Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 3/23
-
(ACC Mentioned) Updated TSCA Would Trigger Paperwork Collection Requests
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
If Congress reauthorizes the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency has to collect more information from chemical manufacturers, the agency would need to revise the information collection requests the Office of Management and Budget already has approved, an OMB official said March 22. -
(ACC Mentioned) Monitoring of Major Chemical to Begin in April
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
A coalition of the five largest U.S. chemical manufacturers of octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane, known as D4, will begin to monitor environmental concentrations of the chemical in April, Karluss Thomas as part of an enforceable consent agreement (ECA), the coalition's manager, told Bloomberg BNA. -
(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Companies Decide What's Toxic, Not the EPA or FDA
Mar 22, 2016 | Alternet
By Wendell Potter, Nick Penniman
Arsenic, like formaldehyde, can cause health and developmental problems and at high levels is linked to certain cancers. -
EPA Chemical Assessment Program Leaders Discuss New Directions
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Kenneth Olden, director of the EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment, which manages the agency's Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, and Vincent Cogliano, who directs EPA's IRIS program, sat down with Bloomberg BNA's Pat Rizzuto Feb. 29 to discuss changes they have made to the program since Olden joined the agency in 2012. -
Washington Enforces State Chemical Limits for First Time
Mar 23, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Washington state’s Department of Ecology has identified violations to its state-level chemical content limits in children’s products, for the first time. -
Six Biobased Chemicals Get Reduced Reporting From EPA
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency signed a final rule March 22 that would exempt manufacturers of six biobased chemicals from having to report certain information required under the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule. -
ECHA Confirms 2016-2018 Substance Evaluation List
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) March 22 confirmed that 54 substances will be added to the list of chemicals with suspected hazards that will be evaluated from 2016-2018 by European Union member state authorities under the bloc's REACH regulation. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Cites NHSM Ruling To Bolster Defense Of Solid Waste Definition Rule
Mar 22, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
EPA is pointing to a 2015 court ruling upholding its non-hazardous secondary materials (NHSM) rule to bolster its defense of key aspects of its definition of solid waste (DSW) rule -- which sets out requirements for recycling hazardous waste -- and to reject criticisms of the rule from industry and environmentalists. -
New Petrochemical Plant Authorized on Dow Complex in Freeport
Mar 22, 2016 | Fuel Fix
By Jordan Blum
A company partially owned by Dow Chemical confirmed Tuesday that it will build a petrochemical plant in Freeport at Dow’s Oyster Creek site as intended. -
AFPM 2016: More Restructuring, Consolidation Possible in Petchems: Panel
Mar 22, 2016 | Platts
With the global petrochemicals markets changing, there is an opportunity for more consolidation and acquisitions, Abdulwahab Al-Sadoun, secretary general of the Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association, said Tuesday. -
McCarthy Says EPA Or Courts Will Address ESPS Compliance Deadlines
Mar 22, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Lee Logan
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says compliance deadlines under the agency's greenhouse gas rule for existing power plants will be determined either by courts or the agency if the regulation survives legal challenges, rejecting the notion that the Supreme Court's stay of the rule automatically delays, or tolls, the deadlines. -
Administration Fights Injunction of Fracking Rule
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
The Obama administration asked an appellate court March 21 to overturn a preliminary injunction blocking new federal regulations for hydraulic fracturing on federal and Indian lands (Wyoming v. Jewell, 10th Cir., No. 15-8134, 3/21/16). -
Oil, Gas Lobby Seeks to Pare Down Pipeline-Safety Bills
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Catherine Traywick
Koch, Kinder Morgan and Williams Cos are among the companies trying to pare down a pipeline safety bill that has gained new exposure in the wake of a massive gas leak at Sempra's Aliso Canyon facility. -
McCarthy Digs in on EPA Budget, Power Plan in Testimony
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Dabbs
The Environmental Protection Agency will continue to support state implementation plans for the Clean Power Plan, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told a House Appropriations Subcommittee in March 22 testimony, adding that the $50.5 million allocated for the plan's implementation in the White House Fiscal Year 2017 budget does not “run contrary” to the Supreme Court's February stay on the rule. -
GOP Lawmakers Tell McCarthy to 'Refocus' and 'Do Your Job'
Mar 23, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Amanda Reilly
House Republicans yesterday spent more than four hours grilling U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy at two wide-ranging hearings that touched on several agency regulations over air and water pollution. -
Bill Would Put Environmental Programs on Chopping Block
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Dozens of environmental programs, including some of the nation's marquee air and water protection statutes, would be terminated under a House bill that would sunset federal initiatives if they have not been formally reauthorized by Congress.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation News
Environment News
-
(ACC Mentioned) Updated TSCA Would Trigger Paperwork Collection Requests
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
If Congress reauthorizes the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency has to collect more information from chemical manufacturers, the agency would need to revise the information collection requests the Office of Management and Budget already has approved, an OMB official said March 22.
If the EPA is faced with updating its regulations and initiatives to comply with the new law, it also would need to update its Information Collection Requests, said Danielle Jones, a desk officer working in OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
Jones was one of three OMB officials who spoke at the Global Chemical Regulations Conference during a session on the White House office's policies and procedures. The annual conference is organized by the American Chemistry Council and the Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates.
Her presentation touched upon one type of implementation requirement the EPA would need to undertake if TSCA is revised.
OMB on Public Participation
The goal of the OMB session was to help interested parties learn about ways they could participate as the EPA develops policies, procedures and guidance documents to support a revised TSCA, according to conference organizers.
The ability of any agency, including the EPA, to collect information through regulatory requirements or voluntary initiatives is governed by the Paperwork Reduction Act (Pub. Law No. 96-511), Jones said.
Under that law, agencies that wish to collect information from more than nine entities must have their requests reviewed and approved by OMB.
The goals of OMB's review include ensuring the maximum utility of information created, collected, maintained, used, shared and disseminated by or for the federal government, she said.
OMB's reviews of Information Collection Requests, or ICRs, also seek to improve the quality of information agencies collect to strengthen the decisions they make, she said.
The term “information” is defined broadly to include items such as written reports, surveys, records and information for voluntary programs such as the EPA's Safer Choice program.
The EPA could continue to collect previously approved information requests, but should a new law prompt changes in its regulations or information needs, the agency would have to file new ICRs, Jones said.
The public can comment on those information requests although OMB typically receives few comments.
We Listen
Chad Whiteman, a policy analyst with OIRA, said interested parties also can request a meeting with OMB officials to discuss any proposed regulation it is reviewing.
He described such meetings as “listening sessions” where OIRA staff can hear concerns about or recommendations for a proposed regulation, but cannot discuss the rulemaking.
Information OIRA is particularly interested in includes any technical details it may not be aware of and estimates of the costs or benefits of a proposed regulation, Whiteman said.
Nancy Beck, senior director of regulatory science policy at the American Chemistry Council and a former OIRA analyst, moderated the GlobalChem session.
OMB offers a number of opportunities for engagement about rulemakings, Beck said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=85578448&vname=dennotallissues&wsn=497757500&searchid=27226074&doctypeid=1&type=date&mode=doc&split=0&scm=DELNWB&pg=0
-
(ACC Mentioned) Monitoring of Major Chemical to Begin in April
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
A coalition of the five largest U.S. chemical manufacturers of octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane, known as D4, will begin to monitor environmental concentrations of the chemical in April, Karluss Thomas as part of an enforceable consent agreement (ECA), the coalition's manager, told Bloomberg BNA.
More than 300 million pounds of octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (CAS No. 556-67-2) was made in or imported into the U.S. in 2011, the most recent year for which production volume data is available, according to information from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Dow Corning Corp., Evonik Corp., Momentive Performance Materials USA Inc.; Shin-Etsu Silicones of America Inc. and Wacker Chemical Corp. have agreed, under an ECA's environmental testing plan the Environmental Protection Agency approved March 17, to sample for concentrations of D4 in environmental media. These include surface water, effluent, influent, sediment and fish, said Thomas, who manages the American Chemistry Council's Silicones Environmental, Health and Safety Center. The plan spells out the details of a testing protocol the coalition agreed to undertake under an Enforceable Consent Order the agency announced in 2014 (79 Fed. Reg. 18,822).
D4 is one of three primary cyclic siloxanes used to make silicone polymers for use in eight key markets—transportation, construction materials, electronics, energy, health care, industrial production, personal care products and special applications such as paper product coatings and peel-off adhesives for packaging, according to the Global Silicones Council, which represents companies that produce and sell silicone products around the world.
EPA Plans to Assess Environmental Risks of D4
The EPA announced in 2012 that it plans to assess the risks of “down the drain” releases of octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane.
Concerns about such releases prompted two advisory committees serving the European Chemicals Agency to recently support a proposed restriction of D4 and a related cyclic siloxane, decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (D5), in personal care products such as shaving creams and shower gels (51 DEN A-7, 3/16/16).
Laboratory studies indicate that D4 does not readily biodegrade in aquatic systems but persists in sediment and accumulates in fish, the United Kingdom's Environment Agency said in a 2009 risk assessment.
Yet, the implications of such studies and computer modeling of environmental concentrations are not clear because D4 rapidly volatilizes, the U.K. agency said.
The European decision does not reflect a consideration of risk and the weight of evidence, Thomas said. “We don't think any restrictions are warranted by the science.”
Traditional environmental models were designed for carbon-based chemistries and do not work well for silicones, he said. Silicones are synthetic polymers with a core, or “backbone,” of silicon and oxygen atoms.
Because the environmental models the EPA and other agencies typically use would not work, the environmental monitoring study is designed to provide “real world data” about the concentrations of D4 in the environment, Thomas said.
Three Types of Sites to be Monitored
The companies will pay well over $1 million, Thomas said, to collect samples at 14 different sites this year beginning in April.
The 14 different sites break down into three types of facilities:
• four D4 manufacturing or processing sites that discharge wastewater into the environment;
• five wastewater treatment plants that receive wastewater from D4 processors and use activated sludge for wastewater treatment; and
• five wastewater treatment plants that also use activated sludge for wastewater treatment but receive less than 15 percent of wastewater from industrial facilities and, preferably, none from D4 manufacturing, processing, or formulating sites.
Final Report Targeted for 2017 Submission
The goal is to complete the analysis of the monitoring data and prepare by the end of 2017 a report that will be submitted to the EPA and released to the public, Thomas said.
Thomas said this is the first Enforceable Consent Agreement he knows of to contain this type of environmental monitoring.
“I hope it will be a model for similar, future collections of environmental exposure information,” he said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=85578412&vname=dennotallissues&wsn=497749000&searchid=27226074&doctypeid=1&type=date&mode=doc&split=0&scm=DELNWB&pg=0
-
(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Companies Decide What's Toxic, Not the EPA or FDA
Mar 22, 2016 | Alternet
By Wendell Potter, Nick Penniman
The following is an excerpt from the new book Nation on the Take by Wendell Potter & Nick Penniman (Bloomsbury Press, 2016):
Arsenic, like formaldehyde, can cause health and developmental problems and at high levels is linked to certain cancers. Columbia University professor Joseph Graziano jokes, darkly, that arsenic makes lead look like a vitamin. That’s because, as he told the Center for Public Integrity’s David Heath, it “sweeps across the body and impact[s] everything that’s going on, every organ system.” It’s in weed killers marketed to fight your lawn’s crabgrass, and, in many places, it’s in the water we drink.
A 2008 draft assessment by the EPA estimated that arsenic was seventeen times more potent than previously thought. In assessing the impact of arsenic on women in particular, the agency estimated that if a hundred thousand women were to consume the legal limit of arsenic currently permitted, 730 would get bladder or lung cancer.
After seeing the draft assessment, the producers of arsenic-based pesticides that hired Charlie Grizzle to lobby for them, Drexel Chemical Co. and Luxembourg-Pamol, began to take action, as did mining companies like Rio Tinto, which also would have been affected by the regulation. As the Center for Public Integrity’s David Heath reported, a group of lobbyists, including Grizzle, set up a meeting with Representative Mike Simpson, the Republican from Idaho, who by 2015 had received a total of $8,000 in campaign donations from Grizzle, according to data compiled and analyzed by the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics.
All it took to send the EPA’s draft assessment to the National Academy of Sciences for a review was for a congressman to slip one paragraph into in a 221-page spending bill. When Heath asked Simpson about the paragraph, he said he worried about small communities not being able to meet drinking water standards.
Such stealth maneuvers are not uncommon in Congress. A senator, for example, can anonymously put a hold on legislation, completely blocking it. Committee members can insert language written by lobbyists directly into a large spending bill before anyone has adequate time to review it. As Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine, bemoaned to Center for Public Integrity reporter David Heath in June 2014: “It’s happening more and more in this Congress that we see less and less of what goes on behind the scenes, that members aren’t informed until the last minute. So things like this, major policy changes like this, can happen somewhat in the dark of the night with very little information to the public.”
When confronted by a reporter, Simpson said he didn’t know that the paragraph inserted into the spending bill kept a weed killer containing arsenic on the market, and he said he had “no idea” that Grizzle had donated to his campaigns.
Delays continued in subsequent years as industry-funded scientists presented their views to the Academy, sometimes without disclosing their financial ties. (The Center for Public Integrity reported that one such scientist suggested that an arsenic dose even higher than the current drinking water standard doesn’t cause cancer.) The result: in 2015, seven years after the EPA’s draft assessment that arsenic is considerably more dangerous than previously thought, many public health experts said the federal government was continuing to allow too much arsenic in our water and in products like weed killers.
“Nobody’s Looking Out for Our Welfare”
“We have a broken Toxic Substance Control Act,” says Tom Neltner. That’s the big problem that “federal health officials, prominent academics and even many leaders of the chemical industry” agree on, the Atlantic’s senior health care editor, Dr. James Hamblin, wrote in 2014.
The obstacles for public health are (1) the vast majority of the eighty thousand industrial chemicals available for use are not regulated or even tested by the government, and (2) companies are not even required to submit most of them for testing.
“What most Americans don’t realize is nobody’s looking out for their welfare,” Mount Sinai’s Philip Landrigan told us. “The great fear is always that there might be other chemicals out there that have never been tested but to which children are exposed.”
In addition, the EPA (like the FDA) has to meet a very high standard before it can ban a toxin. The EPA has banned or limited only five. Weak laws even made it difficult to ban asbestos.
There were signs in 2015 that the chemical safety laws might be strengthened when legislation to update the laws for the first time in thirty-nine years received bipartisan support in the Senate. It would, among other things, require more frequent testing at the federal level and make it easier for the government to pull products off the shelves.
Sponsored by industry favorite David Vitter and New Mexico Democrat Tom Udall, who in the past has supported increased environmental protection, the bill even received kudos of sorts from some environmental advocacy groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, which view the legislation as an improvement over the broken status quo. Other green groups maintained it was much too weak. Senator Barbara Boxer was pushing a separate, more stringent bill that allowed for testing of more chemicals each year.
Vitter’s spokesman wrote that the “legislation provides common-sense reforms that are necessary to update the United States’ forty year old chemical regulatory program. Senator Vitter has worked with colleagues across this aisle, stakeholders from all sectors, and the EPA to draft this legislation that will drastically increase EPA’s ability to ensure the safety of chemicals being used in the United States.” It soon became apparent, however, that the bill was being vetted—and possibly even written, at least in part—by industry lobbyists. Using metadata on a Microsoft Word document circulated by Udall, a reporter for Hearst Newspapers found that the document originated at the American Chemistry Council. Senator Boxer said she felt certain the industry wrote it, citing a Senate information technology staffer who investigated the issue.
Udall, who the New York Times suggested had formed an “unlikely alliance” with the chemical industry, maintained that the document originated in his office. One of his aides told Hearst that “it was shared with a number of stakeholders including at least one other senator’s office. One of those stakeholders was the ACC.” But the council did not deny authoring that draft of the bill. “There’s no way for anyone to tell,” a council spokesperson said. Others, including Udall’s office, said anyone could change some metadata. A spokesperson for Udall said the senator has been engaged with all groups on all sides of the issue.
Regardless of who wrote the bill’s language, the end product was more than palatable to the chemical industry. The American Chemistry Council called the bill the “culmination of a multi-year effort” to secure “compromise, common-sense” legislation that it characterized as “a balanced, science-driven solution that reassured the public that our products are safe and that keeps our economy growing.”
The ten biggest chemical companies spent $154 million lobbying on the bill over 2013 and 2014, the watchdog group MapLight found. In contrast, public interest, environmental, and medical groups together spent less than $18 million. The environmental groups spent $6.6 million.
Those chemical companies also contributed almost more than $4 million in campaign contributions to several candidates’ campaigns in the 2014 election as the sponsors were shepherding the bill through Congress, MapLight found. The ACC also donated $150,000 to a super PAC supporting Vitter’s gubernatorial bid in Louisiana.
The ACC also spent $4 million plus on TV and radio advertising in support of the reelection of Udall and the industry’s other allies in Congress, the Timesreported. The ads portrayed Udall as a man who brings “both sides together to get results.” According to the Times, Udall “emphatically rejects” that he was doing the industry’s bidding: “We can’t do something that is pie in the sky; we have to deal with reality,” he said.
Nick Penniman is the President of Fund for the Republic, a national nonpartisan organization working to reduce the undue influence of money in politics through grant making, convening and catalyzing new initiatives. He is the former executive director of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, founder of the American News Project, publisher of the Washington Monthly, DC director of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, executive editor of TomPaine.com, associate editor of American Prospect magazine and director of the Alliance for Democracy.
http://www.alternet.org/books/heres-how-chemical-companies-decide-whats-toxic-not-epa-or-fda
-
EPA Chemical Assessment Program Leaders Discuss New Directions
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Kenneth Olden, director of the EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment, which manages the agency's Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, and Vincent Cogliano, who directs EPA's IRIS program, sat down with Bloomberg BNA's Pat Rizzuto Feb. 29 to discuss changes they have made to the program since Olden joined the agency in 2012.
The changes are designed to address criticisms that IRIS produced chemical assessments too slowly and failed to clearly explain the rationales used for the many scientific choices that are in such complex analyses.
IRIS assessments provide information about the hazards a chemical poses and the doses at which those hazards would not be expected to manifest—even to vulnerable populations. Risk assessors combine IRIS information with exposure measurements or calculations to determine if a particular scenario poses a health risk that should be managed through regulations or other means. This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Bloomberg BNA:
IRIS assessments have gotten even more complex in recent years as EPA has implemented recommendations to calculate less-than-lifetime risk values, use systematic review, and use and discuss mechanistic data. Has the program's budget and staffing increased?
Vince Cogliano:
We've gotten very strong support from the agency and then within the Office of Research and Development that the IRIS program is important. The agency is giving us additional positions—more than we've had in a long time—since I came back from the International Agency for Research on Cancer [IARC] in 2011.
We're hiring. Having sufficient scientific staff and staff in the right scientific disciplines to carry out the mix of assessments we have is a critical resource.
Kenneth Olden:
We're hiring in the range of 20 to 30 new people. That will allow us, hopefully, to staff all the chemicals that are in the multiyear plan released in December.
If it turns out that we can't staff all the chemicals then we may have to go back and say we need additional resources or we may have to develop a different kind of expectation for two years down the road. But we've had very good support from Tom Burke [deputy assistant administrator of research and development] and Lek Kedeli [principal deputy assistant administrator for research and development]. I think we will have the resources to do the job.
Bloomberg BNA:
What have you heard from those bosses about the priority they put on IRIS?
Cogliano:
We would not be getting the resources we're getting in this era of tight budgets if this wasn't important. IRIS is very important to them.
We are getting a clear message about making sure our assessments allow the agency programs and regions to protect public health by identifying health hazards and safe doses. They would like us to do more and do it faster, and I think we're doing our best to step up to that.
Olden:
It's very clear, if we want to protect the health of the American people we need to get assessments out. It is critical that we generate a reasonable number of chemical assessments per year. We also have to make sure they're of high quality, and that the science that supports them is good.
What they've communicated to me is that they want both: high quality and numbers.
We need to do more than three of four assessments per year, and I think we're going to be in a position to do that soon—not yet—but soon.
We've had to devote a lot of time, resources and people to tasks like developing an IRIS handbook, standard operating procedures. That was my priority. We now have a draft handbook. A tremendous amount of work went into doing that, and it will be reviewed.
At the same time, we've been developing a multiyear plan for IRIS assessments.
All these things take time. They take human resources. The same people who were doing IRIS assessments were preparing the draft handbook, the multiyear IRIS plan and developing systematic review procedures.
We can't do everything at once. We've put in place an infrastructure to enable the enhancements we announced just over 21/2 years ago.
The last time we were reviewed by the NRC [National Research Council] in 2014 it was pleased with the progress that we have made.
I think if that same committee came back and took another look at us today, they would reach the same conclusion.
Bloomberg BNA:
When do you expect to release the draft handbook?
Cogliano:
By the end of the year.
Bloomberg BNA:
What kind of metrics do you use to measure whether the program is on track?
Cogliano:
Earlier you heard Ken say we're leaning the process. I never heard that term until about a month before we started doing that. It's part of the phrase “lean government initiative,” or getting the most value added out of a process.
We took the internal draft development of an IRIS assessment, step 1 of the seven-step IRIS process. We outlined all of the steps that something goes through from staffing the team to conducting literature searches to identifying issues to getting additional help on the chemical assessment team to preparing evidence tables and getting these tasks reviewed internally.
We asked where we are really adding value and where do we have some steps that are a bit redundant or not adding value, and we collapsed some of the internal workings.
This kind of thinking makes you look at metrics in a time frame that's much more immediate than we had been used to thinking. Assessments take months and a lot of things were only tracked monthly or quarterly, but we need to know earlier when something is taking longer.
So we developed performance metrics for tasks such as how long we think it should take to do literature searches; how long it should take to synthesize various sections; and how long an internal review should take. We will be tracking those metrics.
At first, it's like picking a number out of the air. We think we ought to do this, this fast, but we really haven't had the experience with doing this for many chemicals. It's going to be important to collect data and then make those metrics really match with what we've been doing.
Some of the metrics deal with timeliness; some deal with quality.
For example, there are a number of review loops. The team gets an assessment together, goes to senior scientists or a manager for review and gets comments. Does the assessment have to be sent back [to the manager] a second time?
We've got to get down to one review cycle. By tracking, we can see how we're getting better.
Then there are things that are more traditional. Ken has said many times we're not getting enough assessments out, and so we are definitely tracking how many assessments we'll be moving forward in the process this year.
We're hoping to get a certain number of final assessments posted this year—four—they are the ones that have been through the Science Advisory Board already.
I hope to get four more assessments into the Science Advisory Board by the end of the year so that we're maintaining production. I'd like to get more than four assessments into the earlier steps—the steps you don't see publicly—but that I can track: are they in intraagency review or are they in interagency review?
I want more than four assessments through intra- and interagency review by the end of the year, so that next year we can get more than four assessments to the SAB.
Olden:
We've put into place a management council that manages all the FTEs now in IRIS. We didn't do that historically.
The management council meets weekly to discuss progress and to discuss whether there are bottlenecks—issues that are holding us up. Or is there a staffing need or a needed expertise or access to a database that could move the assessments?
We are putting in place the metrics that will allow us to say absolutely, non-equivocally this is how many people are necessary to get a job done in a finite amount of time. That was not the way that things were done before.
Bloomberg BNA:
What are your plans in 2016 in terms of number of workshops, and the subjects of those workshops?
Cogliano:
We'll have a workshop on uncertainty and variability in risk assessment.
We're also going to have a few meetings that are like workshops but may be a somewhat different format.
For example, we plan to discuss the development of a novel kind of toxicity value, a dermal slope factor, for benzo(a)pyrene at one of our public science meetings with National Academies-named experts.
We expect to have the Science Advisory Board review the draft IRIS handbook, and there probably will be some kind of consultation with the board on systematic review later this year.
It might not be billed as an NCEA workshop, but it'll be the same kind of thing. We will take a focused topic and discuss it with experts and the public.
Bloomberg BNA:
Can the IRIS program disclose at public meetings difficult issues and options it is wrestling with, without locking yourself into one choice or other?
Cogliano:
I don't look at it that way. Until we get down to writing we are really open to all of the data, all of the studies. We want to take a look and see where it goes.
Even when we write an assessment we're not locked into it. You've seen the charge questions that are for the advisory board meetings. We tell the board we took this position and ask “is that the right position?” Sometimes we'll call out a scientific issue explicitly at public science meetings.
I thought that the PCB [polychlorinated biphenyls] meeting we had last summer illustrated that.
One issue the agency has to address is the exposure to PCBs in indoor air in schools.
It's an issue for children. It's also an issue for teachers who might be thinking of getting pregnant while they're working in schools.
All we have to evaluate the health hazards PCBs caused by inhalation is one four-week rat study.
So, at the meeting, we said this is the problem the agency is wrestling with—these sparse data—could we extrapolate from oral studies to get a toxicity value for PCB inhalation?
We asked if there are other things we could do, and we let the science community know that a study of PCB inhalation would be very, very useful.
Some people came to that meeting and talked about studies they have in progress that hopefully will be available at the time we do the assessment and we'll be able to draw on them. That's exactly what we intend to do through these meetings.
Olden:
The public meetings are evolving. The way we conducted the first one will be somewhat different from the way we conduct them today.
We're learning, but we expect the meetings to be opportunities not just for people to ask about what we're doing, but to talk about the science. If we've left something out of an assessment, put it on the table.
Bloomberg BNA:
Are there key databases that stakeholders should track to make sure that IRIS literature reviews will find the studies they say are important for the agency to consider?
Cogliano:
The HERO [Health and Environmental Research Online] database lets the public see the studies we're looking at.
In addition, we go beyond what most systematic review practitioners do. They'll have a protocol for searching in PubMed, for example. [PubMed has more than 25 million biomedical literature citations and is maintained by the National Library of Medicine.]
We search there and the Web of Science and other traditional databases with links to toxicity or medical studies, and we'll search other databases if warranted for a particular chemical.
Bloomberg BNA:
If the Toxic Substances Control Act [TSCA] is modernized, would that affect the IRIS program?
Cogliano:
If there are more studies done and submitted to the agency there will be new and better data for us to use in our program. We already look at the TSCA submissions when we do our assessments and hopefully there will be more of those.
I think it will also help drive assessments to using new data technologies, because I think a lot of the data that is anticipated would come from new technologies.
Bloomberg BNA:
Do you anticipate the IRIS program making greater use of new types of data, such as that which results from high throughput toxicity screening studies and computer modeling information?
Cogliano:
Yes we do. We need to be working towards using those, because IRIS assessments need to be based on the type of data and the types of studies that people are doing.
As soon as the scientific community develops the understanding to use emerging types of data in hazard identification, we will be using it.
Right now, many of the high throughput data are used or thought of primarily for screening, but eventually, it will be useful to use this type of data to draw conclusions about hazards.
In our benzo(a)pyrene assessment, we summarized the high throughput data that existed and put that information into an appendix. We'll be doing that for other chemicals.
At some point the Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee will suggest ways to use that type of information.
Olden:
The effort for high throughput approaches started back in the late 1990s with toxicogenomics. We looked at just one thing: gene expression pattern. We thought, and I still think, that the expression pattern of a gene following a specific exposure to a specific chemical can give rise to a unique signature that will be characteristic of a toxic substance. The idea was that we could determine if a chemical was toxic or not toxic fast.
We knew, however, that eventually high-throughput approaches would generate information about mechanism [changes a chemical makes to biological processes].
Mechanisms are very important to us. We are at the stage now where some of these high-throughput approaches are going to elucidate pathways involved in disease, and certainly we need and could use that in IRIS assessments.
Down the road the data will be quite useful. It's going to revolutionize risk assessment with time.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=85578418&vname=dennotallissues&fn=85578418&jd=85578418
-
Washington Enforces State Chemical Limits for First Time
Mar 23, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Washington state’s Department of Ecology has identified violations to its state-level chemical content limits in children’s products, for the first time.
Recent testing found five breaches of the chemical content requirements outlined in its Children’s Safe Products Act (CSPA). These included four jewellery items sold together with clothing that contained extremely high levels of cadmium, between 39% and 98%.
The Act requires manufacturers to report the presence in children’s products of chemicals of concern. It also sets limits for certain substances in these products, including a 40ppm limit for cadmium.
The Department of Ecology oversees the programme, and performs routine testing to ensure manufacturers are reporting accurate information and complying with chemical limits.
Holly Davies, toxics policy coordinator, said the agency was “definitely surprised” to find the high levels of the substances.
“Most of our product testing is checking up and finding compliance,” said Dr Davies. The most frequent violations have been for manufacturers failing to report the presence of chemicals.
Federal pre-emption
The Act’s substance limits came into effect in 2009. These were then largely pre-empted by the subsequent federal Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).
Deciding which limit – the federal or the state – takes precedence for a particular product can be complicated. Washington state recently issued enforcement guidance on its limits for lead, cadmium and phthalates, clarifying that it has the authority to enforce violations of its rule for those products, where there is no mandatory federal standard that pre-empts it.
Voluntary standard
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has worked with the children’s jewellery industry to develop a voluntary consensus standard, ASTM F2923, which sets a migration limit for cadmium in those products.
But in 2012, it voted unanimously to terminate a petition submitted by the Sierra Club, to impose a mandatory cadmium limit for children’s products.
In its response to the petition, the CPSC said: “Although the children’s jewellery standard is a consensus standard, our expectation is that manufacturers will similarly abide by it,” as they do with the mandatory toy standard.
Brent Cleaveland, executive director for jewellery trade body FJATA, said its members have worked to conform to the voluntary standard and to reduce cadmium and lead levels throughout their supply chain.
Ecology’s testing did not identify high substance levels in any of the 132 items of children’s jewellery sold as standalone products – which Mr Cleaveland says is what his members typically sell.
His organisation has “worked hard to encourage and eventually pass legislation in Rhode Island” based on the voluntary standard, he said. Similar legislation has been proposed in other states.
Dr Davies said the testing results suggest that much of the children’s jewellery industry has conformed to this, but more work needs to be done with the providers of jewellery sold together with clothing.
“Consumers’ priority is knowing that the products they buy are safe for their families,” said Dr Davies. And, they “expect things for sale not to be 98% cadmium”.
https://chemicalwatch.com/45835/washington-enforces-state-chemical-limits-for-first-time
-
Six Biobased Chemicals Get Reduced Reporting From EPA
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency signed a final rule March 22 that would exempt manufacturers of six biobased chemicals from having to report certain information required under the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule.
The EPA signed the rule granting a petition filed by the Biobased and Renewable Products Advocacy Group (BRAG) to exempt manufacturers of six biobased chemicals from submitting processing and use information as required by the CDR, an agency spokeswoman confirmed to Bloomberg BNA.
Production volume, processing and use, and other information required under the CDR rule must be filed between June 1 and Sept. 30.
The final rule would apply to manufacturers of:
• fatty acids, C14-18 and C16-18 unsaturated, methyl esters (Chemical Abstract Services No. 67762-26-9);
• fatty acids, C16-18 and C-18 unsaturated, methyl esters (CAS No. 67762-38-3);
• fatty acids, canola oil, methyl esters (CAS No. 129828-16-6);
• fatty acids, corn oil, methyl esters (CAS No. 515152-40-6);
• fatty acids, tallow, methyl esters (CAS No. 61788-61-2); and
• soybean oil, methyl esters (CAS No. 67784-80-9).
Exemption Can Be Revoked
Susan Sharkey, a chemical engineer who leads the EPA team that is preparing to receive chemical manufacturers' CDR submissions, mentioned the final rule had been signed during an overview of the CDR that she gave today at a Global Chemical Regulations Conference. Sharkey did not provide the details of the rulemaking during her presentation, but the EPA spokeswoman confirmed them afterwards.
The final rule, the spokeswoman said, is consistent with the proposed rulethe agency issued July 22, 2015 (80 Fed. Reg. 43,383).
During her presentation, Sharkey said the EPA allows chemicals to be exempted from the requirement to file processing and use data when it has determined it doesn't need the information.
The exemption, however, is not permanent, she said.
Should the agency receive new information that indicates processing and use information is of interest, the EPA can revoke a previously issued partial exemption, Sharkey said.
EPA's proposal to exempt the six biobased chemicals said the exemption would become “inapplicable” if any of the chemicals later becomes the subject of a proposed or promulgated testing, restriction, new use or similar rule issued under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Regulation Seen as Equitable
Kathleen Roberts, BRAG's executive director, previously told Bloomberg BNA that the group petitioned the agency so that manufacturers of the biobased chemicals would qualify for the same exemption the agency already provides manufacturers of petroleum-based versions of the chemicals (204 DEN A-17, 10/22/14).
Receiving the partial exemption from CDR requirements would save manufacturers about 83 hours or two weeks, she said, adding it takes about that amount of time to prepare the processing and use reporting data for the CDR's required Form U.
Saving that time and money is good news and timely for the small, but growing number of biobased chemical manufacturers that make these compounds, Roberts said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=85578439&vname=dennotallissues&fn=85578439&jd=85578439
-
ECHA Confirms 2016-2018 Substance Evaluation List
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) March 22 confirmed that 54 substances will be added to the list of chemicals with suspected hazards that will be evaluated from 2016-2018 by European Union member state authorities under the bloc's REACH regulation.
The 54 substances will be added to a list of substances for which evaluations were already planned, making a total of 138 chemicals that will be evaluated from 2016-2018, ECHA said.
The substances are included in the so-called Community Rolling Action Plan (CoRAP), which allocates each substance to a member state authority and notes the “grounds for concern” in each case.
According to the CoRAP, 39 substances will be evaluated in 2016, 50 in 2017 and 49 in 2018. The evaluations are allocated to 21 participating EU countries and non-EU member Norway.
Evaluations under the CoRAP are aimed at identifying if further information should be requested from the companies that register the substances under REACH (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation and authorization of chemicals), in order to substantiate concerns about the risks posed by the substances.
Potential Follow-Up Measures
ECHA published a draft version of the CoRAP in October 2015 .
In terms of the 54 new additions, the final CoRAP list published March 22 was largely unchanged from the draft version, with the addition of only one substance, 2,6-di-tert-butyl-p-cresol, which is used as an antioxidant in food, cosmetics and other products.
France will evaluate 2,6-di-tert-butyl-p-cresol during 2016 for suspected endocrine disrupting properties, according to the CoRAP.
Among other substances to be evaluated are sunscreen chemical zinc oxide, which will be investigated for hazards related to its nanoform, and graphite in the form of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, which will be assessed as potentially carcinogenic. Both will be evaluated by Germany in 2017.
Evaluations under REACH of substances with suspected hazards could ultimately lead to further regulatory measures, such as usage restrictions or designations of chemicals as “substances of very high concern,” a preliminary step ahead of a possible usage ban.
ECHA said that in case any concerns about substances were identified during evaluation, companies that had registered the substances under REACH would “have an opportunity to comment before any decision to request further information is taken.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=85578417&vname=dennotallissues&fn=85578417&jd=85578417
-
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Cites NHSM Ruling To Bolster Defense Of Solid Waste Definition Rule
Mar 22, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
EPA is pointing to a 2015 court ruling upholding its non-hazardous secondary materials (NHSM) rule to bolster its defense of key aspects of its definition of solid waste (DSW) rule -- which sets out requirements for recycling hazardous waste -- and to reject criticisms of the rule from industry and environmentalists.
In its initial respondent's brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit March 18 inAmerican Petroleum Institute, et al. v. EPA, the Justice Department (DOJ) on behalf of EPA defends the agency's decision to mandate the use of four recycling legitimacy factors and its decision to allow verified third-party recyclers to meet an alternative to strict hazardous waste requirements for secondary materials.
The defense comes in the face of arguments from industry petitioners to loosen certain requirements where they allege EPA has overreached, and arguments from environmentalists that certain exemptions in the rule exceed EPA's authority.
Disputing industry's arguments that EPA is regulating non-discarded materials through the January 2015 rule,EPA says in the brief, "The concept of legitimate recycling is not, as Industry Petitioners seem to think, a set of conditions that EPA imposes on hazardous secondary materials that are actually being recycled. Instead, it is [a] means of determining whether those materials really are being recycled, as opposed to discarded in the guise of recycling.”
The agency goes on to say that its application of this test comports with the D.C. Circuit's precedents fromAmerican Mining Congress v. EPA in 1987 through its 2015 NHSM ruling in Solvay USA Inc. v. EPA.
"The Court's opinion in Solvay is particularly instructive, because in that case EPA dealt with non-hazardous secondary materials in virtually the same manner as EPA has dealt with hazardous secondary materials in this case," EPA says. "In both instances, EPA codified a definition of legitimate recycling for companies to apply to a wide range of secondary materials.”
In Solvay, the D.C. Circuit in a June 3, 2015, decision upheld EPA's NHSM waste definition rule, which classifies when commercial NHSM such as scrap tires can be burned as fuel rather than solid waste, thereby being subject to less stringent air requirements than they would be if burned in commercial incinerators. The ruling rejected challenges to the rule by both environmentalists and industry groups. Solvay is also known as Eco Services Operations LLC v. EPA.
The long-awaited Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) DSW rule EPA issued last year responds to earlier litigation by environmental groups over a Bush-era rule and attempts to close what the Obama EPA saw as regulatory gaps in the 2008 version of the rule by mandating use of all four of the agency's criteria for determining that recycling of hazardous waste is legitimate, rather than just two under the Bush-era rule. Exempting hazardous secondary materials from the definition of solid waste also exempts them from hazardous waste regulation under RCRA.
According to EPA's supporting documents for the 2015 rule, the rule also "retains the exclusion [from the solid waste definition] for recycling under the control of the generator, including recycling on site, within the same company, and through toll manufacturing agreements.”
It also eliminates a transfer-based exclusion from the solid waste definition, replacing it with a stricter "verified recycler exclusion," allowing those who meet certain criteria an alternative to meeting strict hazardous waste rules.
In addition, the final rule affirms the legitimacy of 32 pre-2008 DSW exclusions, and applies the codified version of the agency's definition of legitimacy to these exclusions, rather than guidance-based legitimacy criteria that EPA says are substantively the same.
Solvay Ruling
The industry petitioners -- API, Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, National Association of Manufacturers, American Chemistry Council and energy resource company Freeport-McMoRan -- take issue with EPA's decision to mandate adherence to the third and fourth legitimacy factors, rather than just the first two factors, the EPA brief says.
Additionally, industry challenges the agency's use of the legitimacy test to impose requirements on secondary materials being recycled in a continuous industrial process.
But in its brief, EPA responds that while it "cannot regulate secondary material actually recycled in a continuous industrial process, EPA can create a test that determines whether particular materials are actually being recycled, or are in fact being discarded in the guise of recycling."
And the agency notes that the D.C. Circuit in the Solvay case “upheld a legitimacy test as a reasonable exercise of EPA's discretion to distinguish between non-hazardous secondary materials that are not waste when used as fuels or as ingredients, and secondary materials that are discarded, and therefore are solid waste, when used in combustors."
EPA adds, "The fact that Solvay involved non-hazardous secondary materials instead of hazardous secondary materials is irrelevant because the same statutory definition of solid waste applies equally to both types of materials.”
The agency also rebuts challenges to the verified recycler exclusion, where industry claims the measure is too restrictive and environmentalists say it is too lax. Industry parties say third-party recycling should not be considered "discard" at all, while environmentalists argue it is by definition "discard," particularly when third parties pay to transport materials to off-site recyclers, the EPA brief says.
The fact that both industry and environmentalists are challenging the provision “simply underscores that EPA developed common sense and reasonably-tailored conditions to ensure that hazardous secondary materials transferred to third-parties for recycling are not in fact discarded," EPA responds.
EPA says industry argues the 2015 rule "unlawfully presumes that a transfer of hazardous secondary material constitutes discard." But EPA says that both the 2008 version and the 2015 rule "presume that transfers to third-parties for off-site recycling are more likely to involve discard than are recycling activities conducted with the generator's control," and note that industry petitioners had no issue with that presumption in the 2008 rule, with EPA questioning why they would contest it in the current rule.
Specifically, industry argues that "a presumption regarding transfer conflicts with this Court's precedent, is not supported by the record, and conflicts with prior agency practice.”
But that presumption was upheld in Solvay, EPA says. The court there held that distinguishing between material burned by a generator and transferred to a third party was "'consistent with RCRA and reasonable,'" the brief says, referencing Solvay. Also in that ruling, the court supported EPA's authority to place the burden on the regulated entity to show transferred material was not solid waste.
EPA also disputes that the 2015 rule conflicts with EPA's historical practice, pointing out some pre-2008 exclusions depend on the location of the recycling, and say that studies in the record support EPA's presumption.
Verified Recycler
Environmental petitioners also are challenging the verified recycler exclusion, with Sierra Club, Clean Air Council, Louisiana Environmental Action Network and others arguing the exclusion "stretches the statutory definition of solid waste beyond the breaking point by exempting hazardous wastes as not discarded even when the owners of these wastes must pay to have [them] hauled . . . away.”
But EPA says none of the environmental groups' arguments is "any more persuasive than industry's.”
Environmentalists' main argument is that if a generator pays to have its hazardous secondary materials transferred to a third party, it is automatically discarding those materials.
But EPA disputes that. The agency says such a finding is not "dictated by RCRA's plain language or by this Court's precedents, and ignores the situations where a company legitimately recycles its hazardous secondary materials despite paying a transporter to transfer those materials to a recycler.”
Again, EPA points to Solvay, noting that the court there ruled that "neither RCRA nor precedent prevents EPA from defining solid waste to exclude certain secondary materials."
"In Solvay, as here, EPA had defined solid waste to exclude secondary materials legitimately recycled, whether the recycling occurs by a generator or off-site by a third-party," EPA says.
Environmentalists also challenge EPA on the pre-2008 exclusions, arguing it should have taken more action on them. In their opening brief, environmentalists say they are challenging "EPA's decision to leave dozens of outdated exclusions on the books and unchanged even after the agency became aware that these exclusions lack the minimum requirements necessary to prevent the unlawful discard of hazardous wastes."
But EPA says in its brief that the substance of these exclusions is not at play in the current rulemaking, and that the statute of limitations for any challenges to these has run out.
"Yet, Environmental Petitioners attempt to use this rulemaking to reopen and challenge these lawful exclusionsen masse," EPA says. But "[b]ecause EPA expressly refused to reopen the pre-2008 exclusions," the challenges by environmental petitioners should be rejected, the agency tells the court.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-cites-nhsm-ruling-bolster-defense-solid-waste-definition-rule
-
New Petrochemical Plant Authorized on Dow Complex in Freeport
Mar 22, 2016 | Fuel Fix
By Jordan Blum
A company partially owned by Dow Chemical confirmed Tuesday that it will build a petrochemical plant in Freeport at Dow’s Oyster Creek site as intended.
The facility, slated for completion in 2019, would produce monoethylene glycol that is used to make polyester, resins, fibers and liquids like antifreeze. The project will require 1,400 construction jobs and 50 permanent workers.
The project is led by the MEGlobal company that’s owned by the Greater Equate joint venture, in which Dow owns a 42.5 percent stake, although Dow intends to eventually lessen its ownership percentage. The other partners are Kuwait and the Kuwait-based Boubyan Petrochemical Co.
“The Oyster Creek site provides MEGlobal with greater flexibility to satisfy our customers’ needs for consistent and reliable delivery of ethylene glycol products, especially in the growing U.S. and Asian markets,” said MEGlobal President Ramesh Ramachandran in the announcement.
Dow and MEGlobal are not releasing specific project costs, except to say that it’s more than $1 billion.
The MEG plant will tie into Dow’s new ethylene cracker facility in Freeport that’s scheduled to come online next year. Ethylene is the primary chemical building block for many plastics and products.
While speaking in Houston less than a month ago, Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris specifically touted Dow’s ongoing $6 billion investment along the Gulf Coast, mostly in Freeport and Lake Jackson.
Dow is currently merging with DuPont, but the combined entity will eventually splinter into three separate companies, including one still named Dow. The sprawling Freeport campus will stay with the Dow brand after DowDuPont is broken up.
In December, Dow started commercial operations at its new propylene production facility in Freeport. The propane dehydrogenation unit makes propylene — a core building block of many plastics.
In January, Liveris commemorated the opening of Dow’s Texas Innovation Center, a five-building technology development facility in Lake Jackson that can accommodate more than 2,000 workers. Dow employs about 6,200 people in the Houston area, including 4,200 at the Freeport complex.
But Dow and DuPont are both currently cutting jobs in advance of the merger.
After announcing about 1,700 planned job cuts last spring, Liveris in early February said the number will grow to 2,200 positions. Dow has eliminated 1,200 jobs thus far, so another 1,000 cuts are forthcoming. Dow employed nearly 50,000 people globally last year. Dow would not say whether Texas is impacted.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/03/22/new-petrochemical-plant-authorized-on-dow-complex-in-freeport/
-
AFPM 2016: More Restructuring, Consolidation Possible in Petchems: Panel
Mar 22, 2016 | Platts
With the global petrochemicals markets changing, there is an opportunity for more consolidation and acquisitions, Abdulwahab Al-Sadoun, secretary general of the Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association, said Tuesday.
"I think the low oil price is driving the leadership of the industry to consolidate the business," Al-Sadoun said as part of a forum at the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers' International Petrochemical Conference. "I think we will see in the next five years more business consolidation or acquisition."
Al-Sadoun pointed to Equate's acquisition of MEGlobal as one example of recent consolidations in the Middle East. He added that more mergers in the Middle East were likely, but didn't go into details.
"The key driver is critical mass," Al-Sadoun said. "The smaller players are not competitive in this environment."As a part of the forum, Dow President and CEO Jim Fitterling said critical mass is important in the industry.
"We get to points and times in the cycle where people look at putting their efforts together so their dollars are being put to better use for the investors," Fitterling said.
Recently, Dow has had deals with Corning and DuPont that Fitterling said were to position them to where they think they need to be 10 years from now. Fitterling said the DuPont deal has a large agricultural component that is the driving force behind the deal.
"Deals that we have done recently are the culmination of 10 years of strategic transformational work," Fitterling said.
Tom Crotty, Ineos Europe director and president of the European Petrochemical Association, said there will be continued consolidation in Europe.
"Europe in a number of product areas lacks scale," Crotty said.
In the last few years, Ineos has had a joint venture with BASF in styrene, Styrolution, as well as a joint venture with Solvay in the PVC chain, Crotty said.
In addition to consolidation and acquisitions, Al-Sadoun said the industry might see more globalization of assets.
"We are seeing more export opportunities and more opportunities in the US to take advantage of low-cost feedstocks," Al-Sadoun said.http://www.platts.com/latest-news/petrochemicals/dallas/afpm-2016-more-restructuring-consolidation-possible-21139344
-
McCarthy Says EPA Or Courts Will Address ESPS Compliance Deadlines
Mar 22, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Lee Logan
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says compliance deadlines under the agency's greenhouse gas rule for existing power plants will be determined either by courts or the agency if the regulation survives legal challenges, rejecting the notion that the Supreme Court's stay of the rule automatically delays, or tolls, the deadlines.
“The Supreme Court did stay the rule. They did not speak to any tolling of the deadlines,” McCarthy testified during a March 22 House appropriations panel hearing on EPA's fiscal year 2017 budget request. “The issue will clearly be decided by the Supreme Court or given to a lower court or EPA to work through. There are a variety of ways those issues get resolved, but it was not spoken to by the Supreme Court in its decision.”
McCarthy was responding to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY), who said he had seen “conflicting reports” about how state plan deadlines and the compliance period would be treated if the existing source performance standards (ESPS) rule is ultimately upheld.
Rogers said that the Justice Department in court filings said that some deadlines likely would have to be delayed, but that acting EPA air chief Janet McCabe recently indicated that some deadlines -- such as the initial 2022 compliance deadline -- might remain in effect as written in the final rule.
He asked McCarthy if she would “assure” the committee that EPA would “delay the deadlines in the rule until the courts have issued their final decision.”
But McCarthy declined to make that commitment, and added that the ESPS “is a rule where compliance is quite far off into the future.”
As such, she appeared to reject efforts by other Republican lawmakers, such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), for EPA to abide by “inherent” requirements in the Feb. 9 Supreme Court stay order for all deadlines in the rule to be tolled.
McCarthy's comments also align with McCabe's recent remarks at a renewable energy policy forum, where she suggested that while immediate deadlines for states to submit initial compliance plans are unquestionably suspended, it is “premature” to speculate about how the compliance period would be handled if the rule is upheld.
But in private comments McCabe made last month -- shortly after the high court issued its stay -- she suggested that the agency may not extend the rule's compliance targets, including the 2022 start date.
Because the Supreme Court stayed the rule, some critics have been pressing the agency to delay all deadlines. Others, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have urged states to halt work on their compliance plans.
But the agency has promised to support states' voluntary efforts to develop compliance plans and requested a $50 million increase in the FY17 budget request for the ESPS.
ESPS Funding
At the March 22 hearing, McCarthy defended the funding increase, noting that almost half of the states are continuing to “voluntarily” move forward with planning efforts for the rule despite the high court's stay.
Half of the $50 million request would go directly to states to help them craft compliance plans, while the rest would allow the agency to “continue to develop tools that respond to their requests,” McCarthy said.
In response to a question from Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), the ranking member on the appropriations subcommittee that oversees EPA's budget, McCarthy said there are “about 25 states that at least have sent signals or continue to work with us directly” on the ESPS.
She added that “most states continue to talk about this and work on it because the Clean Power Plan is legally solid.” Further, she argued that the rule “doesn't change the direction in which the energy system is moving,” and that states are preparing for an “inevitable” transition to a lower-carbon power grid.
Even so, the agency's requested ESPS funding could be at risk, given statements by top Republicans on the appropriations panel.
For example, Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), chairman of the subcommittee that oversees EPA's budget, noted that the administration called for cuts to popular programs such as water infrastructure loan funds, an inter-agency water quality program for the Great Lakes and an effort to replace old diesel engines, while “proposing more funding to implement regulations the courts have put on hold.”
He added that the agency, in the waning months of the Obama administration, seems to “double down” on a “desire to keep [fossil fuels] in the ground.”
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) added that many programs with bipartisan support, such as the diesel engine program, are funded in the budget request by “gimmicks” -- such as mandatory spending that would be created in part by a proposed new $10.25-per-barrel tax on oil that Congress will not approve.
Those are “things that we are pretty sure won't happen. I don't see us putting on the oil barrel tax and some of the other things that are used” for the mandatory funding, he said. And given the ongoing budget constraints, “we're going to have to balance those competing interests and try to put together a bill.”
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/mccarthy-says-epa-or-courts-will-address-esps-compliance-deadlines
-
Administration Fights Injunction of Fracking Rule
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
The Obama administration asked an appellate court March 21 to overturn a preliminary injunction blocking new federal regulations for hydraulic fracturing on federal and Indian lands (Wyoming v. Jewell, 10th Cir., No. 15-8134, 3/21/16).
Federal attorneys told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that a district court judge did not have adequate justification for the injunction. Consolidated lawsuits against the 2015 fracking rule from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) did not have a reasonable likelihood of success, and the harms the plaintiffs might suffer were not the sort of substantial and irreparable injuries that justify a preliminary injunction, the federal appellants said.
The appeal of the injunction is occurring while the merits of the fracking rule are contested by state, tribal and industry plaintiffs in the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming.
Four states, the Ute Indian tribe and two oil and gas industry associations have filed their merit briefs arguing that the BLM lacked authority to issue its regulations on fracking and was arbitrary and capricious in many impractical or unclear provisions of the regulations.
The federal government has until April 4 to respond in the district court, inWyoming v. Interior, D. Wyo., No. 2:15-cv-43, plaintiff briefs filed 3/4/16 (48 DEN A-24, 3/11/16).
Authorities and Potential Injuries Argued
A preliminary injunction requires that a court conclude the parties seeking the injunction have a reasonable likelihood of winning their case on the merits, and that the injunction is needed to protect against irreparable harm. The federal defendants told the appellate court that neither of those provisions properly applied in the court fight over hydraulic fracturing.
The district court tentatively agreed with Wyoming and other state plaintiffs that the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) and the Mineral Leasing Act did not give the BLM authority to regulate fracking. At the same time, the states, the Ute Indian Tribe and industry plaintiffs said the disruptive and costly impact of the burdensome regulations would meet a court test of “irreparable harm.”
The defendants told the appellate court the BLM has been using its authority under FLPMA and the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 to protect surface and subsurface resources, including groundwater, for nearly a century.
As for financial harm, the defendants said the minimal compliance costs do not constitute irreparable harm merely because sovereign immunity precludes their recovery from the BLM. Nor should the district court have seen irreparable harm in the “speculative” argument that operators will abandon federal and Indian leases because of an onerous and impractical layer of additional regulations.
The defendants asked that the injunction be vacated, and added, “The court's findings and conclusions, even if correct, would have supported granting petitioners only limited relief from certain of the rule's requirements. Thus, at a minimum, the preliminary injunction must be vacated and remanded for appropriate tailoring.”
Plaintiffs' Brief Due April 25
The plaintiffs have until April 25 to file their responding brief. The case is being heard by a two-judge panel, Neil Gorsuch and Robert Bacharach.
The plaintiffs are Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, Utah, the Ute Indian Tribe, the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Western Energy Alliance.
The defendants are Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, BLM Director Neil Kornze, the Interior Department and the BLM.
Consolidated with the federal defendants' appeal, case no. 15-8134, is an appeal by intervening environmental activist groups, case no. 15-8126. The environmental group intervened to help defend the federal regulations.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=85578449&vname=dennotallissues&fn=85578449&jd=85578449
-
Oil, Gas Lobby Seeks to Pare Down Pipeline-Safety Bills
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Catherine Traywick
Koch, Kinder Morgan and Williams Cos are among the companies trying to pare down a pipeline safety bill that has gained new exposure in the wake of a massive gas leak at Sempra's Aliso Canyon facility.
The leak, which released about 100,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere before being plugged in February, catalyzed efforts to pass pipeline safety legislation and, in the process, strengthen the agency's rule-making authority. Last month, the Senate passed a PHMSA reauthorization bill that would do just that: S. 2276 would have the agency both regulate underground storage tanks like the one at Aliso Canyon, and share oil-spill response plans with Congress (See BGOV Bill Summary).
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is crafting its own measure, a draft of which was approved last week by the subcommittee on energy and power. That bill goes even farther than its Senate counterpart in one major respect: It would expand pipeline regulators’ power to police the sector by giving the transportation secretary the authority to issue emergency orders to halt operations, upgrade equipment or make other changes in the event of an emergency.
Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the committee's chairman, told Bloomberg BNA he's aiming to mark up the bill next month.
“We had a fairly amicable subcommittee mark,” said Upton. “There is no reason to think we can't come to agreement on a comprehensive bipartisan bill before the end of next month.”
Overreach?
Pipeline operators say that the legislation overreaches. While they've acquiesced to congressional calls for gas-storage regulation, they say they're worried that other recent accidents—including the Plains All American Pipeline spill off the coast of Santa Barbara—are driving lawmakers to give PHMSA too much power. Their lobbyists are fighting behind the scenes to de-fang the House measure.
That campaign is already paying off. Last week, the House Energy and Power Subcommittee cut a provision from their draft bill that would have made it easier for people to file lawsuits compelling PHMSA to write new regulations or update old ones. The so-called “sue and settle” provision had drawn the ire of pipeline operators. Earlier this month, lobbyists from the American Gas Association, Association of Oil Pipelines and Interstate Natural Gas Association of American warned lawmakers that the language could be too easily abused by environmentalists to force the agency to write new rules. Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield, (R-Ky.), cut the measure shortly thereafter.
Emergency Order Authority
More recently, industry lobbyists have united against the House bill's emergency order authority provision, which would allow the Transportation Department to issue an emergency order valid for 30 days. Following the Sempra leak, PHMSA Administrator Marie Therese Dominguez asked lawmakers to include emergency authority in its reauthorization bill and they did. But critics say the language is overly broad and doesn't adequately define “emergency.”
“Such emergency order authorization could be used as a back-door rule-making process,” said INGAA spokesperson Cathy Landry, who added that the provision “could undermine industry support for the overall legislation.”
House Republicans have already proved receptive to the industry's pleas. At a markup of the bill last week, Rep. Joe Barton, (R-Texas), insisted emergency authority would “be used as a tool to blackmail the industry” and the provision is too “ambiguous” and “open ended.” He argued that the measure would give the Transportation Secretary power to shut down a pipeline without prior notice. “That's extraordinary, and it's totally unnecessary,” he said.
Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), echoed the sentiment, saying that the provision was “good in theory” but that lawmakers must “make sure this powerful new tool isn't abused or used in a way that unnecessarily leads to a price spike or weakens grid reliability.”
Most lobbyists interviewed said they aren't opposed to emergency authority in some form, but rather want to narrow the scope of it. Others were less nuanced.
“PHMSA has proven itself time and time again to be a relatively incompetent agency,” said Mike McKenna, a lobbyist who represents Koch. “These guys can't get out of their own way; why would you give them more authority?”
Oil Spill Response Plans
Liquid pipeline operators are also hoping that House lawmakers can help them make at least one major change to the Senate-passed bill. They want to cut a provision that would require PHMSA to share unredacted oil-spill response plans with select members of Congress. Senate critics have already raised concerns that disclosing those plans could expose weaknesses in the U.S. pipeline system, which could be exploited by terrorists. To address those concerns, bill sponsor Sen. Deb Fischer, (R-Neb.), changed the bill to shield those documents from public disclosure—but lobbyists say there's little to keep that from happening.
“There is still no real clarity on how sensitive information that can be used to harm pipelines would be protected from public disclosure,” said John Stoody, spokesperson for the Association of Oil Pipelines. “The provision in there currently is very lacking.”
The game plan is to keep House lawmakers from adopting any similar provision in their bill—and then shore up support to cut or change that measure when the two bills are reconciled.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=85578416&vname=dennotallissues&fn=85578416&jd=85578416
-
McCarthy Digs in on EPA Budget, Power Plan in Testimony
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Dabbs
The Environmental Protection Agency will continue to support state implementation plans for the Clean Power Plan, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told a House Appropriations Subcommittee in March 22 testimony, adding that the $50.5 million allocated for the plan's implementation in the White House Fiscal Year 2017 budget does not “run contrary” to the Supreme Court's February stay on the rule.
“Though the Supreme Court has temporarily stayed the [Clean Power Plan], states are not precluded from voluntarily choosing an implementation plan,” McCarthy told the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies. “EPA will continue to assist those states that voluntarily decide to do so.”
Twenty-five states are signaling their intent to advance those plans, despite the removal of a September 2016 deadline for state proposals, McCarthy told the Interior Subcommittee and, later in the day, a House Energy and Commerce hearing. Still, many states understand the Supreme Court paused the CPP regulatory mandates, hinting that they are not forging a path forward, she said.
In testimony before both congressional panels, McCarthy fielded heated questions on issues across the EPA policy spectrum, from the Flint lead contamination crisis to regulatory hits on coal production and Diesel Emission Reduction Act (DERA) viability. Lawmakers couched their challenges in references to President Barack Obama's Fiscal Year 2017 budget figures, but also used the hearings as a forum to push for more information on their priorities.
Coal Representatives Criticize McCarthy
Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), sitting in on the Interior hearing, accused McCarthy of killing coal jobs through CPP and other onerous regulations.
Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.) challenged McCarthy on the same front, claiming her failure to visit West Virginia in her current role as administrator illustrated her inability to grasp the devastation the EPA has brought to coal country.
“Your war on coal impacts so many more people and businesses than just the thousands of direct mining jobs,” Jenkins said at the Interior hearing, pointing to the negative effect of lost coal revenue on local police and other critical public services. “Congress is trying its best to stop your agenda, an ideologically-driven agenda, hell-bent on shutting down the use of fossil fuels for energy production.”
Rogers said the EPA collaborated with “extreme” environmental groups like the Sierra Club to formulate the coal rule.
EPA Aims to Maintain Coal Production
Despite those concerns, the EPA is not angling to eliminate coal production from U.S. industry and the power supply through CPP regulations, McCarthy said.
“We believe the standards are reasonable and not just appropriate but cost effective as well or else we would not have established them,” she said. “We are not looking to preclude coal from being a significant part of the energy system and we project it will continue to be.”
Market forces, in fact, are jeopardizing the profitability and viability of Appalachian coal, McCarthy said. She, however, deflected questions on EPA economic assessments in the afternoon hearing, while pledging written follow-up responses.
“The bottom line is if you lost seventy power plants, that has an effect,” Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on the Environment and Economy chief John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said.
Skimkus lashed into the Obama EPA's efforts as a whole, asserting that the EPA is overstepping its authority.
“The problem, and the reason we've cut your budget, is that your agency, is prioritizing new rules and regulations that Congress never told you to pursue in the first place,” Shimkus said. “You're not doing a bad job, you're doing the wrong job…And that's a big problem. It's a problem because the Clean Power Plan you're working on is unconstitutional.”
Interior Subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) said the EPA budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2017 requests $127 million more than the previous year, despite a modest $40 million hike in government-wide discretionary spending as part of the budget agreement brokered in late 2013.
“That number excludes another $300 million proposed outside of the discretionary caps,” Calvert said.
Lawmakers Continue to Highlight Flint
Democrats at both hearings pushed aggressively for more EPA funding in order to avert future crises like the lead contamination of Flint's drinking water supplies.
Ranking Member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) praised the $160 million increase for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund in the president's budget proposal.
“Our drinking water systems need more funding to help provide clean and safe drinking water to communities,” Pallone said. “While I am happy to see this funding increase, I must reiterate that so much more is needed. The Drinking Water SRF has been underfunded for years. According to the EPA's most recent Needs Survey, $385 billion is needed over the next 20 years to modernize and repair our drinking water systems.”
The Flint crisis, however, represents EPA's deviation from congressional directives, Energy and Commerce chief Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said, echoing the Shimkus remarks.
“The heartbreaking events unfolding in Flint, Michigan are a sign that EPA has strayed from its core mission,” Upton said. “Make no mistake, the system failed at all levels that resulted in the lead contamination problems with Flint's water supply, but it is clear that EPA's poor performance of its duties under the Safe Drinking Water Act was a part of the problem.”
McCarthy, speaking at the Appropriations hearing, said 10 million lead pipe lines need to be monitored in the U.S., but could not point to a specific financial figure necessary to combat the crisis in Flint.
Budget Shifts DERA to Mandatory Side
The president's budget slashes discretionary funding for the DERA program by 80 percent, Calvert said. The administration is proposing a shift to the mandatory side of the ledger for DERA funding, McCarthy said.
“We know this program has had great impact,” said McCarthy referring to the grant program geared toward diesel air emission reductions. “We're going to continue to support it as best we can, and there is an opportunity that the president has offered to have that done in a different way outside of EPA's budget.”
Calvert shot that proposal down, however, calling it an administration budgetary “gimmick.”
“We're not going to get that into mandatory spending. Realistically that's not going to happen,” Calvert said. “So we're going to have to find money within the discretionary budget.”
Republican appropriators pushed hard for more funding for several programs and other priorities, despite urging a reduction in the overall EPA budget. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) shed light on that conflict, and the uncertain path forward.
“We talk about the Long Island Sound needing more funding, the Puget Sound needing more funding, the Great Lakes Initiative needing more funding, DERA needing more funding, rural water technical programs needing more funding ... all that given the circumstances that we're probably going to have at least a flat, maybe a reduced, budget in that overall budget in this coming year,” Simpson said. “That's the challenge that we're going to face given the need that's out there. And we're going to have to balance those competing interests and try to put together a bill because it's not just EPA and programs within the EPA that we will have some differences on.”
Budget Resolution Relevance?
Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) told Bloomberg BNA, in an interview after the Interior Subcommittee hearing that appropriators will continue to forge ahead regardless of budget resolution action. The House Budget Committee rejected two Flint-related amendments and passed its resolution on March 16 (52 DEN A-3, 3/17/16).
“We're continuing that process, hoping that the budget itself gets resolved,” Rogers told Bloomberg BNA after his testimony. “We're a little ways away from considering their budget, but the real debate right now is whether or not a House budget will be at [$1.07 trillion] or [$1.04 trillion]. And the Senate is beginning to markup their bills at $1.07 trillion. We're beginning to mark our bills up at $1.07. If the House goes down to $1.04 trillion, the Senate will not accept those bills. So we're headed directly, in that instant, to a [continuing resolution].”
Members of the conservative “Freedom Caucus” prefer the $1.04 trillion top-line number for discretionary spending, Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Hing told Bloomberg BNA. The Budget Committee has not yet released its legislative report on the resolution, which includes function-by-function outlays, Budget spokesman Ryan Murphy told Bloomberg BNA on March 22.
Interior Subcommittee Ranking Member Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) called the budget resolution, which sets a comprehensive budget level at just under $4 trillion, “devastating” in a March 22 interview with Bloomberg BNA.
“The Republican leadership is failing to make strategic investments in treating water and making sure we have safe drinking water. Budgets are about our values and our choices. We can either continue to make sure that oil companies continue to get tax subsidies, or we can look at making strategic investments,” she said. “If you look at just what [the EPA is] at right now, they're at 2010 and 2012 levels, and we just had an emergency in Flint, which if we do not pass a supplemental for will come out of their bottom line. This is not the way to protect drinking water in the United States.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=85578445&vname=dennotallissues&fn=85578445&jd=85578445
-
GOP Lawmakers Tell McCarthy to 'Refocus' and 'Do Your Job'
Mar 23, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Amanda Reilly
House Republicans yesterday spent more than four hours grilling U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy at two wide-ranging hearings that touched on several agency regulations over air and water pollution.
Chief among the criticisms raised by GOP lawmakers was that EPA is focusing on the Clean Power Plan and other climate change initiatives to the detriment of other agency priorities, including ailing water infrastructure.
GOP members said that the lead contamination crisis in Flint, Mich., signaled that EPA has "strayed" from its core mission during the Obama administration. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the full House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he hoped the crisis would refocus the agency on "basic health protections."
"I know that the agency has an ambitious agenda it would like to put in place before President Obama's tenure in the White House is completed," Upton said. "But the EPA should focus its efforts less on finalizing a wave of new regulations and more on getting back to the basic functions for which the agency was created."
Republicans also slammed the administrator for not visiting areas of the country that they said have been hit hardest by big agency rules. Members raised a slew of concerns about local issues, as well, including athletic turf fields, souped-up race cars and last year's mine waste spill.
"You've given us a smorgasbord of things to go after," said Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) at the day's second hearing.
McCarthy yesterday morning testified in front of the House Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. In the afternoon, she appeared before a joint hearing of the Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittees on Environment and the Economy and on Energy and Power.
Both hearings were ostensibly about the Obama administration's request to provide the agency with a $127 million funding increase for fiscal 2017. Republicans are likely to reject the proposal.
"By cutting EPA's budget and reducing its staff levels, our intent is that you'll refocus your limited resources toward implementing and enforcing congressionally authorized core missions and policies," said Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy. "We want you to do your job -- no more, no less."Clean Power Plan
While the morning appropriations hearing was focused largely on the Flint crisis, GOP lawmakers at both hearings used the opportunity to confront McCarthy about the Clean Power Plan (Greenwire, March 22).
The Clean Power Plan requires states to craft plans to lower carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Last month, the Supreme Court froze the program while litigation plays out; 27 states and many industry and business entities have filed challenges.
At both hearings, McCarthy told lawmakers that about 25 states have signaled that they will continue working toward compliance with the Clean Power Plan and its goals to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
"Many states understand the transition in the energy world right now," she said, indicating that the country is moving away from coal-fired power to renewable sources of energy.
But GOP members repeated concerns about the costs and feasibility of the Clean Power Plan and other agency rules that limit air emissions from the power sector. Republicans from coal states twice accused the administrator of waging war on coal country.
At the morning appropriations hearing, Republican West Virginia Rep. Evan Jenkins said he was disappointed that McCarthy has never visited the coal state in her capacity as EPA administrator.
McKinley of West Virginia raised similar concerns at the afternoon hearing, arguing that McCarthy can't understand the impact of EPA regulations without visiting the state or its coal-fired power plants.
"You're part of this bureaucracy that's passing all these legislative fiats and regulations," McKinley said, "but never really touching base with the people."
House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) signaled that EPA will not receive the $50 million the agency has asked for in its fiscal 2017 budget request for Clean Power Plan implementation activities. He characterized it as a waste of taxpayer money while coal communities are suffering.
In the afternoon hearing, other lawmakers said they worried that EPA, by continuing to offer help to states, may overstep the bounds of the Supreme Court's stay.
Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), who chairs the Energy and Power Subcommittee, said there is "real angst" over the Clean Power Plan and pledged that his committee will be aggressive in making sure the agency was following the high court's decision.
"We are going to do everything we can do to do serious oversight to make sure that the stay issued by the Supreme Court is followed," he said.
McCarthy maintained that the Clean Power Plan is on solid legal ground.
"The Clean Power Plan was a reflection of what we thought the direction of the energy transition was heading. What we're seeing already is that the energy transition is happening towards the lower-carbon sources even more quickly than we had anticipated," she said. "So we fully expect the Clean Power Plan, when it's looked at on its merits, will be found to be legally solid."
She did not, however, give a clear signal on whether the agency would hold to the deadlines that it originally set out in the plan if the Supreme Court upholds the rule. McCarthy said only that the court had not given any specific instructions to toll the deadlines.Other EPA issues
GOP lawmakers raised a host of other local and regional issues throughout the two hearings.
At the morning appropriations hearing, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) pressed McCarthy on whether anyone has been fired for the agency's role in causing the Gold King mine waste spill in southern Colorado. He accused EPA of adopting a double standard and suggested that a private company would have faced more severe penalties.
McCarthy acknowledged that the spill was a "mistake" on EPA's part but said that she had found no one had acted irresponsibly.
Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) argued that EPA should consider administratively halting a rule to limit air emissions from the brick and tile industry.
Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), on the other hand, focused on the recent controversy over whether EPA emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks would harm the world of amateur racing.
At issue is a one-sentence provision, buried deep in the agency's proposed 630-page rule, that an automobile industry trade group has warned would bar the conversion of regular street cars into racing vehicles (E&E Daily, March 16).
McCarthy said that wasn't the agency's intent.
"We were very directly trying to make sure we were doing no more than what we were doing before, in terms of either compliance or enforcement," she said. "I fully recognize that this has raised a lot of confusion, and we need to address this confusion moving forward."
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/03/23/stories/1060034481
-
Bill Would Put Environmental Programs on Chopping Block
Mar 23, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Dozens of environmental programs, including some of the nation's marquee air and water protection statutes, would be terminated under a House bill that would sunset federal initiatives if they have not been formally reauthorized by Congress.
Those programs potentially impacted by the Unauthorized Spending Accountability Act (H.R. 4730) range from smaller initiatives, like state grants to fight lead contamination in schools and coastal erosion programs, to entire laws, including the Endangered Species Act and major swaths of the Clean Water Act.
“This bill would have a dramatic and radical impact on the ability for the [Environmental Protection Agency] to protect the environment and protect endangered species,” Amit Narang, regulatory policy advocate for Public Citizen's Congress Watch, told Bloomberg BNA March 21.
Narang noted that the bill's scope goes well beyond EPA regulations and environmental laws to other agencies and their regulations. But he said the bill would essentially punish the EPA and other agencies for Congress' failure to reauthorize programs.
“There are a number of unauthorized programs, but it's certainly not the agency's fault that their authorization has lapsed,” Narang said.
Introduced by Senior Republican
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers' (R-Wash.) bill, introduced March 14, would force federal programs without authorization to shut down within three years. Many programs currently receive funding through spending legislation regardless of whether their congressional authorization has expired.
H.R. 4730, introduced with 29 Republican co-sponsors, would address these so-called “zombie” programs, according to McMorris Rodgers. Unauthorized programs at the bill's enactment would receive 90 percent of current funding for the first year, followed by 85 percent of current funding the next two years, before shutting down after a third year without authorization.
“Too much of the government is currently on autopilot,” McMorris Rodgers, a member of House Republican leadership, said March 17 on the House floor. “It is time to hold federal bureaucrats accountable for being so disconnected from their mission and reclaim the power of the purse.”
Her office of did not respond to requests for further comment.
Numerous Programs Affected
There are dozens of environmental programs and entities that lack formal congressional reauthorization, according to the Congressional Budget Office's annual report on unauthorized programs that still receive funding through appropriations legislation.
There are 61 laws covered under the annual House Appropriations Interior, Environment and Related Agencies spending bill that would be affected by the legislation. In total, those unauthorized activities received approximately $5.8 billion in fiscal year 2016 appropriations, according to the January 2016 report.
Among the dozens of programs that would be forced to sunset under the bill are the EPA's state revolving loan funds for drinking water treatment, state groundwater protection grants, regulation of underground storage tanks and the national estuary program.
Major sections of or the entire Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Superfund statute and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act have not been reauthorized in recent years and would essentially sunset under the bill.
In addition, the White House Council on Environmental Quality also would be forced to shut down within three years of the legislation's enactment.
Overall, the Congressional Budget Office found Congress appropriated $310.4 billion to 256 programs and activities with authorizations for fiscal year 2016.
Not Agencies' Fault: Observers
Several observers said it would be unfair to penalize federal programs because Congress was unable to function properly and reauthorize them.
Allen Schick, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, said the failure of Congress to reauthorize programs stems from increased polarization of process.
“Conflict—not failure to perform or being a zombie agency—is far and away the main reason why Congress fails to reauthorize ongoing programs,” Schick told Bloomberg BNA March 21. “Because Congress routinely appropriates funds to agencies that lack reauthorization, when conflict is intense—as has been the situation with respect to EPA—the easiest approach is to avoid a fight by making unauthorized appropriations.”
Narang said the threat of ending programs might make it more likely Congress would move to reauthorize some of them, but also raised the specter they would do so in exchange for policy concessions.
“The incentives here are very similar to a government shutdown,” Narang said. “I very much see the possibility where the opposition will use the authorization to hold a program hostage and then extract damaging policy concessions.”
Wave of Authorizations Likely
Other observers told Bloomberg BNA enactment of the bill could produce an unexpected outcome: prompting Congress to move speedily to reauthorize the very legislation and programs targeted by the bill.
“Congress would likely reauthorize any program under threat of cut or sunset—especially given the bill's three-year timetable,” Ryan Young, a fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Bloomberg BNA. “The USA Act would increase the executive's accountability and transparency to Congress, but in my opinion, it would likely not actually cut or sunset any programs, EPA or otherwise.”
Young's group is one of 12 free-market groups to endorse the legislation in a March 14 letter to McMorris Rodgers, writing it would “force Congress to better exercise its power of the purse by requiring the periodic authorization of federal programs” that frequently operate “without sufficient oversight and accountability.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=85578437&vname=dennotallissues&fn=85578437&jd=85578437
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation News
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested