ACC AM Dec 21

Congressional Hearings - There are no clips to report at this time.

Industry and Association News

1. (ACC Blog) The Chemistry Of Star Wars

   Dec 18, 2015 | American Chemistry Matters

   Every day, fantastical technology we see in movies like Star Wars comes closer to reality. From aerospace to defense systems to medical devices, chemistry enables amazing feats of science and imagination. In this blog post, we’re going to delve deep into the possibilities with some educational information about chemistry... http://blog.americanchemistry.com/
2. (ACC Mentioned) Commentary: A Very Eventful Year

   Dec 21, 2015 | ICIS Chemical Business

   By Joseph Chang
   
   
   Goodbye 2015 – an eventful year as any! For the industry it had everything, from plunging crude oil and commodity chemical prices, to the China slowdown, to US new project construction, renewed investor activism, a nuclear deal with Iran, quantitative easing in the eurozone and a contrasting interest rate hike in the US.

Chemical Management News

3. (ACC Blog) 12 Days Of Giving? How About 12 Ways Of Living…Energy Efficiently, That Is!

   Dec 21, 2015 | American Chemistry Matters

   This winter, innovations in building products made from plastics are lending a helping hand to homeowners with “more energy efficiency” on their holiday wish list. As many of you know, plastics play a major role in every household and provide benefits that can help us save money, reduce waste and conserve energy. http://blog.americanchemistry.com/
4. (ACC Mentioned) The Senate Finally Passed Chemical Safety Reform. Here’s How They Did It

   Dec 18, 2015 | National Journal

   By Jason Plautz
   
   
   The lineup in the Sen­ate swamp on the warm Oc­to­ber day was so un­usu­al, it was just about the only thing every speak­er could men­tion as they got to the mic. Lib­er­als such as Shel­don White­house and Ed Mar­key were lined up next to arch­con­ser­vat­ives Dav­id Vit­ter and Jim In­hofe. The heads of the En­vir­on­ment­al De­fense Fund and...
5. (ACC Mentioned) Senate Approves Bill Giving EPA More Clout On Safety Of Chemicals

   Dec 19, 2015 | The Washington Post (in the Boston Globe)

   By Chelsea Harvey
   
   
   The Senate has passed a much-anticipated bill to revise the federal chemical safety law, which environmentalists have long argued puts the American public at unnecessary risk of exposure to toxic substances. The bill has been in negotiations for more than two years. It finally went to a vote in the Senate on Thursday night and...
6. (ACC Mentioned) Senate Unanimously Approves Microbead-Ban Bill

   Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

   By Amena H. Saiyid
   
   
   A ban on the sale, manufacture, and distribution of synthetic plastic microbeads in facial washes, soaps and shampoos could start as early as July 2017 following the Senate's approval of the legislation by unanimous consent on Dec. 18. The Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, which would amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act...
7. (ACC Mentioned) Congress Sends Microbeads Ban To Obama

   Dec 18, 2015 | E&E News PM

   By Sam Pearson
   
   
   The Senate this afternoon easily approved a bill to ban the use of plastic microbeads in personal care products, which when washed off into water bodies can harm aquatic life, sending the bill to the president to sign. The chamber passed H.R. 1321, or the "Microbead-Free Waters Act," by unanimous consent. The House had unanimously...
8. (ACC Mentioned) Chemical Safety Overhaul Passes Senate, Earns Industry Praise

   Dec 21, 2015 | Environmental Leader

   By Jessica Lyons Hardcastle
   
   
   The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — the US’ primary chemical regulation — moved closer to getting a years-in-the-making overhaul late Thursday night as the US Senate approved the chemical safety bill. The Senate passed the bipartisan Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act by a unanimous voice...
9. (ACC Mentioned) Chemical Regulation Reform Clears Senate

   Dec 18, 2015 | Plastics Technology

   By Tony Deligio
   
   
   On December 17, the U.S. Senate approved S. 697, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, on a unanimous voice vote, leaving only a conference committee with the House of Representatives and President Obama’s signature standing in the way of finally reforming the nation’s antiquated chemical regulations.
10. Senate Votes to Overhaul Chemical Safety and Ban Beads in Beauty Products

    Dec 19, 2015 | The New York Times

    By David M. Herszenhorn and John Schwartz
    
    
    In a flurry of year-end legislative activity, the Senate last week approved a bill to overhaul the nation’s chemical safety system, and a separate measure to ban the use of tiny plastic beads in beauty products that can pollute waterways and harm marine life. The chemical safety overhaul, named for Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New ...
11. Vitter: Chemicals Bill to Provide Nationwide Rulebook

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Pat Rizzuto
    
    
    Legislation the Senate passed unanimously Dec. 17 that would overhaul the primary U.S. chemicals law would set consistent national standards for chemical regulations across the country, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said Dec. 18. “When the EPA acts, that is the rulebook for the entire country, which is the only way an industry like this...
12. TSCA Reform Supporters Eye Informal Talks To Guide Quick Conference

    Dec 18, 2015 | InsideEPA

    By Bridget DiCosmo
    
    
    Supporters of pending legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) appear to be eyeing informal discussions on how to reconcile a House TSCA measure with a Senate version approved Dec. 17, which could help lead to streamlined conference negotiations resulting in a final bill that Congress could vote on early next year.
13. TSCA Reform: The Most Important Work Comes Next

    Dec 18, 2015 | Safer Chemicals Healthy Families

    By Andy Igrejas
    
    
    Last night, the Senate passed its bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). This is a milestone that we have worked toward for years, but it also comes with some big red flags. The version that passed is much improved over the introduced version of S.697, the Udall-Vitter bill. It contains some important reforms:It removes the major...
14. TSCA: Summary of Senate Bill

    Dec 18, 2015 | BNA Energy & Environment Blog

    It’s been more than 10 years since the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J) introduced his first of several bills to update the Toxic Substances Control Act to give the Environmental Protection Agency greater authority to ensure the safety of chemicals in commerce. Last night the Senate passed by voice vote a bill to modernize...
15. Senate Votes To Ban Microbeads In Soap

    Dec 18, 2015 | The Hill - Regulation

    By Lydia Wheeler
    
    
    The Senate has approved legislation to ban plastic microbeads from bath products like soaps and body washes. The Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 passed by unanimous consent Wednesday morning, almost two weeks after the bill sailed through the House. The legislation, now headed to the president’s desk...
16. EPA Funding in Omnibus: Winners and Losers

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By David Schultz
    
    
    After a year of intense political maneuvering, the appropriations process for the Environmental Protection Agency ended with an anticlimax. The Dec. 18 passage of the omnibus spending bill (H.R. 2029) in both chambers of Congress contained funding levels for the EPA that are almost totally unchanged from the prior fiscal year.
17. Looking for the Perfect Cosmetics Gift Box? Shop Smarter with EWG’s Skin Deep

    Dec 21, 2015 | Environmental Working Group

    By Christine M. Hill and Sonya Lunder
    
    
    Every holiday shopping season, stores nationwide offer deals on a wide assortment of fragrance and cosmetics gift sets. Nearly every major retailer, from the high-end department store to the neighborhood specialty shop, displays festive towers of boxed cosmetics and perfumes.

Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Transportation News

18. Safety Bolstered on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor

    Dec 20, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal

    By Andrew Tangel
    
    
    Travelers taking Amtrak between New York City and Philadelphia are now being protected by a new crash-prevention system. The national passenger railroad over the weekend activated its version of so-called positive train control between the two cities, the last stretch of its tracks on the busy Northeast Corridor to get the system.
19. Panel Forming on Lithium Battery Transport Standard

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    SAE International is forming a committee charged with developing a performance-based lithium battery packaging standard for air transport, according to a Dec. 17 news release. The International Civil Aviation Organization requested the aerospace engineering group take the lead in developing the standard intended...

Energy and Environment News

20. Some Oil, Gas Companies Improve Fracking Disclosure

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Andrea Vittorio
    
    
    A handful of oil and gas companies, including BHP Billiton Ltd. and CONSOL Energy Corp., have noticeably improved their disclosures to investors on the risks posed by hydraulic fracturing, according to an annual scorecard released Dec. 17. But most of the industry still earned low marks in the report from investors...
21. Oklahoma Argues Clean Power Plan Unconstitutional

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Andrew Childers
    
    
    The Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan is unconstitutional because it commandeers state resources to enforce the federal limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality said in a statement of issues filed as part of a lawsuit challenging the plan
22. Obama Vetoes GOP Push To Kill Climate Rules

    Dec 19, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire

    By Timothy Cama
    
    
    President Obama has vetoed a pair of measures by congressional Republicans that would have overturned the main pillars of his landmark climate change rules for power plants. The decision was widely expected, and Obama and his staff had repeatedly threatened the action as a way to protect a top priority and major part of his legacy
23. Aluminum Producer Faults MACT's 'Work Practice Standards'

    Dec 18, 2015 | InsideEPA

    An aluminum producer is signaling its pending suit over EPA's maximum achievable control technology (MACT) air toxics rule for the sector will include a challenge to “work practice standards” requirements designed to reduce emissions, as well as attacks on other provisions that the company says are too onerous and arbitrary.
24. House to Try for Waters Rule Nullification in 2016

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Anthony Adragna
    
    
    Congressional lawmakers aren't backing down on their efforts to block an Environmental Protection Agency Clean Water Act jurisdiction rule and the House intends to vote on a bid to nullify that regulation in 2016, a top House Republican aide told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 18.

Full Text of Stories Below

Congressional Hearings - There are no clips to report at this time.

Industry and Association News

1. (ACC Blog) The Chemistry Of Star Wars

   Dec 18, 2015 | American Chemistry Matters

   Every day, fantastical technology we see in movies like Star Wars comes closer to reality. From aerospace to defense systems to medical devices, chemistry enables amazing feats of science and imagination. In this blog post, we’re going to delve deep into the possibilities with some educational information about chemistry and its role in innovation, so you know fact from fiction.

   The innovative products of chemistry lead to cutting edge advancements—applied technology in space exploration, computing, robotics, fuels and more. Chemistry also enables technological advancements that drive innovation, create jobs and enhance safety in our everyday lives.

   So before you venture to a galaxy far, far away in the new Star Wars:

   -The Force Awakens film, transport your mind with these cool chemistry facts: From heroes to villains to a host of aliens and other strange creatures, a lot of limbs are lost in the Star Wars saga. Most famously in the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker has a cybernetic hand installed to replace the one Darth Vader cut off. Cybernetics, prosthetics and artificial skin are frequently made with the versatile chemistry of silicones. Check out this silicone innovation from researchers in South Korea, as featured in Popular Science: Researchers built a new artificial skin that can jacket prosthetic limbs, the bulk of which is composed of a flexible, transparent silicone material called polydimethylsiloxane. This “skin” can sense whether an object is hot or cold and then send that information back to an amputee’s nervous system.

   -Solar panels are frequently used to harvest solar energy in Star Wars. TIE fighters (twin engine ion ships used by the Galactic Empire in Star Wars) and many other ship variations seen in the films use them as a source of power. The large mirror used to focus warmth and sunlight from Coruscant’s tiny sun on the planet’s extreme northern and southern latitudes helps to warm the environment by a few degrees, making it habitable. The large mirror is known as an orbital solar energy transfer satellite. Solar panels like these are not just for science fiction. We already use them for energy in power, transportation and other devices. A solar cell is, in principle, a simple semiconductor device that converts light into electric energy. Solar cells are made out of silicon; this material works as the semiconductor and is very abundant on earth. Nanoparticles are also used in the manufacture of solar cells and are being considered in other innovate space exploration applications. For example, lightweight solar sails are made with carbon nanotubes which help use the pressure of light on a solar cell to propel a spacecraft deeper into space. NASA and others are testing this technology and learning how far and fast solar sails might take us into the universe.

   -Stormtrooper armor is capable of protecting its wearer in extreme environments, including deserts, thick forests and icy wastelands. The armor also protects troopers from projectile weapons and blast shrapnel. While we’re not entirely sure what kind of material Star Wars stormtrooper armor uses, our best guess is that it could be a type of polycarbonate plastic. In real life, life-protecting equipment used by police, fire and other safety personnel are made with polycarbonate plastic. High-strength, heat-resistant composite parts, such as those reinforced with carbon fibers, fiberglass, or Kevlar™ are also made from epoxy resins that use bisphenol A (BPA).

   -Though we don’t know if the lightsabers and blasters (laser guns) depicted in Star Wars are possible, it’s likely that if this use of technology is developed, nanotechnology will play a large role. How? Though laser lights can be used for everyday tasks like scanning bar codes and playing DVDs, they aren’t used to create lightsabers (not yet anyway). In the book “The Science of Star Wars,” astrophysicist and writer Jeanne Cavelos writes that the main difference between Star Wars lasers and the lasers we use currently is size. Basically, the bigger the laser, the more powerful it is. The vibrant colors of lightsabers are another issue that chemistry and nanotechnology can solve. This year, researchers created a novel nanosheet — a thin layer of semiconductor that measures roughly one-fifth of the thickness of human hair. This laser light is capable of lasing in any visible color, completely tunable from red to green to blue, or any color in between. Can’t wait for a nanotech lightsaber? Phys.org features some tips on how to build your own.

   -A variety of chemistries make space travel possible. But to get from light speed to hyperdrive, the Star Wars crew should have a good thermal protection system (TPS) to travel safely. TPS is a barrier that protects space shuttles and satellites from atmospheric heat during departure and reentry. It is also used to protect real-life space travelers from the heat and cold of space while in orbit. NASA has developed special types of polyurethane foam to protect and insulate important parts of space shuttles, making them both highly insulated and lightweight.

   In Star Wars, and in our own world, the products of chemistry are accomplishing some amazing feats.

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2. (ACC Mentioned) Commentary: A Very Eventful Year

   Dec 21, 2015 | ICIS Chemical Business

   By Joseph Chang

   Goodbye 2015 – an eventful year as any! For the industry it had everything, from plunging crude oil and commodity chemical prices, to the China slowdown, to US new project construction, renewed investor activism, a nuclear deal with Iran, quantitative easing in the eurozone and a contrasting interest rate hike in the US. A solid year for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) was capped by the announcement of the “deal of three centuries” (thank you, Frank Mitsch of Wells Fargo) – the $130bn (€120bn) mega merger between Dow Chemical and DuPont.

   Many of these trends and events, along with their consequences, will stretch into 2016 and should make it as interesting a year as 2015.

   What more can one say about the planned Dow/DuPont merger? There are obvious cost synergies, and the companies have identified them to the tune of $3bn-4bn in cost savings within the first two years of closing, which is expected in the second half of 2015, and $1bn in potential revenue growth from the combination. Wall Street points out that these are conservative estimates with the actual cost savings likely to come in higher.

   Ultimately, the plan is to break the merged entity up into three leaner and more focused companies – a $51bn commodity chemical and materials company back integrated into crackers, a $19bn agricultural chemicals and seed trait business that can better compete with leader Monsanto, and a $13bn specialty chemicals company focused on electronic chemicals, nutrition and industrial biosciences.

   Dow and DuPont suppliers and customers are weighing the implications of the merger and split. Bankers are weighing the hefty fees. To read more insight on the deal, see page 10.

   Not as much a surprise as the Dow DuPont deal was the quarter-point interest rate hike by the US Federal Reserve on 16 December. Widely anticipated and signalled by the central bank for months, the increase ends years of easing monetary policy since the financial crisis started in 2008. The US stock market, including chemical equities, took the move in its stride, rising on the dovish tone of Fed chief Janet Yellen, who said a return to a normalised rate environment would be “gradual”.

   However, less than a week earlier there was a hiccup in the high-yield debt markets, with one major fund freezing redemptions, and news of the move causing waves of selling of high-yield bonds. That market is worth watching in 2016 – not just in the US, where the collapse in oil prices is hitting leveraged shale oil and gas operators hard, but in emerging markets, where companies have built up piles of dollar-denominated debt through the years of loose US monetary policy.

   The dollar is also worth watching, as this has been a major headwind for profitability among US manufacturers with international exposure, including chemical companies. The US dollar index is up by about 22% over the past two years and further strength could be problematic.

   Meanwhile, the European Central Bank is continuing its ultra-easing, juicing the region’s economies and making industries more competitive as the euro falls. Manufacturing activity, as measured by the manufacturing purchasing managers’ indexes (PMIs) has held up the best in the eurozone versus the US and China.

   As for China, can it continue to engineer a semi-soft landing as it transitions from a manufacturing export powerhouse to a consumer-driven economy? The great rebalancing has already begun.

   Meanwhile, Asia – China in particular – is the prime destination for US plastic resins exports as the wave of new petrochemical and polyolefins capacity starts up in 2017-2018. Kevin Swift and Martha Moore, economists at the American Chemistry Council (ACC) estimate that around half of the new US plastics resins capacity will be exported.

   To our longtime and new readers, we wish you all Happy Holidays and a very Happy New Year!

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Chemical Management News

3. (ACC Blog) 12 Days Of Giving? How About 12 Ways Of Living…Energy Efficiently, That Is!

   Dec 21, 2015 | American Chemistry Matters

   This winter, innovations in building products made from plastics are lending a helping hand to homeowners with “more energy efficiency” on their holiday wish list.

   As many of you know, plastics play a major role in every household and provide benefits that can help us save money, reduce waste and conserve energy. They’ve played a key role in helping to make some of the world’s first “zero energy” homes, in which the homes’ own energy supply is equal to the homes’ energy use.

   But perhaps one of the most remarkable trends helping eco-conscious homeowners drive down energy costs is sizing down – way down – to earn the moniker-turned-meme: “Tiny House.”

   Just in time for the Holiday countdown, here are 12 magical ways plastics helped make one very special tiny house more energy efficient:

   1.SOLAR SHINGLES – These tough, innovative plastic solar shingles play two roles: roof protector and renewable energy generator.

   2.POLYCARBONATE SKYLIGHT – This tough plastic skylight provides natural daylight, thermal resistance, and UV protection to help save energy.

   3.VINYL SIDING AND TRIM – This plastic siding and trim can provide an additional barrier between indoors and out, plus they are low-maintenance, resilient, and do not need periodic painting.VINYL WINDOWS – Plastics such as vinyl have a high resistance to heat and cold, which is one reason these plastic window frames are excellent insulators.

   4.POLYURETHANE/FIBERGLASS FRONT DOOR – This traditional looking door is made with tough polyurethane-based fiberglass and an insulating plastic foam core to provide resistance to heat/cold.RECYCLED PLASTIC DECKING – Plastic composite decking is low maintenance, easy to clean, long lasting, and resistant to infestation and decay—and no wood splinters! Some plastic decking contains recycled plastics to prevent valuable materials from going to waste.

   5.CROSS-LINKED POLYETHYLENE (PEX) PIPES – Tough but flexible PEX piping retains more heat in hot water lines than traditional piping, which can reduce energy needs.

   6.LUXURY VINYL FLOORING – This luxury vinyl flooring adds a waterproof barrier layer between indoors and out.

   7.POLYSTYRENE FOAM INSULATION – This durable plastic foam provides an insulating barrier beneath the flooring of the tiny house, which is particularly useful since the house is mounted to a platform on an outdoor trailer.

   8.PLASTIC SEALANTS & CAULKING – Strong yet flexible, water-resistant plastic (such as silicone) caulking and sealants help fill gaps around pipes, air ducts, plug outlets, and other places where outside air can enter a house.

   9.SPRAY POLYURETHANE FOAM INSULATION – This plastic foam insulation expands to fill spaces in walls and attics, sealing tough-to-reach corners and cracks to help dramatically improve energy efficiency.

   10.POLYISOCYANURATE FOAM BOARD – This stiff plastic foam board was applied to the outside of the tiny house walls (under the siding) to help prevent untreated air from even touching the wall materials/framing.

   Want more? Check out the Tiny House mini-documentary below. For more information on plastics and sustainability, visit plasticsmakeitpossible.com/tiny-house.

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4. (ACC Mentioned) The Senate Finally Passed Chemical Safety Reform. Here’s How They Did It

   Dec 18, 2015 | National Journal

   By Jason Plautz

   The lineup in the Sen­ate swamp on the warm Oc­to­ber day was so un­usu­al, it was just about the only thing every speak­er could men­tion as they got to the mic. Lib­er­als such as Shel­don White­house and Ed Mar­key were lined up next to arch­con­ser­vat­ives Dav­id Vit­ter and Jim In­hofe. The heads of the En­vir­on­ment­al De­fense Fund and the Amer­ic­an Chem­istry Coun­cil stood shoulder-to-shoulder.

   They were there to cel­eb­rate a long-awaited chem­ic­al-re­form bill, which after years of lan­guish­ing had crossed a ma­jor mile­stone. A few days earli­er, the bill had net­ted its 60th co­spon­sor and its sup­port­ers were con­fid­ent that, after clear­ing a last-minute hurdle, it could pass the full Sen­ate in a mat­ter of minutes.

   They were in for dis­ap­point­ment.

   In­stead of minutes, it took more than two months of wait­ing un­til, on Thursday night, the Sen­ate fi­nally passed its first up­date of the loathed 1976 Tox­ic Sub­stances Con­trol Act.

   Now, if they can suc­cess­fully nav­ig­ate a con­fer­ence with a House-passed TSCA re­form bill, the product could end dec­ades of work to over­haul the na­tion’s chem­ic­al man­age­ment sys­tem. Of the 80,000 or so chem­ic­als in com­merce, EPA has only re­quired test­ing for about 200 since the ori­gin­al TSCA le­gis­la­tion was passed. And of those 200, it has par­tially reg­u­lated only five.

   But mem­bers are also selling it as a tri­umph of net­work­ing, tak­ing a bill that was once seen as a pipe dream and bring­ing it to the floor with the Sen­ate’s ma­gic num­ber: 60.

   Here’s how they got there.

   2 Votes

   Hav­ing already moved bills to ban smoking on air­planes and crack­ing down on drunk driv­ing, Sen. Frank Lauten­berg of New Jer­sey had been try­ing for years to pass a chem­ic­al-re­form bill as a cap on his pub­lic-health leg­acy. But his Safe Chem­ic­als Act had gone nowhere; even in a Demo­crat-con­trolled Con­gress, the best Lauten­berg could do was to get it out of com­mit­tee.

   Con­cur­rently, the chem­ic­al in­dustry was look­ing to re­form the bill. States were swoop­ing in to fill the void and set­ting their own reg­u­lat­ory sys­tems, cre­at­ing a patch­work sys­tem that com­pan­ies said was too con­fus­ing and costly. Dav­id Vit­ter, a Louisi­ana Re­pub­lic­an, star­ted work­ing on his own bill that was ex­pec­ted to be much more fa­vor­able to the in­dustry that’s a ma­jor play­er in his home state.

   In the spring of 2013, Vit­ter and Lauten­berg ap­proached mod­er­ate Demo­crat Joe Manchin about sign­ing on to their re­spect­ive bills (just weeks earli­er, Lauten­berg, who was sick and mostly out of Wash­ing­ton, had made a dra­mat­ic ap­pear­ance on the Sen­ate floor to vote for Manchin’s gun-re­form bill), but Manchin de­clined. In­stead, he told the two to sit down to­geth­er and merge their bills, rather than com­pet­ing on le­gis­la­tion with equally dim chances of passing.

   The res­ult was a polit­ic­al odd couple—a lib­er­al gi­ant and an arch­con­ser­vat­ive who hates EPA reg­u­la­tions—and a bill that seemed to match the dis­par­ate poles. The bill did give EPA more au­thor­ity to re­view ex­ist­ing chem­ic­als and test new ones be­fore they reached the mar­ket, and changed the cri­ter­ia by which EPA would eval­u­ate a chem­ic­al’s safety.

   Many on the left balked at what they said were handouts to the in­dustry. There wer­en’t firm dead­lines for EPA to fin­ish their re­views, nor would it provide enough fund­ing. And it re­moved Lauten­berg’s lan­guage spelling out a spe­cif­ic safety stand­ard and ex­pli­cit pro­tec­tions for cer­tain vul­ner­able pop­u­la­tions like chil­dren or the eld­erly. Even though it had 14 co­spon­sors, it had lost the sup­port of many Demo­crats who had backed Lauten­berg’s ori­gin­al bill, and pub­lic health groups fled (the En­vir­on­ment­al Work­ing Group said at the time that ele­ments of it “may ac­tu­ally be worse than cur­rent law”).

   Part of the cri­ti­cism no doubt had to do with mis­trust of Vit­ter. Bon­nie Lauten­berg, the sen­at­or’s wid­ow, re­called in an in­ter­view that her hus­band had tried for years to get even the most lib­er­al Re­pub­lic­ans, such as Olympia Snowe, on board, but couldn’t.

   “We are so, so grate­ful to [Vit­ter] and the way he got so many Re­pub­lic­ans to work with him,” she said fondly. “The last pho­to­graph I have of my hus­band is of him with Dav­id Vit­ter.”

   14 Votes

   Just six weeks after the bill came out, Lauten­berg passed away at age 89.

   Bon­nie, still in touch with Vit­ter’s staff, pressed for the bill to keep go­ing, so Vit­ter star­ted seek­ing “an­oth­er strong Demo­crat­ic part­ner.” New Mex­ico’s Tom Ud­all had taken over Lauten­berg’s spot chair­ing the Su­per­fund, Tox­ics, and En­vir­on­ment­al Health sub­com­mit­tee, and seemed a reas­on­able part­ner. Even though the two had nev­er worked on le­gis­la­tion to­geth­er, Vit­ter reached out.

   One night, the two walked from their of­fices to The Monocle, a nearby bar, for din­ner to talk through the bill. “We just shot the bull, and it was really pos­it­ive and pro­duct­ive,” Vit­ter re­called. “I sensed a real com­mit­ment to build­ing to­wards passing this bill.”

   But pro­gress in their cham­ber faced a huge road­b­lock in the form of Cali­for­nia Demo­crat Bar­bara Box­er, then the chair­man of the En­vir­on­ment and Pub­lic Works Com­mit­tee. Her home state had some of the toughest en­vir­on­ment­al laws in the coun­try and she was con­cerned that the bill as writ­ten would wipe them off the books in fa­vor of weak­er fed­er­al en­force­ment. Box­er wanted Lauten­berg’s ori­gin­al bill—which had no Re­pub­lic­an sup­port—to move through her com­mit­tee.

   That sum­mer, Box­er held an hours-long hear­ing with three pan­els of wit­nesses to de­bate the lan­guage, but made it clear that she wouldn’t pass the bi­par­tis­an bill (at one point, she even held up a Curi­ous George doll and squeaked, “no pree­mp­tion please!”). Be­hind the scenes, Box­er con­tin­ued her as­sault on the bill, try­ing to pull off Demo­crats who were be­ing ap­proached by Ud­all.

   “Their bill was a dis­aster,” she said in an in­ter­view. “The first time it was in­tro­duced was a dis­aster, the second time was the same dis­aster … I had no ne­go­ti­at­ing part­ners, they wouldn’t deal with me, so I said ‘I’m go­ing to stand up and say no.’”

   Without Box­er on board, the bill didn’t have an ob­vi­ous path for­ward, and it was soon over­taken by oth­er is­sues.

   15 Votes

   Iron­ic­ally, it would take the Re­pub­lic­an takeover of the Sen­ate for Lauten­berg’s bill to come back.

   Work had been on­go­ing be­hind the scenes to pos­sibly re­in­tro­duce the bi­par­tis­an bill, and a Feb­ru­ary 2014 let­ter by 11 Demo­crats led by Thomas Carp­er had spelled out nine ma­jor areas of con­cern for the Left, in­clud­ing that an up­dated bill cla­ri­fy pro­tec­tion of vul­ner­able pop­u­la­tions, set a sched­ule for EPA is­su­ing a pri­or­ity list of chem­ic­als and in­clude lan­guage ad­dress­ing the im­port of products with harm­ful chem­ic­als.

   Re­flect­ing some of that in­put, Ud­all and Vit­ter re­in­tro­duced their bill, now named the “Frank R. Lauten­berg Chem­ic­al Safety for the 21st Cen­tury Act,” in March with 15 co­spon­sors. Even as Con­gress moved to the right, the bill it­self had moved to the left. Among the changes was a waiver sys­tem to al­low states to keep en­for­cing their laws for cer­tain chem­ic­als and a fee sys­tem to pay for chem­ic­al test­ing, for ex­ample.

   But the same op­pon­ents were still left want­ing. A day later, Box­er in­tro­duced her own bill with Mar­key, a Mas­sachu­setts Demo­crat, then em­barked on a pub­lic cam­paign to kill the Ud­all-Vit­ter com­prom­ise that got so in­tense it rubbed even some Demo­crats the wrong way. She held a fiery press con­fer­ence with chem­ic­al ad­voc­ates such as Erin Brock­ovich, and at one point charged that the bi­par­tis­an bill had been writ­ten by the Amer­ic­an Chem­istry Coun­cil, point­ing to a Word doc­u­ment show­ing that the group had made ed­its (ACC said it had just com­men­ted on a draft, as had many out­side groups).

   “I loved Frank Lauten­berg so much, and it’s with deep re­spect and a heavy heart that I say all of this about a bill that bears his name,” Box­er said at the time.

   But Box­er wasn’t in charge of the EPW agenda and spon­sors didn’t have to go through her any­more.

   “I al­ways wanted her to be in­volved and be con­struct­ive,” Ud­all said. “But there were times when I thought her op­pos­i­tion might just stop us flat, right where we were.”

   That’s ex­actly what Box­er had in mind.

   “I was a road­b­lock. The whole point of what I did was to stop this bill un­til I got to a point where I didn’t think it would kill people,” she said. “I’m not here to please oth­er mem­bers, I’m here to work with oth­er mem­bers for the good of the people.”

   36 Votes

   After a March hear­ing on the bill, three Demo­crats on the com­mit­tee—Shel­don White­house, Jeff Merkley, and Cory Book­er—came to­geth­er with a list of con­cerns and ap­proached Ud­all.

   “Every so of­ten, a hear­ing really does make a dif­fer­ence and this was a good hear­ing,” White­house said. “See­ing the faults and flaws of the ex­ist­ing bill, the hear­ing really set up a feel­ing where we could gain some ground … This wasn’t a ques­tion of a bill be­ing on a ful­crum where there had to be off­sets to our changes, we knew there would have to be sig­ni­fic­ant move­ment in the dir­ec­tion of pub­lic pro­tec­tion.”

   “Tom had been talk­ing to all of us pretty con­stantly ask­ing us to help him im­prove the bill, but we thought we could be more ef­fect­ive ne­go­ti­at­ing as a group rather than get­ting picked off one-by-one,” White­house con­tin­ued.

   The res­ult was a pack­age of Demo­crat-friendly changes. Mem­bers ad­dressed a so-called “death zone,” or a gap that barred states from act­ing after EPA began eval­u­at­ing a spe­cif­ic chem­ic­al. More state laws were grand­fathered in­to the bill, and a vari­ous safety stand­ards were tightened.

   The sup­port of the three new Demo­crats al­lowed the bill to emerge from the EPW Com­mit­tee in a 15-5 vote. A week later they signed on as co­spon­sors with 11 oth­er sen­at­ors, bring­ing the bill’s total to 36.

   Mean­while, the GOP-con­trolled House was go­ing ahead with its own bill, one that pub­lic-health groups thought was even bet­ter than one ori­gin­ally draf­ted by Lauten­berg. The bill from Rep. John Shimkus was nar­row­er than what the Sen­ate pro­posed and didn’t con­tain some of the in­dustry-friendly pro­vi­sions that en­vir­on­ment­al­ists hated.

   The bill, in the end, passed in a 398-1 vote un­der a sus­pen­sion of the rules, shock­ing out­siders who had seen how con­ten­tious TSCA re­form had been in the past.

   “I don’t think the House au­thors have got­ten the cred­it they de­serve for in­flu­en­cing the de­bate,” said Andy Igre­jas, ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of the co­ali­tion Safer Chem­ic­als, Healthy Fam­il­ies, which has not en­dorsed the House bill but thinks it is a good base. “It got less at­ten­tion, but iron­ic­ally that’s be­cause of the work they put in to get the bill to that point.”

   52 Votes

   With the Sen­ate bill out of com­mit­tee, spon­sors star­ted look­ing for floor time, but with a packed floor agenda, they wanted to min­im­ize the time it would take up. By Ju­ly, the bill was up to 52 co­spon­sors, but spon­sors ac­know­ledged that their chances would be bet­ter if they could prove they had 60 votes to fend off a fili­buster.

   But as they worked to re­cruit more, Ud­all and Vit­ter had a goal in mind: keep a one-for-one bal­ance between the parties.

   “In this polit­ic­al at­mo­sphere, it’s im­port­ant for this to be a true bi­par­tis­an bill,” Vit­ter said. “It hasn’t been so much dif­fi­cult, as it’s been very time con­sum­ing. It’s not unique to the sub­ject mat­ter, I think it’s more about this Con­gress and this Sen­ate.”

   That meant a lot of “good old-fash­ioned le­gis­lat­ing,” as Ud­all called it. In­di­vidu­al mem­bers had pet con­cerns. Delaware’s Chris­toph­er Coons, a chem­istry ma­jor, had been push­ing for green chem­istry and re­search pro­vi­sions. New Jer­sey’s Book­er wanted lim­its on an­im­al test­ing.

   Jim In­hofe, chair­man of the En­vir­on­ment and Pub­lic Works Com­mit­tee and a sup­port­er of the bill, re­called that at one press con­fer­ence, Vit­ter was run­ning late and In­hofe real­ized he was the only Re­pub­lic­an on a stage with “all of the very-far Left.”

   “I’m look­ing around and I thought, ‘Am I really do­ing the right thing here?’” In­hofe said.

   White­house poin­ted out that Ud­all had taken a lot of friendly fire from the Left in the early stages.

   “I think he signed on not be­cause he really liked the bill as it was, but be­cause he saw the pro­spect of a bi­par­tis­an bill and could be a link and drive it to where it is today,” White­house said.

   In a press con­fer­ence, Book­er looked at Ud­all and said, “You’ve got scars. When you go to heav­en, God doesn’t judge you by how good you look, but by how many scars you have, and this is one.”

   60 Votes

   Mar­key, who had at one point al­lied with Box­er, and Illinois Demo­crat Dick Durbin fi­nally signed on in Oc­to­ber after months of ne­go­ti­at­ing, be­com­ing the 59th and 60th sup­port­ers. The two had worked to­geth­er on vari­ous tox­ics is­sues (in­clud­ing a Ju­ly ef­fort to get as­bes­tos out of chil­dren’s toys) and had been press­ing Ud­all to keep ne­go­ti­at­ing the bill, des­pite Mar­key’s al­li­ance with Box­er.

   The two fi­nally came on after Ud­all and Vit­ter agreed to a new pack­age that would set dead­lines for in­dustry to com­ply with EPA reg­u­la­tions, in­crease the fees paid by in­dustry and ac­cel­er­ate ac­tion on a list of chem­ic­als iden­ti­fied as high risk. It also sim­pli­fies the pro­cess for states to keep en­for­cing their own laws amid fed­er­al ac­tion.

   Box­er has claimed that the Demo­crats were ne­go­ti­at­ing in part on her be­half, al­though Re­pub­lic­an aides said that Demo­crats were really go­ing be­hind her back. Coons said the split in the party was “ex­cep­tion­ally dif­fi­cult.”

   In­hofe, who had worked with Box­er on a ma­jor trans­port­a­tion bill that sum­mer, stepped in for Vit­ter to ne­go­ti­ate dir­ectly with her. The two worked out new lan­guage that would give back some reg­u­lat­ory power to the states, give more test­ing pri­or­ity for chem­ic­als like as­bes­tos and force ex­tra con­sid­er­a­tion for chem­ic­als stored near drink­ing wa­ter (an is­sue brought to light in the 2013 chem­ic­al spill in West Vir­gin­ia).

   She agreed not to get in the way of the bill and the spon­sors got an agree­ment from both parties to move the bill by un­an­im­ous con­sent. All that was left was find­ing a few minutes on the floor.

   100 Votes (Or at least, no ob­jec­tions)

   The fi­nal hurdle for the bill was a para­dox fa­mil­i­ar to any sen­at­or who has caught a glimpse of the fin­ish line. Once a bill looks like it could suc­ceed, oth­er le­gis­lat­ors—know­ing how few op­por­tun­it­ies there are to move a meas­ure through the Sen­ate—look to at­tach their own pro­jects to the meas­ure, sim­ul­tan­eously giv­ing new hope to their bills but mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to pass the meas­ure as a whole.

   Iron­ic­ally, the bill’s suc­cess al­most guar­an­teed its fail­ure. North Car­o­lina Re­pub­lic­an Richard Burr, a co­spon­sor of the bill, wanted to amend the bill to reau­thor­ize the ex­pired Land and Wa­ter Con­ser­va­tion Fund, a pop­u­lar pub­lic-lands pro­gram, and said he’d block up quick-floor time on the chem­ic­al bill to get it. Spon­sors, want­ing to move it cleanly, told Burr he’d need to find an­oth­er vehicle.

   And so the bill sat idle for months. Ud­all and In­hofe would trot to the floor every so of­ten for a showy re­quest for un­an­im­ous con­sent, Burr would ob­ject and the Sen­ate would move on.

   It took un­til the fi­nal week of the ses­sion for the lo­g­jam to clear—a three-year ex­ten­sion of the LW­CF was in­cluded in the om­ni­bus pack­age. The morn­ing after the om­ni­bus was re­leased, Burr called In­hofe’s of­fice to tell him the hold was lif­ted.

   That’s when a fa­mil­i­ar foe ree­m­erged. Box­er, up­set that the un­an­im­ous-con­sent agree­ment didn’t con­tain an agree­ment to go to form­al con­fer­ence with the House, im­me­di­ately in­sti­tuted her own hold and de­man­ded as­sur­ance that a con­fer­ence be held with the terms she wanted. Re­pub­lic­ans, say­ing that was out­side the nor­mal or­der for the Sen­ate and con­cerned it could blow up a del­ic­ate un­an­im­ous con­sent agree­ment, launched a frantic be­hind-the-scenes dis­pute.

   And some ugli­ness spilled out in­to the open. “She’s will­ing to walk back on a deal on the sake of try­ing to throw her Demo­crat­ic col­leagues un­der the bus,” said a Re­pub­lic­an aide, ac­cus­ing her of try­ing to keep cer­tain mem­bers away from the con­fer­ence. A Demo­crat­ic aide said that Box­er was simply try­ing to make sure there were no back­room deal­ings.

   As­sured that the con­fer­ence would hap­pen in the open, Box­er backed off and lif­ted the hold. Just be­fore 6:00 p.m., while most of the Cap­it­ol was look­ing for­ward to the next day’s must-pass om­ni­bus votes, In­hofe and Ud­all took to the floor and quickly passed the bill by voice vote.

   But Box­er may not get her wish—In­hofe said Fri­day that a form­al, pub­lic con­fer­ence with the House “may be ne­ces­sary, but may not.” In­form­al talks have already be­gun to merge the two bills.

   Whatever the path for­ward, Sen­at­ors were eager to look at the man who star­ted it all. In a vic­tory lap press con­fer­ence Fri­day, they were flanked by a pho­to­graph of Lauten­berg sur­roun­ded by his grand­chil­dren, mark­ing a leg­acy that is that much closer to the fin­ish line.“I could just cry when I think about it,” Bon­nie Lauten­berg said in an in­ter­view, sniff­ing as she held back tears. “We’ve worked so hard to get this done. It meant so much to Frank and it means so much to our fam­ily, I’ll be forever grate­ful to every­one who made this hap­pen.”

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5. (ACC Mentioned) Senate Approves Bill Giving EPA More Clout On Safety Of Chemicals

   Dec 19, 2015 | The Washington Post (in the Boston Globe)

   By Chelsea Harvey

   The Senate has passed a much-anticipated bill to revise the federal chemical safety law, which environmentalists have long argued puts the American public at unnecessary risk of exposure to toxic substances.

   The bill has been in negotiations for more than two years. It finally went to a vote in the Senate on Thursday night and passed with bipartisan support. The bill now heads to a conference committee to be reconciled with a similar measure passed by the House.

   The Senate version calls for a major overhaul of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which gives the Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate chemicals. In recent years, environmentalists have sought major changes to the law, which they have argued does not give the EPA enough power when it comes to restricting toxic substances.

   ‘‘This law is about 40 years old, and it simply hasn’t kept up with the new science that is showing how chemicals can affect our health,’’ said Richard Denison, lead senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund.

   A major problem with the existing law, according to Denison, is that it requires the EPA to demonstrate such a high burden of proof that a chemical is dangerous to human health as to make it nearly impossible to restrict a substance’s use.

   The ‘‘poster child’’ for this issue is the EPA’s failed attempts to ban asbestos — a substance known for its cancer-causing qualities — in the 1980s.

   As a result of restrictions in the current law, Denison said, the EPA has not been able to generate adequate information on many chemicals still commonly used in the United States, and there are also many restrictions on the information it’s permitted to share with the public, so as not to divulge confidential trade information.

   ‘‘Most people assume that the chemicals in the products and materials they encounter every day have been thoroughly tested and shown to be safe,’’ Denison said. ‘‘In fact, only a handful of chemicals have ever been reviewed for safety.’’

   The new bill would grant greater authority to the EPA to study the effects of chemicals and regulate their use and has received wide support from both Democrats and Republicans. The bipartisan support is a reflection of the amount of time senators have spent negotiating the bill, a process that has required ‘‘careful balancing of the interests on both sides in this debate,’’ Denison said.

   While the bill grants much greater regulatory authority to the EPA, which supporters hope will lead to more uniform, national health-based standards, it also includes some protections for the industry from state regulations.

   The bill has also received support from members of the chemical industry.

   The president of the National Association of Chemical Distributors, Eric Byer, said, ‘‘Today’s vote puts us on the doorstep of finally reforming an outdated law in a way that will build confidence in the US chemical regulatory system, protect human health and the environment from significant risks, and meet the commercial and competitive interests of the US chemical industry and the national economy.’’

   The House of Representatives passed a similar, although much more limited, bill earlier in 2015 proposing some smaller-scale reforms to the toxic-chemicals law.

   Negotiations between the House and the Senate could be complete, and a compromise bill sent to both chambers for a final vote by early 2016.

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6. (ACC Mentioned) Senate Unanimously Approves Microbead-Ban Bill

   Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

   By Amena H. Saiyid

   A ban on the sale, manufacture, and distribution of synthetic plastic microbeads in facial washes, soaps and shampoos could start as early as July 2017 following the Senate's approval of the legislation by unanimous consent on Dec. 18.

   The Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, which would amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, now heads to President Barack Obama's desk.

   The Senate's unanimous consent came just about ten days after the House approved by voice vote H.R. 1321, which was authored by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and shepherded through the House by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.). Upton is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, while Pallone is its ranking member (235 DEN A-7, 12/8/15).

   Environmental groups and wastewater communities have raised concerns about plastic microbeads because the tiny pieces of spherical plastics swirl down the drains of U.S. households, flow unimpeded through wastewater treatment plants and spill into rivers, lakes and estuaries, accumulating in ever-increasing quantities where people fish and swim.

   One tube of exfoliating facewash can contain more than 350,000 microbeads, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, which lauded the Senate's action and called on Obama to sign the bill into law.

   Product Makers Endorse Bill

   The Personal Care Products Council, noting that plastic microbeads in such products constitute a very tiny part of the marine pollution problem, has also endorsed the bill, saying a national law was better than a patchwork of state regulations. Lezlee Westine, the council's president and chief executive officer, in a Dec. 18 statement said the bill creates “a planned and pragmatic national phase-out process in the interest of both consumers and the personal care products and cosmetics industry.”

   The Consumer Health Products Association joined the American Chemistry Council, Personal Care Products Association, and SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association, in support of H.R. 1321.

   The microbead ban would become effective July 1, 2017. A year later, the ban would apply to the manufacture of over-the-counter drugs as well as sale of rinse-off cosmetics containing microbeads. The bill also would ban the sale of over-the-counter drugs containing microbeads, starting July 1, 2019.

   The ban also would prohibit the use of all alternatives and would apply to any “intentionally added” plastic microbeads defined in the bill as “any solid plastic particle that is less than five millimeters in size and is intended to be used to exfoliate or cleanse the human body or any part thereof.”

   It also would preempt microbead bans that already exist in nine states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey and Wisconsin (184 DEN B-1, 9/23/15).

   Biodegradeable Plastic Microbeads Banned

   According to Pallone, H.R. 1321 explicitly banned the use of biodegradable plastic as an alternative ingredient, a loophole that was discovered in a number of existing state laws.

   The closing of the biodegradable provision loophole in the California bill is what set the stage for a strong federal bill, Blake Kopcho, oceans campaigner for Center for Biological Diversity, told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 18.

   “The combination of closing the biodegradable loophole and the accelerated timeline of implementation makes this a strong bill that reduces a major contributor of plastic pollution at the source before it ever has a chance to reach the ocean,” Kopcho said.

    

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7. (ACC Mentioned) Congress Sends Microbeads Ban To Obama

   Dec 18, 2015 | E&E News PM

   By Sam Pearson

   The Senate this afternoon easily approved a bill to ban the use of plastic microbeads in personal care products, which when washed off into water bodies can harm aquatic life, sending the bill to the president to sign.

   The chamber passed H.R. 1321, or the "Microbead-Free Waters Act," by unanimous consent. The House had unanimously approved the bill under suspension of the rules earlier this month (E&E Daily, Dec. 8).

   The legislation will halt manufacturing of plastic microbeads by July 1, 2017, and ban the delivery of new cosmetic products containing microbeads by July 1, 2018. It also will prevent states from setting their own timelines for faster phaseouts, though none has so far done so.

   "This is so sweet," said Sherri Mason, a professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Fredonia.

   Mason conducted some of the first research into the impacts of plastic microbeads. Her researchers took to the Great Lakes to test water samples for microbead content in the summers of 2012 and 2013.

   Mason and others are now performing tests on 29 tributaries of the Great Lakes. While the study is still ongoing, Mason said her team was finding higher quantities of microbeads in these areas, which she said is not surprising because less water is present and the streams are closer to wastewater discharge sites.

   Removing microbeads from commerce will help these ecosystems recover, Mason said.

   "This is a fantastic first step," Mason said, "and that's kind of been my philosophy with regard to the microbeads from the beginning -- never have I intended to imply that microbeads are the only plastic pollution issue -- that by banning microbeads, somehow we're solving the problem -- but it's the first step in the process of getting people to be aware and think about our relationship with plastic."

   Lawmakers were able to win the support of prominent industry groups including the Personal Care Products Council and the American Chemistry Council for the ban.

   Industry leaders who testified said the timeline established in the bill is reasonable for companies, some of which are shifting away from the products already. And lawmakers of both parties found common ground on their desire to protect the Great Lakes from pollution.

   "Christmas has come early for Lake Michigan and all of our nation's waters," House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in a statement. "These pesky pieces of plastic may be tiny, but they are causing big time pollution. I am pleased the Senate followed the House's lead, and that the president will soon have an opportunity to sign this important bipartisan bill into law. Microbeads' days are numbered, and that's good news."

   Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), a co-sponsor of the Senate bill, also lauded its approval.

   "Plastic microbeads are devastating to wildlife and human health, and I'm pleased our bill will now be law so we can phase them out in a way that's fair to Ohio companies and keeps them on a level playing field with their competitors," Portman said in a statement.

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8. (ACC Mentioned) Chemical Safety Overhaul Passes Senate, Earns Industry Praise

   Dec 21, 2015 | Environmental Leader

   By Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

   The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — the US’ primary chemical regulation — moved closer to getting a years-in-the-making overhaul late Thursday night as the US Senate approved the chemical safety bill.

   The Senate passed the bipartisan Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act by a unanimous voice vote. It now goes to conference committee to be reconciled with the US House of Representatives’ chemical safety reform bill, which passed in June.

   The 39-year-old TSCA is the last of the major environmental laws passed in the 1960s and ’70s that has not yet been modernized. This has led to uncertainty and varying restrictions at the state level and in the private sector, creating a chaotic marketplace for business, says Jack Pratt, the Environmental Defense Fund’s chemicals campaign director.

   Since TSCA was enacted, the EPA has been able to restrict just five chemicals, and it has prevented only four chemicals from going to market — out of the more than 23,000 new chemicals manufactured since 1976 — according to Sen. Tom Udall (D-New Mexico), co-author of the new chemical safety bill.

   The new bill gives the EPA greater authority and funding to regulate chemicals. It also gives the industry new protections against state regulations, which has earned it support from several trade organizations, all of which applauded the Senate’s vote.

   Industry Praises Senate’s Vote

   The Consumer Specialty Products Association (CSPA), which represents hundreds of household brands including 3M, Procter & Gamble, BASF and Unilever, said the Senate’s passage of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21stCentury Act brings the US closer to having an effective, science-based chemical regulatory system that gives consumers confidence in the safety of the products they buy.

   “For nearly a decade the Consumer Specialty Products Association has testified in support of strengthening the Toxic Substances Control Act and has offered input on the best way to modernize TSCA,” said Chris Cathcart, president and CEO of CSPA. “We are looking forward to working with the Senate and House bill authors to reconcile the two bills into legislation that has the support of a wide range of stakeholders and will be signed by President Obama.”

   The American Chemistry Council said the bill “build confidence in the US chemical regulatory system and address the commercial and competitive needs of the US chemical industry and the national economy.”

   And the National Association of Manufacturers said the bill will eliminate regulatory uncertainty. “Manufacturers have long been vocal advocates for these essential reforms that strengthen and modernize outdated environmental regulations,” said NAM vice president of energy and resources policy Ross Eisenberg. “This real reform will enable manufacturers to further improve products while growing the economy and creating jobs. Manufacturers urge congressional negotiators to resolve this legislation quickly.”

   But despite the bipartisan and industry support, much work still must be done to reconcile the two bills, Keith Matthews, an attorney at Sidley Austin LLP and former former director of the Biopesticides and Pollution Prevention Division in the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, told Environmental Leader.

   Much Work to Be Done on Final Bill

   First off, the House bill, at 46 pages, is much less detailed than the Senate bill, which is more than three times as long as its counterpart.

   “While the House bill grants EPA new authority to act in certain areas, the Senate bill to a much greater extent directs EPA’s future actions,” Matthews says. “Still to be determined is which approach will predominate in a final bill.”

   The two bills contain significant differences in the prioritization of chemicals and supportive funding for the agency’s regulatory activities.

   “The Senate bill establishes a multi-stage process for EPA to prioritize the chemicals that must be assessed — of over 86,000 ‘existing chemicals,’ it is thought that approximately 1,000 are of sufficient concern to require comprehensive risk assessment,” Matthews says. “The Senate bill requires EPA to designate ‘high priority’ and ‘low priority chemicals. EPA is to designate 10 high priority chemicals and 10 low priority chemicals within 180 days of enactment; within three years, EPA is to have either completed or have in process 20 high priority chemical risk assessments; this number increases over time.”

   Meanwhile, the House bill expands the EPA’s authority to require testing, but does not specify a mechanism for priority setting.

   Similarly, the Senate bill requires the EPA to establish “reasonable fees” for manufacturers and processors taking action under TSCA while the House bill says the EPA may require such fees. “All in all, the Members still have a significant amount of work ahead in crafting the final bill,” Matthews says.

   Udall and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who co-authored the bill, told The Hill that they hoped to start negotiations Friday — during Congress’ holiday break — and have a final product ready for votes in both chambers early next year.
   Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/12/21/chemical-safety-overhaul-passes-senate-earns-industry-praise/#ixzz3uxUKiGJU
   

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9. (ACC Mentioned) Chemical Regulation Reform Clears Senate

   Dec 18, 2015 | Plastics Technology

   By Tony Deligio

   On December 17, the U.S. Senate approved S. 697, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, on a unanimous voice vote, leaving only a conference committee with the House of Representatives and President Obama’s signature standing in the way of finally reforming the nation’s antiquated chemical regulations.

   Signed on Oct. 11, 1976, by President Gerald Ford, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) taxes the Environmental Protection Agency with regulating the introduction of new or already existing chemicals. Failure to update the law, at a time when many consumers have become increasingly concerned about the chemicals in everyday products, including plastics, had prompted local governments, including the states of California, Oregon and Vermont, to enact their own restrictions on chemicals. The potential for an inconsistent patchwork of regulations around chemicals, and the plastics they go into, had lead makers and consumers of those products to call on an overarching federal framework for regulation.

   In a release, Bill Carteaux, president and CEO of SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association praised senate passage of the reform, saying the legislation would have “the power to truly protect consumers while giving plastics companies reliable ground rules that are based on science.”

   National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD) President Eric R. Byer noted the impact on consumers and industry. “Today’s vote puts us on the doorstep of finally reforming an outdated law in a way that will build confidence in the U.S. chemical regulatory system, protect human health and the environment from significant risks, and meet the commercial and competitive interests of the U.S. chemical industry and the national economy,” Byer said.

   American Chemistry Council (ACC) President and CEO Cal Dooley said senate passage represented a watershed moment in the history of U.S. environmental legislation, adding that the proposed law will “protect human health and the environment, build confidence in the U.S. chemical regulatory system and address the commercial and competitive needs of the U.S. chemical industry and the national economy.”

   Martha Marrapese a partner at Washington D.C. lawfirm, Keller and Heckman LLP and an expert on TSCA told Plastics Technology that as passed, the Senate bill would have an impact on industry, noting that the primary reason for reforming TSCA was to give the EPA greater authority to regulate the approximately 62,000 chemicals that were grandfathered in when the original law passed back in 1976.

   “[The House and Senate bills] do that,” Marrapese said. “Plus, EPA will have to stay on a schedule for identifying and reviewing existing chemicals. The agency’s decisions must be clear to the regulated community and the public. Both bills promote fiscal responsibility by giving EPA the ability to ask for fees to pay for substantial portions of the reviews. All of these factors add up to meaningful reform.”

   Jon Kurrle, senior vice president, Government & Industry Affairs at SPI, told Plastics Technology that the new law would be beneficial to both plastics producers and processors.

   “Basically the situation is that the existing law is so old it really undermined confidence out there in the states and among consumers,” Kurrle said. “It undermined confidence in the ability to regulate the manufacture, use, and importation of chemicals.” In doing so, the lack of TSCA reform had become as much a processor issue as it was an issue for petrochemical manufacturers.

   The next step will be the formation of a House/Senate conference committee to iron out differences between the two bills, as the House passed a different version of the legislation in the spring. Should that be successful, the reconciled bill would then head to the White House, where the Obama administration had indicated support for the effort, particularly since it had been a bipartisan process all along.

   Kurrle noted some discussion will be necessary, as the House version is much shorter than the Senate’s, but he said the SPI is optimistic about the prospect of passage and hopeful that the conference will be convened as soon as possible in 2016. “There were some last-minute procedural hurdles to get through to make sure every senator was satisfied,” Kurrle said of the bills progress through the senate, adding that “all signals from the Obama administration” with regards to the bill “are very positive.”

   Back on May 22, 2013, Senators David Vitter and Frank Lautenberg started this process with the introduction of The Lautenberg-Vitter Chemical Safety Improvement Act of 2013. On June 3 of that year, Lautenberg passed away, and New Mexico Senator Tom Udall replaced him as the democratic cosponsor of the legislation. That spirit of bipartisanship has remained with the bill, as it ultimately garnered 57 cosponsors in the senate, including 35 Republicans and 22 Democrats.  

   On his website, Udall noted that in the 39 years since TSCA was enacted, the EPA has been able to restrict just five chemicals (polychlorinated biphenyls, fully halogenated chlorofluoroalkanes, dioxin, asbestos and hexavalent chromium), and it has prevented only four chemicals from going to market. That out of the more than 23,000 new chemicals manufactured since 1976, according to Udall.
   

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10. Senate Votes to Overhaul Chemical Safety and Ban Beads in Beauty Products

    Dec 19, 2015 | The New York Times

    By David M. Herszenhorn and John Schwartz

    In a flurry of year-end legislative activity, the Senate last week approved a bill to overhaul the nation’s chemical safety system, and a separate measure to ban the use of tiny plastic beads in beauty products that can pollute waterways and harm marine life.

    The chemical safety overhaul, named for Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, would be the first significant rewriting of the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act. Many experts have said the statute, enacted in 1976, is inadequate in protecting the public from dangerous chemicals in an array of consumer products, largely because of weak enforcement provisions.

    Mr. Lautenberg, who died in 2013 at the age of 89, had been a driver of the effort to overhaul the chemical safety laws. The push to complete the legislation took on new urgency after 7,500 gallons of a coal processing chemical leaked into the Elk River near Charleston, W.Va., in January last year.

    Supporters of the legislation said it would require the Environmental Protection Agency to set clear priorities for assessing the risk of chemicals and would substantially increase the number of chemicals reviewed by federal regulators.

    The House has approved a different version of the legislation, and the two measures must now be reconciled. That process is expected to take place early next year.

    On Friday, the Senate, by unanimous consent, also adopted a bill banning the use of tiny plastic beads in beauty products, including exfoliating scrubs.

    The beads flush through water treatment systems and out into lakes, waterways and the oceans, and attract toxic chemical compounds like PCBs that are then consumed by marine life. The beads, and other microplastic debris, have been identified as a threat to fish and other creatures, and studies have suggested that the chemicals can move up the food chain to humans.

    The House passed its version of the bill earlier this month. The new federal law would require manufacturers to begin phasing out the beads in July 2017, and would follow bans passed in several states, including California and Illinois. A similar measure is under consideration in New York. Many major cosmetics companies, under pressure from environmental groups, have already announced phaseout plans.

    The two environmental measures were part of year-end legislative activity that largely focused on a sweeping fiscal package, which included a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, and a $620 billion package of tax breaks for businesses and low-income individuals. Congress approved the fiscal measure on Friday morning, and President Obama signed it that afternoon.

    The spending law included an array of provisions in a number of policy areas, which have prompted public debate. Among those provisions is an expansion of the H2-B visa program for seasonal workers that would potentially raise the number of workers admitted under the program to 250,000 from 66,000.

    Supporters of the provision, including Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, said it would benefit businesses, like those in her state’s seafood industry, that face a shortage of workers.

    Critics, including Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, said that the provision to expand the program was dropped into the spending measure without sufficient debate.

    “It has been added to this bill without hearings and without an open process in the Senate,” Mr. Sessions said.

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11. Vitter: Chemicals Bill to Provide Nationwide Rulebook

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Pat Rizzuto

    Legislation the Senate passed unanimously Dec. 17 that would overhaul the primary U.S. chemicals law would set consistent national standards for chemical regulations across the country, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said Dec. 18.

    “When the EPA acts, that is the rulebook for the entire country, which is the only way an industry like this, which isn't just national, it's international, can remain an innovation leader,” Vitter said during a briefing the morning after the Senate voted unanimously by voice vote to pass the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (S.697) . The Senate's bill was renumbered as H.R. 2576, so it could be sent back to the House for consideration, Senate staff told Bloomberg BNA.

    The bill would balance the new authority it would give the Environmental Protection Agency with specific requirements so the regulated community and interested public can better understand the reasoning for the agency's decisions about chemicals, Vitter said.

    “As we gave EPA more authority, we wanted to make sure it acted with that authority in a completely transparent way that is based on completely sound science. I think there are significant protections in the bill,” Vitter said.

    Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who originally opposed the bill, said he agreed to support it after language was added to provide the EPA more funding from industry fees; require industry compliance with regulations by set deadlines; require the EPA to act more quickly to address hazardous chemicals, such as asbestos, more quickly; and provide additional protection for populations vulnerable to chemicals.

    “None of us standing up here believe it is perfect,” Markey said. “But it's this kind of bipartisan commitment, married with compromise, that yields important, long-lasting legislation.”

    Udall Highlights Changes to TSCA

    Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) worked with Vitter for more than two years to secure passage of this legislation, which took minutes to approve on the by voice vote floor (243 DEN A-1, 12/18/15).

    “After years of negotiations, collaboration and working with stakeholders across the country, we have made tremendous progress toward historic, bipartisan environmental reform,” Udall said.

    In a floor speech later in the day, Udall highlighted key features of the bill and changes it would make to existing TSCA:

    • “Our bill requires EPA to assess chemicals based only on the health and safety information, not on the cost.”

    • “Our bill gives EPA new authorities to require testing data and it requires [the EPA to make] a finding of safety before new chemicals—as many as 1,500 a year—enter the market.”

    • “Our bill explicitly requires the protection of vulnerable populations and lists examples of populations such as infants, the elderly, pregnant women, workers and others.”

    • “Our bill requires the EPA to systematically review all the chemicals in commerce, prioritizing all the chemicals of most concern first, and it sets aggressive judicially enforceable deadlines for EPA decisions.”

    • “Our bill includes a section on sustainable chemistry and also makes more information about chemicals available by limiting industries' ability to claim information as confidential.”

    • “Our bill gives EPA sustained sources of funding and assures that EPA's priorities are not overwhelmed by private interests to ensure that the program we implement is a risk based system.”

    • “Our bill provides an appropriate balance between federal and state actions.”

    Next Steps

    Udall discussed next steps to reconcile the Senate bill with House legislation that narrowly changed TSCA.

    The House approved its TSCA Modernization Act (H.R. 2576) in June by a 398-1 vote (121 DEN A-1, 6/24/15).

    Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) lifted her objections to the TSCA-reform bill proceeding to the Senate floor even though neither chamber has reached any agreement regarding the specific approach they will use to address differences between the two bills, Udall said.

    Staff from both chambers will work toward reconciling the bills during the holiday break, Udall said.

    The next session of Congress begins on Jan. 5, 2016, for the House and on Jan. 11, 2016, for the Senate.

    Vitter said all sides will be working to complete a final TSCA-reform bill in early 2016.

    Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who shepherded the House bill through that chamber, told Bloomberg BNA the House is open to looking at provisions in the Senate bill that are absent from the House legislation, such as the Senate's change that would require the EPA assess the safety of new chemicals before they enter commerce.

    “I'm not going to require or request my folks to burn the midnight oil all through the break, destroy their holidays, when we can come back and start the process in January. I think there will be a lot of time during the regular workday, regular hours when members can talk to senators, staff can talk to staff.

    “The real question is, ‘do we go the formal route or are there discussions that can happen where it's not [formal],' ” Shimkus said.

    Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) likes having formal conferences, Shimkus said, but added if the chambers used an informal process all stakeholders would be heard. “I'm very optimistic. Very exciting.”

    Mark Duvall, an attorney with Beveridge & Diamond PC who consults with chemical companies and their trade associations, told Bloomberg BNA the House and Senate bills are notable.

    Despite the chamber's general lack of bipartisanship, “both houses overwhelmingly approved legislation giving EPA significant new authority. Both sides should be congratulated on feat of magic,” Duvall said.

    Additional Public Health Protections

    Boxer did not attend the briefing, but her office provided Bloomberg BNA a list of changes it said she negotiated with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) initially followed by Udall and Vitter.

    The changes have been added since April when the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved the bill (82 DEN A-9, 4/29/15).

    The changes include:

    • as the EPA would determine which chemicals to evaluate first for safety, it would have to give priority to those that are known human carcinogens and have high acute and chronic toxicity, such as asbestos;

    • the EPA also would have to consider whether the chemical is stored near a significant source of drinking water as it sets priorities;

    • the EPA would have to complete chemical safety assessments under tighter deadlines;

    • the scope of the EPA's preemption of state law is more limited; and

    • a revision to the Public Health Service Act through a Trevor's Law provision that would give federal agencies explicit authority to investigate cancer clusters.

    More Changes Since Committee Approval in April

    Senate staff also provided a summary listing highlights of the bill in general and changes made since the EPW committee approved it. The summary says the bill would:

    • direct the EPA to use its Framework for Metals Risk Assessment as it prioritizes and assesses metals and metal compounds;

    • require the EPA to provide additional details on its safety assessments and safety determinations in a annual report to Congress; and

    • require companies comply with regulations within four years, with an extension of up to 18 months available if compliance is not technologically or economically feasible.

    Line-by-Line Assistance

    Many technical changes and small revisions to the bill have been made to tighten it up and ensure it would not, inadvertently, throw new obstacles in front of the EPA, Senate staff told Bloomberg BNA.

    Agency and Senate staff conducted a line-by-line review of the bill, they said.

    Scientists from the American Chemical Society provided guidance throughout the bill's development as well, Udall said.

    A group of toxicologists convened by the Society of Toxicology consulted with Senate staff on issues such as chemical safety tests, William Farland, a member of that group and former senior EPA scientist, said during a recent Society for Risk Analysis meeting.

    As the TSCA-reform bill was revised through negotiations, the language on its scientific requirements became more accurate and less prescriptive, Farland said.

    The task force did not want the law to inadvertently freeze toxicity testing by requiring any specific technologies, he said.

     

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12. TSCA Reform Supporters Eye Informal Talks To Guide Quick Conference

    Dec 18, 2015 | InsideEPA

    By Bridget DiCosmo

    Supporters of pending legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) appear to be eyeing informal discussions on how to reconcile a House TSCA measure with a Senate version approved Dec. 17, which could help lead to streamlined conference negotiations resulting in a final bill that Congress could vote on early next year.

    However, it is unclear what form the pending conference talks will take, and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) -- a critic of earlier versions of the Senate bill, S. 697 -- is vowing to “stay intimately involved” in the process. Boxer's objections to various parts of the upper chamber's legislation, including language preempting state chemicals programs, prompted her to call on lawmakers to instead move the much narrower House TSCA bill, H.R. 2576.

    Both bills would would overhaul the 1976 TSCA in order to give EPA new authority to address risks from existing chemicals in the marketplace. The measures would also eliminate legal hurdles in current law that have hindered the agency's ability to restrict dangerous chemicals, such as its 1991 failure to ban asbestos.

    Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), who co-sponsored S. 697 with Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), at a Dec. 18 press conference the day after the Senate approved the bill by voice vote said a model for the conference process could be the Elementary and Secondary Education Act re-authorization bill that President Obama signed early this year. That conference was a “one day affair” preceded by “working with staff and members,” Udall said.

    Udall previously said at a June 25 Bipartisan Policy Center TSCA reform event in Washington, D.C., that lawmakers have several options to resolve differences between the bills, including an informal conference. Such a process, in which lawmakers held informal talks ahead of a formal conference and "outlined the differences" in each bill, could mean that the formal conference would go quickly and smoothly, he said.

    'Productive' Discussions

    At the Dec. 18 press conference, Vitter said he hopes the conference process could be completed “early next year,” saying there have already been some “significant and productive” discussions with the House on the issue.

    Udall said that he does not think there are a lot of differences to be worked out between the two TSCA reform bills, given that the House measure is significantly more narrow, but that he expects a clear area for discussion will be on preemption of state chemical programs -- one of Boxer's biggest concerns.

    “The big issue is how much the state does, and how much the federal government does,” Udall said, noting that the House took a different approach to preemption but still has “some good ideas.”

    The House bill would “grandfather,” or preserve existing state chemical safety laws that took effect before Aug. 1 and preserve state toxic tort claims, after EPA takes final action on regulating a chemical, unless they “actually conflict” with new federal mandates. New state chemical laws, however, would be preempted once EPA finishes a restriction of a substance under TSCA.

    The Senate bill also contains grandfathering provisions to preserve existing laws, but preemption for new chemical rules and laws would occur when EPA defines and publishes the scope of a safety assessment and safety determination under TSCA section 6 reviews for existing chemicals.

    Recent changes to the Senate bill aimed at securing more Democratic support also clarify the process under which a state could seek a waiver from preemption and for states to serve as "co-enforcers" of federal regulations.

    The current preemption provisions in the Senate bill have “found a sweet spot,” Udall said during the press conference.

    Conference Committee

    Senate leadership will appoint the members of the conference whether it is formal or informal. Udall said at the press conference that the “thing you should know is that all of the senators up here have a very good relationship” with the House lawmakers leading TSCA reform efforts.

    The senators that attended the press conference along with Udall were Vitter, Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW) Chairman James Inhofe (R-OK), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ed Markey (D-MA), Chris Coons (D-DE) and Tom Carper (D-DE).

    Republicans may outnumber Democrats in the conference committee given that they hold majorities in the House and Senate, but Boxer -- ranking member on EPW -- says she will be closely involved in the process.

    In a Dec. 17 statement, she said she had agreed to support the Senate bill moving to a vote because it has been “vastly improved” over the original version, which she charged “would have been harmful to our families, because it overrode our state laws and set up an ineffective and nonexistent way to regulate most toxic pollutants.” She also said that she “has been assured” that the conference committee will “consider the voices of those who have been most deeply affected, including nurses, breast cancer survivors, asbestos victims, and children, will be heard. I will have the opportunity to be in the room at every step and express their views.”

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13. TSCA Reform: The Most Important Work Comes Next

    Dec 18, 2015 | Safer Chemicals Healthy Families

    By Andy Igrejas

    Last night, the Senate passed its bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). This is a milestone that we have worked toward for years, but it also comes with some big red flags.

    The version that passed is much improved over the introduced version of S.697, the Udall-Vitter bill. It contains some important reforms:It removes the major legal barriers that prevented EPA from assessing chemicals and imposing restrictions where needed.It reduces the abuse of “Confidential Business Information,” which hides chemical information from the public.It sets up a weak but enforceable schedule of EPA chemical reviews.It preserves existing state restrictions on chemical use.Compared to previous versions, it makes it more likely that especially hazardous chemicals are reviewed earlier than later.It lets EPA order companies to test a chemical, instead of having to go through a formal rulemaking, which is a very cumbersome process.It provides EPA with a fee from industry to help fund its work.It provides clear “grandfathering” (legal protection) of many existing state laws.

    Unfortunately, it contains several provisions for the chemical industry and some other interest groups that undermine these limited reforms:It makes it harder for EPA to follow through and intercept a dangerous chemical when it enters the country as part of an imported product. Since so many products are imported, that’s a big deal.It requires EPA to jump through new legal hoops before it can order a chemical company to test a chemical. In that sense, it has reduced one barrier, but created some new ones.It still requires EPA to set aside a certain number of chemicals as “low priority” without a full safety review. The industry will flock to that provision so they can use it to convince retailers, states, and trading partners who are currently taking action against chemicals that a particular chemical really isn’t a problem, even though it hasn’t been held to the safety standard.It blocks states from taking new action on a chemical while EPA conducts its assessment, potentially delaying needed health interventions for years.It has a lot of other busy work and smaller provisions that are there for various industry groups, which will waste precious time and resources at EPA and reduce what is available for the core tasks of testing, evaluating and restricting toxic chemicals.

    Our press statement on the passage of the bill last night emphasized the negative aspects of the bill for two reasons:The Senate bill has been accompanied by a full propaganda push by the industry and its allies, requiring some rebalancing and perspective on our part.Recently, and more troubling: in the run-up to this vote, we saw strong indications that the chemical industry’s playbook for the upcoming conference process will be to walk back the few key wins for public health and the environment, including walking away from a strictly health-based standard and an enforceable schedule of reviews.

    The next phase of the process will therefore be most crucial. As we’ve said before, the strength of the House bill is that it acknowledges that it is a limited reform and it focuses on the fundamentals. The House bill simply removes the key pieces of TSCA that had prevented EPA from testing, evaluating, and restricting chemicals where needed. It also asks for expedited action on chemicals that are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic. Like the Senate bill, it defines vulnerable populations and requires that they are protected. It has an important principle that nothing changes for the states unless and until EPA actually exonerates a chemical after a full safety review or restricts it to ensure safety.

    The House bill still falls short by not providing new resources for EPA, making inadequate reforms to confidential business information, and not having clearer grandfathering of certain key state laws.

    To combine the best of both bills would be to work off of the House bill and address these shortcomings, by pulling selectively from the Senate bill.

    If the conference committee does that, we could end up with TSCA reform that is more limited than we had hoped for, but still meaningful in the protection it steadily provides.

    “Ten chemicals per year” sounds like a small number but one chemical or class of chemicals can have an enormous reach in the economy and impact on our health. If EPA tackles some of the worst first, and truly protects disproportionately exposed populations, like environmental justice communities or factory workers, it would make a big difference to actual people. Ditto for the PBT provisions.

    The most important part of the process comes next and the stakes are still very high for public health and the environment. Stay tuned.

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14. TSCA: Summary of Senate Bill

    Dec 18, 2015 | BNA Energy & Environment Blog

    It’s been more than 10 years since the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J) introduced his first of several bills to update the Toxic Substances Control Act to give the Environmental Protection Agency greater authority to ensure the safety of chemicals in commerce.

    Last night the Senate passed by voice vote a bill to modernize the act for the first time in 40 years.

    Key Points of the Bill

    Some of the highlights, as outlined in a summary of the Senate bill, are:

      a requirement that the EPA review the safety of all chemicals in commerce;new chemicals must pass a safety check before they can be sold on the market;an explicit requirement to protect populations whose exposures, age or other conditions make them vulnerable to chemicals;new authority for the EPA to require companies to test new and existing chemicals for safety; andEPA can retain enacted state regulations and laws for chemicals, but temporarily stop new regulations while the agency is assessing a chemical's risks.

    Other provisions include minimizing animal testing, the establishment of a federal sustainable chemistry program, interim storage by mercury generators and a prohibition on the export of certain mercury compounds.

    Next Steps Senate works with House to merge their bills House bill (HR 2576) passed in June 398-1

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15. Senate Votes To Ban Microbeads In Soap

    Dec 18, 2015 | The Hill - Regulation

    By Lydia Wheeler

    The Senate has approved legislation to ban plastic microbeads from bath products like soaps and body washes. 

    The Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 passed by unanimous consent Wednesday morning, almost two weeks after the bill sailed through the House.

    The legislation, now headed to the president’s desk, aims to protect the nation's lakes and streams from getting clogged with the little pieces of plastic that easily pass through water filtration systems.

    Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who applauded the Senate for passing the bill introduced by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), said an estimated eight trillion tiny plastic microbeads have entered the country’s waterways, threatening aquatic life.

    “For much of Connecticut, that means they end up in the Long Island Sound, which is critical to Connecticut’s economy and our way of life," he said in a news release. “As I said before, this is a national problem that Connecticut can’t solve alone.”

    Murphy credited state Rep. Terry Backer (D), who died earlier this week, for his part in Wednesday’s victory.

    “I cannot help but feel deep regret that Terry Backer, a close friend and mentor, isn’t around to celebrate this victory," he said. "I wouldn’t have fought for this issue so hard without his fierce advocacy in Connecticut, and he deserves credit for the state ban and for raising awareness of this across the country.”

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16. EPA Funding in Omnibus: Winners and Losers

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By David Schultz

    After a year of intense political maneuvering, the appropriations process for the Environmental Protection Agency ended with an anticlimax.

    The Dec. 18 passage of the omnibus spending bill (H.R. 2029) in both chambers of Congress contained funding levels for the EPA that are almost totally unchanged from the prior fiscal year.

    The bill also contains no new policy riders blocking the EPA from implementing any of the high-profile environmental regulations it is currently pursuing (242 DEN A-1, 12/17/15).

    But while overall spending on the EPA will remain steady, some individual programs within the agency saw their funding boosted or slashed, while others narrowly avoided having their funding cut as well.

    Beaches Funding Retained

    For the fourth year in a row, the Obama administration's annual budget proposal asked Congress to eliminate funding for the EPA's beach protection grant program. And also for the fourth year in a row, Congress rejected the president's request.

    The omnibus bill contains $9.55 million for the EPA's beach grant program. These grants go to states for coastal water quality testing and notification programs, according to Mara Dias, water quality manager with the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation.

    Had these grants been cut as the president requested, states would “absolutely see less testing, less often of less beaches,” Dias told Bloomberg BNA. “And you'll see people not knowing if it's safe to go in the water.”

    Dias has a theory as to why the White House keeps proposing to eliminate the politically popular program and Congress keeps restoring it.

    “There's a lot of pressure on the administration to make cuts. I believe this was the administration's way of saying ‘We're willing to make the hard choices too,' ” she said. “It was an easier cut to make because there was a reasonable expectation that there would be support [in Congress] for restoring funding.”

    In other words, Dias said, the beach grant program “became a pawn in the budget wars.”

    Oil Spill Program Unchanged

    The same situation occurred with the EPA's Inland Oil Spill program but in reverse: the Obama administration asked Congress to triple funding for operation and administration of the program, but Congress instead left it unchanged.

    Patrick Vuchetich, an environmental compliance consultant with the firm Williams & Co., said the main purpose of the Inland Oil Spill program is to make sure companies that store and transport oil have developed plans for what they will do in the event of a spill.

    Vuchetich, who helps these companies develop their plans, said the funding the EPA receives for the program goes toward ensuring compliance not toward spill cleanup, which he said is paid for by companies responsible for a spill.

    Vuchetich told Bloomberg BNA he was skeptical that this compliance program needed a tripling of its budget because his clients have a strong economic incentive to prevent spills themselves.

    “Most of the people understand that these spills cost them money,” he said. “This is their inventory. Most people protect their inventory.”

    E-Manifest Survives House Challenge

    Funding for the EPA's Hazardous Waste E-Manifest System program wasn't threatened by the White House, but rather by the House of Representatives.

    The Obama administration had proposed doubling funding to the EPA for a multiyear project to develop an electronic system for keeping track of hazardous waste. Republican appropriators in the House, however, went in the opposite direction: their bill eliminated all funding for the E-Manifest program (129 DEN A-13, 7/7/15).

    David Case, executive director for the trade group the Environmental Technology Council, said he believes zeroing out funding for E-Manifest was really Congress's way of sending the EPA a message that the agency needed to justify the costs the program has incurred so far. Case said the EPA received this message and successfully assuaged Congress's concerns at an Oct. 27 hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee (210 DEN A-6, 10/30/15).

    Ultimately, Congress neither doubled the program's funding nor eliminated it, choosing instead to keep it unchanged from the prior fiscal year.

    “It's a good idea for the EPA to periodically report to Congress on how money has been spent and what their future needs are,” Case told Bloomberg BNA. “I think this was a formal, sensible step in the process.”

    Environmental IT Funding Flat

    In the omnibus bill, very few EPA programs saw their funding reduced on a year-over-year basis.

    But while these programs may not have been cut, most of them weren't fully funded either, according to Alexandra Dunn, executive director of The Environmental Council of the States.

    As the EPA continues to promulgate more—and more complicated—environmental regulations, the states that rely on EPA funding to implement these regulations won't have access to more money, Dunn told Bloomberg BNA.

    “Flat funding does not keep up with the cost of doing business,” she said.

    Dunn said she was especially disappointed that Congress kept funding flat for an EPA program that provides states with information technology grants. The Obama administration had requested more than $25 million for this program, but it received less than $10 million.

    Dunn said this shortfall was a missed opportunity to increase the efficiency of states' work.

    “If we have new regulatory demands and essentially flat funding, technology is one way to try to deliver results,” she told Bloomberg BNA.

    Status Quo Ultimately Reached

    This status-quo outcome for the EPA is one that would have been hard to predict given the back-and-forth between Republicans and Democrats that played out throughout 2015.

    The Obama administration kicked off the appropriations process on Feb. 2 with a spending proposal that called for a nearly half a billion dollar increase in the EPA's budget (22 DEN B-1, 2/3/15).

    Congressional Republicans responded several months later by introducing spending bills that would have instead slashed the agency's budget by as much as $700 million (111 DEN A-4, 6/10/15).

    The two parties ultimately ended up reaching a compromise but only after three short-term extensions of a funding deadline, a reworked federal budget agreement and the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

    After the Dec. 18 passage of the omnibus with large bipartisan majorities in both chambers, the EPA and all other federal agencies are now funded throughout the 2016 fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.

     

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17. Looking for the Perfect Cosmetics Gift Box? Shop Smarter with EWG’s Skin Deep

    Dec 21, 2015 | Environmental Working Group

    By Christine M. Hill and Sonya Lunder

    Every holiday shopping season, stores nationwide offer deals on a wide assortment of fragrance and cosmetics gift sets. Nearly every major retailer, from the high-end department store to the neighborhood specialty shop, displays festive towers of boxed cosmetics and perfumes.

    And they sell. One in five holiday shoppers will give cosmetics, fragrance or a health-and-beauty aid to loved ones, according to Deloitte’s annual holiday shopping survey. But despite the popularity of holiday gift sets, no one is making sure that these products are safe.

    There is very little regulation of the U.S. personal care products industry, worth about $189 billion a year. The federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, which was intended to guarantee the safety of cosmetics, is nearly 80 years old and falls far short of ensuring that cosmetics are safe.

    No other class of products is so widely used, and in such large quantities, with so few safeguards.

    The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t test the safety of cosmetics or their ingredients, nor does it approve new personal care products before they go on the market. Over the years, the FDA has only prohibited or restricted the use of 10 substances in personal care products, including toxic mercury and chloroform. By contrast, the European Union bars more than 1,300 chemicals and classes of chemicals.

    Moreover, cosmetics companies aren’t required to share their safety information with the FDA or report harmful health effects. Most of the limited safety guidelines are voluntarily set by the industry itself. Companies are under no legal obligation to comply, and many don’t. There is also little oversight of the concentration levels of chemicals in these products. The FDA can’t even require a recall of products that are found to cause serious harm.

    In an effort to strengthen these weak safety and disclosure requirements, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have introduced a bill to better protect consumers. The Personal Care Products Safety Act (S.1014) would address these glaring safety loopholes and create a modern regulatory framework. Consumer and health groups and businesses have joined forces to support this bill. That includes Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Revlon, L’Oreal, Unilever, Estee Lauder and California Baby, as well as consumer and health advocates including EWG, the Endocrine Society and the Society for Women’s Health Research 

    This marks the first time that federal legislation on this issue has earned the support of both consumer and industry groups.

    Before you purchase that holiday makeup gift set, check out EWG’s Skin Deep® Cosmetics Database. It provides information on almost 70,000 personal care products. For your convenience, before you head out to the store, download the app for your Apple or Android devices to help make smarter choices for your loved ones.

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Transportation News

18. Safety Bolstered on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor

    Dec 20, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal

    By Andrew Tangel

    Travelers taking Amtrak between New York City and Philadelphia are now being protected by a new crash-prevention system.

    The national passenger railroad over the weekend activated its version of so-called positive train control between the two cities, the last stretch of its tracks on the busy Northeast Corridor to get the system.

    Amtrak, which activated the system between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., earlier this month, is meeting a federal year-end deadline that Congress recently extended amid protests by many freight and commuter railroads.

    “This is just an added layer of safety,” said D.J. Stadtler, executive vice president who oversees operations for Amtrak. “The railroad before this was put in place was already safe.”

    Known as PTC, the system can take control of a train before it speeds through a curve where trains should slow down, or if the engineer driving it becomes disabled or distracted.

    Experts say the safety system, had it been activated on the southern stretch of the corridor, could have prevented an Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia in May that killed eight and injured more than 200 others.

    Amtrak has had the system up and running between New Haven, Conn., and Boston since 2000, a federal requirement when Amtrak rolled out Acela service there as fast as 150 miles an hour; the service runs at a top speed of 125 mph between New York and Washington.

    A handful of spots along the Northeast Corridor won’t be covered by PTC, such as slow-speed zones immediately outside stations, Mr. Stadtler said.

    Amtrak doesn’t own the track between New Rochelle in Westchester County and New Haven, where Metro-North operates. This stretch doesn’t yet have PTC.

    Mr. Stadtler said commuter systems that share tracks with Amtrak have been planning for its rollout of PTC and he didn’t expect any operational issues.

    Amtrak’s system will be a first in the New York City area. The three major commuter systems serving the city—NJ Transit, the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad—expect to have positive train control up and running by the end of 2018, within the new federal deadline.

    Representatives of the New York-area commuter railroads cited a number of delays caused by, among other things, difficulty obtaining radio spectrum and designing and procuring technology that isn’t off the shelf. NJ Transit also cited disruptions caused by superstorm Sandy in 2012.

    NJ Transit plans to activate PTC on a seven-mile stretch on its Morris and Essex line next year. The LIRR and Metro-North plan to eventually turn on the system in segments, said a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the railroads.

    “We are looking to put this in place as fast as we can,” the MTA spokesman said.

    Philadelphia’s commuter-train system expects to have its PTC system running by the end of January, said Jeffrey Knueppel, general manager of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA.

    “There’s different circumstances for everybody,” he said. “Everything broke right for us, and we’re just barely [finishing] right around the original mandate.”

    Congress mandated passenger and freight railroads install PTC in 2008, following a Metrolink commuter train crash that year in Chatsworth, Calif., that killed 25.

    In the May 12 Amtrak cash in Philadelphia, New York-bound Amtrak Train 188 was traveling at 106 miles an hour through a tight curve, twice the speed limit.

    Amtrak’s existing signal system at the curve wasn’t configured to automatically slow speeding trains in the northbound direction, unlike the system on the southbound tracks at the curve. Amtrak had believed that northbound trains wouldn’t be able to build up enough speed to derail.

    The Federal Railroad Administration later ordered Amtrak to modify its signals at various locations along the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston, including at the derailment site.

    Amtrak has also installed inward-facing video cameras in locomotives on the Northeast Corridor—a feature whose absence has hindered an investigation into the cause of Philadelphia crash. The National Transportation Safety Board’s probe is expected to conclude in 2016.

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19. Panel Forming on Lithium Battery Transport Standard

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    SAE International is forming a committee charged with developing a performance-based lithium battery packaging standard for air transport, according to a Dec. 17 news release. The International Civil Aviation Organization requested the aerospace engineering group take the lead in developing the standard intended to improve the safety of moving lithium batteries, which can catch fire, as air cargo. The SAE International Lithium Battery Packaging Committee will meet for the first time in January. Those interested in participating should contact Laura Feix at laura.feix@sae.org. A performance-based standard is highly sought after, domestically and internationally, as fear over lithium battery-caused or escalated fires aboard flights has increased (214 DEN A-15, 11/5/15).

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Energy and Environment News

20. Some Oil, Gas Companies Improve Fracking Disclosure

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Andrea Vittorio

    A handful of oil and gas companies, including BHP Billiton Ltd. and CONSOL Energy Corp., have noticeably improved their disclosures to investors on the risks posed by hydraulic fracturing, according to an annual scorecard released Dec. 17.

    But most of the industry still earned low marks in the report from investors and advocacy groups for failing to provide enough information on how they manage toxic chemicals, water and other issues associated with the drilling process known as fracking. The report's authors say these issues can translate into financial risks for companies and shareholders in the form of fines, regulations or threats to companies’ so-called social license to operate.

    “The results of the 2015 scorecard show that corporate disclosure efforts have increased among a core group of industry leaders, despite enormous financial write­offs by the industry,” said Richard Liroff, executive director of the Investor Environmental Health Network, one of the authors of the report.

    Companies might have been tempted to pull back on disclosure as low oil prices helped trigger a contraction of well drilling and completion activities in the U.S., the report said. But for eight companies, disclosure improved over the last year.

    How Companies Scored

    BHP Billiton was the highest-scoring company for the second year in a row, while Hess Corp., Apache Corp. and Noble Energy Inc. all improved since 2014, disclosing information for about half of the scorecard indicators. Meanwhile, CONSOL nearly quadrupled its score from last year (239 DEN A-9, 12/12/14).

    Danielle Fugere, president of sustainability advocacy group As You Sow, another one of the report's authors, said it was “encouraging to see a new company,” CONSOL, jump into the top five this year. “But we need to see a bigger commitment from the industry in general,” she said.

    Toward the bottom of the pack were the two of the largest U.S. oil and gas companies—Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.

    Liroff said one area in which disclosure was “almost non-existent” across the board was methane leakage. Most companies failed to disclose their methane leakage rate or how often they monitor for leakage, and none of the companies had a public goal for reducing methane emissions.

    Methane is of particular concern because it is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed its first-ever methane emissions standards for new oil and natural gas wells, though environmental groups argue additional rules are needed for existing facilities (160 DEN A-1, 8/19/15).

    “Absent greater disclosure on things like methane, other air emissions and growing concerns around induced seismicity, investors have no way of crediting those companies making meaningful efforts to adopt best practices and mitigate their impacts on communities and the environment,” said Steven Heim, managing director of Boston Common Asset Management, which also contributed to the report.

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21. Oklahoma Argues Clean Power Plan Unconstitutional

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Andrew Childers

    The Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan is unconstitutional because it commandeers state resources to enforce the federal limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality said in a statement of issues filed as part of a lawsuit challenging the plan (West Virginia v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1363, statement of issues filed 12/18/15).

    The EPA also overstepped its authority because the Clean Power Plan “invades the traditional authority of Oklahoma and other state governments over electricity generation and intrastate electricity transmission as recognized by the Federal Power Act,” the state told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Dec. 18.

    The EPA's Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33), issued under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, sets carbon dioxide emissions limits for the power sector in each state that would then be implemented by state regulators. The rule is being challenged by 27 states as well as several industry groups and unions.

    Oklahoma also told the court that it intends to argue the EPA lacks the legal authority to issue the rule because the agency is barred from regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power plants under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act because those units are already subject to hazardous air pollutant standards issued under Section 112.

    Conflicting Amendments Included in Air Act

    When the Clean Air Act was last amended in 1990, conflicting amendments were adopted for Section 111(d). The House language would bar the EPA from regulating industrial sources such as power plants under Section 111(d) if they are already subject to Section 112 standards. The Senate's amendment merely prevents the EPA from regulating pollutants under Section 111(d) if they are already designated as hazardous air pollutants under Section 112.

    While both amendments appear in the statutes at large, only the House language is reflected in the U.S. Code, and opponents of the Clean Power Plan argue it should take precedence.

    Additionally, the state said it plans to argue the EPA should have issued standards for new power plants under Section 111(b) of the act before pursuing standards for existing units. The EPA issued final rules for both new and existing power plants at the same time.

    Stringency of Standards Questioned

    The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, the United Mine Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers all targeted the stringency of the EPA's carbon dioxide emissions limits for existing power plants, which are effectively more stringent than the comparable standards for new and modified units. Historically, the EPA has set the most stringent requirements on new sources while existing sources faced less onerous standards.

    The United Mine Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers both filed their statements of issues Dec. 17.

    Like Oklahoma, the labor groups also argued that the EPA erred by setting carbon dioxide standards that can't be met by any existing unit in operation. The unions also argue that the EPA exceeded its authority by setting standards that effectively require existing coal-fired power plants to retire on the assumption they will be replaced by low- or zero-emissions sources.

    The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers & Helpers, AFL-CIO had made similar arguments in its statement of issues filed Dec. 16 (243 DEN A-11, 12/18/15).

    New Lawsuits Filed

    Separately, the United Mine Works of America, Alabama Power Co. and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several other industry groups Dec. 18 filed lawsuits challenging the EPA's carbon dioxide new source performance standards (RIN 2060-AQ91) for new and modified power plants (United Mine Workers of Am. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1463, 12/18/15; Alabama Power Co. v. EPA, D.C. Cir. , No. 15-1468, 12/18/15; U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1469, 12/18/15).

    Additionally, the Louisiana Public Service Commission and GenOn MidAtlantic LLC and other utilities filed lawsuits challenging the Clean Power Plan (La. Pub. Serv. Comm'n. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1464, 12/18/15; GenOn MidAtlantic LLC v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1470, 12/18/15).

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22. Obama Vetoes GOP Push To Kill Climate Rules

    Dec 19, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire

    By Timothy Cama

    President Obama has vetoed a pair of measures by congressional Republicans that would have overturned the main pillars of his landmark climate change rules for power plants.

    The decision was widely expected, and Obama and his staff had repeatedly threatened the action as a way to protect a top priority and major part of his legacy.The White House announced early Saturday morning, as Obama was flying to Hawaii for Christmas vacation, that he is formally not taking action on the congressional measures, which counts as a “pocket veto” under the law.

    “Climate change poses a profound threat to our future and future generations,” the president said in a statement about Republicans’ attempt to kill the carbon dioxide limits for existing power plants.

    "The Clean Power Plan is a tremendously important step in the fight against global climate change,” Obama wrote, adding that “because the resolution would overturn the Clean Power Plan, which is critical to protecting against climate change and ensuring the health and well-being of our nation, I cannot support it.”

    That rule from the Environmental Protection Agency mandates a 32 percent cut in the power sector’s carbon output by 2030.

    He had a similar argument in support of his regulation setting carbon limits for newly-built fossil fuel power plants, saying the legislation against it “would delay our transition to cleaner electricity generating technologies by enabling continued build-out of outdated, high-polluting infrastructure.”

    Congress passed the resolutions in November and December under the Congressional Review Act, a little-used law that gives lawmakers a streamlined way to quickly challenge regulations from the executive branch.

    Obama had made clear his intent to veto the measures early on, so the passage by both GOP-led chambers of Congress was only symbolic.

    The votes came before and during the United Nations’ major climate change conference in Paris, as an attempt to undermine Obama’s negotiating position toward an international climate pact.

    Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee and a vocal climate change doubter, said it’s important to send a message about congressional disapproval, even with Obama’s veto.

    “While I fully expect these CRA resolutions to be vetoed, without the backing of the American people and the Congress, there will be no possibility of legislative resurrection once the courts render the final judgments on the president’s carbon mandates,” he said on the Senate floor shortly before the Senate’s action on the resolutions.

    Twenty-seven states and various energy and business interests are suing the Obama administration to stop the existing plant rule, saying it violates the Clean Air Act and states’ constitutional rights.

    They are seeking an immediate halt to the rule while it is litigated, something the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit could decide on later this month.

    All Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential election want to overturn the rules.

    In addition to the veto, Obama is formally sending the resolutions back to the Senate to make clear his intent to disapprove of them.

    Obama has now vetoed seven pieces of legislation, including five this year, the first year of his presidency with the GOP controlling both chambers of Congress.

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23. Aluminum Producer Faults MACT's 'Work Practice Standards'

    Dec 18, 2015 | InsideEPA

    An aluminum producer is signaling its pending suit over EPA's maximum achievable control technology (MACT) air toxics rule for the sector will include a challenge to “work practice standards” requirements designed to reduce emissions, as well as attacks on other provisions that the company says are too onerous and arbitrary.

    In a Dec. 18 non-binding statement of issues filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Kaiser Aluminum Fabricated Products says EPA's Sept. 18 final rule updating MACT controls for the secondary aluminum production sector “is unlawful because it is in excess of statutory authority, not otherwise authorized by law, and/or otherwise violates the Administrative Procedure Act.” Secondary aluminum producers make products using aluminum recovered from other applications.

    EPA's rule did not impose fundamentally tougher limits on emissions from the sector, but did mandate some new work practice standards to further reduce emissions, such as “hooding” of certain furnaces to capture fumes, and add to existing testing, monitoring, and reporting requirements.

    Kaiser says it intends in the pending suit to question whether EPA acted arbitrarily when it required new or reconstructed “top round” furnaces to install temporary hooding during testing, use an 80 percent capture efficiency assumption, and the need to petition EPA for a determination that these steps are impractical -- all provisions that the company says contradict EPA policy for existing top round furnaces.

    The company further says it will challenge EPA's immediate application of the provisions to new and reconstructed sources, which it says are unreasonable; changes to definitions of furnace classifications that subject furnaces to different requirements; submission deadlines for test data, which the company says are too tight; requirements for malfunction reports, which EPA failed to specify a timeline for; and an apparent erroneous reference by EPA to a specific air law section.

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24. House to Try for Waters Rule Nullification in 2016

    Dec 21, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Anthony Adragna

    Congressional lawmakers aren't backing down on their efforts to block an Environmental Protection Agency Clean Water Act jurisdiction rule and the House intends to vote on a bid to nullify that regulation in 2016, a top House Republican aide told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 18.

    Matt Sparks, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), confirmed the chamber planned to vote on a Congressional Review Act challenge to the EPA's Clean Water Rule (S.J. Res. 22) next year.

    That came shortly after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters Congress was “in the process of putting the waters of United States repealer on his desk.” The Senate passed its own resolution Nov. 4 to kill off the rule and to bar the agency from ever pursuing a “substantially similar” regulation by a 53-44 vote (214 DEN A-20, 11/5/15).

    President Barack Obama has vowed to veto any effort to nullify the Clean Water Act rulemaking.

    Controversial since its release this summer (80 Fed. Reg. 37,054), the EPA's Clean Water Rule (RIN 2040–AF30) is the subject of lawsuits from more than 30 states and 20 organizations representing agriculture, industry and developers. A federal appeals court issued a nationwide stay in October.

    House and Senate Republicans were disappointed and frustrated congressional leadership failed to include a policy rider on the regulation in a government spending package (H.R. 2029) that cleared both chambers Dec. 18. The Clean Water Rule is a rare Obama administration environmental initiative to raise significant concerns among many Democrats (242 DEN A-9, 12/17/15).

    Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.) introduced his own resolution (H.J. Res. 59) to block the waters regulation in July.

     

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