Preview Newsletter
ACC AM FEB 22
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Passenger Rail: Opportunities and Challenges for the National Network
Feb 23, 2016 | U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation
Location: Senate Russell Office Building, Room 253/ 9:45 AM -
Hearing To Examine The Department Of The Interior’s Budget Request For Fiscal Year 2017
Feb 23, 2016 | U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources
Location: 366 Dirksen Senate Office Building/ 10:00 AM -
Budget Hearing - Office of Management and Budget
Feb 23, 2016 | U.S. House of Representatives Committe on Appropriations
Location: 2359 Rayburn House Office Building/ 3:00 PM -
DOE for the 21st Century: Science, Environment, and National Security Missions
Feb 24, 2016 | Energy & Commerce Committee
Location: 2123 Rayburn House Office Building/ 10:30 AM -
The President’s Imposition of New Environmental Mitigation Regulations
Feb 24, 2016 | House Committee on Natural Resources
Location: 1334 Longworth House Office Building/ 2:00 PM -
Budget Hearing - Department of Transporation
Feb 24, 2016 | U.S. House of Representatives Committe on Appropriations
Location: 2359 Rayburn House Office Building/ 2:00 PM -
Reauthorization of DOT’s Pipeline Safety Program
Feb 25, 2016 | U.S. House of Representatitves Transportation & Infrastructure Committee
Location: 2167 Rayburn House Office Building/ 10:00 AM -
Budget Hearing - Consumer Product Safety Commission
Feb 25, 2016 | U.S. House of Representatives Committe on Appropriations
Location: HT-2 The Capitol/ 2:00 PM -
(ACC Mentioned) America Is On The Cusp Of The Biggest Fight Against Toxic Chemicals In Decades
Feb 19, 2016 | Salon
By Reynard Loki
2016 marks the 40th anniversary of the Toxic Substances Control Act. But there is little to celebrate. Signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1976, the TSCA has been sharply criticized for failing at what it was meant to do: protect public health and the environment from the tens of thousands of chemicals that saturate the marketplace... -
In the news
Feb 19, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The classification of bisphenol A (BPA) as a category 1B substance, toxic for reproduction, now looks a formality after it received the backing of EU member state officials this month. Substances classified as category 1 carcinogens, mutagens or reprotoxicants can be banned from use in consumer products ... -
US EPA Extends Consultation On Human Exposure Assessment Guidelines
Feb 19, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has extended the consultation period on its draft document, Guidelines for human exposure assessment, to 22 March. The agency intends the document to expand and update the 1992 version to reflect the "significant transformation in methods and approaches" since that time. -
US Agencies Release Joint Action Plan On Crumb Rubber
Feb 19, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
A joint action plan to examine the safety of exposure to chemicals in recycled “crumb rubber” has been released by three US agencies. The announcement follows a letter from Congressional leaders calling on the EPA to examine the safety of the material – used in playgrounds and as synthetic turf infill... -
Microbeads In Skin-Care Products Rub Some People The Wrong Way
Feb 19, 2016 | The Houston Chronicle
By Maggie Gordon
If you're one of the millions of Americans who use facial cleansers containing microbeads, it's time to find a new beauty regimen. A new law approved by Congress in December bans the manufacturing of products containing the tiny plastic particles. The ban, which goes into effect in July 2017 and cites the negative environmental impact... -
Manhattan Is Surrounded by Its Own Mini Version of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Feb 19, 2016 | NY Magazine
By Claire Landsbaum
It will surprise no one who lives here that New York's waterways are filled with garbage — after all, this is the city of snow trash. But a new study went to great lengths to calculate just how much garbage has landed in the various rivers, estuaries, kills, and other bodies of water that collectively stretch from the Tappan Zee Bridge to Sandy Hook. -
Lawmakers To Debate PHMSA Delay, Safety Reauthorization
Feb 22, 2016 | E&E Daily News
By Ben Panko
A House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee this week will debate the reauthorization of the Transportation Department's pipeline safety program and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration's slow progress in implementing safety mandates. -
Lawmakers To Tackle DOT Budget, Proposed Oil Tax
Feb 22, 2016 | E&E Daily News
By Ariel Wittenberg
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will this week defend the president's $98 billion fiscal 2017 transportation budget request, which Republicans panned earlier this month for proposing a new fee on oil. The budget request -- on the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee agenda... -
Sierra Club Sues Over Oil Company Earthquakes
Feb 20, 2016 | The Huffington Post - Green Blog
By Nicholas Jimenez
For the past few years, residents of Oklahoma and Kansas have been battling a bizarre and devastating environmental threat: human-induced earthquakes, caused by oil and gas companies pumping massive quantities of polluted water underground. To help protect the citizens of Oklahoma and Kansas from this serious threat, yesterday the Sierra... -
Enbridge Looks Beyond Oil Sands as Projects Now in Doubt
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jeremy van Loon
Enbridge Inc. is looking for ways to reduce its dependence on oil-sands growth as a prolonged crude price collapse casts doubts over the future of projects in Western Canada. The pipeline company will seek to shift its focus after the current wave of projects draws to a close near the end of the decade, said Guy Jarvis, who heads the company's... -
Defense Duty Owed for Gas Leak Caused by Faulty Pipe
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
An insurer had a duty to defend a contractor against claims that the faulty installation of pipe caused a release of hydrogen sulfide gas at an Arizona shopping mall, a federal courthas ruled (Nat'l Fire Ins. Co. v. James River Ins., 2016 BL 44702, D. Ariz., No. 14-CV-765, 2/16/16). -
Industry Groups Drop Tailoring Rule Climate Lawsuit
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The American Petroleum Institute and other industry groups have voluntarily dropped a lawsuit challenging an update to the Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse gas permitting requirements after the U.S. Supreme Court limited the scope of the permitting program (Am. Petroleum Inst. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 12-1376, 2/18/16) -
Critics Emphasize 'Beyond The Fence' Claim In Opening Bid To Vacate ESPS
Feb 21, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Lee Logan
Critics of EPA's landmark greenhouse gas standards for existing power plants, who filed their opening appellate briefs late Feb. 19, are emphasizing their claim that the rule is unlawful and must be vacated because it marks a “breathtaking expansion of the agency's authority” by requiring generation shifting “beyond the fence line”... -
Cross-State Dissent Could Be Key in Power Plan Defense
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
A federal appellate court judge's dissent to a decision overturning the Environmental Protection Agency's cross-state emissions rule for power plants, which was ultimately reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, could aid the agency as it defends carbon dioxide limits for the power sector, legal experts said. -
EPA to Release Annual GHG Emissions Report
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The Environmental Protection Agency is readying its annual report on annual greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. through 2014, according to notice to be published in the Federal Register Feb. 22. The Draft Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2014 summarizes emissions of carbon dioxide, methane... -
Lawmakers Eye Unfunded Mandates, Environmental Rule Impacts
Feb 22, 2016 | E&E Daily News
By Hannah Hess
Panels on both sides of the Capitol will listen to concerns about federal rulemaking Wednesday, with senators eyeing a bill to require agencies to consult with the private sector when developing mandates and congressmen looking at controversial environmental rules. -
Panel To Grill Jewell On Energy, Climate At Budget Hearing
Feb 22, 2016 | E&E Daily News
By Scott Streater
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is expected to face sharp questioning at a Senate budget hearing this week as she defends President Obama's last budget request for the Interior Department. The $13.4 billion fiscal 2017 budget request for Interior includes a number of land conservation, climate change resilience and renewable energy... -
White House Sees Busy Year For Global Climate Pact
Feb 19, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Andrew Restuccia
President Barack Obama's environmental team plans to spend its last 11 months trying to keep alive the political momentum that helped clinch December's landmark international climate change deal. With world leaders turning their focus to other crises like terrorism and the influx of refugees fanning across Europe... -
Lawmakers Heading to Flint for Federal Response Update
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Six House Democrats, including Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), will travel to Flint, Mich., Feb. 22 for an update on the federal response to the ongoing drinking water crisis and a roundtable discussion with small business owners about how the lead-contaminated water has impacted their businesses. Democratic Reps. Dan Kildee ... -
EPA Releases Online Tool to Map Drinking Water Sources
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
A new online mapping tool Environmental Protection Agency released Feb. 19 will enable anyone to identify sources of drinking water, determine if they are polluted and note if there are possible pollution sources that could affect their community's water supply. The purpose of DWMAPS—Drinking Water Mapping Application...
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
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Transportation News
Energy and Environment News
Full Text of Stories Below
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Passenger Rail: Opportunities and Challenges for the National Network
Feb 23, 2016 | U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation
Location: Senate Russell Office Building, Room 253/ 9:45 AM
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Hearing To Examine The Department Of The Interior’s Budget Request For Fiscal Year 2017
Feb 23, 2016 | U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources
Location: 366 Dirksen Senate Office Building/ 10:00 AM
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Budget Hearing - Office of Management and Budget
Feb 23, 2016 | U.S. House of Representatives Committe on Appropriations
Location: 2359 Rayburn House Office Building/ 3:00 PM
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DOE for the 21st Century: Science, Environment, and National Security Missions
Feb 24, 2016 | Energy & Commerce Committee
Location: 2123 Rayburn House Office Building/ 10:30 AM
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The President’s Imposition of New Environmental Mitigation Regulations
Feb 24, 2016 | House Committee on Natural Resources
Location: 1334 Longworth House Office Building/ 2:00 PM
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Budget Hearing - Department of Transporation
Feb 24, 2016 | U.S. House of Representatives Committe on Appropriations
Location: 2359 Rayburn House Office Building/ 2:00 PM
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Reauthorization of DOT’s Pipeline Safety Program
Feb 25, 2016 | U.S. House of Representatitves Transportation & Infrastructure Committee
Location: 2167 Rayburn House Office Building/ 10:00 AM
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Budget Hearing - Consumer Product Safety Commission
Feb 25, 2016 | U.S. House of Representatives Committe on Appropriations
Location: HT-2 The Capitol/ 2:00 PM
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(ACC Mentioned) America Is On The Cusp Of The Biggest Fight Against Toxic Chemicals In Decades
Feb 19, 2016 | Salon
By Reynard Loki
2016 marks the 40th anniversary of the Toxic Substances Control Act. But there is little to celebrate. Signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1976, the TSCA has been sharply criticized for failing at what it was meant to do: protect public health and the environment from the tens of thousands of chemicals that saturate the marketplace, and the hundreds of new ones that are introduced every year.
Adding to the concern is the fact that the law hasn’t been significantly updated since it was enacted, during which time some 22,000 new chemicals have entered American commerce, with around 700 new ones rolled out each year. Many of these chemicals — most of which did not previously exist in nature — have been widely dispersed throughout the environment, into the air, soil and water where some will persist for decades, or even centuries.
The figures are staggering. Every year, around 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released by American industries. In 2011 alone, 16 new chemicals accounted for nearly 1 million pounds. There is far too little testing of these substances: Only a fraction of the nearly 3,000 high-production-volume (HPV) chemicals — chemicals that have an annual production run of at least one million pounds — have been studied for their potential toxicity. According to the EPA, the agency has “only been able to require testing on a little more than 200 existing chemicals” out of the 62,000 that have been introduced since the TSCA’s enactment. The EPA has banned just five.
It has been a long time in coming, but after several years of negotiations, two bills seeking to overhaul the TSCA have finally been passed in both houses of Congress. And while one might assume a federal effort to improve the TSCA would receive widespread popular support (a nationwide poll conducted in 2012 found that nearly 74 percent of Americans believe the threat of chemical exposure to people’s health is serious), the legislation has been met with fierce opposition — and not from the chemical industry.
For decades, regulating chemicals in the U.S. has been a “too little, too late” exercise in futility. Now that Washington is on the verge of a major overhaul, chemical policy reform has become a pitched battleground. Several stakeholders have been vying for leverage, from federal lawmakers and state attorneys general, to chemical industry lobbyists and community activists, to public and environmental health activists. How did something so basic as keeping people and animals safe from dangerous substances become such a highly politicized arena?
One Word: Plastics
Since World War II, some 80,000 new chemicals have been invented. But it wasn’t until the early 1970s when the President’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), formed in 1969 under the Nixon administration, proposed federal legislation to regulate American commerce in chemical substances. So why did it take so long for the government to address the potential health and environmental effects of chemicals? It’s a familiar and tragic narrative: Public health regularly takes a back seat to corporate interests. Time and time again, major toxic disasters occur, reminding us just how susceptible humans, animals and the environment are to toxins produced by industrial activity. Look at Love Canal in Niagara Falls in the 1950s, Times Beach, Missouri in the 1970s or theSummitville mine in Colorado in the 1980s. More recently, there was the Exide lead contamination in Los Angeles. Today, the Flint water crisis unfolds in Michigan.
While big disasters such as these make national headlines, it was actually a series of festering environmental contamination events around the country — and the community activism that gradually grew around them — that set the stage for the TSCA’s passage.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were contaminating the Hudson River; polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) were contaminating agricultural produce in Michigan; and chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emissions were depleting the ozone layer. But it was the process behind making polyvinyl chloride, a plastic commonly known as PVC, that was ultimately the driving force that finally got the law passed. In their 2002 book Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, public health historians Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner write, “While the discovery of various kinds of industrial pollution had led the EPA to begin pressing for passage of Toxic Substances Control Act, the publicity and seriousness of the vinyl crisis would become the impetus for more assertive efforts to get TSCA passed, with a view toward regulating more chemicals than vinyl chloride.”
Developed in the 1920s, PVC is one of the most used plastics in the world. Impervious to rust and rot, it is used predominantly in water systems, sewer lines and underground wiring, and also across a wide array of consumer goods, from tire treads and credit cards to children’s toys and medical devices. In many ways, PVC has changed things for the better, particularly across the developing world, where almost all the clean water projects depend on bacteria-resistant PVC pipe. Chemical engineer Arjen Sevenster, who sits on the board of EU vinyl industry trade group VinylPlus, is a vocal proponent of PVC, the third most widely produced synthetic plastic polymer in the world. “PVC products make life safer, more comfortable and more pleasurable,” he says. “And, because PVC has an excellent ratio of economic cost to performance, it allows people of all income levels access to these important benefits.”
But there is a big problem with this popular plastic. In order to make it, you need to start with vinyl chloride (VC), an intermediary organic compound that was implicated in causing liver damage as early as the 1930s, when the PVC industry was still in its infancy. But it wouldn’t be until 1949, when Russian researcher S.L. Tribukh published a paper about the health effects of VC that it became clear: VC exposure causes liver injury.
In the decades to follow, her research would be tragically manifested in the workplace. A mortality study conducted in 1988 by the Health and Safety Executive, the United Kingdom’s independent regulator for work-related health, found that between 1940 and 1974, there were 11 tumor-related deaths among British vinyl workers — seven of them from angiosarcoma, an exceedingly rare cancer tumor of the liver. The HSE concluded that the deaths indicated “asignificant excess of non-secondary liver tumors.” By the late 1960s, the issue got attention in the United States, when four cases of angiosarcoma were diagnosed among workers at a B.F. Goodrich tire-making plant near Louisville, Kentucky, between 1967 and 1973. The episode was one of the earliest reportsof an occupational disease outbreak published by the Center for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The 1967 film The Graduate was one of the biggest movies of the period. One of its most famous lines was uttered by Mr. McGuire (Walter Brooke), who gives Ben, a 21-year-old recent college grad played by Dustin Hoffman, some friendly business advice: “There’s a great future in plastics.” He was right, of course. In 1976, the global production of plastics was around 50 million metric tons. By 2002, that number had quadrupled. Today, more than 311 metric tons of plastics are produced worldwide. In 2013, plastic wholesaling generated $55 billion in the United States, which is behind only China in total PVC production.
But plastic’s future would not be all bright. Just a few years after The Graduatewas released, VC health concern had reached critical mass in the U.S. Nancy Beach, who was coordinating the EPA’s vinyl chloride efforts at the time, revealed that exposure to the toxin wasn’t limited to factory workers. In a private session organized by the National Cancer Institute and attended by representatives from 10 federal agencies, including the FDA, OSHA, CDC and the National Institutes of Health, Beach revealed that some 6 percent of the VC used during PVC production was escaping into the outside air. “It sounds small,” she said, “but if one considers that the annual production of PVC in the U.S. is well over 5 billion pounds a 6 percent loss figure is on the order of 250 million pounds, which is somehow getting out of the workplace.”
By the summer of 1974, the FDA, EPA and Consumer Product Safety Commission moved to prohibit the use of VC in bottles and other consumer goods. In October, EPA administrator Russell Train announced new air emissions standards for vinyl chloride. The announcement would have far-reaching implications: By framing the VC issue within the larger goal of regulating the hundreds of chemicals that enter the marketplace every year, Train helped pave the way for the passage of the TSCA:
For the past five years, an estimated 600 new chemicals a year have been introduced into U.S. commerce. These chemicals have been sold without any systematic, advanced assessment of their potential impact on human health. As we have learned through our experience, materials such as vinyl chloride, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos, nitrosamines and several others, we often do not discover how harmful a compound can be until it has become a commonplace item in our everyday life.
Two years after Train’s announcement — and after significant negotiation between the government and industry — the TSCA was finally signed into law by President Ford on Oct. 11, 1976, authorizing the EPA to test and regulate new and existing chemicals. In a statement accompanying the signing of the bill, Ford said, “I believe this legislation may be one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation that has been enacted by the Congress.” He may have been right, but important does not equal effective.
Fixing ‘Fundamental Weaknesses’
A large part of the problem with the TSCA is its fundamentally Sisyphean nature. In 1994, former EPA assistant administrator Lynn Goldman testified to Congress, saying, “Our available tools for gathering testing data about these chemicals are cumbersome.” Later, she explained that under the provisions of the TSCA, “It’s almost as if … we have to, first, prove that chemicals are risky before we can have the testing done to show whether or not the chemicals are risky.” Since the TSCA was enacted, some 62,000 chemicals have never been tested by the EPA because they were grandfathered in and remain on the market.
In 2009, Michael Wilson and Megan Schwarzman, environmental health scientists at UC Berkeley, published a damning analysis of U.S. chemical policy, identifying “fundamental weaknesses” in the way the government protects Americans from toxic substances — weaknesses that not only leave the public unprotected, but hamstring the development of a chemical marketplace that is less toxic and more sustainable. “These policies have largely failed to adequately protect public health or the environment or motivate investment in or scientific exploration of cleaner chemical technologies,” they wrote in the paper, which was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal. “On this trajectory,” they warned, “the United States will face growing health, environmental and economic problems related to chemical exposures and pollution.”
Two bills, a House and Senate bill, which passed their respective chambers last year, represent Congress’ first serious attempt to “reauthorize and modernize” the TSCA. The Senate bill, S. 697 (the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act), has been hailed as the result of bipartisan compromise on Capitol Hill led by Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and David Vitter (R-LA), who co-sponsored a bill in May 2013. A month later, Lautenberg died. Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) picked up the reins and worked with Vitter — an ally of the chemical companies — to improve the bill, which eventually secured enough support in the Senate to be filibuster-proof. Now dubbed the “Udall-Vitter chemical safety bill,” it passed on December 17 by unanimous consent.
New York Times columnist Joe Nocera sees a rare quality in the Udall-Vitter bill: “In this era of polarized politics,” he writes, “it is something of a miracle.” He said Udall told him that the bill stood as “an example of good, old-fashioned legislating.” Nocera also relayed the opinion of Dominique Browning, a co-founder of the grassroots green group known as Moms Clean Air Force:
Browning, an old friend of mine, describes herself as an environmental pragmatist. She concluded that whatever the flaws in the bill, it was a vast improvement over the status quo — a status quo in which the Environmental Protection Agency can’t even regulate formaldehyde. She and her brain trust decided that their 570,000-member group would work to improve the bill instead of oppose it. This is also the position taken by the ever-pragmatic Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund, with which Moms Clean Air Force is affiliated.
The House bill, H.R. 2576 (TSCA Modernization Act), was introduced in May 2015 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL-15) and passed in June. The next step is for the bills to be assessed in a conference committee to reconcile the two versions. (Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund has published an excellent side-by-side comparison of how the two bills address 12 of TSCA’s key limitations.)
As the first major overhaul of the 40-year-old TSCA, the bills have several laudable goals and fix glaring omissions in the old law. For example, the TSCA gives no special consideration to segments of the population that may be more susceptible to toxins, such as infants, children, pregnant women, workers and the elderly. This is a striking oversight. Less than 20 percent of HPV chemicals have been studied for their ability to impact child development. The Senate bill addresses this omission, expressly requiring protections for these vulnerable groups. Furthermore, the TSCA gives the EPA the authority, but regrettably no mandate, to restrict chemicals deemed to present an “unreasonable risk.” The new legislation closes this breach by requiring restrictions on such substances.
Another target of reform is the “safety standard.” Under the TSCA, a substance of unreasonable risk requires the EPA to conduct a cost-benefit analysis, an unwieldy requirement that is ultimately not necessary — if the bottom line is protecting public health. Both bills address this by prohibiting the EPA from considering costs and other non-risk factors in making safety determinations, eliminating an onerous requirement of the TSCA that Denison characterized as a “paralyzing regulatory hurdle.”
The final bill will likely meet one of the threshold principles for the Obama administration: that the safety standard is a “health only” standard and not a “cost-benefit” standard. In their analysis, Wilson and Schwarzman note three key “gaps” caused by the weaknesses in the TSCA:Data gap: “Producers are not required to investigate and disclose sufficient information on chemicals’ hazard traits to government, businesses that use chemicals, or the public.”Safety gap: “Government lacks the legal tools it needs to efficiently identify, prioritize, and take action to mitigate the potential health and environmental effects of hazardous chemicals.”Technology gap: “Industry and government have invested only marginally in green chemistry research, development, and education.”
The bills address these gaps to varying degrees. Regarding the data gap, the new legislation mandates a greater level of transparency, requiring an upfront justification from companies for all or most new claims. Regarding the safety gap, the bills, as stated earlier, prohibit the EPA from considering costs in risk evaluations. Regarding the technology gap, the Senate bill mandates that, no later than two years after the bill’s enactment, an Interagency Working Group — comprised of representative from several agencies, including the USDA, EPA, National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation — must submit “a summary of federally funded sustainable chemistry research, development, demonstration, technology transfer, commercialization, education, and training activities.”
Whether or not these changes survive the final combined version of the bill remains to be seen.
Question of Authorship
While there is much to like to about the reform bills, particularly the protection they require for vulnerable segments of the population, they have drawn strong opposition. Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a 450-member coalition dedicated to TSCA reform that counts as its members a number of leading environmental and public health advocacy groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Breast Cancer Fund, opposes the part of the reform bills that gives the EPA the ability to declare substances “low-priority” based on a finding that the chemical is “likely to meet” the safety standard, thereby leaving them off the official assessment table. That’s a loophole that, according Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families’ national campaign director Andy Igrejas, lets industry off the hook:
A low-priority designation is a new form of pro-active non-assessment. It is effectively a hall pass for the chemical; a declaration that EPA will not review the chemical so it is therefore free to roam the economy and potentially your home without any restrictions. All on the back of “likely to.” This distinction, which confers many of the benefits of being declared “safe” but without a thorough safety evaluation, is likely to be coveted by chemical companies.
Is it possible that the low-priority designation isn’t just coveted by chemical companies, but was actually written by them? Hearst Newspapers obtained a copy of the draft bill in the form of a Microsoft Word document, which has led to questions concerning the bill’s authorship. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a Hearst paper, accessing the document’s “advanced properties” revealed that the company of origin was none other than the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s powerful lobbying group. Ken Cook, president of the non-profit Environmental Working Group, was quick to denounce the legislative process behind chemicals reform. “We’re apparently at the point in the minds of some people in the Congress that laws intended to regulate polluters are now written by the polluters themselves,” he said.
Indeed, the chemical industry is so far supportive of the reform. “Updating the Toxic Substances Control Act is critical for our industry, one that creates the building blocks for 96 percent of all manufactured goods, playing a fundamental role in every facet of national commerce and the U.S. economy,” the American Chemistry Council said in a statement. According to the trade group, the Senate bill balances the needs of the public to be informed about chemicals in the marketplace without getting in the way of the industry’s job to make the kinds of chemicals — toxic though they might be — that manufacturers need.
Igrejas also notes that the Senate bill “weakens EPA’s ability to intercept imported products, like most of the toys under your Christmas tree, when they contain a known toxic chemical.” Following the March 2015 hearing by the Senate environment committee, he wrote, “The overwhelming conclusion to any but the most partisan observer was that the bill — though improved over last year’s version — needs additional work before it represents true progress for public health and gathers the broader support needed to become law.”
States Rights vs. Federal Oversight
But perhaps the most dramatic change that would be ushered in by the new legislation as it is currently written regards the role of states, which would have diminished control. The new law threatens to undo state-led efforts to protect citizens in light of failures at the federal level. “The toxics tug-of-war in state houses,” says Ronnie Greene of the Center for Public Integrity, “is direct falloutfrom the muddled environmental politicking of Washington, D.C.” Notably, the new law would block states from taking direct action on potentially hazardous chemicals while the EPA makes its own assessments, which could delay rolling out necessary steps to protect public and environmental health, possibly for years.
In a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, California State Attorney General Kamala Harris said it “is deeply troubling given the enormous time lag certain to occur between the beginning of an EPA assessment and the effective date of any federal safety rule.” The federal time lag is truly extraordinary. In 2010, for example, the EPA added 16 new cancer-causing chemicals to the list of toxic substances that must be reported to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), which allows the American public to know what kinds of chemicals might be polluting their communities. It was the first time chemicals had been added to the list in over a decade.
Harris wasn’t the only state AG to come out against the Senate bill. A week after it was introduced, the state attorneys general of Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New York, Oregon and Washington sent a similar letter to Sens. Boxer and James Inhofe (R-OK), the environment committee chairman. They write:
We oppose S. 697’s broadly expanded limitations on the ability of states to take appropriate action under state laws to protect against … risks posed by chemicals and chemical mixtures … In contrast to the existing law, S. 697 would prevent states from adopting new laws or regulations, or taking other administrative action, “prohibiting or restricting the manufacture, processing, distribution in commerce or use” of a chemical substance deemed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) to be a “high-priority” for federal review even before any federal restrictions have been established. As a result, a void would be created where states would be prevented from acting to protect their citizens and the environment from those chemicals even though federal restrictions may not be in place for many years. S. 697 also eliminates two key provisions in the existing law that preserve state authority to protect against dangerous chemicals. One is the provision that provides for “co-enforcement” — allowing states to adopt and enforce state restrictions that are identical to federal restrictions in order to provide for additional enforcement of the law. The second is the provision that allows states to ban in-state use of dangerous chemicals.
Last month, Sharon Lerner, who covers the environment for The Intercept, wrote an article focusing on the effect the TSCA reform bill would have on the work that is happening on the state level. “If the worst provisions from both bills wind up in the final law,” she writes, “the new legislation will gut laws that have put Oregon, California, Maine, Vermont, Minnesota and Washington state at the forefront of chemical regulation.”
Lerner told me that there are almost 20,000 chemicals currently on the marketplace whose identities remain unknown because they’re protected by law. “They’re considered confidential to business, and you can’t check the safety of something if you don’t know the identity of it,” she said. Under the new legislation, she added, “none of that will change. I think it’s really important to remember that.”
But there is still time to make the final bill that reaches the president’s desk one that will please more of the stakeholders. But ultimately, legislators mustn’t lose sight of the bill’s basic goal: to protect people, wildlife and the environment from dangerous substances. “Luckily, it is not too late,” Igrejas said in a statement. “When Congress reconciles the House and Senate versions, they should focus on the fundamentals of reform and simply empower and direct EPA to identify and restrict toxic chemicals.” And they shouldn’t let corporate interests make the sausage.
Plastics and other toxic substances have arguably helped shape the modern world in many positive ways. But the rules governing their use, and the way those rules have been written, are problematic, to say the least. As Dustin Hoffman remarked in The Graduate, “The rules don’t make any sense to me. They’re being made up by all the wrong people.”
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Feb 19, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The classification of bisphenol A (BPA) as a category 1B substance, toxic for reproduction, now looks a formality after it received the backing of EU member state officials this month. Substances classified as category 1 carcinogens, mutagens or reprotoxicants can be banned from use in consumer products in the EU via a simplified procedure (8 February).
Echa has launched 24 public consultations on applications for authorisation, covering 36 uses for eight chromate compounds. The compounds are sodium, potassium, ammonium dichromate, chromium trioxide, chromic acid, dichromium tri(chromate), strontium chromate and potassium hydroxyoctaoxodizincatedichromate (11 February).
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) says that a statutory overhaul of California’s Proposition 65 is needed, and has called on the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) to “revise or abandon” its proposed reform of warning label requirements (11 February).
Canadian regulators are seeking stakeholder input to help shape risk assessment and management plans for implementing the next phase of the Chemical Management Plan (CMP). In the third phase of the CMP, Environment Canada and Health Canada want to address the remaining 1,550 of the 4,300 substances identified under the plan’s prioritisation process as requiring human health and ecological assessments (10 February).
China’s new regulation restricting certain hazardous substances in electrical equipment – known as RoSH2 – has brought many more products under the regime’s scope. Issued in January, it adds significant new obligations on companies compared to the country’s original RoHS regulation (4 February).
European Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis has pledged to present scientific criteria for the identification of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) “before the summer”. Speaking in a European Parliament debate on the issue earlier this week, he defended the time it is taking the Commission to finish its impact assessment into the various options (4 February).
More information in REACH registration dossiers on the uses of priority substances and their volumes produced, or imported, each year must be generated, a key Echa official has told a workshop. This is to prevent the issue becoming “too big a block to progress” to minimising their health and environmental effects (3 February).
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has adopted a regulation that will create a “Lead Agency website” to provide information to the public on exposure to chemicals that require warning disclosure under Proposition 65. The website has been agreed, despite continued protest from a coalition of more than 170 businesses and trade groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) (26 January).
Twelve attorneys general have set out “core principles” to limit state preemption that they say Senate and House negotiators should adhere to as they work to reconcile competing measures to modernise the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) (26 January).
The French authorities do not plan any enforcement activities on SVHCs in articles this year. This despite last year’s ruling by the European Court of Justice. In September the court backed France and six other countries’ view that the obligation to notify SVHCs in articles applies to “each of the articles incorporated as a component of a complex product”, rather than to the entire article. The ruling took immediate effect (25 January).
Echa has selected another tranche of substances from REACH registration dossiers for further scrutiny by member state competent authorities. The nearly 300 substances will be manually screened by the national authorities to decide whether there is a need for regulatory action (28 January).
Company managers, government officials, journalists and campaigners are all set to benefit from big improvements to the provision of public information on Echa’s website. Offering details on substance properties, hazards and uses, and on relevant regulatory activities and outcomes, the changes have the potential, in the long term, to significantly increase the sum of public knowledge about chemicals (20 January).
Four organisations representing state elected leaders have called on Congress to maintain their rights to develop and implement chemical regulations under a reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) (17 February).
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US EPA Extends Consultation On Human Exposure Assessment Guidelines
Feb 19, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has extended the consultation period on its draft document, Guidelines for human exposure assessment, to 22 March.
The agency intends the document to expand and update the 1992 version to reflect the "significant transformation in methods and approaches" since that time.
As with the original, it is published to help exposure scientists in developing: exposure and risk assessments;status and trends analyses;mitigation strategies;regulatory decisions; andepidemiological studies.
An external peer review panel will consider public comments submitted during the consultation. This is being convened by an independent contractor.
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US Agencies Release Joint Action Plan On Crumb Rubber
Feb 19, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
A joint action plan to examine the safety of exposure to chemicals in recycled “crumb rubber” has been released by three US agencies.
The announcement follows a letter from Congressional leaders calling on the EPA to examine the safety of the material – used in playgrounds and as synthetic turf infill – amid concerns on the chemicals it contains and anecdotal evidence linking repeated exposure to it with cancer.
The EPA, Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) have outlined a programme to: evaluate data and knowledge gaps;test the materials to determine the chemicals present and their toxicity; andconduct a pilot study to determine exposure under use conditions.
The agencies aim to release preliminary findings and conclusions before the end of 2016.
Congressman Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a signatory to the Congressional letter, praised the action. He is hopeful that the cooperation will lead to a conclusive determination on crumb rubber safety.
But an NGO that successfully pushed for the EPA and the CPSC to withdraw their previous safety endorsements of crumb rubber says the approach “will raise more questions than it answers”.
“While we are glad that chemical exposure to crumb rubber surfaces is finally drawing national attention, this ‘federal action plan’ does not appear designed to lead to actual action,” says Jeff Ruch, executive director of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
The group has called on the CPSC to classify playground surfaces as a children’s product. Such a designation would trigger enforceable lead limits. It has also proposed a moratorium on the construction of new crumb rubber infilled fields while research continues.
NGO Center for Environmental Health (CEH) has said that crumb rubber, made from recycled tyres, contains a “cocktail of toxic chemicals”, including: heavy metals;carbon black; andbenzothiazole.
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has also initiated a study on the safety of the material. The EPA has said it will work with California and other states on these efforts.
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Microbeads In Skin-Care Products Rub Some People The Wrong Way
Feb 19, 2016 | The Houston Chronicle
By Maggie Gordon
If you're one of the millions of Americans who use facial cleansers containing microbeads, it's time to find a new beauty regimen.
A new law approved by Congress in December bans the manufacturing of products containing the tiny plastic particles. The ban, which goes into effect in July 2017 and cites the negative environmental impact of microbeads, is expected to cause a major disruption in the skin-care market.
Companies already are working to change ingredients in their products. Johnson & Johnson, the parent company for Neutrogena, which has several products containing microbeads, has stopped developing new products with the beads and has "been conducting environmental safety assessment of other alternatives," according to spokeswoman Carol Goodrich. While the company is mum on what its new recipes will turn to in lieu of microbeads, Goodrich said the company completed the first phase of product reformulation last year.
"Generally, the microbeads currently on the market are just about everywhere," said Valencia Thomas, a dermatologist with UTHealth and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. "They've been used for years to increase the friction for mechanical exfoliation." Health Hundreds of yoga enthusiasts turn up for annual conference Microbeads in skin-care products rub some people the wrong way Mail-order medications may not be up to strict pharmacy standards 10 tips for better heart health Grown man destroys two In-N-Out burgers like they're nothing
You'll find microbeads in facial and body scrubs, body wash, facial cleansers and toothpaste. To see if they're in your products, check the ingredients list for polyethylene, polypropylene and Nylon-66. That's science-speak for microbeads.
With the wide range of products microbeads appear in, come widespread environmental concerns. In 2012, State University of New York at Fredonia professor Sherri Mason collected samples from all five of the Great Lakes to investigate plastic pollutants in the water. By skimming for samples and comparing the plastic particles they found with ingredients in grocery-store beauty products, Mason's team found microbeads were responsible for a significant portion of the lakes' trash problem.
Microbeads are tiny spheres of plastic - less than a millimeter in size - "like a grain of sand or a snowflake," Mason said.
"Having done three years of sample collections in all five of the Great Lakes, I would say (microbeads) probably account for 15 percent of the plastics we find, which is a significant amount," she said.
Why were they found in such high concentrations? Three reasons: Due to their size, they don't sink; plastic doesn't disintegrate; and people love the products they're in.
"Consumers and patients, we like them because when you use a cleanser with microbeads, you can really feel it exfoliate, and your face feels amazing," said Alpesh Desai, a dermatologist affiliated with Memorial Hermann Greater Heights Hospital. "From a consumer standpoint, there's a tangible, pulsating feeling. And from a scientific or clinical standpoint, the feeling is real."
Microbeads helped penetrate the top-most layer of the skin, allowing the products' active ingredient to get deep into the pores. But while the beads were effective, they're far from irreplaceable.
"You have to remember, there are a lot of ways we were exfoliating before these beads came in vogue," Desai said.
He suggests several natural ingredients that can take over for microbeads, including apricot seeds, sea salt, sugar and nutshells.
One exfoliating ingredient is not inherently better than another, said Thomas. In the end, it comes down to "user experience" - what you like the best and what you'll commit to using regularly.
"Manufacturers use anything that is non-liquid in these facial products. There are seaweed scrubs, and certain types of tree bark are also used," said Thomas. "I've seen a little bit of everything."
With a wide selection of ingredients to use, the list of potential new cleansers for those seeking to replace their plastic scrubs goes on and on. And Thomas said consumers can get great results from handheld cleansing brushes like those available from Clarisonic. The drawback here is the added cost. While you can pick up a tube of apricot scrub for less than $5, the Clarisonic Mia costs $99, and the Mia II rings in at $149.
No matter how you change up your routine, Desai stresses the importance of testing out the new procedure before using it on your face.
"Always test it on a small area, like the back of your ear or the back of your neck where it's not visible - and try it for a good week to see if your skin is OK with it," he said. "As long as you're OK, go right ahead with it."
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Manhattan Is Surrounded by Its Own Mini Version of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Feb 19, 2016 | NY Magazine
By Claire Landsbaum
It will surprise no one who lives here that New York's waterways are filled with garbage — after all, this is the city of snow trash. But a new study went to great lengths to calculate just how much garbage has landed in the various rivers, estuaries, kills, and other bodies of water that collectively stretch from the Tappan Zee Bridge to Sandy Hook. A crew from NY/NJ Baykeeper sampled 18 locations around the New York Bight and calculated that, at any given time, an estimated 165 million bits of plastic, or more than 256,000 particles per square kilometer, are floating in the waterways surrounding both states.
According to the New York Times, most of the plastic particles — 38 percent — take the form of polystyrene, or what you'd casually call Styrofoam. Other categories include fishing line, clothing fiber, pellets, and films. To come up with an accurate estimate, the team dragged a manta trawl — a "nine-foot net with a large open mouth that resembles a manta ray" — across different patches of water at two knots for 30-minute stretches, then counted the take. Based on a study of plastic pollution in the Great Lakes, they could then extrapolate that 165,840,512 pieces of plastic are bobbing around between New York and New Jersey.
That includes the microbeads that were until recently used in cosmetic products, which are extremely dangerous to marine animals because they (a) absorb other toxins, and (b) are so tiny that fish accidentally eat them, taking in those toxins. Despite being banned in December, microbeads still showed up in NY/NJ Baykeeper's samples, as did other types of microplastics that had broken down (but not disappeared) over time. In fact, 85 percent of plastics discovered in waterways were five millimeters or smaller. In other words, just because it's not depressingly huge and visibly disgusting doesn't mean it's not killing wildlife.
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Lawmakers To Debate PHMSA Delay, Safety Reauthorization
Feb 22, 2016 | E&E Daily News
By Ben Panko
A House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee this week will debate the reauthorization of the Transportation Department's pipeline safety program and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration's slow progress in implementing safety mandates.
The last congressional authorization of DOT's pipeline safety authority expired Sept. 30, 2015, but a bipartisan effort, S. 2276, to reauthorize it through fiscal 2019 is moving through the Senate (Greenwire, Dec. 9, 2015).
Many in Congress have been troubled, however, by PHMSA's delay in implementing 42 safety mandates that the last authorization included (Greenwire, July 14, 2015). Sixteen of the mandates remain to be implemented, according to a list provided by the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials.
"For proper enforcement, inspection, safety, and productivity in the industry, these mandates need to be implemented by the agency," the subcommittee's staff wrote in a hearing memo.
Donald Santa, head of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, will testify on behalf of pipeline companies to urge the passage of the Senate's reauthorization bill and the timely completion of PHMSA's safety mandate implementation process, spokeswoman Cathy Landry said.
"Given how long it has taken to send these proposed rules to [the Office of Management and Budget] for review, and the record of delay in other rulemakings across the executive branch, we have good reason to be apprehensive that it may take several more years to finalize these pipeline safety rules," Santa testified at a Senate hearing last year on the proposed reauthorization (E&E Daily, Sept. 29, 2015).
Santa will also testify on INGAA's wish for PHMSA to enact regulations on underground natural gas storage, with oversight funded by fees on its operators.
PHMSA is considering adopting such rules in the wake of the Los Angeles methane leak that drove thousands of people from their homes and took nearly four months to plug (EnergyWire, Feb. 3).
Andrew Black, head of the Association of Oil Pipe Lines, said he will testify on his industry's efforts to improve its safety performance record and its implementation of a new safety management tool developed by PHMSA and recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board.
PHMSA has expressed interest in implementing stricter regulations inspired by natural gas pipelines to oil pipelines following several spills, including a 2013 incident in Mayflower, Ark. (EnergyWire, Aug. 28, 2015). Last month, the oil industry came out against several parts of those newly proposed regulations (EnergyWire, Jan. 11).
Carl Weimer of the Pipeline Safety Trust said he plans to share several concerns his organization has about the Senate bill's language, including its heavy reliance on industry-drafted rules in sections relating to underground gas storage and small-scale liquefied natural gas facilities, and the fact that inspection report information won't be made public.
He also has concerns about the current pipeline safety statutes and rules regarding "barriers to charging companies for criminal violations," lack on information regarding health effects from spills, and the lack of requirements for permits to operate pipelines, among other things.
Cheryl Campbell of Xcel Energy Inc. will testify on behalf of the American Gas Association, which has expressed strong support for the Senate's reauthorization bill (Greenwire, Dec. 9, 2015).
Campbell and PHMSA Administrator Marie Therese Dominguez could not be reached for comment.
Schedule: The hearing is Thursday, Feb. 25, at 10 a.m. in 2167 Rayburn.
Witnesses: Marie Therese Dominguez, administrator, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration; Andrew Black, president and CEO, Association of Oil Pipe Lines; Donald Santa, president and CEO, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America; Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president of gas, Xcel Energy, on behalf of the American Gas Association; and Carl Weimer, executive director, Pipeline Safety Trust.
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Lawmakers To Tackle DOT Budget, Proposed Oil Tax
Feb 22, 2016 | E&E Daily News
By Ariel Wittenberg
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will this week defend the president's $98 billion fiscal 2017 transportation budget request, which Republicans panned earlier this month for proposing a new fee on oil.
The budget request -- on the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee agenda -- aims to simultaneously improve the nation's aging infrastructure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.
A portion of the proposal called the "21st Century Clean Transportation System" would fund a variety of initiatives to increase alternative-fueled vehicles and smart cars while cutting carbon pollution by promoting public transit and building better highway systems (E&ENews PM, Feb. 4).
Republicans blasted the blueprint because the Obama administration proposed levying a $10-per-barrel oil tax, paid by oil companies, to pay for the investments.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called the idea "dead on arrival," a phrase echoed by other members of the party, including Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) (E&E Daily, Feb. 5).
Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), top lawmaker on the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, has also criticized the proposal, saying in a recent statement he was "disappointed, although not surprised, that President Obama's final budget proposal continues his administration's policy of record-high taxes and spending and growth of government."
"Rather than offering ideas that Congress and the American people could come around to, this budget doubles as a partisan political platform chock full of progressive wish list items," he said.
Democrats have remained largely quiet on the specifics of Obama's transportation budget proposal, with a few distancing themselves from the oil fee proposal in favor of a gas tax (E&E Daily, Feb. 10).
Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), ranking member of the subcommittee, voiced his general support for the budget in a statement earlier this month.
"President Obama's request calls on Congress to make the investments a great country must make and lays out a comprehensive blueprint to reduce our long-term deficits," he said.
"The proposal includes robust funding for urgent needs, such as rebuilding our crumbling transportation infrastructure and stopping the spread of the Zika virus epidemic; it also increases support for forward-looking priorities, including science and technology research and initiatives to lift millions out of the crippling cycle of poverty," Price said.
Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 2 p.m. in 2359 Rayburn.
Witness: Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.
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Sierra Club Sues Over Oil Company Earthquakes
Feb 20, 2016 | The Huffington Post - Green Blog
By Nicholas Jimenez
For the past few years, residents of Oklahoma and Kansas have been battling a bizarre and devastating environmental threat: human-induced earthquakes, caused by oil and gas companies pumping massive quantities of polluted water underground. To help protect the citizens of Oklahoma and Kansas from this serious threat, yesterday the Sierra Club filed a federal lawsuit against three of the major culprits for disposing of waste in such a way that it causes or contributes to an "imminent and substantial endangerment" to public health and the environment in violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). We discuss the lawsuit here. The Club is represented by Richard Webster of Public Justice and co-counsel Robin Greenwald of Weitz & Luxenberg, Scott Poynter of the Poynter Law Group, and Bill Federman of Federman & Sherwood.
A recent article in the New Yorker brought the problem national attention and explained the situation well. By the mid-1990s, Oklahoma's oil fields had been thoroughly tapped, and additional oil recovery was not profitable. One of the principal problems was that the oil fields companies currently tap are very waterlogged, either naturally or as a result of the water injected by oil companies themselves over the years. As a result, new wells would bring up ten or twenty times as much water as oil. Beginning a little over ten years ago, however, recovery from these fields was again profitable as the price of oil soared and new technology made dewatering easier. But the polluted water still had to go somewhere, and waste fluid from fracking--where the companies inject a watery chemical cocktail into the ground at high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks and release natural gas or oil inside--only added to the load.
Oil companies have traditionally reinjected these "production wastes" underground, theoretically deep enough that it will not interact with any drinking water aquifer, rather than finding a way to treat it and dispose of it by other means, which would cost them significantly more money to do. Using the new recovery processes, oil companies have billions of new gallons of polluted water to dispose of annually, but they continue to thoughtlessly use the same disposal method. The rate of re-injection has increased astronomically over recent years.
Image: Public JusticeThe Sierra Club's "notice of intent to sue" letter vividly illustrates the increases in production waste disposal and resulting earthquakes. The increased disposal has brought swarms of earthquakes to a region that hasn't seen significant seismic activity in millennia, increasing the number of magnitude-3 or larger earthquakes in north-central Oklahoma by nearly 300 times, or approximately 30,000%. Strikingly for a very oil and gas-friendly state, in 2015 Oklahoma state geologists officially recognized that the quakes are caused by wastewater injection, and later the Governor also clearly acknowledged the link.
Image: Public JusticeNot only has the number of earthquakes increased dramatically, but so too has their severity, as the above graph shows, and the earthquakes have already caused serious injuries and property damage. The scale to classify earthquakes is logarithmic, meaning that a magnitude 4 earthquake is 10 times more powerful than a magnitude 3, and a magnitude 5 earthquake is 100 times more powerful than a magnitude 3. Furthermore, it's a law of seismology that swarms of smaller earthquakes suggest a larger one may be on its way. Scientists at the United States Geologic Survey (USGS) warn that the smaller earthquakes are reawakening long-dormant, 300-million-year-old fault lines across Oklahoma that could trigger much higher-magnitude earthquakes. If a large earthquake hit the Oklahoma City area, it could cause thousands of injuries and even fatalities.
The quakes also threaten catastrophic environmental harm, mainly through the inevitable rupture of the storage and transportation infrastructure for hazardous materials. This poses a special threat in Oklahoma. If a large earthquake struck the massive oil storage area in Cushing, truly huge amounts of oil could be released. Cushing is one of America's largest oil-holding facilities, taking in oil from across the U.S. as well as receiving pipelines from Gulf of Mexico offloading operations. As fracking has generated a glut of oil on world markets, it has also filled Cushing's massive oil storage facilities, as investors wait to sell it at higher prices. Cushing currently stores approximately 55 million barrels of oil. The storage tanks in Cushing were built to national standards that account for some shaking, but they weren't constructed with serious earthquakes in mind. Many of the tanks were built in the 1920's, and the likelihood that a strong earthquake could rupture Cushing's storage tanks and affect the nation's energy supply has even become a matter of national security, recently attracting the attention of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in addition to USGS.
The Sierra Club's Oklahoma and Kansas Chapters have been leading voices in the public outcry demanding regulators do something about the ongoing threat. We in the Law Program have been discussing the issue with both of the chapters over the past months, and we want to share a few of their choice words on the subject:
"Oklahoma's state government is failing its citizens on this issue--we met dozens of rural home owners last summer who literally cried telling me their stories--until you are awakened every night for months on end because an earthquake woke you up, you cannot imagine the psychological toll this is taking on our citizens--massive across-the-board injection volume reductions should have been taken years ago. People should always be more valuable than profits." - Johnson Bridgwater, Director of the Oklahoma Chapter
During a "Kansas-Oklahoma Fighters Meeting," Johnson met with 93-year-old Ada Mae Mott, a resident of Medford, Oklahoma, who was thrown to the ground in her kitchen during an earthquake."Kansas is a low-regulation state when it comes to the oil and gas industry. The Kansas Chapter has worked for the past five years to put stronger rules and regulations on the books of Kansas, but to no avail. Kansas officials deny the earthquake surge in Kansas corresponds to increased oil and gas activity in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma. Kansans are at risk on a daily basis, and damages are already mounting into the millions of dollars." - Zack Pistoria, Kansas Chapter
Oklahoma-Kansas joint screening of the fracking documentary, Groundswell Rising.So long as government regulators lack the resources or the will to deal with this problem and force oil companies to dispose of their waste safely, people and the environment remain at serious risk. Just this past weekend, northern Oklahoma suffered a magnitude 5.1 quake, the third most powerful in the state's recorded history. In response, Oklahoma regulators issued a "Regional Earthquake Response Plan for Western Oklahoma." While we in the Law Program haven't fully reviewed the plan yet, it appears to be too little too late. For example, the plan--which appears to rely on oil companies' voluntary compliance--calls for reducing the amount of water injected in the region covered by the plan by "about 40 percent." Given the explosion in injection rates over the past few years, however, this still allows companies to inject far more production waste than they have in the past. Furthermore, the region covered by the plan does not include Cushing or Oklahoma City.
By addressing the ongoing earthquake risk, the Sierra Club's lawsuit follows in the best tradition of citizen enforcement of public health and environmental laws. Congress put "citizen suit" provisions into laws like RCRA as a backstop, to ensure that citizens who suffer from the government's chronic failure to enforce the law have some way to protect themselves. The Sierra Club stands with the citizens of Oklahoma and Kansas, who deserve protection from the irresponsible practices of a handful of oil companies.
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Enbridge Looks Beyond Oil Sands as Projects Now in Doubt
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jeremy van Loon
Enbridge Inc. is looking for ways to reduce its dependence on oil-sands growth as a prolonged crude price collapse casts doubts over the future of projects in Western Canada.
The pipeline company will seek to shift its focus after the current wave of projects draws to a close near the end of the decade, said Guy Jarvis, who heads the company's pipeline operations, during a Feb. 19 conference call. Enbridge, which has C$18 billion ($13 billion) of projects with secured customers through 2019, is also looking to grow in the power generation and energy services space.
“It is difficult to determine how and where producers will make decisions going forward, which is why when we look at our strategy it falls back to setting up an inventory of opportunities for Enbridge that aren't reliant on the oil sands post 2019,” Jarvis said.
Little Exposure to Crude
Enbridge has largely escaped the impact of the market rout that has hurt its customers for more than a year. The company has been helped by long-term shipping contracts, increasing volumes as current oil-sands projects are completed, and little direct exposure to crude pricing. Profit in the fourth quarter beat expectations as the company ran its main oil conduits at full capacity.
Net income was C$378 million, or 44 cents a share, compared with C$88 million, or 10 cents, a year earlier, the Calgary-based company said Feb. 18 in a statement. Excluding one-time items, per-share profit exceeded by 5 cents the 53-cent average of 13 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
‘Stronger Performance.’
“Our fourth quarter actually came in a bit stronger than we anticipated late last year due to stronger performance from the Canadian liquids business in December and lower overall operating and administrative costs,” Chief Executive Officer Al Monaco said Feb. 19.
Enbridge's shares fell 2 percent to C$43.19 at 1:17 p.m. in Toronto as crude slipped below $30 a barrel and stocks worldwide trimmed weekly gains.
The pipeline operator's customers including Canadian crude producers Suncor Energy Inc., Imperial Oil Ltd. and Cenovus Energy Inc. have suffered from losses or declining profit in the fourth quarter as lower oil prices have thwarted some expansion plans and resulted in spending and job cuts. Cenovus had its debt rating cut to junk by Moody's Investors Service Feb. 18, along with Encana Corp. Enbridge said it will require additional security from shippers whose debt falls below non-investment grade status.
Enbridge is focusing on expanding “low-cost, incremental” projects like twinning existing pipelines to provide producers with new transportation capacity as they struggle with low crude prices, Monaco told investors in October 2015.
Environmental Impacts of Line 3
The company's C$7.5 billion Line 3 replacement is the largest project. The completion of that project and the Sandpiper pipeline project in Minnesota may be delayed until early 2019 after the state required the company to complete an environmental impact statement.
The Northern Gateway pipeline, a 525,000 barrel per day proposed conduit from Alberta to the north coast of British Columbia designed to carry growing volumes of bitumen to Asian markets, will likely require an extension for its permit from Canadian authorities, Monaco said during the conference call. A construction start before the permit expires this year is “really quite remote,” he added.
“We're not looking at our watch here on the project,” Monaco said. “This will take more time to develop. If you look at the environment we're in, vis-a-vis the production profile, there's not as much panic.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Calg
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Defense Duty Owed for Gas Leak Caused by Faulty Pipe
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
An insurer had a duty to defend a contractor against claims that the faulty installation of pipe caused a release of hydrogen sulfide gas at an Arizona shopping mall, a federal courthas ruled (Nat'l Fire Ins. Co. v. James River Ins., 2016 BL 44702, D. Ariz., No. 14-CV-765, 2/16/16).
An absolute pollution exclusion in the insurance policy bars coverage for traditional environmental claims but not for property damage caused by nontraditional pollution stemming from the faulty installation of plumbing, the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona said.
Alta Mesa & McKellips LLC hired Sigma Contracting Inc. to build a shopping center. Sigma hired a subcontractor, who installed the allegedly faulty pipes. Sigma sought coverage from James River Insurance Co. when Alta sued Sigma. James River denied coverage. The court found the insurer breached its duty to defend.
Judge James A. Teilborg issued the opinion.
Gordon & Rees LLP in Phoenix represented Sigma.
Dixon Law Offices PLC in Phoenix represented James River.
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Industry Groups Drop Tailoring Rule Climate Lawsuit
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The American Petroleum Institute and other industry groups have voluntarily dropped a lawsuit challenging an update to the Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse gas permitting requirements after the U.S. Supreme Court limited the scope of the permitting program (Am. Petroleum Inst. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 12-1376, 2/18/16). The lawsuit challenged the EPA's third step of its tailoring rule, which had set greenhouse gas permitting requirements for large stationary sources of air emissions. The lawsuit had been held in abeyance since 2013. The EPA's tailoring rule was subsequently undone by the Supreme Court, which ruled that only those large industrial sources that are already subject to prevention of significant deterioration or Title V permitting requirements for emissions of conventional pollutants are also required to permit their greenhouse gas emissions (Util. Air Regulatory Grp. v. EPA, 2014 BL 172973, 78 ERC 1585, 134 S. Ct. 2427 (2014)). The dismissal is available at http://src.bna.com/cKq.
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Critics Emphasize 'Beyond The Fence' Claim In Opening Bid To Vacate ESPS
Feb 21, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Lee Logan
Critics of EPA's landmark greenhouse gas standards for existing power plants, who filed their opening appellate briefs late Feb. 19, are emphasizing their claim that the rule is unlawful and must be vacated because it marks a “breathtaking expansion of the agency's authority” by requiring generation shifting “beyond the fence line” of regulated plants to non-regulated units.
The claim – focused on the notion that EPA under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act cannot set standards premised on actions taken beyond a plant's “fence line” – is the first and most expansive argument in the nearly 200-page opening merits brief of “core legal issues” filed by the coalition of 25 states led by West Virginia and a wide variety of utility, coal and business associations.
The state and industry critics also outline three other “core” issues, including that the agency lacks threshold legal authority for the rule, it intrudes on states' authority to set standards and unconstitutionally “commandeers” states into implementing the regulation.
In a separate brief filed the same day, opponents also make a suite of “record-based” claims – such as the final existing source performance standards (ESPS) rule is not a “logical outgrowth” of the proposed version, EPA's GHG targets are infeasible and the agency imposes “particular” harm on certain states.
But the prominence of the “fence line” argument in the just-filed briefs highlights that the forthcoming legal battle over the ESPS will turn on whether critics can convince the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit – and ultimately, the Supreme Court – that EPA takes too broad a view of its authority by essentially forcing coal plants to curtail operations and subsidize their competitors.
The argument hinges on the critics' claim that EPA cannot set state emissions targets using a formula that assumes actions taken throughout the power sector rather than at individual sources. EPA's target-setting formula is based on three “building blocks” – plant-level efficiency, substituting coal power with greater use of existing gas plants, and substituting fossil generation with zero-emitting power such as renewables.
Critics say only the first block, improvements to plants' heat rates, is lawful under the air act.
EPA said it adopted this approach in part because power sector officials stressed that there are a wide variety of activities to cut GHGs, many of which do not involve plant-level controls.
But the critics charge this is unlawful under section section 111(d), which only “authorizes EPA to establish 'procedure[s]' under which States set 'standards of performance for any existing source,' i.e., standards that are 'appl[icable] … to a particular source.'”
As a result, the rule's emissions “reduction requirements can be met only by shutting down hundreds of coal-fired plants, limiting the use of others, and requiring the construction and operation of other types of facilities preferred by EPA – a directive EPA euphemistically calls 'generation shifting,'” according to the “core” issues brief.
Opponents add that the rule could set a dangerous precedent, allowing “the agency to mandate that any existing source’s owners in any industry reduce their source’s production, shutter the existing source entirely, and even subsidize their non-regulated competitors.”
Supreme Court
The D.C. Circuit's review of the ESPS has taken on heightened importance following the high court's Feb. 9 stay of the regulation and a vacancy on the court created by the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia just days later.
Both critics and supporters of EPA say Scalia's death could bolster the fate of the ESPS, which is the Obama administration's flagship climate policy and a cornerstone of the country's international commitment to reduce GHGs under the Paris Agreement.
Scalia, one of the court's most conservative justices who was widely expected to vote to strike down the ESPS, wrote the majority ruling in Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG) v. EPA, in which the court narrowed the reach of EPA's GHG permit program and warned the agency to carefully consider its authority before imposing significant regulatory costs.
“When an agency claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate 'a significant portion of the American economy,' we typically greet its announcement with a measure of skepticism. . . . We expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast 'economic and political significance,'” the court said in the UARG opinion.
In their recent D.C. Circuit brief, opponents frequently invoke Scalia's decision in UARG, charging, “For the Clean Air Act to authorize the Rule’s wholesale transformation of the U.S. energy system, EPA must show that the Act contains a clear statement compelling the agency’s reading of section 111(d).”
Because the statute includes no such statement, they argue, the rule fails the test set by UARG, and it also impermissibly intrudes on states' authority over intrastate power generation.
But if Scalia is replaced by a more liberal justice – either by Obama or the next president – the court might not take quite as skeptical a view of EPA's authority as it did in its 2014 ruling or in its stay order.
In their brief, opponents also seek to counter an argument EPA made that the final rule's standards are legal in part because they require power plant owners to produce a good – electricity – in a cleaner manner, and that owners have the ability to secure emission cuts from throughout the power sector.
On the contrary, opponents say, section 111(d) “forbids EPA to mandate emission reductions by requiring the owners or operators of existing sources to subsidize lower-emitting generation, including generation entirely outside section 111’s reach. Section 111’s performance standards 'appl[y]' to sources themselves, not to the owners and operators of those sources.”
They add that all previous rules crafted under 111(d) were premised on targets that could be achieved by individual sources, and that “[r]equiring an owner or operator of a fossil fuel-fired source to construct, or to subsidize generation at, other facilities, as the Rule does, is not a standard 'for' that source at all.”
Opponents also charge that EPA's rule does not offer “performance standards” as the air act requires, but rather “obligations that can be met only through non-performance by regulated sources.”
“A 'standard of performance' requires better emission performance from an individual regulated source, not less (or no) performance. The Rule’s 'generation-shifting' mandate does not involve a source improving its emissions performance when it generates, but instead consists of plants reducing or ceasing work, or non- performance, as their production is 'shifted' to EPA-preferred facilities,” the brief adds.
Other Issues
The “core” issues brief also reprises a claim that was raised in earlier, unsuccessful suits over the proposed ESPS. That litigation argued that EPA is barred from regulating power plants under section 111 because it already regulates plants' mercury emissions under section 112 – and the law bars such dual regulation.
The earlier litigation, brought by the West Virginia coalition and coal mining firm Murray Energy, failed because the D.C. Circuit ruled it did not have jurisdiction to consider a proposed rule.
The legal issue at the heart of the argument is complicated because House and Senate amendments to section 111(d) were never reconciled in conference before the 1990 air act amendments were enacted. The Senate amendment would explicitly allow EPA's proposed rule by limiting section 111(d)'s "112 exclusion" to pollutants already regulated under that section.
The House amendment could be read as prohibiting the rule because it focuses on source categories, not pollutants. But EPA in the final ESPS interpreted the House amendment to only exclude the regulation of hazardous air pollutants (HAP) under section 111(d) if already regulated under section 112, but not to preclude the regulation of other pollutants.
But in their just-filed briefs, opponents argue the air act “expressly prohibits EPA’s use of that section to require States to regulate 'any air pollutant . . . emitted from a source category which is regulated under section [1]12.'”
Another fundamental issue is opponents' claim that section 111 allows states to set “standards of performance” and that EPA's regulation is merely a “guideline.” Further, states' limits can be less stringent that EPA's guideline if they make certain findings, including that the standard would shorten a facility's remaining useful life.
The air act “expressly provides States – not EPA – with the right under section 111(d) to 'establish' and 'apply' performance standards,” the brief says. “But with this Rule, EPA, not the States, effectively established standards of performance and prohibited States from establishing and applying standards to sources” even with EPA's standards would force a source's early retirement.
Further, the brief includes constitutional claims – popularized by Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who was hired by coal firm Peabody Energy – that the rule “commandeers” states into carrying out federal energy policy.
“States have no 'legitimate choice' but to take action to carry out EPA’s federal decarbonization policy,” the opponents argue, citing the high court's 2012 opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, in which the court upheld the bulk of the Affordable Care Act but struck down a requirement that states expand their Medicaid programs. “Because EPA lacks the authority to take all of the regulatory actions necessary to ensure a sufficient supply of power to accommodate the Rule’s changes, States face the threat of blackouts and consequent threats to their public safety and economies unless they help implement federal policy,” the brief argues.
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Cross-State Dissent Could Be Key in Power Plan Defense
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
A federal appellate court judge's dissent to a decision overturning the Environmental Protection Agency's cross-state emissions rule for power plants, which was ultimately reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, could aid the agency as it defends carbon dioxide limits for the power sector, legal experts said.
The defense by Judge Judith Rogers of the EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which set up a cap-and-trade emissions trading program for power plants, is a “pretty rousing dissent” in a lawsuit that may present similar legal issues as those being raised in litigation over the Clean Power Plan (RIN 2060-AR33), Ann E. Carlson, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Law School, told reporters today. The agency's power plan limits carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector in each state.
Rogers had argued for upholding the EPA's cross-state rule, which was struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2012. The rule was ultimately reinstated by the Supreme Court.
Is the Past Prologue?
“That dissent from Judge Rogers was remarkably strong and vigorous and a very good foretaste of how she may well come out on this case,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, which will file an amicus brief in support the Clean Power Plan in the upcoming litigation.
Rogers will join Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson and Sri Srinivasan on the D.C. Circuit panel that will hear challenges to the Clean Power Plan June 2 (West Virginia v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1363, 1/21/16).
In her dissent in favor of upholding the EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution rule, Rogers argued the agency was due deference in that instance to interpret the requirements of Section 110 of the Clean Air Act. Rogers also argued that the EPA is not required to adhere to past statutory interpretations if it can provide a rationale for its new reading of the Clean Air Act (EME Homer City Generation LP v. EPA, 696 F.3d 7, 75 ERC 1776, 2012 BL 213202 (D.C. Cir. 2012)).
“But an agency is not forever restricted to its previous policy choices or statutory interpretations; instead, it may change course provided it acknowledges it is doing so, presents ‘good reasons' for doing so, and its approach is ‘permissible under the statute,' ” Rogers said.
Opponents of the Clean Power Plan have argued that the EPA is reading its authority under Section 111(d) far more broadly than it has in the past.
Carlson said there are parallels between the EPA's cross-state rule and the Clean Power Plan because both are derived from Clean Air Act provisions that are open to interpretation.
“The language the EPA was interpreting [for the cross-state rule] was quite short and not so clear about what EPA could do,” she said.
D.C. Circuit Plays Bigger Role
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia Feb. 13 gives more weight to the upcoming June 2, 2016, argument at the D.C. Circuit after the court lost one of its most vocal critics of the EPA, attorneys said.
The Supreme Court has stayed implementation of the Clean Power Plan on a 5-4 vote even before the D.C. Circuit can hear argument in lawsuits challenging the rule (West Virginia v. EPA, U.S., No. 15A773, 2/9/16; 27 DEN A-1, 2/10/16).
One criteria for granting a stay is the likelihood that petitioners will win their argument on the merits. Legal experts had interpreted the Supreme Court's unprecedented move as a clear signal the Clean Power Plan is in legal jeopardy. However, with Scalia's death, the remaining justices are split 4-4 on issuing the stay. If that division holds when the Clean Power Plan is before the Supreme Court, that means the D.C. Circuit's decision will remain in effect. With a favorable panel at the appellate court, the Clean Power Plan's odds of surviving judicial scrutiny may increase (31 DEN A-3, 2/17/16).
Carlson said the case should turn on how much deference the EPA is due when interpreting the Clean Air Act, something Scalia had viewed skeptically.
“Justice Scalia was much less deferential to EPA than most judges. He was much more willing to scrutinize EPA action,” she said.
In a 2014 decision limiting the scope of the EPA's greenhouse gas permitting program, Scalia had cautioned the agency that “[w]hen an agency claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate ‘a significant portion of the American economy' … we typically greet its announcement with a measure of skepticism” (Util. Air Regulatory Grp. v. EPA, 2014 BL 172973, 78 ERC 1585, 134 S. Ct. 2427 (2014)).
Kennedy, Roberts ‘Less Dogmatic.'
Denise Grab, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, which is supporting the EPA in the Clean Power Plan, said Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, both of whom voted to stay the rule, may take a “less dogmatic” view of its merits than Scalia would have. Both justices have previously voted in favor of the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases using its Clean Air Act authority.
“One or both of them could rule in favor of this climate policy once they have more time to explore the merits,” Grab said.
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EPA to Release Annual GHG Emissions Report
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The Environmental Protection Agency is readying its annual report on annual greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. through 2014, according to notice to be published in the Federal Register Feb. 22. The Draft Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2014 summarizes emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, nitrogen trifluoride and perfluorocarbons by source category and sector as part of the reporting requirements for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The draft report will be available at http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/usinventoryreport.html. The EPA's last report found that greenhouse gas emissions were down 10 percent since 2005 (73 DEN A-2, 4/16/14). The EPA will accept comments on the draft report until March 23. The EPA's Federal Register notice is available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2016-03488.pdf.
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Lawmakers Eye Unfunded Mandates, Environmental Rule Impacts
Feb 22, 2016 | E&E Daily News
By Hannah Hess
Panels on both sides of the Capitol will listen to concerns about federal rulemaking Wednesday, with senators eyeing a bill to require agencies to consult with the private sector when developing mandates and congressmen looking at controversial environmental rules.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management, will convene a hearing titled "The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act: Opportunities for Improvement to Support State and Local Governments."
Critics of the original Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, signed into law by President Clinton, have been trying to update the law for five years. They say the 1995 legislation, meant to protect state and local governments from prohibitively expensive rules, created a system with no teeth.
A bill co-sponsored by Lankford would extend the law's reach to independent agencies and require agencies to consult the private sector when developing mandates, among other things.
The House passed companion legislation last year, over the objection of Democrats who said it would add an unnecessary layer of burdensome review and President Obama threatening to veto the measure (E&E Daily, Feb. 5, 2015). Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), sponsor of the bill, will testify at the Senate hearing.
Lankford also invited the leaders of the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Association of Counties, as well as a former director of the U.S. Government Accountability Office's work on performance budgeting.
On the House side, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee's Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law Subcommittee are likely to target energy and environmental regulations, including U.S. EPA's new air toxics standards.
The panel will hear from the president of Whitacre Greer Co., a small, boutique-type manufacturer of fired-clay paving brick. The brick industry has rebuked EPA's regulations (E&E Daily, Feb. 4). A measure from Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) would delay enforcement.
Murray Energy Corp. Vice President Ryan Murray, economists and Public Citizen's president have also been invited to testify at the hearing titled "Triple Threat to Workers and Households: Impacts of Federal Regulations on Jobs, Wages and Startups."
Schedule: The Senate hearing is Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 10:30 a.m. in 342 Dirksen.
Witnesses: Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.); Utah state Sen. Curtis Bramble (R), president, National Conference of State Legislatures; Leon County, Fla., Commissioner Bryan Desloge, first vice president, National Association of Counties; George Mason University Center for Public Service Director Paul Posner, former director of intergovernmental affairs, U.S. Government Accountability Office; and professor Richard Pierce Jr., George Washington University Law School.
Schedule: The House hearing is Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 3 p.m. in 2141 Rayburn.
Witnesses: Ryan Murray, vice president of operations, Murray Energy Corp.; Janet Whitacre Kaboth, president, Whitacre Greer Co.; Manhattan Institute fellow Jared Meyer; Mercatus Center's Patrick McLaughlin, senior research fellow of health policy studies; Robert Weissman, president, Public Citizen; and Josh Bivens, research and policy director, Economic Policy Institute.
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Panel To Grill Jewell On Energy, Climate At Budget Hearing
Feb 22, 2016 | E&E Daily News
By Scott Streater
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is expected to face sharp questioning at a Senate budget hearing this week as she defends President Obama's last budget request for the Interior Department.
The $13.4 billion fiscal 2017 budget request for Interior includes a number of land conservation, climate change resilience and renewable energy initiatives that are sure to raise the ire of Republicans during tomorrow's Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing examining the agency's proposed budget.
The committee is expected to focus on oil and gas and minerals development on federal lands across the West, sources said. And Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is expected to push Jewell to reverse Interior's long-standing refusal to approve a road through Alaska's Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.
Among the hot-button climate and energy issues in Interior's budget request is a controversial proposal to divert roughly $3.3 billion in offshore oil and gas revenues owed to four Gulf Coast states over the next decade in order to fund coastal resilience to climate change, with other savings sent to the U.S. Treasury.
Roughly half of the diverted funds would support a new Coastal Climate Resilience program to help "at-risk coastal states, local governments and their communities to prepare for and adapt to climate change" (Greenwire, Feb. 9).
Murkowski, in public remarks earlier this month, was complimentary of the coastal resilience fund, noting something similar was included in a bill she sponsored -- the "Offshore Production and Energizing National Security (OPENS) Act of 2015" -- that would end the decades-old ban on oil exports and which cleared her committee last fall (Greenwire, Sept. 1, 2015).
But she was very critical of the proposal to divert oil and gas revenues away from the states. The OPENS Act calls for increasing coastal states' share of federal revenue raised by drilling off their coasts.
"I championed paying for a resiliency fund by increasing domestic energy production, which would create jobs and lower prices, but I must oppose the President's effort to pay for it by depriving other states of money they currently rely upon for their budgets," Murkowski said this month in a statement.
Also sure to be hotly debated is a proposal to raise the Bureau of Land Management's discretionary and permanent oil and gas program funding by 17 percent -- and partially offset the costs of doing so by charging onshore oil and gas drillers $48 million in new inspection fees.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and other ENR Committee members are likely to seize on this proposal and others aimed at the fossil fuels industry.
Barrasso has already said in remarks on the Senate floor that the president's overall budget request continues what he called the Obama administration's "assault on energy production in this country." Other issues
In addition to domestic energy production, public lands conservation issues are likely to be a focus of discussion at the hearing.
Among them is a proposal to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund at $900 million.
While the LWCF -- which allows the purchase of new federal lands, the permanent protection of private lands and state-tailored recreation projects -- enjoys broad bipartisan support, some conservatives argue that the money would be better used to maintain current federal lands.
Kris Sarri, Interior's principal deputy assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, and Robert Bonnie, the Department of Agriculture's undersecretary for natural resources and environment, defended the proposal to fully fund the LWCF in a blog post on Interior's website.
"President Obama is committed to passing on America's public lands and waters to future generations in better shape than we found them," they wrote. "That's why he is proposing full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund in the fiscal year 2017 budget, and pursuing permanent authorization in annual mandatory funding for the fund's programs beginning in 2018."
But critics say the Obama administration has placed too much emphasis on conservation.
Murkowski, in particular, has been angered by Interior's continued rejection of a road through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge that the citizens of King Cove, Alaska, say is badly needed to provide them reliable access to medical care.
She last year unsuccessfully pushed to include a rider in the massive federal omnibus spending package that would have bypassed Interior and authorized the road.
She is likely going to raise the issue again with Jewell in what could be one of Jewell's last budget hearings before Obama leaves office.
The Obama administration's management of public lands in general is a sore subject with GOP leaders and is sure to come up frequently during tomorrow's budget hearing.
Murkowski in a statement was very critical of the president's recent decision to use his executive authority to designate three new national monuments in Southern California's Mojave Desert, calling it "the latest in this administration's quest to lock up as much federal land as possible."
Obama has used his authority under the Antiquities Act 22 times since 2009 to bypass Congress and designate new national monuments.
Schedule: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing is Tuesday, Feb. 23, at 10 a.m. in 366 Dirksen.
Witness: Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
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White House Sees Busy Year For Global Climate Pact
Feb 19, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Andrew Restuccia
President Barack Obama's environmental team plans to spend its last 11 months trying to keep alive the political momentum that helped clinch December's landmark international climate change deal.
With world leaders turning their focus to other crises like terrorism and the influx of refugees fanning across Europe, the Obama administration is laying plans to make sure the threat of climate change stays near the top of the global agenda.
"There is a temptation to move on to other things. Obviously the world has many problems," a senior administration official told POLITICO. "Paris is a framework. It does not run itself. It does not implement itself. Having approved the text of that agreement in Paris is really just the end of the beginning of this story of climate action.”
The official said 2016 offers a "major opportunity" to take new steps in the U.S. and abroad to curb emissions and cement the Paris agreement.
“It’s going to be a busy year," the official said, explaining that the administration wants to accelerate the global shift to clean energy. "We want to leave office feeling that that pace is as fast as it reasonably can be.”
Climate change will remain a major focus of the administration's multilateral and bilateral diplomacy, and the U.S. will be "working very hard" to deepen cooperation with China, India and Brazil, the official said. Global warming will also be a major topic of discussion when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits the White House next month.
Meanwhile, State Department climate envoy Todd Stern is holding post-Paris implementation strategy sessions with several international players, including one this week in Brussels with Miguel Arias Cañete, the European Union's climate action and energy commissioner. Stern is planning more meetings with foreign diplomats in the coming weeks and months.
The administration is already looking ahead to September's G20 summit in China. The U.S. plans to press other countries to reduce emissions from heavy-duty vehicles, according to the administration official, who added that the G20's long-standing push to phase out fossil fuel subsidies will "absolutely" be a major topic of discussion at the meeting.
"We think that this is a great moment for the G20 countries to commit to taking a big step forward on heavy-duty vehicle efficiency," the official said.
Countries will get their first opportunity to show their commitment to the Paris deal on April 22 — Earth Day — when United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will host world leaders in New York City to formally sign the agreement.
Administration officials have told their foreign counterparts that the U.S. will indeed sign the deal on April 22 and there is rampant speculation that President Barack Obama will attend the meeting. But the White House has so far refused to confirm that. A recent UN legal brief noted that ministers of foreign affairs are empowered to sign the agreement, so it's possible that Secretary of State John Kerry could be dispatched to New York for the meeting instead of Obama.
After signing the Paris deal, heads of state must take additional steps to formally ratify it, but President Obama can seal the agreement without Congress. The pact will enter into force 30 days after 55 countries accounting for at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions have ratified or approved the agreement.
The U.S. plans to formally join the Paris agreement this year, and it is encouraging other countries to follow suit. This week, Fiji became the first country in the world to ratify the deal.
"We need to keep the momentum up and we need to get this agreement into force," the administration official said. "We need to make sure there’s no uncertainty that this is going ahead.”
But the official was mum on what kind of additional domestic climate actions are in the queue, including whether the EPA will pursue regulations cracking down on methane emissions from existing oil and gas sources — a move that Obama's green allies are clamoring for.
"Methane is definitely a gas that we have been targeting and will continue to," the official said.
Despite growing concern about the Supreme Court decision to halt Obama's climate rule for power plants pending legal challenges, the official said the administration remains confident that the regulation won't be struck down. And the official stressed that the U.S. is still on track to meet its target of cutting emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, a message it has relayed to jittery foreign diplomats in recent weeks.
"It’s by no means easy and it ought not be easy," the official said, referring to the 2025 target. "But it is within reach.”
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Lawmakers Heading to Flint for Federal Response Update
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Six House Democrats, including Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), will travel to Flint, Mich., Feb. 22 for an update on the federal response to the ongoing drinking water crisis and a roundtable discussion with small business owners about how the lead-contaminated water has impacted their businesses. Democratic Reps. Dan Kildee (Mich.), Elijah Cummings (Md.), Scott Peters (Calif.), Brenda Lawrence (Mich.), Debbie Dingell (Mich.) and Hoyer will make up the congressional delegation, according to Kildee's office. This marks the second congressional visit to the Michigan community in the past month. Two additional House hearings on the drinking water crisis are expected from the House Energy and Commerce and House Oversight and Government Reform committees, though firm dates for them have yet to be announced (30 DEN A-8, 2/16/16).
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EPA Releases Online Tool to Map Drinking Water Sources
Feb 22, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
A new online mapping tool Environmental Protection Agency released Feb. 19 will enable anyone to identify sources of drinking water, determine if they are polluted and note if there are possible pollution sources that could affect their community's water supply.
The purpose of DWMAPS—Drinking Water Mapping Application to Protect Source Waters—is to give the public, water system operators, state programs and federal agencies critical information to help them protect drinking water sources.
The tool could help the public know about the locations of chemical storage tanks, abandoned mines and corrosive sources of water, according to the Sierra Club, which lauded the tool's release.
Specifically, DWMAPS is intended to:
• identify potential sources of contamination in locations defined by users;
• find data to support source water assessments and plans to manage potential sources of contamination;
• evaluate accidental spills and releases, identifying where emergency response resources for accidental releases must be readily available; and
• promote integration of drinking water protection activities with other environmental programs at the EPA, state and local levels.
EPA said it developed the tool in consultation with its regional drinking water programs, state drinking water regulators and public water systems.
Potential Sources of Contamination
Sources of drinking water have been contaminated by accidental spills in the past couple of years. In January 2014, the chemical storage tank spill in West Virginia's Elk River tainted water supplies for residents in Charleston and nearby counties (33 DEN A-22, 2/19/16).
The Aug. 5, 2015, accidental spill of the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colo., released a surge of water laden with heavy metals and sediment into the Animas River, which flows into the San Juan River in New Mexico and then merges with the Colorado River in Utah (31 DEN A-5, 2/17/16). The contaminated plume flowed by public and private water systems in the three states and lands owned by three Indian tribes.
And most recently, the corrosive Flint River in Michigan ate up the insides of the lead service lines, contaminating the drinking water of the city's residents and prompting President Barack Obama to declare a public health emergency at the start of the year (30 DEN A-8, 2/16/16).
Empowering the Public
The EPA said the mapping tool can help keep states, utilities and the public informed about a variety of threats and risks to their water supply. “Knowing those risks, states and utilities can plan appropriately, taking both preventative and emergency actions,” the agency said.
According to the EPA, the tool provides a layered view of what is in an area and the means to work with others to prevent threats to drinking water supply from becoming emergencies, or appropriately responding to emergencies when needed. Also, the tool includes information on facilities that are required to report data directly to EPA at a national level.
“States, utilities and emergency managers can use DWMAPS in combination with data from state and local tools (including above ground storage tanks, which are regulated on the state level) to develop a more complete picture of risk to their sources of drinking water,” the agency said.
In a Feb. 19 e-mail to Bloomberg BNA, the Sierra Club said the maps the EPA released to show citizens where their water comes from could prove to be a very useful tool.
“As we saw in Flint, it was the residents of the city who first recognized the serious problem with their water and brought it to the attention of local, state and federal officials,” Dalal Aboulhosn, Sierra Club's senior Washington representative, told Bloomberg BNA. “Citizens were also the first to notice the pollution in the West Virginia Elk River chemical spill and alert officials. And the Colorado Animas River mine pollution we saw last year was immediately noticed by surrounding communities.”
Time and again, Aboulhosn said, “We see that the communities that swim, fish and use these waters for drinking sources are not only stewards of these rivers, but also the first line of defense in protecting them. The new EPA tool will allow greater access to information to the public about their drinking water sources, possible pollution and how to protect their local waterways.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council was more temperate in its praise of the tool. “The map provides information about contamination, but it doesn't by itself require anything to be done to mitigate that pollution – or even the potential sources of contamination,” said NRDC attorney Mae Wu in a Feb. 19 e-mail to Bloomberg BNA. “While it's important to have the data, it's critical that we adopt strong regulations to ensure the EPA can take proactive steps to ensure drinking water is safe nationwide.”
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