Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 1/19/16
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(ACC Mentioned) Coons, Advocates Push For Green Chemistry Provisions In Final TSCA Bill
Jan 19, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) and other advocates of green chemistry measures to reduce the production of hazardous substances are pushing for the inclusion of provisions to promote green chemistry in the pending final Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform compromise legislation that House and Senate lawmakers will craft this year. -
Utility: California Gas Leak to be Stopped Ahead of Schedule
Jan 19, 2016 | Washington Post
By Associated Press
A utility company said Monday that it has abandoned efforts to trap and burn the gas released by a huge natural gas leak in Los Angeles, but also said the 12-week-old leak should be stopped ahead of schedule — by the end of February or sooner. -
Erin Brockovich Appeals to Porter Ranch Residents as Law Firms Push Gas Leak Suits
Jan 19, 2016 | LA Times
By Alice Walton and Louis Sahagun
Movie-famous activist Erin Brockovich stood in front of 400 Porter Ranch residents on a recent weeknight and told a disturbing personal story. "When I first came to Porter Ranch I couldn't believe it," she said of her visit to the community closest to Southern California Gas Co.'s leaking well. "I was in somebody's house and within 10 minutes, I started feeling kind of dizzy." -
The Poisoning of Flint
Jan 19, 2016 | Washington Post
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
In early 2015, shortly after his victory in a heated reelection contest, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) began exploring a run for president. With his business experience and electoral success in a blue state, Snyder was considered a viable potential candidate, so he embarked on a national speaking tour and set up a fundraising organization. Its name: “Making Government Accountable.” -
How Government—and This Columnist—Failed Flint
Jan 19, 2016 | National Journal
By Ron Fournier
As I was knocking around Flint, a city neglected and ultimately poisoned by every level of government, my thoughts kept drifting to two phrases: “refreshing approach” and “in nothing we trust.” -
Carbon Trading Finds a Foothold in at Least 20 States
Jan 19, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Elizabeth Harball and Emily Holden
Beneath the political storm raging around the Obama administration's climate change rules for the electricity sector, a quiet but powerful push for carbon trading is spreading across the nation. -
Supreme Court Shoots Down Challenge to EPA GHG Rules
Jan 19, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Robin Bravender
The Supreme Court today refused to revive an industry challenge to U.S. EPA's permitting rules for greenhouse gases. -
US States’ Ability to Comply with Federal Regulations Scrutinised
Jan 19, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is investigating whether the EPA is considering adequately the “unique interests” of states in its regulatory process. -
EPA Head Defends Flint Water Crisis Response
Jan 19, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defended her agency’s response to the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich., saying it did what it was supposed to do.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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(ACC Mentioned) Coons, Advocates Push For Green Chemistry Provisions In Final TSCA Bill
Jan 19, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) and other advocates of green chemistry measures to reduce the production of hazardous substances are pushing for the inclusion of provisions to promote green chemistry in the pending final Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform compromise legislation that House and Senate lawmakers will craft this year.
A Coons staffer tells Inside EPA that green chemistry has broad support from academia, industry and some environmentalists, and is not controversial, but the provisions could get lost in negotiations over controversial topics like preemption of state chemicals programs or the extent to which the bill would overhaul EPA's toxics program. Coons secured the inclusion of language promoting green chemistry in the Senate-approved TSCA bill, S. 697.
"We hope it stays. There's nothing in the House bill [addressing green chemistry]. Our provision is really it," the staffer says. "Senator Coons is having conversations with key members . . . to allow it to stay in."
As part of the effort to promote the inclusion of green chemistry provisions in the final House-Senate compromise TSCA reform bill, the senator held a Jan. 13 Capitol Hill briefing on the issue. "One of the reasons for the briefing [is that] a lot of people don't know what" green chemistry is, according to the staffer.
One of the briefing attendees agrees that the final TSCA reform bill should include the Senate green chemistry language to fund new research efforts. "It does involve money and could be called an unfunded mandate. But, it's research and development, it's the economy -- these are all positive things," the source adds.
The question, the source says, is whether the issue is "one the House wants to advocate for? It should be an easy one," even though the House-approved TSCA bill, H.R. 2576, lacks such provisions.
The House voted in June to approve its narrower version of TSCA reform, following a Senate vote in late December to advance S. 697. Lawmakers must now hold conference talks to negotiate a final compromise version of the bill, though it remains unclear whether that will be through a formal or informal conference.
In a Jan. 11 press release, Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-OK) said that Congress approving a final TSCA bill is among his top priorities for 2016.
Coons secured green chemistry provisions in S. 697 after previously introducing a broader standalone green chemistry bill, S. 1446, with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in May. About half of the provisions of S. 1446 are included in S. 697, and are largely devoted to funding research and development of green chemistry.
"One of the contributions that I made to this bill was the sustainable chemistry research and development act, a separate bipartisan bill that grew out of my experience as a chemist in Delaware and my work with the Delaware sustainable chemistry alliance to lay the foundation for real progress in sustainable chemistry,"Coons said in October.
Sustainable Chemicals
Speakers at the Jan. 13 hill briefing outlined the goals of green chemistry: To develop alternate chemicals to traditional, generally petroleum-based products that can also be environmentally harmful or toxic by chemists with an understanding of toxicology and environmental sciences. The resulting green or sustainable chemicals are intended to be nonhazardous across their lifecycle, including production, use and disposal.
Several of the speakers at the briefing described the practice as the latest advance in chemistry, which could drive new business and new jobs. But they also spoke to barriers to this advancement, both in limited opportunity for training new chemists in sustainable design principles and limited leadership from government in commercializing the field.
S. 697 would adopt language from S. 1446 to add a new Section 23 to TSCA, called the Development and Evaluation of Test Methods and Sustainable Chemistry. The section would create a new, interagency sustainable chemistry program, aiming to "promote and coordinate Federal sustainable chemistry research, development, demonstration, technology transfer, commercialization, education, and training activities."
The TSCA reform bill language calls for the program to study ways in which the federal government can incentivize sustainable chemistry processes and products, expand collegiate chemistry training to include sustainable chemistry, and support "economic, legal and other appropriate social science research to identify barriers to commercialization and methods to advance commercialization of sustainable chemistry."
Additionally, the bill section calls for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to create an interagency working group on the subject, co-led by EPA's research chief and the director of the National Science Foundation. The group would be responsible for coordinating federal sustainable chemistry activities and spending, and providing a report to Congress two years after its inception on its progress.
The bill would also create an advisory council to assist the interagency working group, comprised of industry, academic, state and tribal and non-government organization experts.
However, S. 697 excludes other components of S. 1446, such as a grant program to fund sustainable chemistry partnerships between industry and universities and a National Academy of Sciences study.
'Important Benefits'
At its introduction last May, S. 1446's supporters included the American Chemistry Council, the American Chemical Society, the American Sustainable Business Council Action Fund, Environmental Defense Fund, the Green Chemistry and Commerce Council (GC3), the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable, and the Yale Center for Green Chemistry & Green Engineering among others, according to Coons' office.
Representatives of several of these groups attended or spoke at the Jan. 13 briefing, among them Joel Tickner, director of GC3, a business forum intended to advance green chemistry across sectors and supply chains. GC3 member companies also visited "Congressional offices and agencies to encourage increased support for green chemistry and adoption," according to a posting on the GC3 website.
In his remarks at the briefing, Tickner announced the formal release of the group's "Agenda to Mainstream Green Chemistry," a multi-year research project that "describes the important benefits of green chemistry, identifies barriers to its adoption [and] makes the case for more public and private sector support to overcome barriers," according to the agenda. The agenda develops five strategies for advancing green chemistry:
1. Enhance Market Dynamics by continuing to build a comprehensive, ongoing understanding of green chemistry enablers, market drivers, and obstacles.
2. Support Smart Policies by designing and advocating for innovative state and federal policies that increase the supply of and demand for green chemistry solutions.
3. Foster Collaboration by facilitating the flow of information about green chemistry solutions among suppliers and product makers, and assembling partnerships to tackle priority challenges.
4. Inform the Marketplace by disseminating information about green chemistry business, economic, and health benefits, as well as opportunities and funding.
5. Track Progress by improving green chemistry metrics and periodically gathering and reporting data on progress."
While legislative efforts to promote green chemistry are still pending, the three West Coast states -- California, Oregon and Washington -- are working with EPA on advancing green chemistry.
The states in October signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at facilitating tools and training, data exchanges on chemicals and products, engagement on toxics in products and packaging, green procurement and testing protocols, funding opportunities and collaboration with EPA.
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Utility: California Gas Leak to be Stopped Ahead of Schedule
Jan 19, 2016 | Washington Post
By Associated Press
A utility company said Monday that it has abandoned efforts to trap and burn the gas released by a huge natural gas leak in Los Angeles, but also said the 12-week-old leak should be stopped ahead of schedule — by the end of February or sooner.
The burn-off plan is being abandoned over fears that it could not be done safely, SoCalGas, which is owned by Sempra Energy, said in a statement. State regulators had been scheduled to vote Wednesday on the plan, which had been intended to give quicker relief to residents suffering sickness and irritation because of the emissions but led to worries of explosions in the Porter Ranch neighborhood where the well is located.
A relief well that the company began drilling in early December should reach the bottom of the 8,500-foot-deep well by late February or sooner, at which time it will be permanently taken out of service, the SoCalGas statement said.
Earlier estimates had put the date sometime in March.
The company says recent estimates show a more than 60 percent reduction in emissions from the well since its November peak, and that benzene levels are at the same level in the Porter Ranch area of the leak than they are in other areas of Los Angeles.
Alexandra Nagy, a Southern California representative of consumer advocates Food & Water Watch, which has been critical of the handling of the leak, said the new estimate is not to be trusted.
“It doesn’t give much comfort to me, and I don’t think it’ll give much comfort to the residents,” Nagy said. “They’ve been misleading since the beginning.”
Residents of Porter Ranch have complained about nausea, headaches, nosebleeds and other symptoms that have persisted since the leak at the Aliso Canyon storage field, the largest facility of its kind west of the Mississippi River, was reported Oct. 23.
By the end of December the company had spent some $50 million in its efforts to stop the leak and mitigate its effects, and Gov. Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency over its emissions.
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Erin Brockovich Appeals to Porter Ranch Residents as Law Firms Push Gas Leak Suits
Jan 19, 2016 | LA Times
By Alice Walton and Louis Sahagun
Movie-famous activist Erin Brockovich stood in front of 400 Porter Ranch residents on a recent weeknight and told a disturbing personal story.
"When I first came to Porter Ranch I couldn't believe it," she said of her visit to the community closest to Southern California Gas Co.'s leaking well. "I was in somebody's house and within 10 minutes, I started feeling kind of dizzy."
She said she saw a doctor who told her she "had what they called a chemically induced kind of bronchitis."
The message was clear. If Brockovich, 55, became ill after just 10 minutes, Southern California Gas Co.'s ruptured well must be harming anyone who breathes the fumes even for a short time — and for that, the victims should get compensation. Brockovich and the law firm she was advocating for, Weitz & Luxenberg, invited the residents to join their lawsuits against the gas company.
Across the region, other law firms are holding similar meetings and running advertising campaigns using a mix of dire warnings about health risks and reduced property values, promises of money and practical advice to try to persuade aggrieved Porter Ranch families to join lawsuits.
Since the leak began at the Aliso Canyon well nearly three months ago, at least 25 lawsuits have been filed seeking damages from the utility and its parent firm, Sempra Energy. The attorneys say their take could range from almost nothing to more than one-third of the awards, depending on the outcome of the cases.
A majority of the lawsuits have been filed by residents of Porter Ranch, a community of 30,000 people in the rolling hills of the north San Fernando Valley. The legal actions claim negligence, hazardous activity, nuisance and trespass and seek compensation for emotional and physical injuries, as well as for diminished property values.
So far, the possible long-term health affects of the chemical compounds in the leaking natural gas remain unknown, and real estate agents say the troubled well's effect on property values won't become clear for several months.
But the law firms aren't waiting for answers. They are rounding up clients, and as evidenced by the hundreds of smartphone photos snapped as Brockovich spoke, the appearance of legal celebrities at these events is an effective way to boost turnout.
At a gathering last month, the attraction was environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the 62-year-old son of the slain U.S. senator. Although it was billed by attorneys as a "town hall meeting," the real reason for gathering at a Porter Ranch church was to find clients.
"I don't need the money," Kennedy said at the event, which was organized by four law firms, led by Kennedy & Madonna of Hurley, N.Y. "If I win a case, the money goes to the clients."
That might have been a relief for some in the crowd of 1,800, but many had hoped to use the occasion to ask about more immediate needs.
Skeptical of the answers they were getting from the gas company and state and local authorities, they sought information about how best to deal with issues involving their health, local schools and businesses and plans to sell their homes, or temporarily relocate elsewhere.
As they filed in and out of the Shepherd of the Hills Church auditorium, each was asked to fill out an application for representation in a class-action lawsuit.
Southern California Gas, which is insured for more than $1 billion, has retained the law firm of Latham & Watkins, a blue-chip international firm with more than 2,000 lawyers.
In a separate case that raised eyebrows last year, Latham & Watkins billed the Water Replenishment District of Southern California more than $5 million in legal fees for just 10 months' work.
Robert G. Bea, a co-founder of the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at UC Berkeley who has studied more than 600 disasters over the last 50 years, said jousting among powerful legal firms comes with the territory. He said it serves an important role in sorting out the cost and range of claims and insurance coverage.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the deadly Pacific Gas & Electric explosion in San Bruno, Calif., in 2010 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, "the legal processes were very effective in exposing documentation that filled out the picture puzzle of these disasters," Bea said.
Gregory Keating, a professor of law and philosophy at USC's Gould School of Law, said that simple math is behind the drive for large numbers of clients.
"When it comes to the race for plaintiffs, well, plaintiffs' lawyers like to be paid," Keating said. "They also like to make more money, not less, so the more good, competent plaintiffs with good stories to tell the better."
When it comes to attracting clients, few legal celebrities can match Brockovich, who nearly two decades ago made chromium 6 a household word after leading an underdog battle against Pacific Gas & Electric that led to a $333-million settlement and the Oscar-winning film "Erin Brockovich."
Her voice filled with defiance, urgency and indignation, Brockovich is a master at stepping into scenes of confusion, uncertainty and fear surrounding environmental disasters.
"When we have information, I want to share it right away," Brockovich said, standing beside a sign emblazoned with the law firm's new website dedicated to Porter Ranch. "If you don't have information — and information that is truthful — you cannot protect what's most valuable and important to you — that is your health and the welfare of your families and your safety."
In an interview that evening, Porter Ranch resident Alcy Montesquieu felt compelled to temper expectations.
"We don't want to exaggerate the effects and we don't want to get caught up with craziness," Montesquieu said. "But at the same time we don't want to not move and not do something we should."
The rally sponsored by Weitz & Luxenberg was the second such gathering that Montesquieu had attended in as many weeks. He and his wife and two children have yet to decide on a firm to represent them in a lawsuit.
The suit Brockovich helped develop against PG&E generated animosity that split the high desert town of Hinkley, Calif., as homeowners grappled with a plume of pollution she said was causing cancer.
In 2010, a state survey did not find a disproportionately high number of cancers in Hinkley, which had become a symbol of public fears about exposure to groundwater tainted with chromium 6.
By 2013, PG&E, which was responsible for the pollution, had bought out hundreds of homeowners who lived within a mile of the plume of tainted groundwater, leaving the ranching community all but a ghost town.
As for the "chemically induced bronchitis" Brockovich told Porter Ranch residents that she picked up during her brief visit to their community, the activist declined requests from The Times to disclose medical records supporting the diagnosis.
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Jan 19, 2016 | Washington Post
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
In early 2015, shortly after his victory in a heated reelection contest, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) began exploring a run for president. With his business experience and electoral success in a blue state, Snyder was considered a viable potential candidate, so he embarked on a national speaking tour and set up a fundraising organization. Its name: “Making Government Accountable.”
As Snyder was testing the presidential waters, however, his government was being shamefully unaccountable to constituents who were concerned about their water supply. The city of Flint switched its primary water source from Lake Huron, through Detroit’s system, to the Flint River in April 2014. Approved by an emergency manager appointed by the governor, the move was supposed to save the beleaguered city millions of dollars. But residents soon began reporting tap water that appeared discolored, smelled rotten and caused kids to break out in rashes. Today, Flint has become a nightmarish example of how misguided austerity policies can literally poison the public.
We now know that Flint’s water supply wascontaminated by lead that it collected from deteriorating pipes. In recent weeks, Snyder has issued a public apology to the city, declared a state of emergency, activated the National Guard and requested assistance from President Obama, who declared the situation a federal emergency on Saturday. The state health department is also looking into whether an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease that has killed 10 people in the area is connected to the water crisis. Meanwhile, the Justice Department isinvestigating the state and local government’s actions, while it could cost up to $1.5 billion to fix the city’s water distribution system.
All of this is the result of the Snyder administration’s stunning lack of accountability, beginning with the fateful decision to put Flint under the control of a political appointee who was unelected and unaccountable to the public. When the city’s residents initially reported their concerns in 2014, officials responded by pumping hazardous levels of chlorine into the water. When complaints persisted, officials assured citizens that the water was safe to drink, repeatedly disregarding clear evidence that it wasn’t. But when elevated levels of lead showed up in children’s blood this past fall, the government was forced to admit there was a problem. Snyder appointed a task force to investigate the crisis, which found, among other things, that legitimate fears were met with “aggressive dismissal, belittlement, and attempts to discredit” the individuals speaking out.
“They cut every corner,” said Flint resident Melissa Mays. “They did more to cover up than actually fix it. That’s criminal.” Snyder’s thenchief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, acknowledged the administration’s deplorable response in a July 2015 email, writing: “These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we’re just not sympathizing with their plight).”
But the water crisis in Flint represents more than a catastrophic political failure. It is also a direct consequence of decades of policies based on the premise that government spending is always a problem and never a solution. Long before Flint tried to reduce spending by moving to a cheaper water source, the pipes that ultimately poisoned the water were neglected. Across the country, crumbling infrastructure is a pervasive threat that is creating serious issues in other cities and could produce similar crises . As Michigan State University economist Eric Scorsone explained , “Flint is an extreme case, but nationally, there’s been a lack of investment in water infrastructure. This is a common problem nationally — infrastructure maintenance has not kept up.”
Unfortunately, the biggest obstacles to desperately needed public investments are politicians like Snyder who conflate “accountability” with austerity. For Republican technocrats in particular, more accountability almost always means less spending on government programs that help ensure the public good.
With less than a month until the Iowa caucus, the conventional wisdom is that voters are fed up and that their anger is reflected in the polls. That frustration and distrust of government is understandable when politicians like Snyder and their cronies are so blatantly unaccountable to the public. Indeed, when government is polluted by officials who put corporate interests above their constituents and cost-cutting above the common good, it too often fails to fulfill even its most basic functions, such as protecting access to safe drinking water. But instead of giving in to anger and austerity, in this election, we should be having a vigorous debate about how government can be truly accountable to the people it serves.
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How Government—and This Columnist—Failed Flint
Jan 19, 2016 | National Journal
By Ron Fournier
As I was knocking around Flint, a city neglected and ultimately poisoned by every level of government, my thoughts kept drifting to two phrases: “refreshing approach” and “in nothing we trust.”
The first phrase is my description, in a column last month, of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s leadership style. What was I thinking? More on that later.
The second is the headline on an April 2012 cover story I wrote for National Journal magazine about a decades-long trend that threatens the nation’s soul: the failure of nearly every American institution to adapt to rapid social change and maintain the public’s trust. The story was told through the eyes of Johnny Whitmire, an unemployed construction worker who I met in a Muncie, Indiana, courthouse. He was fighting a $300 fine for failing to cut the lawn of a home he had forfeited to the bank.
Whitmire is an angry man. He is among a group of voters most skeptical of President Obama: noncollege-educated white males. He feels betrayed—not just by Obama, who won his vote in 2008, but by the institutions that were supposed to protect him: his state, which laid off his wife; his government in Washington, which couldn’t rescue homeowners who had played by the rules; his bank, which failed to walk him through the correct paperwork or warn him about a potential mortgage hike; his city, which penalized him for somebody else’s error; and even his employer, a construction company he likes even though he got laid off.
Taking a break from mowing his bank’s weeds, Johnny told me, “You can’t trust anybody or anything anymore.”
Flint is a hard-bitten industrial town filled with Johnny Whitmires. People too proud to give up and too poor to matter. People who play by the rules and get played—played by their bosses and banks, their unions and preachers; played by small businesses and big media; played by cops and judges and juries; and, of course, played by those damned politicians.
The latest indignity to plague this city of nearly 100,000 is lead poisoning via their drinking water, a man-made disaster created by the arrogance and incompetence of government officials in Flint, Lansing, and Washington—Democrats as well as Republicans.
Anybody angry enough to call for GOP Gov. Rick Snyder’s resignation should also want the scalp of an Obama appointee at the Environmental Protection Agencywho sat on lead test results.
“The EPA buried this,” said Virginia Tech researcher Marc Edwards, whose water analysis in 2015 helped expose Flint’s contamination.
The tragedy began in April 2014, after the city stopped getting its drinking water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and switched to the regional Karegnondi Water Authority, which uses Lake Huron as a source. There is no pipeline yet built to Flint, so the city used water from the Flint River as a cost-saving stopgap.
For months, Flint residents complained about the foul smell and dirty look of their water, and reported assorted health problems. Independent testing at Virginia Tech showed elevated levels of lead in the water in April 2015. Still, nothing was done until September, when researchers at Hurley Medical Center in Flint reported that blood tests showed a doubling of lead contamination in children younger than 5.
Children younger than 6 are most susceptible to lead poisoning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even low levels can cause permanent brain damage.
Who’s to blame? Let’s start at the bottom, where the city government in Flint is so fiscally mismanaged that Snyder appointed a string of emergency managers who mostly usurped the elected city council and mayor. (In Michigan, local governments are given power by the state, and that which can be given can also be taken away).
It was a Snyder-appointed emergency manager who made the fateful decision to switch the city source, one reason why Democratic critics want the governor to resign.
Dayne Walling, the Democratic mayor at the time of the decision, said he feels “betrayed” by city, state, and federal officials who withheld information from him. While the emergency-manager system dramatically reduced his authority, Walling said he’s haunted by his failure as a leader.
“I think about it every day,” said Walling, who narrowly lost reelection last year over the water crisis. “I wish I would have realized that I had to dig deeper into what I was being told—and not being told.”
Having appointed the emergency manager is only half of Snyder’s problem. His appointees at the state departments of health and environmental quality botched the execution of the water-source switch, violating federal regulations requiring anticorrosion treatment for the city’s ancient water pipes. That lapse caused the lead poisoning, but went unreported until two nongovernmental watchdogs—Virginia Tech and Hurley Medical Center—blew the whistle.
Both the director and chief spokesman of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality were forced to resign, and Snyder has taken several steps—albeit belatedly—to help Flint identify the extent of the contamination and to respond to it. He plans to reveal more action in Tuesday night’s state of the state address.
In a wide-ranging conversation with me Monday, Snyder conceded that his administration’s handling of the Flint water crisis is a stain on his legacy, reflects poorly on his leadership, and is aptly compared to President Bush’s mishandling of Hurricane Katrina. He knows he squandered the public’s trust. (You can read the full interview here: “Snyder Concedes Flint Is His ‘Katrina,’ a Failure of Leadership.”)
Snyder accepted responsibility for the lack of adequate follow-up with his department heads, but the twice-elected GOP governor said he would not heed calls for his resignation.
“I want to solve this problem,” Snyder said. “I don’t want to walk away from it.”
In February 2015, months before Edwards helped expose the contamination, an EPA water expert named Miguel Del Toral identified potential problems in Flint’s drinking water. He confirmed his suspicions in April and summarized the crisis in a June internal memo. The memo was kept under wraps by EPA Midwest chief Susan Hedman, and the analyst was forbidden from making his finding public, according to Edwards, who secured an embarrassing batch of EPA emails via Freedom of Information Act requests.
Hedman concedes that her department knew as early as April about the lack of corrosion control in Flint’s water supply, but said her hands were tied by interagencyprotocol.
“Protocol?” Edwards told me. “She buried the memo and gagged the analysis while kids were being poisoned.”
Even Walling, a Democrat like Hedman, said he doesn’t understand why somebody at Obama’s EPA didn’t give him a heads-up about Del Toral’s finding—even off the record—before Walling publicly testified to the water’s safety, chugging a glass of the poisoned liquid on television.
He rolled his eyes at Hedman’s suggestion that she needed a legal opinion on whether the EPA could force action.
“They hid it,” the Democrat said. “They knew and used the law as a shield against the truth.”
There is no love lost for Snyder in this largely Democratic city, but there is also little doubt that the problems are deeper than one man or one party. Of all the people I talked to in Flint, nobody expressed the sense of utter betrayal better than Lawrence Wright, a 43-year-old state employee and owner of a small security firm. He spent the weekend delivering water through tears.
“I’m not just singling out Governor Snyder,” said the Democrat, an African American. “All the politicians including the EPA are playing tit-for-tat, playing games at our expense. It’s everybody. It’s Republicans. It’s Democrats. It’s a globalization of not caring for the people of Flint.”
Like the story about Johnny Whitmire, the scandal in Flint is a reminder of how government and other institutions fail.
—Arrogant leadership, with a lack transparency, follow-up, and singular attention to mission.
—Lack of power at the bottom of society’s brutal pecking order. This would not have happened in a wealthy city like Traverse City, Michigan, or Snyder’s hometown of Ann Arbor.
—Finally, a lack of oversight from traditional institutions. Where was the state legislature and Congress? Where was the media? Why did a scientist in Virginia crack the case with a FOIA request, rather than an investigative journalist?
For that matter, why did I write a column about Snyder’s leadership that didn’t even mention Flint? There’s no good answer, no excuse. I took my eye off the ball. I blew it.
Now that I’ve caught up, I still think Snyder wants to bring refreshing change to Michigan politics. Even as he acknowledges a catastrophic lack of leadership, I believe he cares about the people he serves. So does Obama, for that matter, and most other politicians I know.
That’s what my gut tells me. But can I trust it?
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Carbon Trading Finds a Foothold in at Least 20 States
Jan 19, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Elizabeth Harball and Emily Holden
Beneath the political storm raging around the Obama administration's climate change rules for the electricity sector, a quiet but powerful push for carbon trading is spreading across the nation.
Close to half of states, including many run by Republicans, are hoping to use some form of a carbon market similar to cap and trade to meet federal Clean Power Plan targets, according to a ClimateWire review of high-level planning talks.
In at least 20 of the 47 states that must meet U.S. EPA requirements, top policymakers or major utilities are pushing for a system where power generators could purchase carbon allowances or credits across state borders as a way to meet EPA's goals.
Power plants in nine Northeastern states already voluntarily participate in a carbon-trading regime, and California runs its own economywide system. But even in states like Arizona, North Carolina and North Dakota -- whose governors are staunch opponents of the Clean Power Plan -- the key players increasingly see trading as the most attractive way to regulate carbon produced by power plants if the rule prevails against court challenges.
"You can do this without using markets, but it is, put simply, really hard to do at a low cost," said David Hoppock, senior policy associate with Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, a group that has been coordinating compliance discussions among Southeastern states.
Under the Clean Power Plan, carbon emissions from power plants in the United States would fall 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Each state must write a plan to achieve a certain portion of that 32 percent, and even most states opposing the rule are analyzing carbon-cutting options. Those include ramping up renewable energy, running more natural gas plants instead of coal-fired facilities and using electricity more efficiently.
Discussions at the state level are still in the early stages. But interviews with dozens of experts, power companies and state officials indicate the writing is on the wall: If the Clean Power Plan survives, most states will use interstate carbon markets to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Preparing, even unhappily, for markets
With carbon markets, coal and gas generators that produce more carbon dioxide than EPA allows could comply by purchasing allowances or credits from companies that exceed their goals. Depending on state plans, the owner of a coal plant in North Dakota might be able to meet its goal by purchasing an allowance from a wind plant in Minnesota, for example.
Market researchers say this sort of carbon trading would save power companies and their customers money by allowing them to get credit for supporting low- or zero-emission electricity, which might be cheaper to develop in another state.
Bob Perciasepe, a former EPA deputy administrator who now heads the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, said if markets prove successful under the Clean Power Plan, they might ease Republican opposition to cap and trade, laying the groundwork for national or even international carbon trading programs.
"It would even be more economically efficient if it was economywide and even more economically efficient if there was a global price on carbon," Perciasepe said. "We would like to see us migrate in that direction."
Twenty-seven states and countless industry groups are adamant, for a number of reasons, that the Clean Power Plan is illegal. The Chamber of Commerce, for one, argues that power generators can't reach the required carbon levels individually.
"EPA's performance rates are not performance rates at all," the Chamber states in a report released today, charging that the emission reduction targets "are based primarily on the presumption that power plant owners should replace coal- and gas-fired generation with massive amounts of new renewable energy."
Opponents of the rule say that by asking for cuts beyond what coal plants can achieve on their own, EPA is basically requiring carbon trading. Kentucky Rep. Ed Whitfield and other Republicans have branded the rule "backdoor cap and trade," arguing that Congress voted down a similar system in 2010.
"The reality is, you cannot meet these arbitrary goals that they have set for those states without doing [carbon trading] in some way," Whitfield told ClimateWire.
Utilities are pushing for carbon trading, in case lawsuits fail, Whitfield said, because "they have no other option."
Some utilities eye trading with hope
The Montana Legislature agrees, saying in a draft letter to EPA last week that "while the EPA claims to give states flexibility in complying with the plan, it may be impossible for states like Montana to reach their goal without depending on credits from other states."
EPA counters that it is not requiring states to use carbon trading and was fulfilling requests from the power industry -- including investor-owned utility trade group the Edison Electric Institute -- in making interstate trading more accessible in the final rule.
In North Dakota, Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) regretfully acknowledged in October that carbon trading is "where we could eventually wind up" (ClimateWire, Oct. 5, 2015). Dalrymple has deep concerns about the Clean Power Plan's cost to his state and feels EPA has forced North Dakota's hand.
Otter Tail Power Co., a utility that serves more than 100,000 customers in the Dakotas and Minnesota, thinks EPA has exceeded its legal authority but told state officials that if lawsuits fail, it "supports an interstate trading-ready plan that would facilitate nationwide compliance mechanisms."
Power companies in other red states are urging a similar path. In North Carolina, political leaders are suing EPA and will test the agency's authority by submitting a compliance plan that will not meet requirements. But Duke Energy, a six-state utility based in North Carolina and a supporter of the Clean Power Plan, is a big proponent of carbon trading, and has been heard at Washington, D.C., events lobbying for a specific kind of trading system.
"We support market-based approaches to reduce emissions, particularly in light of the power sector's successful experience with previous EPA trading programs for NOx [nitrogen oxides] and SOx [sulfur oxides]," Duke spokesman Sean Patrick Walsh said.
"We certainly recognize that broader trading markets generally reduce compliance costs, which helps minimize costs for customers."
A similar push is happening in America's heartland. Joe Citta, the environmental manager at Nebraska's largest electric utility, the Nebraska Public Power District, said that "being able to trade is definitely a positive outcome of the final rule" (EnergyWire, Jan. 4).
The bigger the market, the lower the cost
State governments are listening closely to these comments, and moving quickly to act on them. In Arizona, officials this month told utilities and environmental groups that the state will likely prepare a "trading-ready" path to Clean Power Plan compliance, meaning that without entering a formal agreement with other states, Arizona power generators will be able to access an interstate trading market overseen by EPA (ClimateWire, Jan. 6).
Unsurprisingly, states embracing the Clean Power Plan are also giving carbon trading a hard look. Virginia's Clean Power Plan task force group in December concluded that the state, like Arizona, would likely embrace a "trading-ready" plan (ClimateWire, Dec. 16, 2015).
Trading decisions that states are contemplating now will affect how much the rule costs power companies and customers. Generally speaking, bigger markets mean lower costs.
But industry observers foresee several regional power-sector carbon trading programs emerging in the early years of the Clean Power Plan, largely because states with different political and economic priorities may use incompatible trading systems to comply with the rule. States that want to cap emissions, for example, can't trade with states that want to meet an average rate of carbon each year.
Travis Kavulla, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and a Montana electric regulator opposed to the rule, acknowledged that while carbon trading seems inevitable under the Clean Power Plan, he would anticipate trading programs to be "regionally oriented."
Economists, environmental advocates and other supporters of the Clean Power Plan, however, are optimistic that economic forces will drive states toward a national trading system.
Robert Nordhaus, a law partner at Van Ness Feldman who in 1970 drafted the Clean Air Act provision that underpins the Clean Power Plan, predicted that if the regulation survives, "even if you start out with a wide diversity of approaches to trading, within the decade, we'll have one or two major trading systems in this country and most states will have adhered to one or another interstate trading system."
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Supreme Court Shoots Down Challenge to EPA GHG Rules
Jan 19, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Robin Bravender
The Supreme Court today refused to revive an industry challenge to U.S. EPA's permitting rules for greenhouse gases.
In a customary short order this morning, justices rejected an appeal from a group of companies called the Energy-Intensive Manufacturers Working Group on Greenhouse Gas Regulation.
The group had asked the court to hear its appeal and vacate EPA regulations requiring permits for stationary sources' greenhouse gas emissions.
The groups' request to the justices came after they had already weighed in on the dispute, issuing a ruling in 2014 that largely upheld EPA's permitting regime.
That 2014 Supreme Court opinion upheld EPA's authority to mandate that companies install greenhouse gas emission control technologies at pollution sources that would otherwise qualify for Clean Air Act permits.
At the same time, the court scaled back EPA's program, ruling the agency could not require stationary sources to apply for permits and install pollution controls based solely on their greenhouse gas emissions (Greenwire, June 23, 2014).
As part of that ruling, the Supreme Court sent several issues back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which narrowly altered EPA's rules to bring them in line with the high court's ruling.
But industry groups say judges should have thrown out EPA's permitting rules entirely based on the Supreme Court's ruling, and that EPA should go back to the rulemaking process if new standards are to move forward.
"Our principal contention is that any agency action that fails to understand this and thus fails even to attempt to respond to it is procedurally flawed and must be vacated, to be replaced, if the scheme of regulation at issue is to exist at all, by a rulemaking that deals with the core problem," the industry group wrote in its petition to the Supreme Court this month.
The D.C. Circuit denied previous industry requests for rehearings of its amended judgment following the Supreme Court's 2014 decision.
It requires the votes of four justices for the Supreme Court to grant review of a case.
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US States’ Ability to Comply with Federal Regulations Scrutinised
Jan 19, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is investigating whether the EPA is considering adequately the “unique interests” of states in its regulatory process.
EPW Chairman James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) has sought input from state regulators on how they are “able to manage competing deadlines and resources to meet multiple EPA actions”.
States are responsible for carrying out 96.5% of federal environmental programmes, Mr Inhofe said, citing figures put out by the Environmental Council of States. These “may require substantial time and resources” from state agencies to comply, including “myriad regulatory, permitting and enforcement obligations”.
Referring to recent news reports, he said some state regulators are faced with resource and timing constraints in carrying out the programmes.
“The committee seeks to better understand the scope of ongoing work and resources, dedicated to EPA regulatory actions,” he said. It needs feedback on this, "and whether the current regulatory framework between EPA and states upholds the principle of cooperative federalism”, which requires state and federal governments to work together to meet federal actions.
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EPA Head Defends Flint Water Crisis Response
Jan 19, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defended her agency’s response to the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich., saying it did what it was supposed to do.
The comments came Monday, almost a week after it was reported that EPA employees knew about the potential for lead contamination in the city’s water months before medical professionals found elevated levels in children’s bloodstreams.
“EPA did its job but clearly the outcome was not what anyone would have wanted,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told reporters in Washington while volunteering at a kitchen for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, according to Reuters.
“So we’re going to work with the state, we’re going to work with Flint. We’re going to take care of the problem,” she said. “We know Flint is a situation that never should have happened.”
Most of the blame for the lead contamination has been placed on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and his staff, including the state's Department of Environmental Quality, whose head recently resigned.
Snyder was responsible for the decision to switch Flint to a river for its drinking water supply instead of the lake water it previously used.
His staff also repeatedly downplayed problems with the water, including smell, taste and other contaminants. Snyder has apologized.
In a Tuesday statement, the EPA said the Flint crisis “should not have happened,” and it was Michigan’s responsibility under federal law to protect safe and clean drinking water.
“While EPA worked within the framework of the law to repeatedly and urgently communicate the steps the state needed to take to properly treat its water, those necessary actions were not taken as quickly as they should have been,” the agency said.
“All levels of government — federal, state and local — must work together to find solutions for the residents of Flint and to ensure this never happens again,” it added. “The agency looks forward to our continued dialogue.”
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton excoriated Snyder for the crisis in the Sunday night Democratic presidential debate, saying that if Flint’s population were not majority black, the state would have been far more responsive.
“We’ve had a city in the United States of America where the population, which is poor in many ways and majority African-American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water,” she said. “And the governor of that state acted as though he didn’t really care.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton’s top challenger, has called on Snyder to resign.
The Detroit News reported that Susan Hedman, the regional EPA head for the area that includes Michigan, warned state officials about the potential for lead contamination in April 2015.
She sought a legal opinion on whether she could take action apart from the state, but that was not completed for months, so she stayed silent on the matter.
Snyder is due to give his annual state of the state address Tuesday evening.
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