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PM ACC 3/4/2016
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US EPA Issues 1-Bromopropane Draft Risk Assessment
Mar 4, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US EPA has released for consultation a draft risk assessment for 1-bromopropane (1-BP) used in spray adhesive, dry cleaning and degreasing applications. -
Flint Is in the News, but Lead Poisoning is Even Worse in Cleveland
Mar 4, 2016 | New York Times
By Michael Wines
One hundred fifty miles northwest of here, the residents of Flint, Mich., are still reeling from the drinking water debacle that more than doubled the share of children with elevated levels of lead in their blood... -
Group Says Popular Children’s Car Seat Contains Toxic Chemical
Mar 4, 2016 | Healthline
By David Mils
Officials at the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) have asked Orbit Baby Inc. to do a nationwide recall of its toddler car seat and its infant car seat because they contain toxic flame retardant, chlorinated Tris. -
Okla. AG: 'We Must Have Another Justice Scalia' to Fight EPA
Mar 4, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Emily Holden
One of the most vocal attorneys general opposing the Clean Power Plan told conservatives yesterday that the 27 states suing to stop the federal climate change rule are not confident they will succeed. -
Divide Grows in Southeast over Offshore Drilling Plan
Mar 4, 2016 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
On a recent frigid night, anxious residents, many in “Protect Our Coast” sweatshirts, packed the town hall here, spilled onto the lawn, and then erupted in cheers as their town government gaveled in a resolution... -
Industry, Advocates Raise Competing Criticisms of EPA Facility Risk Rule
Mar 4, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Dave Reynolds
Chemical industry officials and advocacy groups are raising competing criticisms of EPA's proposed revisions to its risk management plan (RMP) facility safety rule, with industry questioning the agency's plan... -
Senate Clears Updated Safety Bill
Mar 4, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Hannah Hess
The Senate last night by unanimous consent cleared a bipartisan bill that would update pipeline safety oversight and require federal regulators to prioritize the completion of existing rules. -
(ACC Mentioned) Thatch-Covered Enterprise Centre May be the World's Greenest Building
Mar 4, 2016 | Tree Hugger
By Lloyd Alter
Not long ago the American plastics industry and the American Chemistry Council were at war with the US Green Building Council over the fact that they would even consider that plastics were not green. -
EPA Urges District Court to Cede CWA Jurisdiction Rule Suits to 6th Circuit
Mar 4, 2016 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
EPA is urging a North Dakota federal district court to dismiss a pending challenge to its Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit announced it will review the policy... -
EPA CWA Permit Update Rule Clears White House Review
Mar 4, 2016 | InsideEPA
EPA's long-delayed proposed rule to update and streamline application forms and other documentation for Clean Water Act (CWA) discharge permits has completed White House pre-publication review, clearing the way... -
Judges Toss 'Too Late' Lead Emissions Challenge from Greens
Mar 4, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Robin Bravender
Environmentalists' complaint that U.S. EPA's regulatory scheme allows for harmfully high lead emissions in Puerto Rico came about 35 years too late, a panel of federal judges found today.
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US EPA Issues 1-Bromopropane Draft Risk Assessment
Mar 4, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US EPA has released for consultation a draft risk assessment for 1-bromopropane (1-BP) used in spray adhesive, dry cleaning and degreasing applications.
The draft assessment says that 1-BP shows evidence of acute risks to consumers and workers. It also poses non-cancer and cancer risks to workers subject to repeated and chronic exposures.
Concerns include:
adverse developmental effects to consumers, identified in all of the assessment's acute exposure scenarios;
non-cancer risks to workers and occupational non-users, seen in all but three acute exposure scenarios;
non-cancer risks to workers for chronic occupational exposure to 1-BP, with generally higher risks indicated in spray adhesive applications; and
increased risk of cancer to workers as a result of chronic exposure.
The review of the substance comes under the EPA’s Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Work Plan assessment.
According to the EPA, “if potential risks are indicated in the final TSCA risk assessment following peer review and public comment, the agency will take necessary risk reduction actions.”
An EPA fact sheet on 1-BP says that the regulatory options it could consider include: “transitioning to safer chemicals and greener processes/technologies, promoting best practices and protective controls, or banning uses".
The EPA can also initiate a rulemaking under Section 6(a) of TSCA to protect consumers and workers from exposure to 1-BP.
The agency was not able to comment on specific regulatory action that may be taken on the substance.
Meanwhile, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (Niosh) has initiated a consultation on criteria for worker exposure to 1-BP. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has also released a draft toxicological profile of the substance.
The agencies will coordinate efforts to address concerns from exposure to 1-BP, according to an EPA release.
1-BP is used as an aerosol solvent in a variety of applications. It also has specific adhesive uses, and can serve as a chemical intermediate in pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fragrances and other applications.
The agency has advised that the public “carefully follow product label directions and take precautions that can reduce exposures” to the substance.
The EPA added 1-BP to the Toxic Releases Inventory (TRI) list of reportable chemicals on 23 November 2015. The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has classified it as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen”.
In Europe 1-BP is a substance of very high concern (SVHC) under REACH. It has also been proposed for listing as a carcinogen under California’s Proposition 65.
A spokesperson for the EPA says that the agency plans to complete peer review of the draft assessment this spring. It will “then move as expeditiously as possible to issue a final risk assessment”.
There will be a 60-day comment period on the draft risk assessment.
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Flint Is in the News, but Lead Poisoning is Even Worse in Cleveland
Mar 4, 2016 | New York Times
By Michael Wines
One hundred fifty miles northwest of here, the residents of Flint, Mich., are still reeling from the drinking water debacle that more than doubled the share of children with elevated levels of lead in their blood — to a peak, in mid-2014, of 7 percent of all children tested.
Clevelanders can only sympathize. The comparable number here is 14.2 percent.
The poisoning of Flint’s children outraged the nation. But too much lead in children’s blood has long been an everyday fact in Cleveland and scores of other cities — not because of bungled decisions about drinking water, but largely because a decades-long attack on lead in household paint has faltered. It is a tragic reminder that one of the great public health crusades of the 20th century remains unfinished.
“Unless there is some sort of concerted national effort to do something about this problem, it’s going to persist for years to come,” said Philip J. Landrigan, a leading expert on lead and professor of preventive medicineand pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
“Lead is a big problem in this country, and it frustrates me to no end that except in rare cases, it passes unnoticed.”
Four decades ago, political leaders declared war on lead, citing evidence that even vanishingly small amounts of it have a pernicious impact on young brains, stunting intellectual growth and affecting cardiovascular, immune and hormone systems. The federal government began phasing out leaded gasoline in 1975, and banned lead-based household paints in 1978. In 2000, a cabinet-level task force proposed to end lead poisoning in children within a decade.
By 2006, blood lead levels in children under 6 had fallen to close to a tenth of their 1970s levels.
But progress since has slowed. By the most recent estimate, about 37 million homes and apartments still have some lead paint on walls and woodwork, 23 million with potentially hazardous levels of lead in soil, paint chips or household dust.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that four million of those most dangerous households have children. A half-million children — in Atlantic City, Philadelphia and Allentown, Pa., where a remarkable 23.1 percent of children tested had excessive lead — are believed to have enough lead in their blood to merit a doctor’s attention.
That need not happen. New York City has a vast and aged housing stock and one of the nation’s strictest laws on lead testing and removing lead hazards. In 2014, only 2.1 percent of children tested were flagged for excessive lead.
But in most cities, the lead threat is confined largely to poor neighborhoods with scant political clout. There is little official urgency — and increasingly, little money — to address it.
Charm Warren-Celestine, 64, replaced the windows and porch of her century-old home in east Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood after her toddler grandson Zy’aire developed high blood lead levels after spending the summer of 2011 with her.
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“It took me three years and two applications to get the city to do what was needed to make my dwelling lead-free,” she said. “I had to apply twice because funding was exhausted. You had to be relentless to make it happen.”
Almost five years later, Zy’aire shows no physical effects from the lead, but its effect on his mental development remains unclear.
Researchers argue that failing to attack lead paint hazards is a costly mistake. A 2009 study calculated that every dollar spent on that would generate up to $221 in benefits — in increased productivity, greater tax receipts and lower health care and education costs.
And not the least, in reduced crime. Researchers have long linked high blood lead levels to impulsiveness and violence.
The C.D.C. has consistently lowered its definition of an elevated blood lead level: 60 micrograms per deciliter, then 10, and, as of 2012, five — less than a millionth of an ounce in a little more than a pint of blood.
Yet experts say that is still too much. A 2005 study concluded that increasing a child’s blood lead level to 10 micrograms from 2.4 translated to a 3.9-point drop in I.Q. A 2015 study of Chicago elementary school studentsconcluded that blood lead concentrations of five to nine micrograms explained up to 15 percent of failing grades in reading and math.
Even tiny increases, below five micrograms, “are associated with significant decrements in performance on standardized tests,” the researchers said.
The 2000 cabinet task force found that the lead danger to children then could be substantially eliminated for what, in federal terms, was a pittance: $2.1 billion, over 10 years, to eliminate lead hazards in old homes that posed the greatest threat.
Congress never allotted the full amount, and since 2003, funding for lead-abatement programs has fallen by 43 percent.
“We know how to fix it,” said David Jacobs, a chief contributor to the task force who ran the federal lead program from 1995 to 2004. “The technology is there. It’s just a matter of political will to properly appropriate the money.”
Money for screening children has also fallen. The C.D.C. has cut state grants for lead poisoning prevention by more than half since 2009, and the share of children younger than 6 who are tested has fallen by more than 40 percent. Sixteen states do not even forward the results of lead tests to the federal authorities.
The Ohio Legislature established a Lead Poisoning Prevention Fund in 2003 to attack the lead-paint problem in older homes and to pay for blood tests of children without medical insurance — but never gave it even a dollar.
On Cleveland’s east side, the Glenville neighborhood embodies the neglect of the lead problem and the hope that it might be erased.
At the turn of the 20th century, Glenville was called Cleveland’s Gold Coast, a mansion-studded enclave where John D. Rockefeller had donated land for the city’s largest park. By the 1960s, the wealthy had fled to the suburbs and Glenville was part of the inner city, poor and almost entirely black.
In 1967, Thajuan Perry was 5 years old, living in a Glenville apartment with her parents, when it became clear that something was wrong with Eric, her baby brother. Eric once crawled around the rooms; suddenly, he was neither moving nor making noises.
“He would just gaze for long periods,” Ms. Perry said. “It went from gazing to seizures, and from seizures to a coma.”
Eric was hospitalized with lead poisoning, sickened by dust and paint chips on the apartment floor. At age 50 today, he can speak only simple sentences, takes anti-seizure medication and works at a center for the disabled.
Ms. Perry is his full-time caretaker. “The thing about lead poisoning,” she said, “is that you don’t know you’ve been affected until you have symptoms. At the time, most parents didn’t realize that apartments had lead-based paint.”
In Cleveland, many still do not.
In 2010, researchers estimated that 7.7 percent of the nation’s black children younger than 6 had blood lead levels above five micrograms per deciliter. But in Glenville, 26.5 percent of children tested in 2014 — 286 children in all — exceeded that standard. Two registered more than 45 micrograms, the threshold for hospitalization to remove lead from the body.
Cleveland tested less than half its under-6 population. How many other children are at risk is unknown, but an Ohio State University analysis suggests that in some census tracts, it could be more than four in 10.
Dr. Dorr Dearborn, a retired pediatrician and chairman emeritus of Case Western Reserve University’s department of environmental health sciences, said widely elevated lead levels “give these children an abnormal base to which all the other determinants of school failure and aggressive behavior are added.”
Dr. Dearborn has long campaigned for Cleveland to erase lead-based paint from its homes — nearly nine in 10 of the city’s houses were built before the 1978 ban — but Clevelanders were oblivious.
That changed last October, after a series of articles in The Plain Dealer reported that the city’s Department of Public Health had failed to investigate more than 2,100 cases of lead poisoning during the previous five years. Until 2015, the city had but one employee to inspect homes where lead poisoning occurred.
City officials contest some of those numbers, but in an interview conceded that the city’s lead safety efforts were a mess. The main reason, they said, was a lack of money.
When the C.D.C. began cutting lead poisoning prevention grants in 2010, the officials said, the Health Department had to curtail lead tests and lay off inspectors. In 2012, federal officials withdrew Cleveland’s multimillion-dollar grant for addressing lead in homes because the city’s track record was so poor.
Some critics are less sympathetic, noting that the city has found money for other projects — including $30 million for a 2013 renovation of its National Football League stadium — while lead abatement languished.
“A lot of folks failed,” said Kim Foreman, the director of Environmental Health Watch, a local group that works to ease lead and other health threats in homes. “The layperson, they thought we dealt with lead. But you also have a lot of folks affected who are people of color or low-income people. And honestly, people are not as concerned about them.”
The city vows to do better. The Health Department is to get new leadership; officials have committed to hire more lead inspectors. A new data system will better track lead cases and integrate with other departments that inspect or repair homes. The lost federal grant was reinstated last fall.
Perhaps most important, community leaders have started to face the problem and work on ways to solve it. University Hospital’s network, the Cleveland Clinic and others are devising a program to address lead poisoning and infant mortality in neighborhoods near Case Western.
Glenville is at the head of the list.
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Group Says Popular Children’s Car Seat Contains Toxic Chemical
Mar 4, 2016 | Healthline
By David Mils
Officials at the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) have asked Orbit Baby Inc. to do a nationwide recall of its toddler car seat and its infant car seat because they contain toxic flame retardant, chlorinated Tris.
CEH officials said Tris is a chemical known to cause cancer under California’sProposition 65 consumer protection law.
CEH representatives said Orbit Baby hasadvertised its car seats as being free of toxic flame retardants, but independent tests ordered by the environmental group show “high levels of Tris” in those products.
“In twenty years of exposing companies that mislead consumers, this is one of the most outrageous instances of corporate ‘green washing’ that we have ever seen,” CEH Executive Director Michael Green said in a statement. “Orbit promised parents a safer car seat made without toxic flame retardants, yet sold them products that put children at risk of high exposures to a cancer-causing chemical. Orbit must take responsibility and recall these toxic car seats.”
Healthline has sent a request to Orbit Baby officials for comment, but so far the company has not responded.
Chemicals in Car Seats
Orbit sells higher-end car seats, including seat-stroller combinations, that cost upward of $1,500.
CEH officials said their independent tests on several of the car seats highlighted in the legal action showed high levels of Tris in the seats’ foam filling. The filling is used to help the seat absorb any shock from a collision.
A CBS News report in December stated that one retailer had notified Orbit in 2014 of the toxic chemicals in the car seats.
The news report stated the Ecology Center found 75 percent of all the car seats from a number of companies they tested contained potentially harmful flame retardants.
Federal law mandates that child car seats be made with flame retardant materials, many of which are linked to cancer and neurological disorders.
However, the CBS report stated, Orbit Baby was the only company that advertised that its seats didn’t contain such harmful materials.
CEH has reached legal agreements in the past with dozens of companies to eliminate the use of Tris and, in some cases, all flame retardant materials in their children’s products.
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Okla. AG: 'We Must Have Another Justice Scalia' to Fight EPA
Mar 4, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Emily Holden
One of the most vocal attorneys general opposing the Clean Power Plan told conservatives yesterday that the 27 states suing to stop the federal climate change rule are not confident they will succeed.
Addressing a ballroom of attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) said the uncertainty makes the 2016 presidential election critical.
"We are not terribly optimistic that at the [U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit] that we are going to win as a collection of states," Pruitt said.
He said the court is "packed" with liberal judges appointed by President Obama, meaning the panel will likely uphold the rule after hearing oral arguments this summer. The panel hearing the challenge includes an Obama appointee, a Clinton appointee and a George H.W. Bush appointee.
Pruitt's comments come as states are grappling over how -- or whether -- to move forward under the Clean Power Plan. The rule mandates that states cut carbon emissions from existing power plants 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The Supreme Court decision last month to stay the rule, followed by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, has injected new uncertainty into state plans.
With eight justices currently on the bench, Pruitt noted there's a possibility of a tied decision, which could affirm a lower court ruling backing the regulation. But he said the Supreme Court could rehear the case once a new justice replaces Scalia.
The vacancy could also be filled before the challenge even reaches the Supreme Court.
"This election in November is consequential for many reasons, but the most consequential reason, from my estimation, is the control of the U.S. Supreme Court going forward," Pruitt said, adding, "We must have another Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court" to control federal government overreach.
Koch brothers group distributes fliers
Speaking on the same panel, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) vowed that Republicans in the Senate would block any Supreme Court nomination by Obama.
"With our Republican majority, we will not allow that to flip," he said. "We want to confirm a Justice Scalia replacement who is like Justice Scalia in 2017," Johnson said.
Pruitt said the Supreme Court's decision to stay the rule, which Scalia voted for just days before he died, is unprecedented and a big relief for states.
He argued that states and industry bore the cost of shutting down coal plants under the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, only to see the rule declared flawed by the Supreme Court after years of fighting.
Despite the stay, many states continue to plan for carbon cuts in case the rule survives legal scrutiny.
The American Energy Alliance, which has been arguing for states to halt those talks, distributed fliers during energy-related sessions at CPAC with "10 Reasons to Stop Work on EPA's Carbon Rule." The group argues that the rule offers no observable benefits and violates states' rights.
AEA says officials will have plenty of time to plan if the rule is upheld. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce this week released a paper contending that EPA will have to push all of its deadlines back to match the length of the stay.
'An out-of-control federal government'
EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison said in an email yesterday that "at this stage, it is too soon to say what adjustments to timelines might need to be made once the litigation is resolved."
"Likewise, it is too soon to speculate about the mechanics of how a deadline might be adjusted," she said.
She added that compliance and enforcement of the rule are on hold, but states that want to work to cut carbon pollution will have EPA's support.
Nick Loris, an economist with the Heritage Foundation, said during another CPAC panel that even during the stay, states might feel pressure to actually implement some of the carbon cuts they have been weighing. That, he said, includes "businesses and cronyists that have probably been working with these state agencies to create some sort of agreement that is friendly toward them."
Speaking before hundreds on CPAC's main stage yesterday, Pruitt invoked two other sweeping policies that have been political targets for the right.
"What the Affordable Care Act was to health care, what Dodd-Frank was to the banking and finance system, the Clean Power Plan is to our power grid and energy," Pruitt said.
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge (R), during the same discussion, cited states' 10th Amendment rights, saying, "We have an out-of-control federal government overreaching at every step.
"Do the means justify the end?
Rutledge noted that she has sued EPA six times, but called the accusations that she doesn't want clean air and water "just nonsense."
She also claimed that the Clean Power Plan would raise electricity rates in Arkansas by 20 percent each year over 12 years, "disproportionally affecting minorities and senior citizens in their budgets."
Those figures are in line with predictions from the coal industry's American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.
Cost estimates, most of which have been calculated by either supporters or critics of the regulation, have ranged wildly. Some advocates of the Clean Power Plan say prices could even decline with investments in power savings through energy efficiency (ClimateWire, Nov. 30, 2015).
In a much smaller discussion at CPAC yesterday, speakers argued that the costs of the Clean Power Plan would not justify the benefits to curbing climate change or improving public health, both of which critics believe to be overstated by EPA.
"I don't think there's justification to implement a rule when the costs are a multibillion-dollar price tag and the direct benefits are very meager in the grand scheme of what the EPA projects to be multibillion-dollar benefits," Loris said, adding that much of the rule's professed benefits would come from reducing coal plant co-pollutants, not carbon.
EPA pegs the climate and health benefits of the rule at $55 billion to $93 billion per year in 2030, compared to costs of $7.3 billion to $8.8 billion.
'Spitting in the wind'
Daniel Garza, executive director of the LIBRE Initiative, a conservative group that works with the Hispanic community, argued that the rule would disproportionately affect Latinos, who would feel the brunt of higher electricity costs in power bills and with higher product costs.
"The benefits are questionable and hazy," Garza said. "We know what the pain is going to be, what the cost is going to be."
He cited figures from the National Black Chamber of Commerce stating that the regulation could put 12 million Latinos out of work.
Environmental advocates have refuted that study, calling it misleading and an intentional campaign of misinformation.
Garza noted in an interview after the discussion that he couldn't vouch for the numbers. He explained that he would love to see a transition to cleaner electricity, but he wants it to happen within a free market rather than because of federal regulations.
Critics of the rule also argued that the United States will bear the costs of reducing emissions while the rest of the world continues to pollute.
Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said leaders of developing countries, "no matter how seriously they take the science of climate change, are focused on economic [growth]. As long as that's the case, we in the United States are just spitting into the wind."
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Divide Grows in Southeast over Offshore Drilling Plan
Mar 4, 2016 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
On a recent frigid night, anxious residents, many in “Protect Our Coast” sweatshirts, packed the town hall here, spilled onto the lawn, and then erupted in cheers as their town government gaveled in a resolution urging President Obama to block oil drilling off their shoreline. “Some things are just too precious to risk,” Mayor Emilie Swearingen said.
That afternoon, 140 miles inland in Raleigh, the state capital, Obama administration officials and oil company representatives had outlined plans to move forward with the drilling before a very different crowd, and state lawmakers liked what they heard. “You’re talking about creating over 100,000 jobs,” said Michael Hager, the House Republican leader. “You’re doggone right this is good for the state.”
Within weeks, the Obama administration is expected to release a proposal to open up vast tracts of federal waters in the southern Atlantic to oil and gas drilling for the first time, and a divide is growing between the Southeast’s coast and its landlocked capitals. The plan, written by the Interior Department, is expected to delineate the waters that would eventually be auctioned and leased to energy companies, which in turn would bring the drilling industry to the banks of Georgia, Virginia and North and South Carolina, along with thousands of oil rigs well over the horizon from the beach.
The move has the backing of the Republican governors of Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, and the Democratic governor of Virginia, along with Republican majorities in all those state legislatures. From Raleigh to Richmond, statehouse denizens see new jobs and billions of dollars from royalty revenues to improve roads, schools and public salaries. Among the highest profile politicians in the capitals, at least one, Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Ralph S. Northam, is opposed, although his voice is lonely. Last Thursday, he sent a letter to Obama administration officials asking them to exclude Virginia’s waters from the offshore drilling plan.
“I grew up on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and have worked just about every job one might have on the Chesapeake Bay,” he wrote.
Coastal residents in towns and cities like Norfolk, Charleston and Kure Beach share his concerns — and see potential disaster, even if the rigs are no less than 50 miles offshore and well out of sight. Fearful of a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which killed 11 workers and spewed 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, at least 106 coastal towns in the Southeast have passed resolutions urging the Interior Department not to move ahead. More than 80 East Coast state legislators and the owners of about 1,000 coastal businesses have signed letters to Mr. Obama opposing the drilling.
“For an uneducated guy who needs a job, it’s a good opportunity,” allowed John Hicks, a retired tool and die worker, fishing off the pier in Kure Beach. “But I also think about what it means for my 11-year-old daughter. An accident that messes up the coast could destroy her future. And I guess I care more about her future.”
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Even if the rigs are out of sight, some opponents fear the transformation of the quiet Outer Banks into bustling oil towns.
“Our area has a billion-dollar tourist industry,” said Monica Thibodeau, a member of the Town Council in Duck, N.C. “The risk of drilling isn’t worth losing that.”
The split is more regional than partisan. Coastal Republicans fear the destruction of their tourist industries as much as seaside Democrats, while landlocked members of both parties envision new revenue for schools and highways.
Representative Mark Sanford, a former South Carolina governor and a conservative Republican from Charleston, is fiercely critical of his state’s current Republican governor, Nikki R. Haley, for her support of the drilling. “It’s a lesson to how to be tone deaf to the American public,” he said. “Hearings were held in this congressional district and communities up and down the coast, and the response was overwhelming — they came out with resolutions against the drilling. There is an amazing disconnect between what people are saying in the statehouses and in the areas that would be most impacted.”
In Raleigh, State Representative Rodney Moore, Democrat of Charlotte, saw things the way Ms. Haley does: “It’s a good thing if it can generate revenue for our state, if it can be done safely.”
The fight is playing out as a global oil glut has driven down prices to more than 10-year lows and depressed domestic exploration and extraction. But the industry sees the Atlantic drilling, which would not start for at least five years, as a long-term investment in a future in which oil prices rebound and supplies remain volatile.
“If there’s one thing for sure in the oil and gas industry, it’s change,” said Andrew Radford, a policy adviser for the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry lobby. “Having new exploration opportunities is really important for the industry to replace the resources we’re producing now.”
The Atlantic Coast States’ interest in pursuing drilling off their shores is relatively recent, as is the legal authority to do that work. While offshore drilling has been an integral part of the coastal economy of the Gulf of Mexico since the 1940s, lawmakers from both parties in the Atlantic Coast States resisted the push by oil companies to explore Atlantic waters, supporting a longstanding legal moratorium on Pacific and Atlantic coastal drilling. That calculus changed after a 2006 law, written by former Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, which for the first time required oil companies to pay a portion of offshore drilling royalties directly to nearby Gulf Coast states.
Until passage of that law, oil companies drilling in federal waters were required to pay royalties only to the United States Treasury. Since passage, Louisiana alone has taken in more than $10 billion in new royalty revenue.
Coastal lawmakers persuaded Congress to lift the offshore drilling ban in 2008, hoping the Landrieu legislation could be expanded to include their states, and they have since pressed Mr. Obama to lease the coastal waters for drilling.
Environmentalists are furious with Mr. Obama.
“This is the exact opposite of what he should be doing,” said Jacqueline Savitz, a vice president of Oceana, an environmental group that is aggressively campaigning in the coastal states to build local opposition to the drilling.
But Obama administration officials say they are listening to the elected officials in the Southeastern states. The administration has not advanced plans to drill off the northeast Atlantic or Pacific coastlines, where governors are still opposed to it.
Almost every decision we make is about balancing the economic potential and the environmental consequences,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, who directs the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
The administration also points to its efforts to improve drilling safety ahead of expanding offshore oil exploration. The Interior Department is expected in the coming weeks to complete new safety regulations on offshore drilling equipment, intended specifically to prevent the failures that led to the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
The forthcoming Interior Department proposal will not be the last word. The administration will continue to take public comment on the proposal until it finishes the drilling plan later this year. In response, the oil and gas industry and environmental groups are ramping up advocacy campaigns. Environmental groups are a constant presence at coastal town hall meetings and are planning advertising and telephone campaigns to urge more voters to speak out.
The American Petroleum Institute has become a regular fixture in Southeastern statehouses and town hall meetings and is paying to host events coordinated with local schools to highlight job opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Oil industry officials have also sought to allay fears that oil drilling would hurt tourist towns. “The development will not be in small communities; it will be in ports and industrial areas,” Mr. Radford told the Raleigh meeting.
So far, the pro-drilling faction is winning. But the fight has begun to reshape local politics. In Kure Beach, Ms. Swearingen’s predecessor as mayor, Dean Lambeth, supported drilling, had won three terms and hoped to win a fourth. Last year, Ms. Swearingen ran against him with an anti-drilling stance — and won.
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Industry, Advocates Raise Competing Criticisms of EPA Facility Risk Rule
Mar 4, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Dave Reynolds
Chemical industry officials and advocacy groups are raising competing criticisms of EPA's proposed revisions to its risk management plan (RMP) facility safety rule, with industry questioning the agency's plan to require more extensive safety analysis and environmentalists saying the rule focuses on accident response rather than prevention.
EPA on Feb. 25 released its proposed update to the Clean Air Act RMP program, which requires companies to craft a plan to submit to the agency that outlines how they will reduce risks from releases at their facilities. The proposal would create new requirements for certain industry sectors to analyze whether alternative chemicals or processes would improve safety; conduct third party audits after reportable releases; and disclose additional data to emergency planners upon request.
EPA's proposal is part of a broad federal effort to implement President Obama's Executive Order (EO) 13650 that sought to bolster the safety and security of industrial facilities through improved coordination, as well as revised policies and standards. Obama issued the order Aug. 1, 2013 after an ammonium nitrate explosion at a fertilizer facility in West, TX, killed 15 people, including first responders, and injured more than 200 others.
RMP currently requires companies to assess their facilities and craft a plan to submit to the agency that outlines how they will reduce risks from releases. The proposed revisions would mandate that certain companies at least consider IST in the process hazard assessments that inform plans; require third party audits after a reportable release to reduce risk of future accidents; and aim to improve coordination between facilities and local communities.
EPA will take comment for 60 days after the proposal's upcoming publication in the Federal Register. The agency is seeking input on whether to require companies to implement inherently safer technology (IST) or processes where feasible, such as switching to a chemical that poses less risk to the public in the event of a release.
The agency is also seeking comment on whether to address emergency shutdown equipment or the siting of facilities in a future rule, or through guidance. The input will inform the final version of the rule, which advocates want EPA to finalize before President Obama leaves office -- though it is unclear whether that will happen.
Industry sources say companies' comments on the proposed rule will focus, in large part, on EPA's plan to bolster the hazard analysis that certain facilities must conduct by requiring consideration of IST. That mandate, and EPA's request for input on whether to require facilities to implement IST where feasible, could open the door for government to second-guess facilities' processes, and would raise implementation and cost concerns, sources say.
"It's something that people are going to look hard at," one industry source says. "It certainly opens up the potential for second-guessing decisions that are made."
IST Assessments
One industry source says the proposal's requirement for IST assessments shows the agency seeking to pressure companies into voluntarily implementing the measures even though the agency is not requiring their use. The requirement to assess IST raises concerns regarding personnel needed to review already existing facilities as well as the extent to which data generated in the reviews may be disclosed, the source adds.
One challenge for companies is that they employ engineers with differing expertise for evaluating processes in new and existing facilities, the source says, noting that an IST analysis at an existing facility may be of limited utility. Also, determining whether a particular alternative is feasible can be a difficult proposition.
Similarly, EPA's requirement for companies to conduct a third-party audit after reportable releases, raises questions about the availability of qualified auditors and the scope of the required audit.
The source also notes that the expanded requirements for disclosing facility data to local emergency planning committees potentially raises security concerns.
A second industry source, who represents the chemical sector, says EPA's seeking comment on whether to require that facilities use feasible alternatives, is "probably the scariest part of the whole proposal" even though the agency is not actually proposing to require use of IST.
The source also says language in the proposal requiring that companies be prepared to fight a fire if local emergency responders are unwilling creates both an avenue for local fire departments to opt out of responding to a facility accident and potentially increases costs for facilities to prepare to fight their own fires.
The proposal also raises questions about the overlapping authority of EPA's RMP program and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) process safety management rule, the source says. While both agencies require facilities to assess facilities' hazards, EPA's proposal that the analysis consider IST substantially increases the cost. This is problematic, the source says, noting that the consequences from the overwhelming majority of facility releases occur on-site, and thus are OSHA's jurisdiction, rather than causing off-site consequences, which are EPA's jurisdiction.
'Important Step'
Meanwhile, environmental and labor groups that petitioned EPA in 2012 to use its authority under section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act to require IST where feasible call the proposal "an important step," but say it falls short of needed requirements for facilities to use IST and for increasing public disclosure of facility data.
"[I]t will be a tragic missed opportunity if in the final rule the EPA allows these facilities to conceal the results of their assessments from the residents, schools, and hospitals near these facilities," the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters says in a statement. The final rule should require all RMP facilities to implement IST where feasible, they say.
Advocates are vowing to continue pressing for EPA to require IST, which they say is the only way to adequately meet Obama's commitment under the EO to reduce the risks of the nation's industrial facilities. The advocates' statement also faults the rule for requiring only 13 percent of RMP facilities to conduct the new IST analysis.
The coalition also faults EPA's proposal for failing to expand public disclosure of facility information, not establishing a publicly-accessible database of available safer alternatives to encourage their adoption, and for failing to propose buffer zones between existing facilities and schools, hospitals or other places where people gather.
"EPA has missed an opportunity to move the ball forward and focus on prevention of accidents as opposed to responding to accidents after they occur," a coalition source says.
Groups involved in the coalition "intend to press for substantial improvements in the rule, and we are certainly going to make the case for why a more prevention focused rule is good public policy and smart for business."
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Senate Clears Updated Safety Bill
Mar 4, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Hannah Hess
The Senate last night by unanimous consent cleared a bipartisan bill that would update pipeline safety oversight and require federal regulators to prioritize the completion of existing rules.
Sponsored by Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), the measure would reauthorize the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) through fiscal 2019 and direct the agency to prioritize implementation of 42 mandates required in its last authorization before initiating new rules.
In the shadow of the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, passage of S. 2276 shifts the urgent debate over developing federal regulations for natural gas storage facilities, another key provision in the bill, to the House.
Earlier this week, an Energy and Commerce subcommittee unveiled draft legislation that mirrors many of the provisions incorporated into the Senate bill.
However, the bill does not incorporate language from Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) related to oil spill response plans that caused some hand-wringing in the oil industry.
After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Markey grilled top energy industry executives on their emergency plans for the Gulf of Mexico. With that in mind, Markey penned an amendment when the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee marked up the bill that would require PHMSA to provide the panel's chairman and ranking member with unredacted copies of oil spill response plans (Greenwire, Dec. 9, 2015).
Under current practice, the PHMSA administrator may provide relevant congressional committee chairmen the opportunity to review an unredacted copy of a spill response plan. A provision in the bill would expand the courtesy to the ranking member of the committee.
Some Republicans wanted a fix incorporated into the legislation that would protect those plans from being leaked off Capitol Hill.
When holds emerged on the legislation earlier this week, Fischer told E&E Daily she still hoped to pass the bill, noting that her staff was "still working through stuff."
Last night, the Senate adopted Fischer's substitute amendment. New language on "protection of information" affords protection to any information that looks like national security or confidential business information.
"Every day, across America, resources vital to our nation's energy and economic security move through more than 2.5 million miles of pipeline. For families, consumers, workers and businesses across our nation, the safety and security of our extensive pipeline network must remain a top priority," Fischer said yesterday. "The bill we passed today will enhance the safety of these pipelines through stronger congressional oversight and necessary improvements to PHMSA."
California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer also praised passage of the bill. It would create a federal task force to study the cause of the Aliso Canyon gas leak in Los Angeles and respond to the incident.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), an original co-sponsor, said he looked forward to seeing the bill signed into law so safety standards could advance.
"An oil spill in the Great Lakes would be catastrophic -- not only for Michigan's economy and environment, but for the 40 million people that rely on the lakes as their source for clean drinking water," Peters said.
The American Gas Association has commended the Senate legislation, while expressing concerns about the House draft. AGA and other industry groups have come out strongly against Section 15 of the House draft bill, which would allow individuals or groups to sue PHMSA for "failure to perform any nondiscretionary duty" (E&E Daily, March 2).
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(ACC Mentioned) Thatch-Covered Enterprise Centre May be the World's Greenest Building
Mar 4, 2016 | Tree Hugger
By Lloyd Alter
Not long ago the American plastics industry and the American Chemistry Council were at war with the US Green Building Council over the fact that they would even consider that plastics were not green. But they are fighting a losing battle, as those few architecture firms that actually care about sustainability try and build with more natural, bio-based materials. They would absolutely go into shock if they saw this harbinger of the future, the Enterprise Centre at the University of East Anglia, which Ben Adam-Smith says " might just be the most sustainable large building ever constructed in Britain."
almost went into shock myself when I saw it on Passive House +; we don't see a lot of thatch in North America and I have never seen it used on walls. Not only that, it's prefab thatch; Ben Adam-Smith writes:
[Contractor] Morgan Sindall proposed the idea of off-site manufactured thatch panels that could be delivered to site and lifted into place. Working together with master thatcher Stephen Letch, they created a sample on site and mocked up how the panels would be fixed. Then, three hundred panels were fabricated at a local joinery shop and sent to Stephen's barn to be thatched. Morgan Sindall's James Knox says: "Normally over the winter period he doesn't really have much work on. We gave him and four other thatchers a couple of months' work while it was wet, windy and snowing outside. He was working in the warm, pre-thatching our panels off-site."
The building is designed by TreeHugger favourite Architype to some very tough targets: "70% bio-based materials, a threshold for embodied carbon, passive house certification, a Breeam Outstanding rating, and local sourcing and supply of materials." Passive houses can be very foamy because they need a lot of insulation, so there are some perhaps conflicting goals here.
Gareth Selby, an associate at Architype and passive house designer on the project, says: "Life cycle carbon was one way to sum up the operational carbon and the embodied carbon. Everything was assessed with that attitude rather than just looking at how good is it for passive house. It was bringing the two together."
The Passive House standard sets really tight limits on air changes, and I would have thought that they would have trouble achieving this with these natural materials, but evidently not; the air tightness layer is nothing more than OSB (Oriented Strand Board) with special tapes on the joints. They hit 0.21 air changes per hour, which is pretty spectacular.
But what really is so remarkable is the materials palette. A few years ago I got into a big bunfight when I suggested that there should be a version of Michael Pollan's Food Rules for buildings, which included not building with anything your great-grandma wouldn't recognize as a building material, that you can't picture in their raw state or growing in nature, or that you couldn't pronounce. I wrote:
I think we have to learn from what has happened in the food movement. That's the way people are going; they want natural, they want local, they want healthy and they reject manufactured chemical products. Twenty years ago every food manufacturer talked about the benefits of technology: Transfats make food cheaper and better, High fructose corn syrup has all kinds of advantages. Now even the biggest companies run from these, the vinyls of the food industry.
We are never going to get rid of all these chemicals and plastics from green buildings, anymore than we are going to get rid of all additives from food. Some have very useful functions and some, like vitamins in our diet or plastic sheathing on electric wiring, are even good for us. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to minimize their use and where there are healthy alternatives, chose them instead. I suspect that pretty soon, that is what your clients will be demanding.
The Enterprise Centre looks almost edible. I am still shocked. Forget being the greenest building in the UK; it might well be the greenest building anywhere.
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EPA Urges District Court to Cede CWA Jurisdiction Rule Suits to 6th Circuit
Mar 4, 2016 | InsideEPA
By David LaRoss
EPA is urging a North Dakota federal district court to dismiss a pending challenge to its Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit announced it will review the policy, signaling arguments it is likely to make in trying to end other district court cases to avoid the “chaos” of multiple lawsuits.
In a March 3 brief filed on the agency's behalf with the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota, the Department of Justice (DOJ) says the 6th Circuit decision claiming jurisdiction over the CWA rule challenges means district judges no longer have authority to hear parallel suits even if they disagree with the appellate court.
DOJ warns that a ruling to the contrary would undermine the water law's mandate for many regulatory challenges to be heard solely in circuit courts.
“Indeed, if parties unhappy with a circuit court . . . or wanting to hedge their bets against an adverse decision could simply file duplicative district court challenges, chaos would inevitably ensue. Congress clearly intended to avoid such inefficient, duplicative litigation and forum shopping,” DOJ says in the brief in the case State of North Dakota, et al., v. EPA, et al., which is a challenge to the rule filed by North Dakota and 12 other states.
DOJ argues that Congress' “clear intent” in writing the CWA was to prevent challenges to the same rules from running in both district and appellate courts simultaneously; that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) also forbids such parallel suits; and that judges should block multiple suits as a waste of judicial and executive resources.
“The Sixth Circuit is the only court able to resolve all challenges to the Clean Water Rule in one proceeding. Thus, even if this Court concludes that the Sixth Circuit’s jurisdictional decision is not binding per se, it should defer to the Sixth Circuit,” the brief says.
The pending suit in North Dakota is the farthest advanced of at least 14 filed district court suits. Chief District Judge Ralph Erickson has allowed the case to proceed and issued a stay of the rule within the states that filed the suit. However, that stay was superseded by the 6th Circuit's decision to stay the rule nationwide pending its decision on whether to review the rule.
Legal Challenges
Under section 509 of the CWA, only certain types of rules are subject to immediate review by circuit courts, and challengers to the jurisdiction rule have clashed with DOJ over whether the regulation falls into any of those categories, with plaintiffs pressing for suits to proceed in district courts.
The 6th Circuit backed DOJ in a fractious Feb. 22 ruling that says the rule can qualify as either an “effluent limitation or other limitation” or a permit governance, which are among the actions section 509 singles out for appellate review.
However, the court's decision was based in part on a 2009 ruling, National Cotton Council of America v. EPA, that has not been adopted outside the 6th Circuit -- leading challengers to argue that district judges should ignore the appellate decision.
Petitioners in an 11th Circuit case, State of Georgia v. Gina McCarthy, said district suits should continuebecause two of the three 6th Circuit judges agreed that an appellate court not subject to the National Cottonprecedent would lack authority to hear challenges to the rule.
Groups representing various industry sectors are also citing the divided ruling in their petition for en bancreview of the 6th Circuit ruling by the full circuit, which also urges the court to overturn the National Cottonprecedent.
The push-back on the 6th Circuit's decision signals several more weeks of legal uncertainty over which court is the proper venue for challenges to the rule, but DOJ's brief in the North Dakota case shows that the administration wants the suits heard in the appellate court and for the myriad district court cases to end.
DOJ says in its March 3 brief that Congress' intent in writing section 509 was to ensure that once a circuit court starts reviewing a rule, all other challenges to the policy would cease -- as shown by provisions that consolidate petitions for appellate review into a single court, no matter where they were originally filed.
'Uniformity' Objective
“Congress clearly expressed its objective of uniformity by centralizing multi-circuit petitions for review of agency action in a single circuit. Consistent with that intent, this Court must abide by the Sixth Circuit’s determination that it has exclusive subject-matter jurisdiction to review challenges” to the jurisdiction rule, DOJ argues.
That point is further proven by the fact that under section 509 a single circuit court's ruling serves to uphold or strike down a CWA rule nationwide, even in jurisdictions where contradictory precedents apply, it says.
“In providing in Section [509] for consolidation of multiple petitions for review of the same agency action in a single circuit, Congress determined that the interests in judicial economy, prompt resolution, and national uniformity override the interest in fostering multi-circuit development of the law. It follows that Congress intended that the judgment reached by the reviewing court as to that particular agency action be treated as binding nationwide. Indeed, little purpose would be served by consolidation if the judgment reached by the designated circuit were not nationally applicable as to the action under review,” DOJ says.
The brief adds an alternative argument that even if judges find that CWA itself does not automatically remove authority from the district courts when an appellate court takes up a rule challenge, the pending suit should be dismissed anyway under the APA. That law governs most suits over federal administrative actions, including CWA rules that do not qualify for direct appellate review.
But DOJ notes in its brief that the law only allows suits to proceed when “there is no other adequate remedy in a court,” and continues that the 6th Circuit case will serve as an “adequate remedy.”
“The States already have a petition for review pending in the Sixth Circuit, where they raise the same challenges to the Clean Water Rule as they do here. The Sixth Circuit has confirmed that it will adjudicate that challenge. Accordingly, there is 'an adequate remedy in a court,' and the States’ APA claims may not go forward,” the brief says.
Finally, it says, even if the court finds that there is no mandate to dismiss the district court suit, judges should do so as a matter of prudence in order to further the orderly disposition of rule challenges.
“Allowing a party to pursue simultaneously the same claims against the same party in more than one court wastes the courts’ time and resources and leads to piecemeal litigation,” the brief says, noting that appellate courts including the 8th Circuit, which oversees North Dakota, have recognized “a general policy that duplicative litigation in federal courts should be avoided.”
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EPA CWA Permit Update Rule Clears White House Review
Mar 4, 2016 | InsideEPA
EPA's long-delayed proposed rule to update and streamline application forms and other documentation for Clean Water Act (CWA) discharge permits has completed White House pre-publication review, clearing the way for officials to formally release the proposal.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has posted a notice on its website that it completed review of the proposal March 4, though EPA at press time had not yet released the proposed rule or announced when it will appear in the Federal Register.
According to EPA's Unified Agenda of rulemaking actions, the rule would update some elements of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting program “in order to better harmonize regulations and application forms, improve permit documentation and transparency and provide clarifications to the existing regulations.”
The agency's rule description says it also plans to address other program elements including permit documentation, EPA state permit objection, and public participation procedures to improve the quality and transparency of permit development.
As an example of the types of changes under consideration, the description says EPA might allow a state to meet public notice requirements by posting notices of draft NPDES permits on state agency websites in lieu of a traditional newspaper posting.
In 2012, agency officials told wastewater industry officials that the rule's preamble would also include language asking for comment on whether and how the agency should revise its conflict of interest rules for permit writers.
EPA at one point had targeted the proposal for release that year, but delays led to water utility groups pressing for legislation to change language in the NPDES regulations directly in 2013 after EPA's work on the rulemaking slowed.
The NPDES update rule is one of several regulations EPA is considering updating as part of a retrospective regulatory review under Executive Order 13563, which called on agencies to find rules that should be "modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed" in order to reduce regulatory burdens." EPA announced in 2011 a list of 35 rules it is reviewing.
In EPA's most recent update to its rulemaking plan, the agency says it expects to finalize the NPDES update rule in winter 2017.
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Judges Toss 'Too Late' Lead Emissions Challenge from Greens
Mar 4, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Robin Bravender
Environmentalists' complaint that U.S. EPA's regulatory scheme allows for harmfully high lead emissions in Puerto Rico came about 35 years too late, a panel of federal judges found today.
A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed a legal challenge from the Sierra Club de Puerto Rico and others. The groups had urged the court to reject an EPA rule from 1980 dealing with how the agency regulates sources of air pollution in areas that have been deemed to be exceeding national standards for certain air pollutants.
The groups said the rule will allow excessive emissions of lead from an incinerator that's received a permit to build in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, within an area that's already in violation of national lead limits.
"Unfortunately for Petitioners, their challenge comes too late," D.C. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, wrote in the unanimous opinion issued by the court today. "Accordingly, we dismiss Sierra Club's petition as time-barred."
The judges signaled during oral arguments in January that they didn't think Sierra Club's challenge to the decades-old rule was filed on time (Greenwire, Jan. 14).
Under the Clean Air Act, groups can sue within 60 days after a rule is published in the Federal Register -- or later, if the lawsuit is based solely on grounds that arise after those 60 days. In that case, they have another 60 days to sue after those grounds arise.
The environmentalists argued that they filed their lawsuit in July 2014, within 60 days after an air pollution permit was granted in May 2014 to Energy Answers Arecibo LLC, the company seeking to build the incinerator. The granting of that permit, they argued, "makes this challenge to EPA's rule ripe for review."
Environmentalists also pointed to a recent lawsuit involving EPA's greenhouse gas regulations,Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, where opponents of EPA's regulations were allowed to challenge regulations beyond the 60-day window.
But the judges said they disagreed with that logic. "Sierra Club exaggerates the parallels between Coalition and its own petition," Wilkins wrote.
In the greenhouse gases case, a new regulation subjected sources to existing EPA permitting rules for the first time. "Sierra Club presents us with something closer to the mere application of an old regulation."
Wilkins was joined in the opinion by Democratic appointee Senior Judge Harry Edwards and Senior Judge David Sentelle, a Republican appointee.
Click here to read the court's opinion in Sierra Club de Puerto Rico v. EPA.
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