft letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, CASAC panelists say, "CASAC concurs that quantitative risk assessments for respiratory health effects from short-term NO2 exposures would be unlikely to substantially improve the understanding of NO2-attributable health risks or to increase the confidence in risk estimates. However, the CASAC urges the agency to explore the feasibility of performing a quantitative risk assessment of respiratory health effects from long-term NO2 exposures, particularly due to the strengthening of the causal determination to 'likely to be a causal relationship' in the Integrated Science Assessment."
Further, "available controlled human exposure data do not rule out that adverse effects could occur at NO2 concentrations below that of the current 1-hour standard," CASAC writes. "Therefore, other means for inferring concentrations that may be associated with adverse effects at 1-hour average NO2 concentrations below 100 pbb (such as based on epidemiologic data) should be explored and taken into account when considering benchmark concentrations and interpreting results from the exposure assessment," the letter says.
ALA consultant Deborah Shprentz in her Aug. 13 prepared remarks to CASAC said EPA's proposed approach to the exposure assessment of examining exposures between 100 ppb and 400 ppb is flawed and that CASAC should say so. "Preliminary data from the near-road monitoring network shows very few areas with concentrations above 100 ppb, suggesting that an exposure analysis of benchmarks from 100 to 400 ppb would not be very informative. Given the ISA's findings of adverse respiratory effects at or below the level of the current short-term standard, it is critical that any exposure assessment evaluate exposures at concentrations below 100 ppb," Shprentz writes.
Meanwhile, consultancy Gradient in Aug. 6 comments submitted on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute takes a different view. EPA should "emphasize exposures above 100 ppb for an updated air quality analysis. CASAC should not recommend that EPA evaluate the feasibility of an epidemiology-based risk assessment for long-term respiratory effects, as such a risk assessment is neither warranted nor feasible," Gradient writes.
Science Assessment
The CASAC panel also discussed EPA's draft ISA, which generally strengthens the agency's conclusions regarding the role of NO2 in causing health problems. Panel members on the call said while EPA's determinations of causality appear sound, the agency should do more in the ISA to explain and justify its conclusions.
In another draft letter, the panel says, "CASAC recommends that more clarification and justification be provided in the text for the changes made in causal determinations from the 2008 ISA, especially for the respiratory effects of long-term NO2. The reasoning behind the agency's decision to strengthen the causal determination from 'suggestive, but sufficient, to infer a causal relationship' to 'likely to be a causal relationship' should be more clearly articulated."
Panelists on the call also recommended EPA include more information on the nature of traffic-related NO2 exposures, such as whether monitoring results are taken within "street canyons" that concentrate pollution. This data would help to clarify the ongoing debate over the utility of roadside monitoring, some panelists argued.
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