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(ACC Mentioned) Tech Roundup: Innovation Award, Cyanide Poisoning Education, More
Oct 13, 2015 | Fire Engineering
By Mary Jane Dittmar
Honeywell’s Solstice® LBA wins 2015 Polyurethane Innovation Award: The Center for the Polyurethanes Industry (CPI) of the American Chemistry Council (ACC) has announced that Honeywell’s Solstice® Liquid Blowing Agent (LBA) has won the 2015 Polyurethane Innovation Award. -
Academies Panel to Rethink Risk Assessment at EPA
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
A new National Academies committee is being asked by the Environmental Protection Agency to re-examine the agency's risk assessment approaches to see whether they would predict public health problems that may occur from environmentally relevant chemical exposures. -
It’s Not ‘Either/Or’
Oct 13, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
A recent column in the New York Times focused on some differences that have surfaced inside the environmental community during the long fight for federal chemicals policy reform. I’d like to write today about what we have in common, and how our differences can make us stronger—because I don’t want anyone... -
California Agency Releases Workshop Agenda, Extends Consultation
Oct 14, 2015 | Chemical Watch
California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has released a tentative agenda for its 19 October workshop, to discuss possible amendments to calculating safe harbour levels for reproductive toxicants (CW 1 September 2015). The workshop is part of a pre-regulatory process to consider... -
Rule Won't Expand List of Hazardous Drugs, EPA Says
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Ware
A proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule (RIN 2050-AG39) to better manage hazardous pharmaceuticals won't expand the list of hazardous drugs but would change the way those already on the list are managed, an agency official said during an Oct. 13 webinar. -
Trade Deal Expected to Expedite Natural Gas Exports
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
The federal approval process for liquefied natural gas exports would be streamlined for the Pacific nations included in a historic trade deal signed earlier in October, but most analysts said the real-world impact would be muted. If the deal is approved by Congress, countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership would no longer need to participate... -
Clinton Fights Keystone Criticism As Dems Rally To Climate Action
Oct 14, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Darren Goode
Hillary Clinton had to defend her stance on the Keystone XL pipeline Tuesday night, not from Republicans who support the project, but from a Democratic presidential challenger who argued she flip-flopped. In a rare moment of combativeness in the candidates' debate where nearly all the Democrats echoed ... -
Clinton: 'I Never Took A Position On Keystone Until I Took A Position On Keystone'
Oct 13, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton acknowledged her slow decision to take a public position on the Keystone XL oil pipeline on Tuesday night, but defended her credentials on climate change policy. “I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone,” the party front-runner... -
Prospect Of Policy Riders Alive In Budget Talks
Oct 13, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Manuel Quiñones
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is continuing to push for policy riders in ongoing negotiations to keep the government funded past Dec. 11. Pushing back on Obama administration priorities, including U.S. EPA's water jurisdiction rule, is part of the Republicans' demands, CNN reported today, citing unnamed sources. -
Republicans Gearing Up to Undercut Obama on Climate Accord
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
Senate Republicans are about to open attacks on multiple fronts to undercut President Barack Obama's efforts to essentially bypass the Senate in negotiating the first truly global agreement to address climate change. The Republican strategy includes what one Senate committee aide termed a “preemptive” resolution... -
Variety of Republican Climate Views Arises in Campaign
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who trails far behind the leading Republican contenders in presidential polling, broke with his party and challenged rivals to tell him why they doubt that human activity predominantly contributes to climate change. -
Democratic Candidates Tout Climate Positions
Oct 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
All the major Democratic presidential candidates touted their stances on fighting climate change at Tuesday's debate, while refraining from attacking one another on an issue that nearly all of them agree on. For the second time during the debate, Hillary Clinton recounted that during her time as secretary of state... -
Dem govs: Green Energy Plans Will Help Our Nominee
Oct 13, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A pair of Democratic governors and climate activists are encouraging the party’s presidential candidates to focus on green energy as a way to win votes in next year’s election. Ahead of Tuesday night’s first Democratic presidential debate, the officials said a plan... -
WOTUS Cases Will Not Be Consolidated, Panel Says
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
A panel of federal judges Oct. 13 turned down a request from federal government defendants to consolidate nine lawsuits from seven court districts into one case challenging the Clean Water Act jurisdiction rule (In re Clean Water Rule, J.P.M.L., MDL No. 2663, 10/13/15). -
EPA Steps Back From Criticism Of New Jersey Stormwater Rule Changes
Oct 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Amanda Palleschi
EPA Region 2 has stepped back from warnings that proposed changes to New Jersey's stormwater management rules are inconsistent with federal water discharge permitting regulations, after state officials assured the agency that the proposed changes are aimed at streamlining state requirements and not altering water quality standards.
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Full Text of Stories Below
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(ACC Mentioned) Tech Roundup: Innovation Award, Cyanide Poisoning Education, More
Oct 13, 2015 | Fire Engineering
By Mary Jane Dittmar
Honeywell’s Solstice® LBA wins 2015 Polyurethane Innovation Award
The Center for the Polyurethanes Industry (CPI) of the American Chemistry Council (ACC) has announced that Honeywell’s Solstice® Liquid Blowing Agent (LBA) has won the 2015 Polyurethane Innovation Award. The award was made at the Polyurethanes technical Conference in Orlando on October 7.
Honeywell’s Solstice® LBA is a polyurethane foam-blowing agent used in insulation applications, including in appliances and spray foam, that makes it possible to maintain higher energy standards, according to CPI/ACC. The special formulation, according to Sanjeev Rastogi, business director for Honeywell Fluorine Products, “is making a positive contribution by playing a role in increasing foam performance and energy efficiency, while reducing climate impact.”
The other product finalists were Dow Chemical’s VORASTAR™ 7000 spray elastomer and Novomer’s Converge® Polyol RF-x polyisocyanurate rigid (PIR) foams. The 2015 Polyurethanes Technical Conference featured 75 technical presentations and 38 poster presentations, as well as a Table Top exhibit, a Professional Development Program and premier networking events. The complete release is at http://www.americanchemistry.com.
The ACC represents the leading companies engaged in chemistry business arena.
2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Recognizes Research on How Cells Repair DNA Damage
The 2015 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to Paul Modrich, Ph.D., Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina; Aziz Sancar, M.D., Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Tomas Lindahl, Ph.D., Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. All three are grantees of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and have engaged in research that, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, “has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions.”
"This basic understanding about cell function has led to the discovery of the causes of genetic conditions associated with cancer and is being used to develop new cancer treatments,” notes NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. "NIH is proud to have supported this work." The NIH is the nation’s medical research agency and a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Additional information is available at http://www.nih.gov/icd/od.
Free Educational Aid on Cyanide Poisoning
“Cyanide Poisoning: Understanding the Facts” produced by Meridian Medical Technologies, Inc., a Pfizer company, is available free to fire departments as an educational aid. Some fire departments are using this document as a training document and an information piece at their fire houses. Among these departments is the Tulsa (OK) Fire Department. According to Joseph Sherrell, EMS officer, the department began carrying Cyanokit and educating their members on cyanide a couple of years ago after a near-miss. Sherrell says they recently received this document from Meridian and have distributed it to all of their stations as a reference and a reminder. Their paramedics, Sherrell adds, “have made approximately 15 interventions with Cyanokit since they began using it with positive results.” If you would like additional information, Sherrell can be reached at jsherrell@cityoftulsa.org.
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Academies Panel to Rethink Risk Assessment at EPA
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
A new National Academies committee is being asked by the Environmental Protection Agency to re-examine the agency's risk assessment approaches to see whether they would predict public health problems that may occur from environmentally relevant chemical exposures.
“This committee has the opportunity to change the way we think about toxicity testing, low dose risks and their relevance to protecting public health,” said Thomas Burke, EPA's science adviser and deputy assistant administrator for research and development.
He spoke at the first meeting of the Committee on Endocrine-Related Low Dose Toxicity, which the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine convened to offer advice to the EPA.
The committee's advice, due by early 2018, would draw on a workshop and case study of low dose effects of two or more chemicals, according to the charge the EPA gave the committee.
Not Analogous to Standard Tests
The agency uses risk assessments to inform thousands of different types of decisions.
Initially, such assessments help the agency decide whether a pollutant, chemical or microbe is a health or environmental risk. If it poses a risk, then the agency uses information from the assessment as part of its decision about what limits it should set for air emissions, what discharges should be allowed from a manufacturing plant into an adjacent stream or when farmworkers can enter a field recently sprayed with a pesticide.
Most of the decisions the agency makes involve exposure conditions that are not analogous to the exposures laboratory animals experience in the traditional toxicity tests, Burke said.
Lab animals, which have well-documented genetic traits, are exposed to carefully controlled high doses of chemicals from a known source. A toxicity test, for example, may be designed to examine the effects of a chemical when it is ingested or when it is inhaled.
The EPA, however, has to make decisions about the exposures people would receive, Burke said.
People are exposed to far lower doses of a particular chemical or other agent in the environment. At the same time, people are exposed to many other chemicals from many different sources and these populations have divergent physical, economic and social stressors, he said.
The agency has long-established, robust strategies for integrating toxicity data from traditional laboratory animal tests, said David Dix, director of EPA's Office of Science Coordination and Policy. He offered details on how data from such tests would be incorporated into three specific risk-estimation methods the agency's Office of Pesticide Programs uses.
Standard Approaches, Disconnected Data
The EPA is, however, in the early stages of figuring out how to integrate information from human studies and from the emerging spectrum of cellular, genetic, computer-predicted and other types of chemical safety data, Dix said.
The EPA is asking whether it needs to revise standard test guidelines for toxicity tests to detect and characterize low-dose adverse effects, in particular, those that are mediated by effects on the endocrine system, Dix said.
Tina Bahadori, director of EPA's Chemical Safety for Sustainability research program, described another facet of the question the agency is hoping the committee will address.
There is often a disconnection between health effects examined and exposure measurements taken for traditional laboratory animal and in vitro tests and the health effects and exposure indications tracked in epidemiological studies, Bahadori said.
A lot of data that may be valuable gets ignored in a formal risk assessment, because it doesn't fit into the standard risk assessment approaches, Bahadori said.
If the committee could advise the agency on how it could use all appropriate data, that would be helpful, she said.
Focusing on Data-Rich Chemicals First
The agency asked the academies committee to focus on endocrine-mediated effects—in particular those effects that occur as a result of a chemical mimicking, blocking or altering the actions of estrogen or androgen (the male reproductive hormone)—for several reasons, Dix said.
First, for about two decades there has been intense debate within the scientific community as to whether low doses of hormone-like chemicals are harming people, Dix said.
Second, the chemicals being evaluated through the EPA's Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program and its Office of Pesticide Programs have extensive data, he said.
Third, added Bahadori, EPA hopes that focusing on chemicals that have extensive data will make it easier for the committee to point out—in a data rich environment—where improvements still could have been made.
“Are we missing effects in these data-rich chemicals?” she asked.
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Oct 13, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
A recent column in the New York Times focused on some differences that have surfaced inside the environmental community during the long fight for federal chemicals policy reform. I’d like to write today about what we have in common, and how our differences can make us stronger—because I don’t want anyone to be left with the false impression that EDF believes there is only one strategy for environmentalists to pursue on the road to reform.
While we believe our approach of bipartisan engagement has been effective in moving and improving legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), we also understand and appreciate the strategies employed by other groups. Principled opponents of legislative proposals have helped to identify legitimate concerns and to pressure lawmakers to address those concerns. Collectively, these varied efforts have yielded a strong bipartisan Senate bill that will advance protections for public health and the environment.
EDF believes that the longstanding efforts of many state governments and state- and local-based advocates have also been essential to get us to where we are today. These efforts have both directly addressed risks posed by toxic chemicals, and driven the chemical industry to the negotiating table on TSCA reform after years of complacency.
As essential as that state-level work has been and remains, we believe it is not sufficient. We must also secure a strong federal system that provides EPA with the authority and resources needed to establish nationwide protections from chemical risks. From the beginning, one of the biggest challenges in strengthening TSCA has been to strike an appropriate balance between state and federal authority. EDF was clear early on that initial bipartisan legislative proposals were far too sweeping in their preemption of state authority (see, for example, pages 1 and 8 of my 2013 testimony on the Chemical Safety Improvement Act). For the past two and a half years, we have worked diligently to press lawmakers to narrow that preemption and retain a strong role for states, while preserving the solid bipartisan support that is essential for getting a bill to the President’s desk.
While we have supported the Lautenberg Act, we have also fought for improvements in the bill. As improvements were made, 60 Senators, including progressive Democrats like Sens. Whitehouse and Markey, have come to support to the bill.
Getting a strong TSCA reform bill enacted into law has demanded, and will continue to demand, input from a broad set of stakeholders. Differences in strategy and approach can strengthen, rather than diminish, that outcome.
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California Agency Releases Workshop Agenda, Extends Consultation
Oct 14, 2015 | Chemical Watch
California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has released a tentative agenda for its 19 October workshop, to discuss possible amendments to calculating safe harbour levels for reproductive toxicants (CW 1 September 2015).
The workshop is part of a pre-regulatory process to consider an amendment to the regulatory code. This is to stipulate that an arithmetic mean of user exposure shall be used to calculate the reasonably anticipated rates of exposure.
Comments on the agency's draft text of this proposal will be accepted until 17 November.
In a separate announcement, the agency has extended, by two days, the deadline for providing comments, pertaining to its consideration of five substances for prioritisation (CW 28 August 2015).
Comments, submitted by 14 October, will be considered at the 9 November meeting of the Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee (Dartic). The meeting will include discussion on the potential prioritisation of: nickel; pentachlorophenol; perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA); perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS); andtetrachloroethylene.
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Rule Won't Expand List of Hazardous Drugs, EPA Says
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Ware
A proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule (RIN 2050-AG39) to better manage hazardous pharmaceuticals won't expand the list of hazardous drugs but would change the way those already on the list are managed, an agency official said during an Oct. 13 webinar.
“Only pharmaceuticals that are already considered hazardous” will be subject to the new regulation under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, although the rule would encourage health-care facility workers to treat all pharmaceutical waste as hazardous to avoid having to train workers to differentiate among drugs, Josh Smeraldi, of EPA Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, said.
The webinar was held on a proposed rule announced Aug. 31 with the aim of helping health-care facilities comply with RCRA regulations on hazardous pharmaceuticals. It is designed to reduce the regulatory burden on health-care facilities and make compliance easier and to make water safer (169 DEN A-3, 9/1/15)
Flushing pharmaceuticals and disposing of them in sinks is common at health-care facilities because most workers aren't trained in RCRA, and flushing isn't currently banned by the law, Smeraldi said.
With the proposed rule placing a ban on flushing, the EPA estimates the rule will prevent more than 6,400 tons of hazardous pharmaceuticals from entering drinking water and surface water annually, Smeraldi said. These pharmaceuticals aren't treated once in the water, except incidentally, he said. The health effects of most when ingested are unknown and compounding pharmaceuticals only complicates the issue.
Flow of Disposal
The proposed rule covers the flow of drugs from a health-care facility to a first-reverse distributor, then sometimes to a second-reverse distributor, to a treatment storage and disposal facility, Smeraldi said. A reverse distributor collects damaged, outdated or unsold goods and brings them back to the supplier or manufacturer.
Facilities covered under the rule include hospitals, surgical clinics, veterinary clinics, pharmacies, health clinics and coroners and medical examiners. Drug manufacturers are not considered health-care facilities, he said.
The disposal of a handful of drugs, including chloral hydrate, Valium injectables and phenobarbital, are regulated both by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the EPA, Kristin Fitzgerald, also of OSWER, said. Under the proposed EPA rule, if drugs are considered hazardous by the DEA they will be exempt from RCRA but subject to DEA regulation, she said.
When pharmaceuticals are collected from households in DEA drug take-back programs, they also will be exempt from RCRA but will be subject to DEA regulation, she said.
The proposed EPA rule on pharmaceuticals is considered more stringent than current RCRA regulations, Fitzgerald said. Once the final rule is published, states will be required to adopt it in its entirety, she said. States may, however, develop rules that are more stringent than the federal one, she said.
The ban on sewer dumping will go into effect as soon as the federal rule is published, Fitzgerald said.
The deadline for the EPA to receive comments is Nov. 24, although the agency has received numerous requests to extend the deadline, Fitzgerald said. If that happens, it will be announced soon, she said.
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Trade Deal Expected to Expedite Natural Gas Exports
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
The federal approval process for liquefied natural gas exports would be streamlined for the Pacific nations included in a historic trade deal signed earlier in October, but most analysts said the real-world impact would be muted.
If the deal is approved by Congress, countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership would no longer need to participate in the Energy Department licensing requirement required for countries that do not have free-trade agreements (FTA) with the U.S.
But a large increase in U.S. exports to the nations in the trade deal—Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam—is considered unlikely, according to international energy experts such as Tom Cutler, president of the consulting firm Cutler International LLC.
“I don't know that it is going to result in a spike of U.S. LNG exports to the region,” Cutler, who previously directed the Energy Department's Office of European and Asia Pacific Affairs, told Bloomberg BNA. “It is unclear if it will really bump up our gas exports, but it could really streamline the process.”
Automatic Approval
Under the Natural Gas Act, the Energy Department is required to determine if proposed liquefied natural gas exports are “consistent with the public interest.” FTA countries are approved automatically.
Though countries participating in the TPP would automatically be considered in the public interest, liquefied natural gas prices have declined, making constructing multibillion-dollar export terminals less appealing.
“Right now, I'd say the big issue is the international prices,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told reporters Oct. 6. “In Japan gas is now $9 not $17. That's really a huge impact.”
“We've already licensed 35 [billion cubic feet] per day for free-trade-agreement countries,” Moniz told reporters following his testimony before a Senate committee. “Right now I'd say the market structure is the big issue.”
Spot LNG prices for delivery to Northeast Asia have dropped 56 percent over the past year, Bloomberg News reported, citing data compiled by World Gas Intelligence.
Market Forces at Play
In addition to Cheniere Energy Inc.'s Sabine Pass, which expects to come online in the fourth quarter of this year, other LNG export terminals that have received federal approval include Freeport LNG Development LP's terminal in Texas, Dominion Inc.’s Cove Point in Maryland and the joint Lake Charles LNG venture in Louisiana between Energy Transfer Equity LP and BG Group Plc.
“I think the DOE process has been working pretty well and pretty quickly, so if there are reasons why additional projects beyond the five or six in the pipeline don't move forward, it's not going to be because DOE is not giving the permits. It's going to be whether it makes commercial and economic sense to do lots more of these multibillion-dollar projects,” said Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
“No one ever thought we were going to build 20 or 30 LNG export projects, and now we have five or six that have all their necessary permits,” said Bordoff, who previously served as special assistant to the president and senior director for energy and climate change on the staff of the National Security Council. “I think the U.S. is going to be a major exporter of natural gas by the end of the decade, but the impact of TPP is modest in terms of how much larger that will be.”
Others Concerned
Still, companies that use large amounts of natural gas as feedstocks and to generate electricity are concerned about the impact the trade deal will have on U.S. natural gas prices, said Paul N. Cicio, president of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, which represents companies such as BASF Corp. and Dow Corning.
“It's going to have a significant impact on LNG exports because as you know if these countries do sign a free-trade agreement with the United States, then there are no restrictions to shipping unlimited quantities of LNG to these countries,” Cicio told Bloomberg BNA. “So it will have the impact of increasing natural gas prices domestically. There is no way around it.”
Environmental groups also have raised questions about the trade agreement, and many are encouraging Congress to reject it (194 DEN A-9, 10/7/15).
“Promoting a trade deal that encourages free trade of fossil fuels is effectively soft climate denial,” Luisa Abbott Galvao, an official with the environmental group Friends of the Earth, told Bloomberg BNA. “We are aware the TPP is designed to protect free trade in polluting energy products.”
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Clinton Fights Keystone Criticism As Dems Rally To Climate Action
Oct 14, 2015 | PoliticoPro
By Darren Goode
Hillary Clinton had to defend her stance on the Keystone XL pipeline Tuesday night, not from Republicans who support the project, but from a Democratic presidential challenger who argued she flip-flopped.
In a rare moment of combativeness in the candidates' debate where nearly all the Democrats echoed one another in the need to fight climate change, Martin O’Malley cited Clinton’s stance on the proposed pipeline as one of “a lot of reversals.”
It’s an argument often cited by Republicans — and one Clinton will almost certainly face if she becomes the Democratic nominee.
But Clinton said she is no flip-flopper. “I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone,” she said.
Clinton ended months of speculation in September when she announced her opposition to a project that is still under a review by the Obama administration, a process that began during her tenure as secretary of state.
In October 2010, then-Secretary of State Clinton told the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco that the U.S. is "inclined" to approve the pipeline, arguing that until the country has a clean-energy policy in place, "we’re either going to be dependent on dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada.”
During her tenure, the State Department also issued favorable environmental assessments on the pipeline, which drew protests from green activists who said the assessments didn’t properly account for the climate impact of the crude from the oil-sands that the pipeline would carry from Alberta to Texas.
But in announcing her opposition in September, she said the project was “a distraction from important work we have to do on climate change.”
On Tuesday night, she quickly pivoted to tout her climate record, saying she has been “at the forefront of dealing with climate change.” And twice she cited a story described in her book "Hard Choices" about when she and President Barack Obama stormed uninvited into a private meeting hosted by Chinese officials at the 2009 Copenhagen climate change conference "and got them to sign the first international agreement to combat climate change that they'd ever joined."
"So I'm not taking a backseat to anybody on my values, my principles and the results that I get," she added.
All the major Democratic presidential candidates touted their stance on climate change, while refraining from criticizing each other on an issue they all agreed needs to be addressed.
When asked whether he would be better on the issue than Clinton, Bernie Sanders bypassed the comparison and cited Pope Francis' characterization of climate change as “a moral issue.” He cited legislation he offered years ago with Sen. Barbara Boxer putting a tax on carbon emissions and also called for campaign finance reform because “the fossil fuel industry is funding the Republican Party.”
He described the measure that they introduced in 2013 as “the first piece of climate legislation which called for a tax on carbon,” although other similar proposals date back to the 1990s.
Martin O’Malley perhaps went the furthest in promising in his “very first order in office” to move toward the goal of having a “100 percent clean electric grid by 2050.” O’Malley is the only one of the candidates to officially sign on to a 2050 fossil-free goal posed by billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer. He also called for extending tax credits for solar and wind and spurring green building design.
“We did not land a man on the moon with an all of the above strategy,” O’Malley said, referring to calls to develop oil, gas, and coal resources as well as renewables.
Earlier on Tuesday, the candidates were pressed by Steyer and green groups to use the debate to give details on how they would not just tackle climate change and clean energy, but how it could be integrated in an economic and jobs strategy. Steyer’s NextGen Climate is also running full-page print ads in the Las Vegas Review Journal and USA Today in an effort to get an entire Democratic primary debate focused solely on climate and clean energy.
But another big question was whether Clinton — in announcing opposition in recent weeks to Keystone XL pipeline, Arctic drilling and the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal — had done enough to close any daylight between her and her two main primary opponents, Sanders and O’Malley, who had been using issues like climate change and the Keystone pipeline to challenge her from the left.
Sanders has long been one of the greenest lawmakers and strongest advocates for addressing climate change. He has also featured his longtime opposition to building the Keystone XL pipeline on the campaign trail, though he hasn’t done much to detail his green platform during the campaign.
But Sanders was the only one of the five candidates at the debate that referenced climate change when asked by CNN moderator Anderson Cooper what the greatest national security threat was to the U.S.
“The scientific community is telling us that if we do not address the global crisis of climate change, transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to sustainable energy, the planet that we are going to be leaving our kids, our grandchildren may well not be inhabitable,” Sanders said. “That is a major crisis.”
O’Malley also cited climate change, along with ISIL. “Climate change of course makes cascading threats even worse,” he said.
Clinton said the greatest national security threat “has to be” the spread of nuclear weapons and material to terrorists.
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Clinton: 'I Never Took A Position On Keystone Until I Took A Position On Keystone'
Oct 13, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton acknowledged her slow decision to take a public position on the Keystone XL oil pipeline on Tuesday night, but defended her credentials on climate change policy.
“I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone,” the party front-runner said during the first Democratic 2016 debate. “But I have been on the forefront of fighting climate change, starting in 2009, when President Obama and I crashed a meeting on the Chinese and got them to sign up for the first international agreement to combat climate change that they’d ever joined.”
Clinton, the former secretary of State, announced in September that she opposes the Keystone pipeline project after months of refusing a position on the topic, preferring to cede the decision to President Obama.
Green groups had slammed her long-stated silence on the issue, pushing to her to do as her key challengers — primarily Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley — had done earlier and come out against it. In 2010, as secretary of State, she had said she was “inclined to support” allowing the pipeline to go forward, a line groups used against her until she came out against it.
In September, she did just that, saying that the Keystone project “interferes with our ability to move forward with all the other issues” related to climate change.
The Obama administration’s review of the Keystone project continues, and the White House has said it's waiting until a State Department review of the project is completed.
Despite her slow public opposition to the Keystone pipeline, Clinton, in the debate, emphasized her role on climate change while serving as America’s top diplomat. She took credit for helping broker China’s decision to join an unbinding international climate change agreement reached in Copenhagen in 2009.
“Literally President Obama and I were hunting for the Chinese, going throughout this huge convention center because we knew we had to get them to agree to something,” Clinton said.
“There will be no effective efforts on climate change unless China and India join with the rest of the world. … We marched up, we broke in, we said, 'we’ve been looking all over for you, let’s sit down and talk about what we need to do,' and we did come up with the first international agreement China has signed.”
Clinton endorsed later work President Obama has done to secure climate commitments from China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, which is a key component of a forthcoming United Nations climate change conference later this year.
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Prospect Of Policy Riders Alive In Budget Talks
Oct 13, 2015 | E&E News PM
By Manuel Quiñones
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is continuing to push for policy riders in ongoing negotiations to keep the government funded past Dec. 11.
Pushing back on Obama administration priorities, including U.S. EPA's water jurisdiction rule, is part of the Republicans' demands, CNN reported today, citing unnamed sources.
McConnell has consistently touted his willingness to use Congress' power of the purse in an effort to roll back policies his caucus opposes. It was part of his re-election campaign in 2014 and the broader GOP effort to win the Senate.
But McConnell's team and the White House are being tight-lipped about any details in the negotiations, not wanting to jeopardize the ongoing talks.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) mentioned the prospect of riders during a news conference earlier this month. "We're not there yet," Reid said about an agreement.
Melinda Pierce, legislative director for the Sierra Club, said she's heard more talk about the future of automatic budget cuts under sequestration than policy riders.
She said she's not surprised by reports of McConnell's thinking. "His past posture has been, 'I'm going for it all, and I will get this done,'" said Pierce. "That's always how we see the majority leader entering these negotiations."
Pierce, however, said she is not too worried about the White House trading environmental priorities in a budget deal. She said the water and climate rules are legacy issues for President Obama.
"We've seen a lot of strengthened rhetoric and strengthened position," she said, "that anything that encroaches on the president's executive authority, Obama says no."
Still, Pierce said the environmental community was remaining vigilant about less high-profile items sneaking through during bipartisan talks.
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Republicans Gearing Up to Undercut Obama on Climate Accord
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
Senate Republicans are about to open attacks on multiple fronts to undercut President Barack Obama's efforts to essentially bypass the Senate in negotiating the first truly global agreement to address climate change.
The Republican strategy includes what one Senate committee aide termed a “preemptive” resolution akin to a no-confidence vote in Obama's authority to sign on to the climate accord, which is expected to be completed in Paris in December.
Republicans would likely push for the vote just before—or possibly during—the Nov. 30-Dec. 11 United Nations summit, in hopes of sowing doubt among negotiators who have been assured by the administration that the president can agree to the deal relying solely on his executive authority under the Constitution to negotiate international agreements.
If agreed to, the Paris deal among nearly 200 countries would be the first to commit industrialized and developing nations alike to curb greenhouse gas emissions linked to rising global temperatures.
“Republicans do not support the route that the president is taking,” a Republican aide with the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee told Bloomberg BNA. “So there's some idea of doing a resolution [to say] there are concerns about what the president is doing and suggesting” any deal should be taken up the Senate given its advice and consent authority under the Constitution, the aide said.
“Regardless of the final legal form [of the climate deal], just on its face—by the very nature of what is being proposed—it will require some sort of Senate role,” the committee aide said, whether that means formal ratification or less formal “consultations” with the Senate.
“The president can do the dance of making part of it politically binding and part of it legally binding,” the aide said. “But there's no way around” the need for some consultation with the Senate.
Embassies Warned Obama Authority Limited
Republican environment committee aides also sat down weeks ago with embassy representatives from two countries—Australia and Switzerland—in part to undercut the notion that Obama can sign the U.S. on to a deal in Paris without Senate approval. Committee aides said they also have spoken in recent weeks with the French embassy but that those conversations were limited to the logistics of the Paris talks.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) also plans to hold a hearing in the weeks ahead to scrutinize the U.S. strategy going into Paris as well as the president's broader climate policies. Inhofe is also considering attending the Paris climate summit to argue that Obama cannot commit the U.S. to actions on his own, aides said.
Inhofe's committee has asked the State Department, which heads the U.S. negotiations, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, to testify at the yet-to-be scheduled hearing, committee aides said.
Christiana Figueres, who oversees the international negotiations as head of the UN climate secretariat, said negotiators appear to be unswayed by the argument that the U.S. can't follow through with any agreement it makes in Paris. “My sense is that other governments are taking the word of the United States [as expressed by the Obama administration] very seriously,” she told Bloomberg BNA in an interview.
The U.S. administration “has proven that they are very serious about this [given] all of the different measures they have taken over the last year,” Figueres said, including EPA actions to limit carbon pollution from power plants, the centerpiece of what the U.S. is putting on the table toward the Paris deal. “There is still full confidence and an expectation that the United States will deliver on this.”
The U.S. has vowed it will cut its overall greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025, using 2005 emissions levels as a baseline; the EPA says its power plant limits alone would cut emissions from the power sector 32 percent by 2030, also from 2005 levels.
‘Meaningful Consultations' Sought
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) also is expected to turn more of his focus to the issue in the weeks ahead; that committee has primary Senate jurisdiction over international negotiations.
In a Sept. 22 letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Corker sharply questions whether the administration intends any “meaningful consultations” with the Senate over the deal and whether it considers the agreement one “that legally binds the U.S. under international law or a non-binding political document” (188 DEN A-5, 9/29/15).
Senate Democrats say such efforts are an obvious ploy to derail global efforts to address climate change and will have no lasting impact on the Paris talks. They argue Republicans are well short of the 60 votes they would need on the prospective resolution to avert a Democratic-led filibuster threat (96 DEN B-1, 5/19/15).
Undercutting Negotiators Confidence?
But Republicans counter that even a 51-vote majority would highlight the deep political divisions over the president's climate policies in the U.S. It also, they hope, would sap other negotiator's confidence in the ability of the U.S. to follow through on its acceptance of the Paris deal.
The U.S. negotiating team, led by Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern, is pushing for a sort of hybrid agreement out of the Paris summit that includes national emissions reductions pledged by individual nations and backed by domestic policies or laws. But the U.S. would subject those national pledges to binding measurement and verification requirements to ensure the actions are taken.
That approach reflects a political reality in the U.S., which is that the administration would have no chance of getting a binding international deal through the Republican-controlled Senate. Republicans say that is little more than a ploy to make an end-run around Senate ratification.
Not ‘Monolithically’ Binding Deal
Figueres told Bloomberg BNA the exact legal nature of the climate deal won't be decided until the end of the Nov. 30-Dec. 11 UN summit, but negotiators are likely to end up with a mix of legally binding and nonbinding elements.
“Overall the agreement is going to be legally binding. But it's not going to be monolithically, legally binding like the Kyoto Protocol,” which was adopted in 1997 but only set legally binding targets for industrialized nations, Figueres said.
“There will be different characteristics of the legally binding nature of each of the components,” she said, with some considered internationally legally binding, others not.
But even those that are not deemed internationally binding might still be considered “nationally legally binding,” she said.
That distinction could apply, for example, to pledges put forth thus far by nearly 150 nations to address their greenhouse gas emissions. Those would be nationally binding in the sense that they are supposed to be backed by domestic laws or regulatory policies, Figueres said.
‘Agreed Outcome’ Likely Legal Form
Developed and developing agencies launched the international climate negotiations at a 2011 UN climate summit in Durban, South Africa, and said the final agreement would include actions from all countries.
But negotiators there essentially punted on the precise legal nature of what they would agree to, stipulating only that the deal be either a “protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force” under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Alden Meyer, who tracks the UN negotiations for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said there is still plenty of uncertainty over what parts of the deal will be binding and what parts won't.
“The most likely outcome, most observers would say, is that we're not on track for [a] new treaty, or a new protocol,” Meyer said, in part because for the U.S., either of those options would likely mean Obama negotiators would have to put such a treaty or protocol before the Senate for ratification.
“Developing countries also are not willing to do a binding [agreement] absent commitments for financing and technology” assistance from richer developed nations like the U.S., Meyer, the UCS's director of strategy and policy, said.
Thus, the Paris deal is likely to be “more akin to an ‘outcome of legal force’—that would be the most applicable to where we appear headed,” Meyer said.
On Solid Legal Footing?
That said, many parties including the European Union as well as many environmental groups “are still pushing for a legally binding” deal, Meyer said, even if that approach is a nonstarter to the U.S.
But would Obama be on solid legal footing in agreeing to a Paris climate deal without congressional approval? That depends on what the U.S. is agreeing to, according to Daniel Bodansky, a law professor at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.
“The president would be on relatively firm legal ground accepting a new climate agreement with legal force, without submitting it to the Senate or Congress for approval, to the extent it is procedurally oriented, could be implemented on the basis of existing law, and is aimed at implementing or elaborating the UNFCCC,” Bodansky wrote in his report, published in May by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES).
“On the other hand, if the new agreement establishes legally binding emissions limits or new legally binding financial commitments, this would weigh in favor of seeking Senate or congressional approval” of the deal, according to the report, “Legal Options for U.S. Acceptance of a New Climate Change Agreement.”
Leaders Invited to Open Talks
Negotiators appear cautiously optimistic they can reach a deal by the end of the December summit in France, which will serve as the 21st Conference of the Parties to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which called for stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations “at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The nearly 200 parties to that treaty have spent the last two decades debating what actions developed and developing nations should take to make that commitment a reality.
In hopes of building momentum toward a deal, France, which in addition to hosting the COP-21 summit will hold the COP presidency and thus preside over the negotiations, has summoned world leaders to arrive on Nov. 30 to kick off the talks.
Figueres said the invitations to heads of state were sent out by French officials Oct. 12.
The formal two-week negotiations will proceed once leaders have made their remarks on that Monday, Nov. 30, she said.
Having leaders arrive at the beginning of the talks is meant to assure negotiators they have the highest political backing to get a climate deal agreed to at the end of COP-21. At 2009 talks in Copenhagen, Obama and other leaders from China, Brazil and other nations arrived at the end to essentially salvage talks that had nearly collapsed. But the agreement fell well short of a breakthrough and led to grumbling by many nations who felt they were essentially cut out of the last-minute deal.
That said, world leaders who arrive in Paris at the beginning of the Paris talks would be more than welcome to return near the end of the summit, she said.
National leaders “provide the highest level of political guidance that we have,” the UN official said. “Now, whether they would want to go to Paris on Nov. 30 and then come back at the end remains for them to decide,” she said. “But the door is always open.”
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Variety of Republican Climate Views Arises in Campaign
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who trails far behind the leading Republican contenders in presidential polling, broke with his party and challenged rivals to tell him why they doubt that human activity predominantly contributes to climate change.
“It is, to me folks, a problem that needs to be solved, not a religion,” Graham, who has represented South Carolina in the Senate since 2005, said Oct. 12. “So to my friends on the left who are making this a religion, you're making a mistake. To my friends on the right who deny the science: Tell me why.”
The comments of Graham and another Republican in the race, former New York Gov. George Pataki, demonstrate a range of positions within the party on climate change and how to address it.
Both men spoke Oct. 12 at a New Hampshire forum held by No Labels, a group seeking bipartisan compromise on a host of policy issues.
Most other Republican candidates for president, including current frontrunners businessman Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, doubt human activity significantly contributes to a changing climate.
‘We Have to Do Something.'
Pataki, who served as New York governor from 1995 to 2006, spoke of the need for innovation to combat climate change but strongly objected to the approach of President Barack Obama to addressing the problem.
“I'm a Republican and I happen to believe that when we emit [carbon dioxide] and greenhouse gases, the Earth gets warmer and we have to do something about it,” Pataki said. “Republicans have to embrace science ... and we have to recognize that human activity is contributing to climate change, and there is a role for government to play in dealing with that issue for the future.”
Workable solutions would entail government support for low-carbon technologies, Pataki said, noting “both parties want to see more solar, wind, next generation technologies.” He also called energy efficiency “one of the most important things we can do” and said the military had “rightfully” made addressing climate change a priority.
“With the right policies, I have absolutely no doubt we can do this in the United States,” Pataki said.
During an August interview with Bloomberg BNA, Pataki questioned to what extent human activity contributed to climate change but called for “intelligent policies, consistent with economic growth and not driving up the costs of energy, to reduce [carbon dioxide] emissions” (151 DEN S-27, 8/6/15).
At Odds With Polling Leaders
Graham and Pataki's calls for their party to embrace the scientific consensus—at least 97.2 percent of climate scientists that human activity is a predominant driver of the problem—stand in stark contrast to the party's current frontrunners for the nomination.
Trump, speaking Oct. 12 on Fox News, said of Obama's approach: “All he talks about is climate change and that is not our problem, folks.”
Carson, asked if he did not believe climate change was a problem, said at a New Hampshire town hall Sept. 30 “of course” the temperatures of the planet are changing.
“Of course there's climate change,” Carson said. “Any point in time, temperatures are going up or temperatures are going down. Of course that's happening. When that stops happening, that's when we're in big trouble... There is no reason to make it into a political issue.”
Paul: ‘Absurd Situation.'
Meanwhile, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the tone of the debate on climate change had become “absurd” because anyone who questions the science is treated “like you're a Holocaust denier.”
“I don't think anybody in this room knows how much is nature and how much is man,” Paul, a first-term senator, told New Hampshire's Concord Monitor Oct. 10. “What I can tell you is, if you read the general lay press, everybody's like, ‘Oh yeah, it's all man. It's 99 percent man.’ They're convinced of this. They know nothing about (it)—and nobody knows. It's a conjecture.”
Paul's views on climate change have been seen as nuanced by some. In January, he backed an amendment saying human activity contributes to climate change, though he has consistently opposed attempts by the Obama administration to address the issue (151 DEN S-24, 8/6/15).
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Democratic Candidates Tout Climate Positions
Oct 13, 2015 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
All the major Democratic presidential candidates touted their stances on fighting climate change at Tuesday's debate, while refraining from attacking one another on an issue that nearly all of them agree on.
For the second time during the debate, Hillary Clinton recounted that during her time as secretary of state, she and President Barack Obama barged uninvited into a private meeting hosted by Chinese officials at the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference.
“President Obama and I literally were hunting for the Chinese … and I do think that the bilateral agreement that President Obama made with the Chinese is significant,” Clinton said. International negotiators also “must get verifiable commitments” from China, India and others at the upcoming United Nations climate talks in Paris in December, she said.
When asked whether he would be better on the issue than Clinton, Bernie Sanders bypassed the comparison and cited Pope Francis calls to address climate change “a moral issue.” He cited legislation he offered years ago with Sen. Barbara Boxer putting a tax on carbon emissions and also called for campaign finance reform because “the fossil fuel industry is funding the Republican Party.”
Martin O’Malley perhaps went the furthest in promising in his “very first order in office” to move toward the goal of having a “100 percent clean electric grid by 2050.” O’Malley is the only one of the candidates to officially sign on to a 2050 fossil-free goal pushed by billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer. He also specifically touted extending tax credits for solar and wind as well as spurring green building design.
“We did not land a man on the moon with an all of the above strategy,” O’Malley said.
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Dem govs: Green Energy Plans Will Help Our Nominee
Oct 13, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A pair of Democratic governors and climate activists are encouraging the party’s presidential candidates to focus on green energy as a way to win votes in next year’s election.
Ahead of Tuesday night’s first Democratic presidential debate, the officials said a plan to boost the American clean energy sector could be a winning issue for the party’s nominee. “Although this is a Democratic debate, we know that people of all stripes will be watching,” Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) said on a call with reporters.
“And Republican voters today — voters, maybe not public officials — accept the need to deal with this threat of carbon pollution.”
Climate activists have pushed Democratic candidates — especially front-runner Hillary Clinton — to move left on climate issues. Clinton’s top rivals — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) — have looked to do the same and burnish their green credentials along the way.
But Democrats say their candidates need to do more than just publicly oppose the Keystone XL pipeline or drilling in the Arctic, as all three have done.
“We need much more to develop the jobs that are inherent in a clean energy economy other than the negative of not building a pipeline,” Inslee said.
“We need to find economic messages, incentives and a leveling of the playing field between fossil fuels and new energy technologies by adopting some measures of restriction of carbon pollution that will inspire, enable and help finance the new systems of energy.”
Tom Steyer, the president of NextGen Climate, said polling has shown support for more renewable energy use among battleground state voters, something he said Democrats should advantage of.
“Clean energy is the ultimate growth strategy for our economy," he said. "Seizing on this growth strategy is the ultimate opportunity for the Democratic Party, especially this year.”
Steyer has spent millions of dollars from his fortune trying to elevate climate change to a top political issue. Much of that funding has gone toward helping Democratic candidates.
In the first two GOP presidential debates, Republicans fielded few questions on climate change. Democrats hope that changes when their candidates take the stage.
“I’m most interested in understanding how the candidates view dealing with climate change within their broader economic development approach,” Gov. Jack Markell (D-Del.) said.
“For too long, climate change has been an issue that’s only been talked about as an environmental issue. It’s so much more than that.”
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WOTUS Cases Will Not Be Consolidated, Panel Says
Oct 14, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
A panel of federal judges Oct. 13 turned down a request from federal government defendants to consolidate nine lawsuits from seven court districts into one case challenging the Clean Water Act jurisdiction rule (In re Clean Water Rule, J.P.M.L., MDL No. 2663, 10/13/15).
Centralizing the cases into one district court “will not serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses or further the just and efficient conduct of this litigation,” the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ruled.
The challenges to the rule defining the “waters of the U.S.,” issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, “will turn on questions of law with respect to whether the EPA and the Corps exceeded their statutory and constitutional authority,” not on extensive discovery or other pretrial proceedings, the panel said in explaining its decision against centralization.
In addition, centralization would require the transferee judge to “navigate potentially uncharted waters” because of the differing positions of courts on whether the cases belong in district courts or appeals courts, the panel said.
“This procedural complication also weighs against centralization in this instance,” the panel said.
In the nine cases brought to the panel, all plaintiffs opposed centralizing the cases.
Fact-Finding Burden Minimal
The panel said the cases “will involve only very limited pretrial proceedings. Discovery, if any, will be minimal.”
That means centralizing the cases would achieve little in terms of saving time, effort and expense by avoiding duplicative fact-finding efforts, explained Lowell Rothschild, an environmental litigator at the law and lobbying firm Bracewell & Giuliani LLP.
Instead, the cases would use the same administrative record to analyze whether the agencies adhered to the Clean Water Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
There remains a risk that the various district courts will have differing interpretations of whether those laws were properly followed, but district court splits are commonplace and are not the basic concern of the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, Rothschild told Bloomberg BNA.
Courts Split on Jurisdiction
Two courts have held that only the U.S. courts of appeals have jurisdiction over the challenges to the WOTUS rule, while another court has concluded that the challenges belong in the district courts, the judicial panel said.
The two district courts dismissed injunction requests on the grounds that the cases belonged in the appeals courts, after which the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota issued a 13-state preliminary injunction Sept. 4 blocking the rule in 13 states N. Dakota v. EPA, D. N.D., No. 15-00059, 9/4/15; 173 DEN A-11, 9/8/15).
On Oct. 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a nationwide stay on the rule pending further action by the court—including action on the question of jurisdiction (In re EPA, 6th Cir., MDL No. 135, 10/9/15; 197 DEN A-1, 10/13/15).
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EPA Steps Back From Criticism Of New Jersey Stormwater Rule Changes
Oct 13, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Amanda Palleschi
EPA Region 2 has stepped back from warnings that proposed changes to New Jersey's stormwater management rules are inconsistent with federal water discharge permitting regulations, after state officials assured the agency that the proposed changes are aimed at streamlining state requirements and not altering water quality standards.
But environmentalists continue to argue the rule modifications would violate the anti-backsliding provisions of the Clean Water Act (CWA) because they would reduce or eliminate riparian buffers, leading to more pollution in the state's waterways. And changes to the state's definition of "connectivity" might violate EPA's "Waters of the United States" rule and "lead to more pollution and runoff as well as development in flood-prone areas," the New Jersey Sierra Club wrote in an Aug. 7 letter to Region 2 Administrator Judith Enck.
At issue is a June proposal from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to make several changes to the state's coastal zone management rules, stormwater management rules and flood hazard area control rules. The state says the changes will help streamline permitting and bring "predictability" to environmental regulations.
One of the proposed changes would allow stormwater discharges within 300 feet of a riparian zone if an applicant can show that stormwater discharges outside the riparian zone "would likely result in greater erosion or other adverse environmental impacts," according to a summary of proposed changes.
DEP notes in it summary that it is stormwater management rules prohibit new development in such zones, but the state's Flood Hazard Area Control Act rules "recognize that development within the riparian zones is sometimes unavoidable, and therefore establishes requirements necessary to ensure that disturbance to riparian zone vegetation is avoided where feasible, minimized to the extent practicable, and, where disturbance to riparian zone vegetation would adversely impact the environment, appropriate compensation is provided in order to ensure the continued preservation and/or improvement of riparian zone functionality."
The proposal drew fire from EPA, with Region 2 Clean Water Director Joan Matthews warning in a July 30 letter that the state's proposed changes would not comply with the state's own water quality standards.
"Changes to these regulations that result in a less stringent condition in New Jersey's Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NJDEP) permit(s), will also be inconsistent with EPA's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting regulations," Matthews writes.
Because the changes could put the state out of compliance with its own municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) permits, Matthews says the state should revise its fact sheets for NJPDES MS4 permits affected so that they "clearly detail how these rule revisions maintain the same level of stringency and do not result in backsliding."
But a Region 2 spokesman told Inside EPA in a statement that EPA is less concerned about the proposed changes after meeting with state officials. Those meetings left EPA with the conclusion that "the impetus behind DEP's proposed changes is a desire to streamline regulations governing the state's riparian buffers, and not to lessen water quality standards," the spokesman said. "The EPA will continue to monitor the potential effects these changes may have on stormwater permits and water quality, and will maintain regular communication with the state in case of any concerns regarding Clean Water Act compliance," the spokesman notes
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