Preview Newsletter
ET ACC PM 10/2/15
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Copolymer Helps Make Flexible Li-Ion Battery Electrodes
Oct 2, 2015 | Chemical and Engineering News
By Mitch Jacoby
Electrochemistry: Conductive block copolymer improves vanadium pentoxide cathodes’ mechanical and electrochemical properties -
Deal reached for Senate floor action on TSCA overhaul
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
Senators announced today they had reached an agreement on a bill to overhaul how the federal government regulates toxic chemicals, clearing the way for it to reach the floor soon. -
TSCA Bill Revisions Gain Democratic Backing For Filibuster-Proof Support
Oct 2, 2015 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Supporters of Senate legislation to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) have agreed to revisions that include increasing industry TSCA fees and expediting some chemicals programs, prompting new backing from two key Democrats and ensuring the measure has a 60-vote level of support to overcome any filibuster threat. -
Backing from Markey, Durbin gives TSCA overhaul filibuster-proof support
Oct 2, 2015 | Politico Pro -- Whiteboard
By Darren Goode
A bipartisan plan to overhaul the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act has enough support to overcome a filibuster in the Senate after sponsors agreed to changes to the proposal that picked up two additional backers today. -
US EPA issues Snurs for 30 chemicals
Oct 2, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has imposed significant new use rules on 30 chemicals, which were the subject of pre-manufacture notices. Nine of them are subject to consent order under section 5(e) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
Biomonitoring California to consider PFAS for priortisation
Oct 2, 2015 | Chemical Watch
Biomonitoring California's Science Guidance Panel (SGP) will consider ortho-phthalates along with perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoralkyl substances (PFAS) as potential priority chemicals at its 18 November meeting. -
International Specialists Warn Of Global Toll From Chemical Exposures
Oct 2, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Jose Aguayo
In a strongly worded report, a leading international organization of gynecologists and obstetricians warned this week (Oct. 1) that “exposure to toxic environmental chemicals during pregnancy and breastfeeding is ubiquitous and is a threat to healthy human reproduction” worldwide. -
Common Solvent Keeps Killing Workers, Consumers
Oct 2, 2015 | Truth Out
By Jamie Smith Hopkins
Johnathan Welch was 18 and working through lunch when the fumes killed him, stealing oxygen from his brain, stopping his heart. -
Dupont to pay $724k for deadly explosion: EPA Announces
Oct 2, 2015 | Rapid News Network
By Angel Wallace
According to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, on November 9, 2010, the ignition of flammable vinyl fluoride that had seeped inside a 10,000 gallon process tank at the DuPont facility resulted in an explosion that killed one worker and badly burned another. -
EPA defends new ozone standard as green allies fume
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
U.S. EPA is defending its choice of setting a new national ozone standard at 70 parts per billion despite blistering criticism by health and environmental groups that it won't protect the public. -
Drillers experiment with sand levels in frack jobs
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Energywire
Brett Pennington is in the Texas Eagle Ford Shale formation conducting a top-secret experiment to answer an important question. -
Drilling company seeks repeal of 'false' report on flaring
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
By Phil Taylor
Continental Resources Inc., one of North Dakota's largest oil producers, is demanding an environmental group retract a report it issued this week that accused the company of flaring more gas than all other companies combined. -
No landowner permission needed for Va. pipeline surveys, court says
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M Gilmer
A federal court in Virginia this week upheld a state law that allows pipeline planners to access private lands without permission. -
Southern state lawmakers take tough line on EPA rule
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
Even a visit from U.S. EPA air chief Janet McCabe couldn't temper the determination of the Southern States Energy Board (SSEB) to register its strong disapproval of the agency's rule to curtail carbon emissions from the nation's power plants. -
Texas regulator says crafting state plan 'waste' of time
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Energywire
By Edward Klump
AUSTIN, Texas -- Brandy Marty Marquez, who has helped regulate Texas utilities for about two years, said yesterday that she sees no reason for the state to begin exploring ways to comply with U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan as the rule undergoes legal challenges. -
What critics get wrong about the EPA's smog rule
Oct 2, 2015 | Chicago Tribune
By Cass Sunstein
This week's decision by the Environmental Protection Agency, imposing a new limit on ground- level ozone at 70 parts per billion, was eminently reasonable -- an impressive vindication of both law and science. -
‘Groundhog Day’ ozone standard has GOP, industry eyeing Clean Air Act
Oct 2, 2015 | Politico Pro
By Allen Guillen
EPA critics say the new smog standard it finalized Thursday may breathe new life into efforts to revise the Clean Air Act, one of the nation’s most important environmental laws. -
State plots climate change rules for 2030 and beyond despite legislative setback
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Climatewire
By Debra Kahn
California regulators yesterday unveiled new proposals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through 2030 and beyond, including a strategy for cutting petroleum use in half by 2030. -
(ACC Mention) Rail shutdown would cost $30 billion, study finds
Oct 2, 2015 | The Hill
By Keith Laing
A shutdown of the nation's railways at the end of the year if Congress does not move a deadline for automating most of the nation's trains would cost the U.S. economy $30 billion, according to a study conducted by the American Chemistry Council. -
(ACC Mention) House committee proposes rail-upgrade extension
Oct 2, 2015 | Rapid News Network
By Angel Wallace
Under the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, railroads are required to implement PTC systems by the end of this year on mainline tracks that carry “toxic by inhalation” materials like anhydrous ammonia – a key fertilizer ingredient – as well as passenger traffic. -
(ACC Mention) ACC: Looming PTC deadline threatens economic chaos
Oct 2, 2015 | Chemical Week
By Clay Boswell
The US economy will take a massive hit if Congress does not extend the deadline for implementation of positive train control (PTC), according to a report released Thursday by ACC. -
House moves to delay PTC deadline
Oct 2, 2015 | Metro Magazine
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Lawmakers in the House are moving to extend a federal deadline for positive train control that most railroads say they will not be able to meet, The Hill reported.
Industry and Association News
Chemical Management News
Chemical Security News
Energy and Environment News
Transportation News
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Copolymer Helps Make Flexible Li-Ion Battery Electrodes
Oct 2, 2015 | Chemical and Engineering News
By Mitch Jacoby
Flexible, stretchable electronics—a concept that until recently seemed radical—is starting to turn objects such as clothing into powerful gadgets. These devices, which could monitor and relay information about a wearer’s health, for example, could become more widely available if there were thin, flexible batteries to power them. But most batteries are bulky and rigid and their components are often brittle.
Researchers have taken a step toward overcoming that obstacle by hybridizing a candidate for lithium-ion battery electrodes, V2O5, with a conductive polymer. Not only does that process convert the electrode material from a paperlike form that easily cracks to one that’s flexible and robust, it also improves its electrochemical properties (Sci. Rep. 2015, DOI:10.1038/srep14166).
V2O5 has caught the interest of battery researchers because the inexpensive oxide has the potential for a high charge capacity due to its ability to store and release a lot of lithium. Also it is easily formed as a paperlike material, which is key for making electrodes. But the material conducts ions and electrons sluggishly and it’s prone to swelling and cracking as it charges and discharges.
To address those shortcomings, a research team led by Texas A&M University chemical engineers Hyosung An, Jared Mike, and Jodie L. Lutkenhaus used a simple water-based process to blend V2O5 with poly(3-hexylthiophene)-block-poly(ethyleneoxide), P3HT-b-PEO, a block copolymer composed of electron- and ion-conducting units. The researchers developed the blending process mindful of the tradeoffs in making hybrid electrode materials. Such hybrids sometimes can improve mechanical properties of the materials at the expense of electrochemical ones. In addition, adding polymer reduces the concentration of V2O5 and hence reduces the Li-ion storage capacity.
So the team sought to keep the polymer concentration low. They found that adding just 5 wt % polymer led to a hybrid that’s three times as flexible and twice as tough as pure V2O5 Hybridizing also roughly doubled the lithium-ion diffusion, eliminated cracking during battery charging and discharging, and slowed the battery’s loss of capacity over time. The team attributes the enhancements to the hybrid material’s unique self-assembled structure, which consists of interlocking V2O5 layers held together by micellar aggregates of P3HT-b-PEO.
“The electrode fabrication described here is novel,” says University of California, Berkeley, chemical engineer Nitash P. Balsara, a specialist in block copolymer battery applications. Balsara adds that he is impressed with the way the team integrated this polymeric electrode with conventional battery components. “In doing so, Lutkenhaus and her collaborators have assembled a very interesting electrochemical energy storage device.”
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Deal reached for Senate floor action on TSCA overhaul
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
Senators announced today they had reached an agreement on a bill to overhaul how the federal government regulates toxic chemicals, clearing the way for it to reach the floor soon.
The agreement came as Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) -- once a vocal opponent of earlier versions of S. 697, the "Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act" -- and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) agreed to sign on as co-sponsors of the bill.
The bill was introduced by Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and David Vitter (R-La.). It now has 60 co-sponsors from 38 states, enough to overcome a filibuster.
In a statement, Markey described the bill as a "much-needed update" to the Toxic Substances Control Act "that will help protect families and communities from dangerous chemicals."
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said earlier this week she had been negotiating with supporters of S. 697 to secure changes (E&ENews PM, Sept. 30). Previously, Boxer had pledged to raise procedural hurdles to prolong the time necessary to advance the bill on the Senate floor. Boxer now plans to vote against the proposal but allow it to advance, a Senate aide said.
Markey and Durbin negotiated with Udall and Vitter for changes that are due to be added in a substitute amendment, the lawmakers said. Though legislative language was not released, changes include increasing the amount of fees required to be paid by chemical companies, shortening deadlines for U.S. EPA to complete chemical assessments and altering a waiver process through which states were required to seek federal permission to enforce stronger laws in the absence of a final EPA action.
"The dam is broken," said Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, a key supporter of the bill. "This bill has had very strong support for many weeks now, but it has overwhelming support at this point."
That should enable the bill to reach the floor as soon as next week and pass by a large margin, Denison said.
Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said there was no determination yet when the bill would be considered.
The changes are said to have addressed some of the key sticking points that have emerged since the legislation passed the Environment and Public Works Committee in April (Greenwire, April 28).
Under the agreement, chemical companies would be required to contribute up to $25 million per year in program fees, up from $18 million per year. A process would also be created to defray 25 percent of the program's operating expenses, though how that process would work was not immediately clear.
In addition, the bill would create a mandatory compliance deadline for regulated companies of four years, with an extension of up to 18 months allowed if EPA finds compliance with final regulations to manage a chemical determined to pose a health risk is not technologically feasible or is too costly. However, unlike under current law, EPA would not be permitted to consider the cost to companies when evaluating the risk of a chemical.
The deadline "ensures that when EPA does act, it's not going to put in motion a process that'll take 10 years to play out," Denison said. "It'll be a finite and fairly ambitious compliance."
The lawmakers also agreed on changes to a previously proposed waiver process. Under the process, states would be able to take action on their own against chemicals thought to be harmful in the absence of final action by EPA, but only if they received a waiver from EPA, which could be challenged in court if it was denied.
"Some of the negotiation was to make those conditions a little less onerous" for states, Denison said, and to clarify what options states have when EPA misses a deadline to complete review of a chemical.
Markey had previously joined with Boxer to warn of the dangers of what he called an industry-driven proposal.
The earlier version of the bill "handcuffs states attorneys general, who are our chemical cops on the beat," Markey said at a hearing earlier this year. "It gives known dangers a pass, and it fails in any way to create a strong federal chemical safety program that will protect public health."
Markey also introduced his own bill with Boxer, S. 725, the "Alan Reinstein and Trevor Schaefer Toxic Chemical Protection Act," earlier this year.
The potential for Senate action soon is encouraging to House leaders, said Jordan Haverly, a spokesman for Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy.
Shimkus "looks forward to Senate action on TSCA so we can begin to reconcile their bill with legislation passed by the House in July," Haverly said. "He's eager to begin this work and remains optimistic that bipartisan TSCA reform can be sent to the White House."
Several environmental groups that previously opposed the Senate legislation did not comment on the changes this morning, saying they were still reviewing the information.
For the legislation to advance on the floor, senators will need to determine to what extent to allow amendments. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) previously proposed an amendment to the TSCA bill to permit crude oil exports, while more recently some advocates say Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) may attempt to stall the legislation to win permission for a vote on an amendment reauthorizing the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which expired yesterday.
"Members, I think, are looking for any possible vehicle that has an opportunity [for LWCF]," said Alan Rowsome, the director of government relations at the Wilderness Society, "and we'll see what that brings as Congress moves along with its business here in the coming days."
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TSCA Bill Revisions Gain Democratic Backing For Filibuster-Proof Support
Oct 2, 2015 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Supporters of Senate legislation to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) have agreed to revisions that include increasing industry TSCA fees and expediting some chemicals programs, prompting new backing from two key Democrats and ensuring the measure has a 60-vote level of support to overcome any filibuster threat.
The revisions -- including clarifying how states can win waivers of federal preemption of their toxics programs -- clear the path for Senate floor debate on the bill, S. 697, which could take place next week.
As Inside EPA recently reported, Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) had been working with Democratic senators on potential changes to the bill in order to increase backing from the upper chamber's minority. Udall, who introduced the bill with Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), was “open to accommodating any changes that can help grow support for the bill, while retaining the bipartisan support it has,” the senator's spokeswoman said last month.
In an Oct. 2 press release, Udall announced that the updated bill now has the backing of Sens. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Richard Durbin (D-IL). Durbin's support is significant because he is the assistant Democratic leader in the Senate, also known as the Minority Whip, giving the bill backing from a top minority leadership figure.
A Markey staffer had previously outlined the changes that the senator wanted made to S. 697 before supporting it, and the addition of Markey and Durbin as co-sponsors pushes the bill's total support to 60 senators. That ensures the bill would be able to overcome a potential filibuster from Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA).
Boxer, ranking member on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW), has raised major concerns over the measure. For example, she believes it contains provisions that would broadly preempt existing state chemicals programs such as those in California. Boxer has urged senators to reject S. 697 and instead consider taking up a narrower House TSCA reform bill, H.R. 2576, which cleared that chamber in a 398-1 vote in June.
Despite Boxer's fears, Senate proponents of TSCA reform appear set next week to debate S. 697 and likely approve it over her objections. Advocates of the bill have said they are working with senators to discourage them from offering “fringe” amendments that could doom the bill -- such as amendments that would cause either GOP or Democratic senators to lose support, or unrelated policy riders that could also cause a loss in support.
Instead, Udall and other supporters of the legislation have been working to update the legislation prior to floor debate in order to gain more Democratic backers without losing any of their GOP supporters.
According to the press release, the new revisions to the bill include provisions to increase funding for EPA resources through industry fees, ensure fast industry compliance with EPA regulations and simplify the waiver process from preemption for states, along with easing states' ability to “co-enforce” federal regulations.
“I am pleased by the positive and meaningful progress on improvements to TSCA reauthorization legislation, and I am proud we have secured changes to the bill that will ensure chemical companies comply with mandatory deadlines for safety regulations, expedite regulatory action on the most dangerous chemicals, allow states more flexibility to implement new chemical regulations and give EPA the funds it needs to do the job,” Markey said.
Markey was among five senators who voted against the bill during an EPW markup in June, along with Sens. Boxer, Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Benjamin Cardin (D-MD).
Legislative Revisions
The new amendments reflect the changes that Markey sought before he would offer his backing to the TSCA bill, according to the press release. For example, the senators agreed to increase from $18 million to $25 million per year funding cap for industry to pay fees to support the new chemical safety reviews that EPA will conduct under the legislation. It also creates a process to ensure sufficient resources to defray 25 percent of the program costs.
The revisions would also establish a mandatory compliance deadline of four years for industry to comply with new EPA-administered TSCA regulations established if the legislation becomes law, with an extension of up to 18 months if EPA determines the deadline is “technologically or economically infeasible.”
In addition, the revisions are aimed at expediting regulatory action on EPA's existing TSCA work plan chemicals, a field of 90 substances currently in the marketplace the agency has designated as having the highest potential for exposure and hazard and therefore pose the greatest risks, from the seven years in the bill to five years.
The senators also agreed to various other revisions, including adding language to boost mandatory protections for vulnerable populations, reduce exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls as much as “practicable,” require EPA to disclosure the information it uses to make prioritization decisions and improve provisions for allowing access to confidential business information for medical professionals and first responders.
The Democrats also appear to have reached an agreement on making improvements to the preemption provisions in the bill, which have been a major sticking point with Markey and other Senate Democrats, in particular Boxer, who has vowed to introduce dozens of amendments on the floor if her concerns were not addressed.
The Senate bill contains grandfathering provisions to preserve existing states laws, but the bill's critics fault its preemption for new chemical rules and laws that would occur when EPA launches a review of a chemical. That contrasts with the House bill, which would trigger preemption once EPA finalizes a TSCA restriction.
Critics of the Senate bill claim the preemption would begin too early in the chemical review process, leaving a regulatory gap in which there could be no state or federal restrictions for a chemical.
The newly announced amendments are aimed at clarifying the process under which a state could seek a waiver form preemption and for states to serve as “co-enforcers” of federal regulations.
The current waiver provisions in the bill provide exemptions from preemption in the event the state can show “compelling State or local conditions” to warrant the exemption, that compliance with a proposed state rule would not unduly burden interstate commerce or violate federal law, and is “consistent with sound objective scientific principles.” It was unclear at press time how the revised bill updates that language.
The revisions also include language to provide for “parity of judicial reviews of EPA actions,” the press release says, which would retain the “substantial evidence” evidentiary standard under the current TSCA. -- Bridget DiCosmo (bdicosmo@iwpnews.com)
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Backing from Markey, Durbin gives TSCA overhaul filibuster-proof support
Oct 2, 2015 | Politico Pro -- Whiteboard
By Darren Goode
A bipartisan plan to overhaul the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act has enough support to overcome a filibuster in the Senate after sponsors agreed to changes to the proposal that picked up two additional backers today.
Sen. Ed Markey and Minority Whip Dick Durbin announced their support and detailed a set of changes to the bill they negotiated with lead Democratic sponsor Tom Udall.
The deal increases the bill's cap on TSCA fees collected on industry from $18 million to $25 million "to defray 25 percent EPA's chemical safety program costs," according to a statement from the senators. The bill also would be modified to include a four-year compliance deadline for industry to comply with EPA regulations, with an allowance for an 18 month extension if EPA determines companies deserve additional time.
Support from Durbin and Markey, who was one of five Democrats to vote against the bill in committee, brings the list of cosponsors to 60. The bill may be brought to the floor as early as Tuesday, though there are still discussions on lifting a hold from Sen. Richard Burr tied to his unrelated effort to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
The bill changes, which Republicans have accepted, also makes it easier for states to implement their own toxic controls and play a role enforcing federal regulations. The updates also reduce from seven to five years the deadline for EPA to act on 90 high risk chemicals and add "assurances for mandatory protections for vulnerable populations."
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US EPA issues Snurs for 30 chemicals
Oct 2, 2015 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has imposed significant new use rules on 30 chemicals, which were the subject of pre-manufacture notices. Nine of them are subject to consent order under section 5(e) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
In case of substances under consent orders, the EPA determined that activities “associated with the substances may present unreasonable risk to human health or the environment.” The consent orders require protective measures to limit exposures, or otherwise mitigate the potential unreasonable risk.
The rules go into effect from 1 December 2015. They require persons who intend to manufacture, import or process any of the substances for an activity that is designated as a significant new use to notify the agency at least 90 days before starting that activity.
“The required notification will provide EPA with the opportunity to evaluate the intended use and, if necessary, to prohibit or limit that activity before it occurs,” the agency says in a Federal Register notice.
The deadline for submitting written adverse or critical comments, or notice of intent to submit adverse or critical comments, on any of the Snurs is 2 November. If the EPA receives such comments before the deadline, it will withdraw the relevant Snur.
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Biomonitoring California to consider PFAS for priortisation
Oct 2, 2015 | Chemical Watch
Biomonitoring California's Science Guidance Panel (SGP) will consider ortho-phthalates along with perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoralkyl substances (PFAS) as potential priority chemicals at its 18 November meeting.
The agency uses the priority chemical list to select substances for additional study. The SGP recommends priority chemicals from its list of designated chemicals. This was last updated in June (CW 1 July 2015).
The meeting will be webcast.
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International Specialists Warn Of Global Toll From Chemical Exposures
Oct 2, 2015 | Environmental Working Group
By Jose Aguayo
In a strongly worded report, a leading international organization of gynecologists and obstetricians warned this week (Oct. 1) that “exposure to toxic environmental chemicals during pregnancy and breastfeeding is ubiquitous and is a threat to healthy human reproduction” worldwide.
The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, representing physicians from 125 nations and territories, said it was convening an international conference in Vancouver this weekend to develop a call to action for preventing exposure to environmental chemicals.
“We are drowning our world in untested and unsafe chemicals and the price we are paying in terms of our reproductive health is of serious concern,” said Gian Carlo Di Renzo, a professor at the University of Perugia in Italy and lead author of the report published in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
The report said prenatal and early childhood exposures to toxic chemicals in the environment are strongly related to health problems that develop throughout life.
It specifically cited the danger of exposure to pesticides, plastics and metals during pregnancy and early years of development, noting they can lead to fertility problems, stillbirths, miscarriages, cancer and neurological conditions.
The report attributed tremendous losses to chemical exposures, including; an estimated 7 million deaths a year due to ambient and household air pollution worldwide; $66 billion in costs related to pesticide poisoning in the Sub-Saharan region; and an estimated $177 billion a year in health costs caused by exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in Europe. In the United States, childhood diseases linked to toxic chemicals and pollutants in air, food, water and soil cost $76.6 billion in 2008 alone.
EWG applauds FIGO for taking a stance against toxic chemicals and supports its recommendations that “reproductive and other health professionals advocate for policies to prevent exposure to toxic environmental chemicals, work to ensure a healthy food system for all, make environmental health part of health care, and champion environmental justice.”
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Common Solvent Keeps Killing Workers, Consumers
Oct 2, 2015 | Truth Out
By Jamie Smith Hopkins
Johnathan Welch was 18 and working through lunch when the fumes killed him, stealing oxygen from his brain, stopping his heart.
The chemical linked to his death in 1999 wasn't a newly discovered hazard, nor was it hard to acquire. Methylene chloride, which triggered similar deaths dating as far back as the 1940s, could be bought barely diluted in products on retail shelves.
It still can. And it's still killing people.
The solvent is common in paint strippers, widely available products with labels that warn of cancer risks but do not make clear the possibility of rapid death. In areas where the fumes can concentrate, workers and consumers risk asphyxiation or a heart attack while taking care of seemingly routine tasks.
That hazard prompted the European Union to pull methylene chloride paint strippers from general use in 2011. For reasons that aren't clear, regulatory agencies in the United States have not followed suit - or even required better warnings - despite decades of evidence about the dangers, a Center for Public Integrity investigation found.
A Center analysis identified at least 56 accidental exposure deaths linked to methylene chloride since 1980 in the US Thirty-one occurred before Johnathan Welch died, 24 after. The most recent was in July. Many involved paint strippers; in other cases victims used the chemical for tasks such as cleaning and gluing carpet, according to death investigations and autopsy reports the Center obtained through Freedom of Information Act and state open records requests.
Teenagers on the job, a mother of four, workers nearing retirement, an 80-year-old man - the toxic vapors took them all. A Colorado resident one year older than Welch was killed his first day at a furniture-stripping shop. Three South Carolina workers were felled in a single incident in 1986. Church maintenance employee Steve Duarte, 24, survived the Iraq War only to be killed in 2010 while stripping a baptismal pool in California.
"People have died, it poses this cancer threat … and everybody knows it's a bad chemical, and yet nobody does anything," said Katy Wolf, who recommends safer alternatives to toxic chemicals as director of the nonprofit Institute for Research and Technical Assistance in California. "It's appalling and irresponsible."
Two Medical College of Wisconsin researchers writing in The Journal of the American Medical Association criticized the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency for remaining "mute" on methylene chloride's ability to trigger a heart attack. Year of publication: 1976.
The EPA says it does intend to take action. It is working on a rule - expected to be proposed early next year - that could stiffen warning labels on paint strippers containing the chemical, add certain restrictions or ban the products. But any regulation would come more than 30 years after the agency first considered such possibilities for methylene chloride.
The industry is lobbying against a rule, saying the chemical already is well-regulated and remains the most effective way to remove paint.
Faye Graul, executive director of the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, a trade group that includes methylene chloride manufacturers, said the way to stop the string of deaths is simple: "Proper use of the product." Labels on the cans warn against using in areas that aren't well ventilated.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission, for its part, denied a 1985 petition to ban the chemical in household products, when the issue was cancer, requiring instead a carcinogen warning that appears on cans in fine print. And CPSC staff shrugged off requests by California and Washington state officials in 2012 to consider stiffer regulation in response to the recurring deaths, later contending that the problem is an occupational one - even though consumers have died, too.
"To provide information to the public concerning this matter, CPSC has produced a paint stripper pamphlet," an agency toxicologist wrote to the state officials in letters obtained by the Center.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration tightened its rules for on-the-job exposures to methylene chloride in 1997. But OSHA standards don't cover consumers or the self-employed, and many of the recent fatalities happened at sites that are virtually invisible to the agency until there's a death - inside residential bathrooms where lone workers strip tubs of old, chipped finishes.
Methylene chloride offers a case study in how products that pose major risks remain on store shelves. Stuart M. Statler, who helped write the Consumer Product Safety Act and served as a Republican commissioner on the CPSC from 1979 to 1986, said too often companies don't prioritize safety, seeing it as a needless cost. And agencies are unlikely to force the point with bans. He doesn't see that changing.
"The pendulum has swung so far in the direction of deregulation," said Statler, now a product safety and regulatory consultant.
"Too Hazardous" Outside Controlled Settings
Methylene chloride, also called dichloromethane, is briskly efficient in all that it does. It softens old paint in minutes, allowing the coating to be scraped off. But if its fumes build up in an enclosed space, it can kill in minutes, too.
The California Department of Public Health, in its appeal to the CPSC, said the continuing deaths suggest methylene chloride is "too hazardous to be used outside of engineered industrial environments" - exactly what the European Union concluded about the chemical in paint strippers. While these products can be bought at home-improvement and general retail stores across the US, the specialty respirators and polyvinyl-alcohol gloves needed to handle them safely cannot, the Department of Public Health says.
Even workers wearing respiratory protection have succumbed. Levi Weppler, 30, who left a widow pregnant with their first child, was among those found dead with a respirator on, slumped over the Ohio bathtub he was refinishing in 2011. The cartridge-style device he used to filter the air wasn't enough: Only a full-face respirator with a separate air supply, or exhaust ventilation to remove the fumes, is sufficient, OSHA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health say.
By 1985, US agencies considered methylene chloride a probable human carcinogen - the Food and Drug Administration banned it in hairspray as a result. But the rapid-death problem was identified even earlier. In 1976, NIOSH noted that reports of such fatalities dated to 1947, when four men using the chemical for hops extraction were "overcome" and one of them died.
Dr. Kenneth Rosenman, chief of Michigan State University's Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, helped identify the more recent trend of bathtub fatalities from methylene chloride in a 2012 paper that has galvanized efforts by public-health officials.
They fear the fume risk isn't widely known.
"It's not surprising to the scientists who have studied methylene chloride in paint strippers when used in small spaces, but I think it's surprising to the worker and consumer who can purchase the product off the shelf," said Dr. Robert Harrison, chief of the California Department of Public Health's occupational health surveillance program.
Methylene chloride exposure triggers regular calls to the nation's poison control centers. They handled more than 2,700 such cases in the five years ending in 2013, the most recent data.
The number involving inhalation wasn't recorded, but almost all the exposures were accidental. Hundreds involved children. And about 950 of the exposed people went to the hospital or sought other medical treatment, according to a Center analysis of American Association of Poison Control Centers reports.
The death toll compiled by the Center, meanwhile, almost certainly is an undercount. Poison control centers don't hear about all incidents. OSHA tracks workplace fatalities, but not cases involving the self-employed or consumers. And Rosenman is sure the true cause of death for some methylene chloride victims is missed, given the chemical's ability to trigger a heart attack.
Paint-stripping powerhouse W.M. Barr & Co., an employee-owned company in Tennessee that makes several methylene chloride brands, including ones linked to six worker deaths since 2006, sees the safety issue differently.
Barr's founder helped the Navy develop the product during World War II to avoid fire hazards after a deadly incident on a ship involving a flammable paint stripper, according to Barr's vice president of risk management, Mike Cooley. Methylene chloride is nonflammable. Several million cans of paint stripper containing the chemical are sold in the US each year, Cooley wrote in an email to the Center.
"One cannot but help conclude that for the vast, vast majority of consumers, the products were and continue to be safe," he wrote. "Like many products, there are hazards related to the use of [methylene chloride] paint removers. However when used in the proper setting and as directed, they are not only effective but safe."
Swift Death
Setting aside longer-term health concerns, such as cancer, the danger posed by methylene chloride is its one-two punch when fumes accumulate. Because it turns into carbon monoxide in the body, it can starve the heart of oxygen and prompt an attack. The chemical also acts as an anesthetic at high doses: Its victims slump over, no longer breathing, because the respiratory centers of their brains switch off.
An open flame, meanwhile, can transform methylene chloride to phosgene. That's the poisonous gas used to deadly effect during World War I, responsible for more fatalities than chlorine and mustard gas combined. (Whether methylene chloride became phosgene in any of the deaths the Center tracked isn't clear; full records were not available in all cases.)
The 1986 triple-fatality shows how swiftly death can come.
Several contracting firms were working on projects at a dam pumping station in Laurens, South Carolina. One had employees applying paint stripper to an underground area, described by OSHA in records as a basement and a pumping pit. Those workers managed to evacuate after the fumes built up, but when one man went back in, he was overcome so quickly he couldn't get out.
He died. The emergency medical responder who tried to rescue him had to be hospitalized. Two of another contractor's employees went through the same exercise, one entering the area to turn on the sump pump and passing out, the other felled while checking on him, according to OSHA records. The first man survived; the would-be rescuer did not.
To top it off, an electrician working aboveground "heard an unusual noise," according to OSHA, and died in the basement when he went to see what it was.
Four years ago at a California paint company, Gary de la Peña discovered a co-worker lying unconscious in a nine-foot-deep paint-mixing tank. The man had been cleaning it with paint stripper and collapsed. De la Peña rushed in, pulled off his colleague's useless respirator and put him over one shoulder to carry him out. That's all he remembers. Already - in just a matter of seconds - the fumes had overcome him, too.
The man he was trying to save died. De la Peña, now 49 and living in Mexico City, still doesn't know how he survived. He was in the tank for at least 45 minutes, green foam flowing from his mouth when he was finally pulled out. He had to be resuscitated and was hospitalized for four days, according to a state investigation.
He wasn't able to finish his medical treatments before his immigration status forced him back to Mexico. His health has never been the same.
"I guess it attacked my nervous system," said de la Peña, who knew nothing about methylene chloride until after his brush with it. "It's a really dangerous chemical."
Sufficiently concentrated, methylene chloride will kill anyone. But people with heart conditions face higher risks because it doesn't take as much carbon monoxide to trigger an attack. Smokers can be affected more quickly, too, given their already-elevated carbon monoxide levels.
In one incident, detailed in the 1976 Journal of the American Medical Association article, a 66-year-old retiree had three heart attacks - the last one fatal - that each began as he was stripping a large chest of drawers.
"Nobody warned him," said Rosenman, the Michigan State professor.
What Agencies Have Done - and Left Undone
Judy Braiman remembers reading about the heart-attack risk in the 1970s, probably in that same JAMA article. Around 1977, her Empire State Consumer Association in New York petitioned the CPSC to require a warning on methylene chloride paint strippers that "particular care … must be exercised by persons with heart problems or impaired lung function" because carbon monoxide would form in the body from use. The CPSC, alarmed, announced that its staff was drafting a proposed warning.
Braiman, a former CPSC advisor and president of the since-renamed Empire State Consumer Project, clearly remembers seeing the carbon monoxide cautions appear on cans afterward - only to disappear a few years later. The CPSC never did require them, the agency says.
Today, some labels tell customers with heart problems to check with a physician before using paint strippers. The Center could find none that specifically warned about carbon monoxide or heart attacks.
Alex Filip, a spokesman for the CPSC, said by email that he doesn't have much information on the agency's methylene chloride work in the 1970s because the staffers involved are all gone. As to why the commission didn't consider regulation more recently, he suggested that its hands are tied - something that was not communicated to the state officials in the letters responding to their requests for help.
"One fact that stands out in our early investigation is that the injury and death information indicates that this is largely a workplace issue, which is outside of our jurisdiction," Filip wrote. CPSC staff tell him their review of epidemiology data found no people who died as a result of using the products as consumers, and they believe the agency's stance on warning labels is "still appropriate."
Yet deaths from the solvent that involve consumers, though far harder to track than worker fatalities, have occurred in the US The CPSC, in fact, said in its 1978 announcement of proposed warnings that it was aware of "at least three" heart-attack deaths among people using methylene chloride paint strippers in 1976 alone. In 1990, a coroner blamed the chemical after Julette "Julie" Jenkins, a 28-year-old Ohio woman who had been stripping a desk in her attic, dropped dead on the first floor, teacup in hand. And an 80-year-old man died from unintentionally inhaling methylene chloride in 2013, the poison control center system reported.
As the CPSC notes, another agency is working on the issue now - the EPA. Paint strippers with methylene chloride are a test case, one of a handful of chemical uses the EPA recently assessed in hopes of using the weak Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, to actually control toxic substances.
"About one person per year over the last dozen years or so has died, usually in an enclosed space like a bathroom," Jim Jones, assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said of methylene chloride strippers. "Certainly [that] is what jumped out at us. But when we did the assessment, we also found cancer risks."
The solvent industry opposes the effort. After the EPA identified methylene chloride in 2012 as a chemical it intended to assess, the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance told the agency it was "mystified" by the attention. Methylene chloride "is more than adequately regulated" already, wrote Graul, the group's executive director.
Paint stripper warning labels, in Spanish as well as English, all advise against using the products in poorly ventilated areas, she said in a recent interview. Some give bathrooms as an example.
"There are precautions on how to use it, how not to use it," Graul said. "Amateurs were taking it and stripping bathtubs with it, with no ventilation, and there were fatalities as a result."
But a Center review of products sold at 15 home-improvement stores in the Baltimore-Washington region did not turn up any that explained, on the label, the potentially fatal consequences of using without sufficient airflow. The closest to it: that "intentional misuse" - so-called huffing to get a chemical high - could result in death.
This story is part of Environmental Justice, Denied. A look at the environmental problems that disproportionately affect communities of color. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.
Copyright 2015 The Center for Public Integrity.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source. JAMIE SMITH HOPKINS
Before joining the Center's environment and labor team, Jamie Smith Hopkins worked for 15 years for the Baltimore Sun, where she spent most of her time as a business reporter. Her coverage of the housing market, before and after the 2008 economic crash, drew awards from the National Association of Real Estate Editors and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.
SABEW also honored a 2011 data-driven investigation into a pervasive property-tax break that left neighbors with identical homes paying dramatically different tax bills. Hopkins was the valedictorian of her class at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
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Dupont to pay $724k for deadly explosion: EPA Announces
Oct 2, 2015 | Rapid News Network
By Angel Wallace
According to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, on November 9, 2010, the ignition of flammable vinyl fluoride that had seeped inside a 10,000 gallon process tank at the DuPont facility resulted in an explosion that killed one worker and badly burned another. Government investigations found that DuPont overlooked hazards at its facility in violation of the Clean Air Act’s general duty clause.
The workers died after being exposed to methyl mercaptan, a raw material used to manufacture an insecticide. OSHA has fined DuPont $372,000 for various safety violations and placed the company on its severe violator enforcement program.
The board investigates industrial and chemical accidents, but it has no regulatory authorityб and can only make recommendations on accident prevention.
The Chemical Safety Board’s interim recommendations for DuPont, released this week and approved by the board Wednesday, contain more than just measures of corrective action the board is urging DuPont to take before it resumes operations at the La Porte pesticide unit.
Warren Hoy, the manager of the Tonawanda plant, also known as DuPont’s Yerkes facility, confirmed the company has worked to improve safety at the plant.
The interim report also said detectors at the plant that warn of methyl mercaptan releases “provided essentially no value to DuPont personnel or to the public” and that employees had become so accustomed to the odor of methyl mercaptan that they didn’t recognize it presented a hazard.
Still, even if those fans had been working, investigators say they doubt the ventilation in the building could have purged the unit of toxic air in time to save those workers. “The chemical explosion that happened at DuPont in Tonawanda must never happen again”. Wilson says a better warning system could have prevented the accident.
“We’ve already acted on the recommendations from the incident investigations conducted by the CSB and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and our own internal investigation, and we have implemented engineering and procedural safeguards to prevent recurrence and to limit emissions of vinyl fluoride vapors”, Hoy said. “That means largely if there’s going to be change, by DuPont, it rests with you all”, Wilson told the board.
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EPA defends new ozone standard as green allies fume
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
U.S. EPA is defending its choice of setting a new national ozone standard at 70 parts per billion despite blistering criticism by health and environmental groups that it won't protect the public.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said that, while there's no "bright line" on where a standard should be set, she based the 70 ppb limit on a review of the best available public health science. The limit would protect the public with an adequate margin of safety, as is required by the Clean Air Act, McCarthy asserted.
"I need to do what is requisite: not too high and not too low, and it's very challenging," she said. "There's no bright line, but I used as much thought and reason on how we could actually identify health impacts that we could eliminate."
But public health and clean air advocates have accused EPA of dodging questions about its decision and of ignoring scientific advice to set a standard at 60 ppb. They're almost certain to file a lawsuit challenging the final rule (Greenwire, Sept. 29).
"This appears to be an arbitrary decision in search of a rationale," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch.
EPA yesterday finalized the new standard. While it represents a tighter limit than the 75 ppb standard set in 2008 during the George W. Bush administration, it's the upper end of the range that the agency proposed last November.
In rolling out the rule, EPA said that, excluding California, limiting ozone concentrations to 70 ppb will save up to 660 lives, prevent 230,000 asthma attacks in children and prevent 630 asthma-related emergency visits by 2025. In California, the new standard will prevent up to 220 premature deaths, 160,000 asthma attacks in children and 380 asthma-related hospital visits (E&ENews PM, Oct. 1).
Top EPA officials yesterday said they based the standard on definitive scientific findings that 72 ppb is the lowest ozone exposure that causes adverse health effects in healthy, exercising adults. Those health effects include decreased lung function and increased respiratory symptoms.
McCarthy said that, after identifying 72 ppb as harmful exposure, she considered what standard would provide the public with an adequate margin of safety.
"We must protect all people from this level of exposure -- including kids, people with asthma, older Americans, and those who are active and work outside," McCarthy said. "So the standard needed to be lower than 72 ppb."
According to EPA, the science gets more uncertain as exposure levels go down. So the agency settled on 70 ppb as providing the best protection.
"The science is clear at 72 that the effects are harmful, are adverse, as those terms have been defined," EPA acting air chief Janet McCabe told public health groups on a briefing call yesterday. "And the science is less certain at levels below 72 that the effects that one sees in the studies are adverse."
The decision to set a 70 ppb standard comes after the Obama administration considered setting a 65 ppb standard in 2011. But the White House pulled the plug on a revision to the standard that year in the face of the upcoming 2012 election.
McCarthy yesterday defended her decision to differ from her predecessor, Lisa Jackson, who was at the helm of EPA at the time of the scuttled standard and who had made ozone pollution a priority.
"I have a little bit of advantage, so I apologize to Lisa Jackson," McCarthy said. "There's a lot more health data available today than she had available. We have 1,000 more studies in this package for us to look at that wasn't available to her."
McCarthy said that those studies included a "very definitive" study linking ozone exposures of 72 ppb to adverse health effects, as well as several studies that examined the potential impacts of a 60 ppb standard.
"When you look at these studies, as I did when making my decision," she said, "I think it was very clear to me that 70 was the standard where we should land."Enviros see 'sleight of hand'
Public health and environmental groups, however, are accusing the agency of ignoring the recommendation of its own scientific advisers, as well as the advice of the nation's leading medical groups.
"The level chosen of 70 parts per billion (ppb) simply does not reflect what the science shows is necessary to truly protect public health," American Lung Association President and CEO Harold Wimmer said in a statement yesterday.
The agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, a panel made up of outside experts who study air pollution, recommended in June 2014 that the agency choose a new standard in the range of 60 to 70 ppb after intense debate over whether 70 ppb would offer enough protection against adverse health effects.
CASAC noted in its official recommendation to the agency that it preferred a new standard near the lower end of the range (E&ENews PM, June 4, 2014).
"Obviously we were disappointed in the 2008 decision from this previous administration where CASAC's advice to the agency was essentially ignored," said Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs at the Respiratory Health Association. "And looking at the advice that CASAC has given to the agency this time around, it looks to a certain extent that that is still going on."
Top EPA officials say they took the scientific advisory group's advice into account.
"I have to disagree that CASAC is being ignored. CASAC clearly recommended a range of 60 to 70," McCabe said. "They acknowledged that the decision about the adequate margin of safety was a policy decision, that it is the administrator's to make. And that's what she did."
Public health advocates contend that the evidence linking 60 ppb exposures of ozone to negative health effects has grown more certain over the years.
The nation's leading public health organizations had recommended that EPA set a new standard no higher than 60 ppb.
John Walke, the Natural Resources Defense Council's clean air director, wrote in a scathing email that EPA's explanation of how it came to a 70 ppb standard "falls apart in the face of multiple lines of inconvenient arguments."
"EPA acknowledged that they found effects below 70 'but it was less clear whether those effects were adverse'? So EPA would have the public believe the effects of smog below 70 ppb are beneficial?!" he said.
He also charged that EPA gave less weight in its final rule to epidemiological studies that have found negative health effects associated with levels lower than 70 ppb.
Public health and environmental groups say EPA is missing an opportunity to save more people from asthma attacks and premature death.
According to EPA's regulatory impact analysis from last November, a standard of 65 ppb would prevent 960,000 child asthma attacks, or about three times the amount than a 70 ppb standard. A 60 ppb standard would prevent 1.8 million child asthma attacks.
In that analysis, EPA also found that a tighter standard would prevent hundreds more premature deaths than a 70 ppb standard.
EPA's McCarthy said that the nation should strive to lower ozone levels below 70 ppb but that the standard would be fully protective of children and older adults because it would result in ozone levels lower than the standard most of the time.
According to McCarthy, the standard would protect more than 98 percent of children from repeated exposures to ozone as low as 60 ppb.
"I'm confident that we're not only getting the elimination of health effects that we saw at 72," she said, "but also really robust reductions of repeated exposures."
Walke called that reasoning a "sleight of hand."
"EPA's sleight of hand pointing to reduced exposure levels among children in order to obscure or justify acceptance of an unprotective smog standard for those still exposed," he said, "is in some ways the most damning and telling indictment of the Obama administration's unsafe decision."
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Drillers experiment with sand levels in frack jobs
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Energywire
Brett Pennington is in the Texas Eagle Ford Shale formation conducting a top-secret experiment to answer an important question.
The experiment includes the Murphy Oil Corp. exploration chief doubling the amount of sand he blasts down an oil well during hydraulic fracturing. The question is how to get more oil with less cost.
So far, these types of experiments have panned out well: A study in the Eagle Ford shows that extra sand in each injection can at times triple the output.
"I can't control the price of the commodity," Pennington said in a recent interview. "The only thing we can do is get better and faster and cheaper. There's a general correlation that more sand equates to a better well."
Frac sand prices have dropped with the price of oil, and, if national trends apply, more sand in the well means higher output. In 2012, less than 1,000 pounds of sand was used per each foot down the well, according to energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie Ltd. In 2013, it increased to 1,200 pounds, and increased again to more than 1,500 pounds last year.
U.S. oil output is still within 3 percent of its 40-year high even as thousands are laid off and rigs close.
Pennington's experiment will be interesting to watch because if it works, it could be huge, but there's also the potential for huge failure.
Sand traditionally is blasted down wells with water to deepen water-weathered cracks and keep them open. This keeps oil flowing. Too much sand, however, could clog the cracks and block the oil.
Pennington said he wouldn't tell where the well is or how the experiment is going until it's completed in the next few months (Murtaugh/Wethe, Bloomberg, Sept. 30). -- MB
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Drilling company seeks repeal of 'false' report on flaring
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Greenwire
By Phil Taylor
Continental Resources Inc., one of North Dakota's largest oil producers, is demanding an environmental group retract a report it issued this week that accused the company of flaring more gas than all other companies combined.
The Oklahoma-based firm with major operations in the Bakken play said the report by Friends of the Earth "was false and libeled" the company and should be taken down from the group's website and social media.
"We are giving you the opportunity to correct and [retract] your report ... and issue an apology," Eric Eissenstat, the company's senior vice president and general counsel, wrote in aletter Wednesday to FOE. "Absent your doing so in the immediate future, we will pursue appropriate actions against all responsible parties, including the author and the person who approved the report."
At issue is FOE's report "A Flaring Shame," released Wednesday, which found Continental had flared more natural gas than roughly 50 other companies in North Dakota combined from 2007 to 2013.
In total, the Bureau of Land Management permitted companies to flare $524 million worth of gas during that time frame without paying royalties, which cost taxpayers more than $65 million in revenues, the report found.
Continental was responsible for roughly half the flaring -- nearly eight times as much gas as the next highest company, the report found.
The report urged BLM to collect more royalties on the gas companies that burn on public and tribal lands, which environmental groups argue harms the environment and fleeces taxpayers. It was timed to inform BLM's development of a rule to update its venting and flaring regulations, which is due to be released this fall (Greenwire, Sept. 14).
The report is "totally erroneous," according to Jeff Hume, vice chairman of strategic growth initiatives at Continental.
Roughly 97 percent of the gas the company was accused of flaring in the FOE report was "non-usable" and would not have been subject to royalties, he said. The gas, which came from enhanced oil recovery operations in Bowman and Slope counties, was stripped of its hydrocarbons before being flared, he said.
It consists of mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide, but not methane, which is the primary constituent in the natural gas burned in homes and factories, Hume said.
"They've mixed up an apple and an orange here," he said of the report.
FOE Climate and Energy Director Ben Schreiber issued a statement this morning defending the report and asking Continental to submit additional data to Interior to back up its claims.
"This federal data remains the best and only comprehensive data set for how much of this natural resource is being given away for free to individual companies on public and tribal lands in North Dakota," he said. "We stand by our report as an analysis of the best available public data set, until and unless new federal data becomes public."
Schreiber added, "If the data provided by the BLM is incorrect, it highlights the fact that only oil companies know how much taxpayer-owned resources are being handed over for free."
It is true that companies flare a much higher percentage of gas in North Dakota than in most other states. Companies have drilled the Bakken primarily for oil, which in recent years was much more profitable to sell than natural gas. The gas that came up with the oil was flared in the absence of infrastructure to transport and process it.
In August 2014, companies flared 28 percent of the natural gas produced, according to ananalysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Continental says it captured and sold 87 percent of the gas it produced in North Dakota in 2014, up from 81 percent three years before.
The FOE report is the latest effort by environmental groups to quantify the amount of gas being flared, vented and leaked from drilling operations on public and tribal lands.
It shows that finding data on the subject is not easy.
The FOE report relied on oil and gas operations reports that companies file to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue, but those reports apparently do not reflect the precise amount of usable gas that's being flared.
Brad Purdy, a spokesman in BLM's Billings, Mont., office, which oversees North Dakota drilling, said the agency had concerns with the FOE report.
"It is somewhat problematic to lump all the different gases together, apply a unit cost, hit the multiply key, come up with a number and call it 'value of lost gas,'" he said. "As you know from covering environment and energy news, it is never that simple."
Purdy pulled data on two of Continental's operating wells in Bowman that appear to back up the company's claims. Gas from the Medicine Pole Hills Unit consists of 78 percent nitrogen and 12 percent carbon dioxide, and gas from the Cedar Hills North Unit consists of 58 percent nitrogen and 6 percent CO2, the data show.
"The gas analysis does show that from well to well, the mixture of gas does vary, thus so does the value of the particular commodity," he said. "Is venting and flaring a concern? Sure it is. I don't think anyone would dispute that."
BLM's forthcoming rule seeks to reduce the waste of gas and release of methane from flaring, venting and leaking.
In 2013, industry vented, flared or leaked 98 billion cubic feet of natural gas from public and Indian lands nationwide, BLM estimated. The wasted gas -- about 22 percent of which was vented -- was enough to supply 1.3 million homes, it said.
About two-thirds of the gas came from federally administered minerals. Of those minerals, roughly 2.3 percent of the total gas production was wasted and about $33 million of royalties was lost, BLM said.
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No landowner permission needed for Va. pipeline surveys, court says
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M Gilmer
A federal court in Virginia this week upheld a state law that allows pipeline planners to access private lands without permission.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit from landowners who challenged attempts by Dominion Resources Inc. to enter their land for pipeline surveying.
The proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which has additional buy-in from Duke Energy Corp., Piedmont Natural Gas Company Inc. and AGL Resources Inc., would stretch 550 miles from West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina, carrying natural gas from shale fields to markets. Before getting federal approval, Dominion must survey the route and do preliminary environmental analysis.
When certain landowners refused to allow pipeline planners on their property, Dominion notified them that it had the right to access the land with or without permission. Virginia law allows government entities and certain private companies, including pipeline operators, to enter private land without landowner permission, so long as they give notice.
Five Nelson County landowners then filed suit in federal court last year, arguing that the state law is unconstitutional because the right to exclude someone from one's land is a protected aspect of property rights. Dominion's private business interests should not outweigh those property rights, they said.
Dominion countered that the $5 billion pipeline was a legitimate state interest, and certain private property rights would have to give way. State attorneys also jumped into the case to defend the law.
"Simply put, neither the United States nor Virginia Constitution guarantee Plaintiffs' right to exclude all entries on their property in all circumstances," Dominion said in a court filing (EnergyWire, Aug. 5). "In certain cases, the right to exclude must yield to legitimate state interests."
Dominion since has changed the route of the proposed pipeline to exclude the plaintiffs' properties but could not guarantee the plans would not change back, so the litigation continued.
In this week's decision, Judge Elizabeth Dillon agreed with Dominion and the state, finding that a landowner's right to exclude others from his or her property is not absolute.
"There can be no doubt that the right to exclude is one of the essential sticks in the bundle of property rights," she wrote. "But, as defendants and the Commonwealth maintain, it is not absolute. Quite the contrary. The common law has long recognized exceptions to the right."
She added that Virginia has long recognized those exceptions, which include projects that are in the public interest or other actions that help fulfill a legislative duty.
Friends of Nelson, a grass-roots group, vowed to continue fighting the pipeline project, which they worry will rip up the countryside and pose risks of leaks and explosions.
"Friends of Nelson continues to urge landowners to refuse survey until forced by a court order," the group said in a statement yesterday. "It is the only tool we as property owners have prior to pipeline approval to demonstrate unequivocally that we are opposed to the construction of the ACP on our property and that the state is forcing us to comply."
The lawsuit is one of several active property rights disputes over pipeline construction across the country. In neighboring West Virginia, where state eminent domain law is slightly less industry-friendly, a court recently found that pipeline planners for the Mountain Valley Pipeline -- and, by extension, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline -- could not enter private property without permission (EnergyWire, Aug. 7).
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Southern state lawmakers take tough line on EPA rule
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
Even a visit from U.S. EPA air chief Janet McCabe couldn't temper the determination of the Southern States Energy Board (SSEB) to register its strong disapproval of the agency's rule to curtail carbon emissions from the nation's power plants.
The SSEB, at its annual meeting at the Greenbrier in West Virginia earlier this week, unanimously passed a resolution urging its state attorneys general to file lawsuits "to prevent unlawful obligations from being imposed on states, electricity providers, business and citizens" once EPA publishes the final rule in the Federal Register.
The group also called on governors to consider a variety of other actions, including refusing to submit a compliance plan to EPA.
The SSEB, established in 1960, consists of governors and a member each from the states' House and Senate. Members comprise 16 states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia -- as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
So far, eight of the SSEB states have signed onto legal challenges.
The EPA Clean Power Plan "interferes with the sovereign powers of the states to regulate electricity within their border," the SSEB resolution said.
It was sponsored by the hosting West Virginia delegation. Senate President Bill Cole (R), in a statement, said the resolution is "one more tool we have at our disposal to fully protect the interests of our state and its coal miners" as he decried EPA's "infringing upon the rights of these states to make their own, best energy choices."
The SSEB's Clean Power Plan resolution suggested two other paths that governors might want to consider in addition to refusing to draft a compliance plan. One was to ask for the two-year extension EPA has offered for submitting a final plan, giving states until 2018.
The other was to work with "state environmental agencies to submit an implementation plan that the state deems to be feasible and legally sound regardless of whether the plan conforms to the final rule." One attendee described that as a path to further "legal maneuvers" for states opposed to the EPA plan.
"The SSEB wanted to adopt a policy that allows states to have a variety of tools to respond to the Clean Power Plan in a way that expresses their concerns about the economic implications as well as the reliability concerns they see with the rule," said Heather Breeden, the group's legislative and regulatory counsel. "State responses to the CPP are constantly evolving as they evaluate the final rule," she added.Dual tracks
Len Peters, Kentucky's secretary of energy and environment, represents Gov. Steve Beshear (D) on the SSEB.
"It's evident that there are an increasing number of states that are looking at dual pathways of litigation and preparing a plan so that they are prepared should litigation fail," Peters said in an interview. "It's difficult to argue against the wisdom of that."
Beshear believes "a plan specific to Kentucky prepared by Kentuckians is the best way to proceed should litigation not prevail."
But Beshear's term is about to end, and Kentucky will swear in a new governor on Dec. 8.
To help, Peters said his office is preparing "a transition document -- in no way a transition plan or a suggested plan" -- that lays out a primer on the Clean Power Plan for his successor.
Before McCabe addressed the SSEB, she met with the Kentucky delegation. "To say the least, it was a frank exchange of opinions," Peters said. "We said we were very, very disappointed at the differences between the proposed plan and the final rule."
The final rule requires the state to trim its carbon emissions rate 39 percent by 2030, compared with 18 percent in the proposed rule.
"I find that quite disingenuous," Peters said. "What we commented on was dramatically different than what we would comment on today if we had the opportunity to comment today on the final rule."
In particular, Peters said the burden of a much higher emissions reduction goal and the costs to get there present the challenge of "how we make sure that we do not do damage manufacturing in the country."
Peters said EPA essentially needs what would amount to an "economic safety valve" much as the agency proposed to maintain grid reliability.'Rainbows and sunshine'
After McCabe's presentation, Georgia Rep. Chuck Martin (R) twice went to the microphone to register his displeasure, he said in an interview.
He took "offense" at McCabe's message that the agency had listened to those who commented on the proposed rule and made substantive changes.
"It's all good now -- rainbows and sunshine" was her message, Martin said.
"The rule as proposed was so onerous, of course they had to make some changes," he added. "That does not put states in a position where this is not going to be painful, where it is not going to cost billions, this is not going to cost jobs.
"They want to take the high ground by invoking people's emotions -- that they care and we don't. And I just don't subscribe to that," Martin said.
Georgia has yet to say whether the state will join others in a lawsuit over the EPA rule.
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Texas regulator says crafting state plan 'waste' of time
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Energywire
By Edward Klump
AUSTIN, Texas -- Brandy Marty Marquez, who has helped regulate Texas utilities for about two years, said yesterday that she sees no reason for the state to begin exploring ways to comply with U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan as the rule undergoes legal challenges.
Marquez previously worked in the administration of former Gov. Rick Perry (R) and dealt with federal initiatives such as the Affordable Care Act. With the Clean Power Plan, she said, going down a dual path of planning and litigation doesn't seem productive.
"From my perspective, to create a state plan is a waste of our time and energy," Marquez said here in an interview after speaking at the fall conference of the Gulf Coast Power Association (GCPA).
The Clean Power Plan seeks to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants 32 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. Targets vary by state, with initial compliance envisioned by 2022. Environmental groups have applauded the rule as a step to reduce pollution, while critics have called it a costly plan that oversteps EPA's authority.
Marquez, who is a member of the three-person Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC), said talk of flexibility in EPA's carbon plan should be "in air quotes." She also said she didn't see the federal government's authority to act as the rule suggested.
"I don't believe that there is any such thing as a state plan that the federal government has final approval over," Marquez said. "I think it's just states doing a job for the federal government."
Marquez's lack of interest in exploring a state plan is different from the reaction in nearby Arkansas, which has a meeting on the carbon plan scheduled for next week even as it has announced plans to pursue a legal challenge.
Colette Honorable, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who previously was a regulator in Arkansas, said Wednesday that Arkansas took a good approach to planning.
"I recommend the same approach for Texas," Honorable said here in an interview with reporters. She said it wouldn't be a surprise that Texas officials might seek to raise issues on legality and enforceability.
"I would hope also that for the sake of the people that they serve that they would be thoughtful," Honorable said.Seeking to engage and prepare
The FERC commissioner said officials with Texas and its main grid operator had done an "amazing job" over the years and would continue to do so.
"I think the best way to do it, if I might say, is to continue to engage and to prepare and plan," she said.
Honorable added that "lawyers and folks that make decisions will handle the challenge of the rule, and then the planners and the energy experts and engineers and others will carry out this work alongside a number of stakeholders."
When asked about Honorable yesterday, Marquez called her "one of the most fantastic people that I've ever had the opportunity to meet." The Texas commissioner said a dual approach may be fine for Arkansas but that didn't change her thoughts on not pursuing a plan in Texas.
Marquez has said the Clean Power Plan could have "crushing" effects, while also saying she sees Texas as "the greenest state in the nation." She touted nitrogen oxide and ozone reductions, and she noted key roles of natural gas and wind and potentially solar in Texas power. Marquez also mentioned the state's importance to the oil, gas and petrochemical industries.
"The goals that the Clean Power Plan espouses are goals that are being met in Texas already, and they're being done in such a way that is not harmful to ratepayers and not harmful to the economy overall, and that is the biggest detriment of this plan," she said.
In considering potential effects, Marquez said some ratepayers wouldn't be able to handle major increases in power costs.
"We all want cleaner air, cleaner water, cleaner soil," she said. "But those things are luxuries to think about when you can't feed your family or when you can't take your medicine."
The office of Ken Paxton, Texas' Republican attorney general, indicated in August a willingness to pursue litigation if EPA denied a request for a stay.
As for Texas' next steps, Marquez said: "I would say let's let the litigation do its thing."
Marquez noted that her opinion came as just one of three PUC commissioners. Members of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality also are among the parties with a role in any discussion the state might consider.
U.S. data have shown Texas to be the state with the most carbon dioxide emissions. Under EPA's carbon rule, states without an acceptable plan may face a federal implementation plan in the future.Different views on carbon plan
Nationally, market forces and incentives for renewables are causing the United States to decarbonize, and there's a progression in terms of solar, wind and gas, Stephen Byrd, head of research in utilities and clean energy at Morgan Stanley, told the conference here yesterday.
Byrd cited an analysis of the plan and said some additional efforts might be needed to meet 2030 carbon goals.
In the Southeast, coal plants may be shut, with gas and renewables possibly built under a rate base structure, according to Byrd. He said the Northeast may use options such as hydropower from Canada, while in the West, some states may exceed compliance levels. The middle of the country is "a mixed bag," as Byrd said the positions of states vary.
"Through relatively modest cooperation among states, we do think the costs to comply are actually low, without any need for a breakthrough technology or an incredibly heavy hand in terms of forcing one outcome over another," Byrd said.
He said Texas may have some issues, though they may come from other EPA regulations. Byrd said certain coal retirements are possible over the next five years.
A day earlier, on Wednesday, the Clean Power Plan sparked a range of views at the conference here.
John Hall of the Environmental Defense Fund said trends are moving Texas toward compliance, and he said the state should look to maximize benefits and develop a plan given its range of resources.
Michael Nasi, a partner with the law firm Jackson Walker LLP, warned of the potential effects of the carbon plan, including on rates and investments, and he challenged the rule's legality.
Warren Lasher, director of system planning at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state's main grid operator, noted ERCOT's concerns about reliability as expressed following an earlier draft of the Clean Power Plan. He said the council is looking to issue a new analysis on the final rule in mid- to late October.
Yesterday, during a public appearance at the GCPA conference, Marquez called mandates a threat to competition, with the Clean Power Plan putting that on a new scale.
If someone argues that "Texas isn't taking care of its environment, you aren't paying attention," she said.
But Marquez said Texas has done so in a reasonable way that hasn't been detrimental to the economy or residents.
In other words, she said: "Texas is good here."
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What critics get wrong about the EPA's smog rule
Oct 2, 2015 | Chicago Tribune
By Cass Sunstein
is week's decision by the Environmental Protection Agency, imposing a new limit on ground- level ozone at 70 parts per billion, was eminently reasonable -- an impressive vindication of both law and science. The loud objections, coming from both the business community and environmental groups, are unconvincing. (Disclosure: As administrator of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, I was involved in the 2011 decision to postpone the ozone regulation.)
Law first: The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set national ambient air quality standards at a level "requisite to protect the public health" with an "adequate margin of safety." It also requires the EPA to revisit its standards every five years.
In 2001, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that when issuing standards, the EPA lacks the authority to consider costs. And consistent with the schedule laid out in the Clean Air Act, a federal court last year required the agency to issue its ozone standard by Thursday.
It follows that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, and the Barack Obama administration as a whole, were sharply constrained. As Obama noted last month, "there are some fairly stringent statutory guidelines by which EPA is supposed to evaluate the standards."
Under those guidelines, the EPA must obtain advice from a board of scientific experts, the seven-member Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. In recent years, and with reference to the scientific literature, CASAC has consistently recommended a revision of the current standard of 75 ppb, indicating that science supports a standard between 60 ppb and 70 ppb.
In 2014, CASAC unanimously found"clear scientific support for the need to revise the standard." Indeed, CASAC added that "a level of 70 ppb provides little margin of safety for the protection of public health, particularly for sensitive subpopulations."
Reasonably enough, members of the business community do not welcome significant regulatory costs, and have argued vociferously in favor of retaining the 75 ppb standard. Any new standard would indeed be very expensive. But in light of the law and the science, suggesting that a 70 ppb standard would prevent (among other things) hundreds of premature deaths each year, their objections are not strong.
Environmental groups are sorely disappointed; many wanted a standard of 60 ppb. But here as well, the EPA offered an eminently plausible (and impressively technical) explanation. Its central argument is that the evidence of adverse health effects is a lot weaker at the lower end of the CASAC range. Adverse respiratory effects can be found at levels of 80 ppb or higher; at concentrations as low as 72 ppb, healthy young adults, engaged in moderate exertion, have shown decreased lung function and respiratory symptoms.
At 60 ppb, however, no such symptoms have been observed. According to the EPA, scientists have reported no statistically significant increases in respiratory symptoms at either 60 or 63 ppb. At those levels, any adverse effects on lung function have been both short-term and reversible.
CASAC itself concluded that at 60 ppb, the effects "could" be adverse in people with lung disease -- a pretty equivocal conclusion. Hence the EPA found "greater uncertainty" about the nature of adverse effects in the vicinity of 60 ppb.
Importantly, the EPA emphasized that even with a standard of 70 ppb, the new rule will, in practice, end up protecting the vast majority of people (including children) from facing two or more exposures at or above 60 ppb. The agency added that CASAC's discomfort with a standard of 70 ppb was styled as "policy advice" -- and that the choice of that standard reflected its confidence about the levels at which genuinely adverse effects had been demonstrated.
It is true that in light of the "adequate margin of safety" language, and the existing evidence, there is a good argument that EPA had the discretion to choose a standard of 65 ppb, or even 60 ppb. But would that have been better? Its choice of 70 ppb reflected the strongest evidence of harm to public health. And as the standard is actually implemented, that choice will have the further benefit of ensuring that people will be breathing air that is much cleaner than that.
There is a deeper point in the background. Both business organizations and environmental groups make the same blunder: They see the decisions of the EPA (and other agencies) in crassly political terms, as if public officials are usually responding to pressure and "caving" to one side or another -- or trying to decide whom not to offend.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It might be boring, but most of the time, the goal is to follow the law and the evidence, and to ensure that judgments of substantive policy will turn out, in the real world, to be helpful rather than harmful. (I can report that contrary to newspaper accounts, those judgments, and not politics or lobbying, accounted for the decision to delay the rule in 2011; I suspect that the same is true of this week's decision.)
Reasonable people can certainly disagree about how the agency exercised its discretion. But from the standpoint of law and science, the EPA got it exactly right.
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‘Groundhog Day’ ozone standard has GOP, industry eyeing Clean Air Act
Oct 2, 2015 | Politico Pro
By Allen Guillen
EPA critics say the new smog standard it finalized Thursday may breathe new life into efforts to revise the Clean Air Act, one of the nation’s most important environmental laws.
Any changes to the CAA, which has not been substantially updated in a quarter-century, would be extremely difficult in a Congress where legislative gridlock shows no signs of abating. 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Even President Barack Obama has acknowledged that the law forced EPA's hand on the ozone standard, but it remains highly unlikely that he would accept reforms from a GOP-controlled Congress.
“I think there are some other members of the Energy and Commerce Committee that would like to revisit the Clean Air Act, and if we have someone [Republican] in the White House in [2017], I know that there are groups that want to revisit the Clean Air Act,” Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), the Energy and Power Subcommittee chairman, who this week announced plans to retire. “So, I think that that seed has been planted and we’ll see what happens.”
Members of Congress and special interest groups from both sides of the aisle have floated myriad proposals to tweak or overhaul the Clean Air Act since a sweeping package of amendments was enacted in 1990, but virtually none has gained any traction amid worsening legislative gridlock and wariness to meddle with such a marquee law.
The most significant change to the law was the addition of the Renewable Fuel Standard with the 2005 energy law. Congress also came close to adding a carbon cap-and-trade program in the first years of the Obama administration, but the effort fizzled in the Senate and lawmakers have not revisited the law since, even to make minor tweaks.
Unhappy with the tightened ozone standard, the major trade groups for manufacturers and the oil and gas industry are re-upping their calls for changes to the CAA, despite EPA's decision to only lower the ozone decision to 70 parts per billion, the top end of a range recommended by a scientific advisory panel.
“It’s ‘Groundhog Day,’” said Ross Eisenberg, the vice president of energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, which is actively floating the idea of changes to lawmakers — particularly to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards program under which ozone is regulated.
“We certainly believe that it’s worth a very objective, bipartisan effort to modernize this statute,” Eisenberg added. “You don’t have to gut it. It’s been an effective statute, a very effective statute. But the reality of the world we live in is much different than 25 years ago, when we had our last substantial process to amend it.”
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Inhofe says he will offer a resolution to repeal the ozone standard using the Congressional Review Act, a rarely used mechanism that cannot be filibustered but still can be vetoed. Obama would likely veto a CRA, and Republicans would most likely be unable to muster the two-thirds vote to overturn.
Looking beyond the CRA, Inhofe, who co-sponsored the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, said it is worth revisiting the law “if it looks like they’ll be successful in getting this done.”
Not all of EPA’s critics in Congress are anxious to reopen the CAA. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said she wants to see whether EPA addresses her implementation concerns before she decides whether to take another look at the law.
Aside from Congress’ general impasse on energy issues, revisiting a landmark law would provide great temptation for lawmakers, particularly those looking to rein in EPA.
“You can’t really open it up for a surgical strike because it just gets loaded up too fast,” said Stephen Brown, the vice president for federal government affairs at refiner Tesoro.
Even Democrats wary of lowering the ozone standard say reevaluating the CAA would prove disastrous.
“I wouldn’t want the House of Representatives unleashed right now on the Clean Air Act,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said in an interview.
McCaskill last week introduced legislation along with Utah Republican Orrin Hatch that would allow EPA and communities to enter into "early action compacts" to address high ozone levels without being designated as a non-attainment area. She insisted such tweaks could be considered without battling over the entire air law.
“We’re really talking about, with the EPA’s approval, allowing a little bit more flexibility on timing, not going after the rules at their essence,” she said. “And that’s what I think my Republican colleagues would be inclined to do if we opened up the bill.”
The Clean Air Act’s NAAQS program requires EPA to revisit its standards for six specific pollutants every five years. Though the standards don't need to be adjusted in those reviews, the schedule has rarely been adhered to by any administration.
The list includes relatively uncontroversial pollutants like carbon monoxide, the standard for which has gone unchanged since 1971. But standards for more ubiquitous pollutants have become perennial battles pitting industries against environmental and public health advocates. Ozone, a precursor to smog, and particulate matter, which contributes to heart disease and respiratory problems, have been among those fought most fiercely.
Lawmakers and lobbyists who want to re-open the Clean Air Act have yet to produce a detailed wish list with specifics, but the top target is the five-year review.
“Every five years we’re having the exact same fight, and it winds up being environment versus the economy in the press and it winds up being this very, very ugly and sometimes personal battle — and then we have to do it all over again two years later,” said Eisenberg.
Environmentalists counter that there is no such thing as a five-year review given the detailed scientific and legal issues and inevitable regulatory delays. Even the Obama administration took an extra two years.
“We have review cycles that occur in the real world on a seven- to 11-year basis… based on a five-year legal deadline,” said John Walke, the Natural Resources Defense Council's clean air director. “So a 10-year legal deadline would be missed for the same reasons that a five-year legal deadline would be missed.”
Industry also argues that EPA's standard is approaching natural background ozone levels in some parts of the country, meaning those areas may not be able to reach compliance no matter how many limits local regulators placed on major sources of ozone, such as vehicles and factories. Environmentalists dispute that claim, pointing to studies showing background levels significantly lower than the new standard.
When EPA proposed its new ozone standard last year, the agency pointed to 2007 modeling data that showed that even in the intermountain West background, ozone typically did not exceed 45 ppb, despite the region being susceptible to ozone that blows over from China. EPA officials also have stressed that the law has mechanisms to account for background levels, though the industry would like to see changes there, as well.
“The Clean Air Act never envisioned… that we’d be talking about moving standards at or below peak background levels,” said Howard Feldman, the director of regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute. “The way it was written was we’d be bringing levels down that are levels of emissions that we can control, and then we could take steps to do that. But we’re talking about using up all the easy and cheap controls, and now we’ve become more and more challenged to reduce concentrations.”
In any event, greens argue, EPA is supposed to set the standard based on human health, not with implementation concerns in mind.
“If we ever reach the point where the standard we were considering were below or just above background levels in some significant portion of the United States, then maybe that’s a conversation for future elected leaders to have," Walke said. "But we’re not close to that situation now."
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State plots climate change rules for 2030 and beyond despite legislative setback
Oct 2, 2015 | E&E Climatewire
By Debra Kahn
California regulators yesterday unveiled new proposals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through 2030 and beyond, including a strategy for cutting petroleum use in half by 2030.
The goal was among those rejected by state lawmakers last month in the waning days of the legislative session (ClimateWire, Sept. 14). But Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who proposed the goal in January and issued an executive order in April setting an emissions target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, is continuing his push unabated.
The "discussion draft" for mobile sources envisions getting 15 percent of the emissions reductions from existing state programs like the low-carbon fuel standard, the zero-emission vehicle requirement and regional transportation planning rules. Beyond that, reductions would come from increased mandates like 40 percent of new car sales coming from zero-emission vehicles, biofuel use nearly tripling, and electricity- and hydrogen-based fuel increasing by nearly a factor of 40.
It also calls for a joint federal-state standard for combustion engines that is 90 percent cleaner than today's standards in terms of conventional air pollutants, in order to meet existing federal standards for ozone and particulate matter. It does not address yesterday's announcement by U.S. EPA that it would tighten the standard for ground-level ozone (Greenwire, Oct. 1).
Brown spoke at yesterday's multi-agency workshop led by the California Air Resources Board, the agency in charge of writing "scoping plans" under the 2006 law, A.B. 32, that set a target of 1990 emissions levels by 2020. ARB aims to develop the next scoping plan over the next 12 to 18 months, officials said, with a series of technical and regional workshops around the state aimed at tailoring the plan and getting businesses, environmentalists, communities and other stakeholders on board.
The scoping plan "is the concrete process by which we deal with all these complicated issues," Brown said. As such, he said, it's "more important than 95 percent of the news you can read today."
The latest iteration of the plan will focus on achieving 2030 emissions targets despite lawmakers' rejection of a bill that would have enshrined in law the state's greenhouse gas targets for 2030 and 2050 (ClimateWire, Sept. 11).'We can't wait until everybody gets it'
Brown acknowledged the difficulty in cutting petroleum use, but cited Bank of England Chairman Mark Carney's comments earlier this week that 60 to 80 percent of the world's proven petroleum reserves would need to stay in the ground in order to prevent a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius (ClimateWire, Sept. 30).
"That's probably the most concrete that I have heard from a mainstream, credible person not in the environmental movement that's telling us we can't wait until everybody gets it; we have to start now," he said.
"Whatever way you're functioning as a modern person, you're dependent on fossil fuels," he said. "Anybody who has any understanding of what is implied ... realizes this cannot be done lightly or without a mobilization globally that we have never seen before outside time of war."
Staff from ARB, the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission and other state agencies yesterday outlined broad strategies for reducing emissions from a host of sectors, including electricity, building efficiency, forest and farmlands, transportation and short-lived climate pollutants, for which ARB released a draft proposal Wednesday (ClimateWire, Oct. 1).
Brown, who participated in last-minute negotiations over the bills, has been equally focused on the international stage leading up to U.N. climate talks in Paris in December. He cited meetings over the last two weeks with the presidents of China, Hungary, Chile and Norway, as well as the prime minister of India. "I can tell you, people know about California, people are watching, and there's a lot of goodwill that's going to get us to the goal," he said.
A draft scoping plan is due out by the spring, with a final version expected to be voted on by ARB in the fall of 2016. Between now and then, the state will host several workshops, starting with one on the vehicular emissions plan Oct. 16.
Another ARB workshop today will discuss potential amendments to the cap-and-trade program and how the state might comply with U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan for existing power plants.
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(ACC Mention) Rail shutdown would cost $30 billion, study finds
Oct 2, 2015 | The Hill
By Keith Laing
A shutdown of the nation's railways at the end of the year if Congress does not move a deadline for automating most of the nation's trains would cost the U.S. economy $30 billion, according to a study conducted by the American Chemistry Council.
Railroads currently have threatened to shut down service in January 2016 to avoid fines if Congress does not move a Dec. 31 deadline to install an automated navigation system known as Positive Train Control, which regulates the speed and track movements of trains.
The Chemistry Council, which relies heavily on freight service, found in its study that a rail shutdown would cost $30 billion and result in the loss of 700,000 jobs.
“The United States is staring down the tracks of an unprecedented shutdown of freight rail service that could seriously harm our entire economy unless Congress acts quickly to extend the PTC deadline,” the group's president, Cal Dooley, said in a statement.
"A prolonged shutdown would be truly catastrophic, likely resulting in a recession," he continued. "We cannot afford to let this self-inflicted crisis happen; Congress must act now.”
The automated train mandate that was set in the aftermath of a 2008 commuter rail crash in California, but railroads say they need more time to complete the implementation.
Rail companies have argued that they will have no choice but to shut down service at the beginning of next year to avoid fines if Congress does not move the deadline.
A bipartisan measure has been introduced in the House that would push back the deadline for most railroads to install the automated train technology until December 2018. The Senate also included an extension in a highway funding bill that it passed in July, over the objection of rail safety advocates.
Critics have complained the measure is a "blanket extension" that lets railroads off the hook for improving safety for passengers.
"It has been more than 45 years since the National Transportation Safety Board first urged railroads to implement positive train control — an unacceptable delay in implementation of this critical, life-saving technology that has allowed numerous, preventable tragedies," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a statement after the House measure was introduced.
"Extensions should be granted only to railroads that have demonstrated diligent, good faith efforts to meet the mandate," he continued. "Only by holding railroads’ feet to the fire will this critical, life-saving technology finally be implemented.”
Supporters of the extension say it is necessary to prevent an interruption in passenger and freight rail service at the end of the year, however.
"Completion of the Positive Train Control mandate by the end of the year is not achievable, and extending the deadline is essential to preventing significant disruptions of both passenger and freight rail service across the country,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) said in a statement trumpeting the extension.
“Railroads must implement this important but complicated safety technology in a responsible manner, and we need to give them the necessary time to do so," he continued.
The Chemistry Council said "a transportation disruption of this magnitude would have cascading impacts that would threaten the nation’s food, energy and water supplies, as well as nearly every sector of the U.S. economy including manufacturing and construction.
"As the report details, a disruption of rail service lasting only one month will result in a 2.6 percentage reduction to U.S. real GDP growth during the first quarter of 2016, which would put a major chill on just about every leading indicator in the first quarter," the group said.
Transportation department officials in the Obama administration have said they have little choice but to enforce the mandate unless Congress can come to agreement on an extension.
"The reality is without Congress doing something, we've got a deadline coming up and we're going to have to enforce that deadline," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters earlier this week.
"Many of the concerns [railroads] raise appear to be legitimate concerns, but as far as we're concerned, the deadline at present is what it is and we have to enforce against it, absent some congressional action," Foxx continued.
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(ACC Mention) House committee proposes rail-upgrade extension
Oct 2, 2015 | Rapid News Network
By Angel Wallace
Under the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, railroads are required to implement PTC systems by the end of this year on mainline tracks that carry “toxic by inhalation” materials like anhydrous ammonia – a key fertilizer ingredient – as well as passenger traffic.
“The United States is staring down the tracks of an unprecedented shutdown of freight rail service that could seriously harm our entire economy unless Congress acts quickly to extend the PTC deadline”, said Cal Dooley, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council. A suspension would require rail operators to notify customers well before the current December 31 deadline. From farm inputs and goods to coal, automobiles, retail consumer goods and chemicals like those used to purify water for drinking, a major service disruption would have cascading impacts on the nation’s food, energy and water supplies, as well as transportation, construction and almost every sector of the USA economy.
Rail companies have argued that they will no choice but to shut down service at the beginning of next year to avoid fines if Congress does not move the deadline.
“Completion of the Positive Train Control mandate by the end of the year is not achievable, and extending the deadline is essential to preventing significant disruptions of both passenger and freight rail service across the country”, said House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa. Critics have complained the measure is a “blanket extension” that lets railroads off the hook for improving safety for passengers, however.
Positive train controls could have prevented the deadly derailments of a Metro-North commuter train in the Spuyten Duyvil section of the Bronx in December 2013 and an Amtrak train in Philadelphia May 12 by automatically slowing down each train as it approached a curve. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a statement after the House measure was introduced.
But railroads, including freight and passenger services, say implementation efforts have been snarled by high costs, bureaucratic delays and technical hurdles. “Congress should act quickly to pass this bill, which extends the PTC implementation deadline with a clear timeline that keeps railroads accountable while allowing for the responsible employment of this critical safety technology”.
The Government Accountability Office recently reported that a survey it conducted found that commuter railroads, freight railroads and smaller freight lines need one to five years to complete installation, testing and certification of positive train controls (PTC).
Transportation department officials in the Obama administration have said they have little choice but to enforce the mandate unless Congress can come to agreement on an extension.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters in a roundtable Tuesday that numerous concerns raised by railroads “appear to be legitimate”.
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(ACC Mention) ACC: Looming PTC deadline threatens economic chaos
Oct 2, 2015 | Chemical Week
By Clay Boswell
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House moves to delay PTC deadline
Oct 2, 2015 | Metro Magazine
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Lawmakers in the House are moving to extend a federal deadline for positive train control that most railroads say they will not be able to meet, The Hillreported.
A bipartisan measure — the Positive Train Control Enforcement and Implementation Act of 2015 (H.R. 3651) — has been introduced in the lower chamber that would push back the deadline for most railroads to install automated train technology until December 2018, the report said.RELATED: Senate confirmation panel presses Feinberg on PTC deadline
Democrats on the House Transportation Committee said they are reluctantly supporting the extension of the automated train deadline to prevent a widespread interruption in train service, according to The Hill. For the full story, click here.
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