Preview Newsletter
acc am 4/18
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Hearing to Examine Challenges and Opportunities for Oil and Gas Development in Different Price Environments
Apr 19, 2016 | U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources
Location: 366 Dirksen Senate Office Building / 10:00 AM -
Examining the President’s FY 2017 Budget Request for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Apr 19, 2016 | U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works
Location: 406 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
Pipelines: Securing the Veins of the American Economy
Apr 19, 2016 | Transportation Security Subcommittee, Infrastructure Protection
Location: 311 Cannon House Office Building / 2:00 PM -
(ACC Mentioned) Industrial Production Falls in March, But Chemical Production Rises, ACC Says
Apr 15, 2016 | Chemical Engineering
By Scott Jenkins
Overall industrial production declined 0.6% in March, but the chemical industry was one of few industry sectors experiencing production growth, according to the latest Weekly Chemistry and Economic Report from the American Chemistry Council. -
(ACC Mentioned) Polymer Sector Faces Fall-Out from US Silica Exposure Rule
Apr 18, 2016 | European Rubber Journal
A new federal rule aimed at protecting workers from silica exposure will have more significant impact on the polymer sector than some may think. -
(ACC Mentioned) Stopping Production of Certain Paraffins Called Illegal
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency exceeded its legal authority in its preliminary decision to end production of five medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins and not allow another two new chemicals in that group to enter commerce, according to individual companies and trade associations. -
Environmentalists Call For Broad Reforms To TSCA New Chemicals Program
Apr 15, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Environmentalists are calling for sweeping revisions to EPA's Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) new chemicals program, saying lawmakers should incorporate the changes into pending House and Senate TSCA reform bills because the revisions are necessary to address gaps in public health information on chemicals used in oil and gas drilling. -
Resolution Calling for Tougher Toxin Regulation Moves to Senate
Apr 15, 2016 | VT Digger
By Mike Polhamus
The Vermont House approved a resolution this week urging Congress to pass tougher laws regulating toxic chemicals in the United States. -
EPA Rulemaking to Manage TCE May Protect 330,000
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency is developing a proposed rule that would ban or restrict trichloroethylene's use for vapor degreasing, according to the April 14 update of the agency's Actions Initiated by Month website. -
Commission Science Committee Finds BMHCA 'Not Safe'
Apr 15, 2016 | Chemical Watch
A revised opinion on the substance 2-(4-tert-Butylbenzyl)propionaldehyde (BMHCA) has found it is not safe for use as fragrance ingredient in cosmetic leave-on and rinse-off type products. -
European Commission Sets Out Terminology for Nanomaterial Assessment
Apr 18, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
An attempt to harmonize the terminology used when risk assessing nanomaterials is a step toward better regulation of substances at the nanoscale, the Nanotechnology Industries Association told Bloomberg BNA April 15. -
(ACC Mentioned) Letter: Why America Needs New, Energy Friendly President
Apr 18, 2016 | Dispatch Argus
By Mike Steffen
Despite bipartisan support in Congress and from voters in coastal states, the Obama administration has a shortsighted policy that keeps 87 percent of federally controlled offshore acreage off limits to energy exploration (americasoffshoreenergy.com/#/?section=unlocking-americas-offshore-energy-opportunity). -
Energy Bill Returns to Floor After Surprise Deal
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
The Senate is expected to resume consideration of what could be the first broad energy bill in nearly a decade the week of April 18 after a surprise deal revived the bill weeks after it stalled on the floor. -
Senate Looks to Finish Bipartisan Package this Week
Apr 18, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss
After two months of talks to clear out roadblocks, Senate leaders are looking to wrap up the bipartisan energy bill (S. 2012) this week. -
Energy Bill Faces Senate Test; House Sets Markup
Apr 18, 2016 | E&E Daily
By George Cahlink
Spending priorities for energy, nuclear and agriculture programs and scores of water projects will come into focus this week as fiscal 2017 funding bills work their ways through both the Senate and House. -
Why Fracking has Become Such a Critical Issue in the New York Primaries
Apr 15, 2016 | The Washington Post
By Philip Bump
Fracking is based on water. A narrow shaft is dug straight down and then horizontally through a formation of shale -- flat, layered rock. Water (mixed with some chemicals) is pumped in at high pressure, and the rock fractures. -
Clinton: Natural Gas is a Bridge Fuel to be Crossed 'Quickly'
Apr 15, 2016 | Politico (Morning Energy)
By Eric Wolff
The Democratic presidential candidates are stepping up their fight over natural gas as they drill for votes in the frack-phobic state of New York ahead of Tuesday's primary. -
Administration Tries to Fix Air Pollution Rule After Supreme Court Loss
Apr 15, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Obama administration moved Friday to repair the problem with a major air pollution rule that the Supreme Court said last year was illegal. -
Petitioners Fire Latest Volley in Clean Power Plan Fray
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Attempting to justify its Clean Power Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency merely “ties itself in knots” by downplaying issues about whether Congress granted it the authority to issue the regulation, petitioners said in a reply brief April 15 (West Virginia v. EPA, D.C. Cir. , No. 15-1363, reply briefs filed 4/15/16). -
EPA Reaffirms Finding on Power Plant Mercury Rule
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
Cost considerations do not alter the Environmental Protection Agency's determination that it is “appropriate and necessary” to regulate power plants under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act, a finding that led to promulgation of the mercury and air toxics standards, the agency concluded. -
EPA 'Ties itself in Knots,' Foes Tell Judges
Apr 15, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Robin Bravender
U.S. EPA is tying "itself in knots" in its legal defense of the Obama administration's signature climate change rule, the agency's challengers told a federal court today. -
Federal Agencies Provide FAST Act Guidance
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amy Phillips
Federal transit, rail, and highway agencies have provided joint guidance on implementing recent surface transportation statutory provisions geared toward speeding environmental reviews and analysis of impacts to historic properties, parks and wildlife refuges. -
House Panel Schedules Pipeline Safety Bill Markup
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has scheduled an April 20 markup for legislation it released April 14 that would reauthorize the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a Republican committee aide told Bloomberg BNA April 15. -
House Transportation Panel to Vote on Safety Bill
Apr 18, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Hannah Hess
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will vote this week on legislation to reauthorize the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, one of three pipeline-safety bills moving through Congress. -
Oil and Gas Sector No. 1 Methane Emitter -- EPA
Apr 15, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly
U.S. EPA published today its final greenhouse gas inventory showing total U.S. emissions rose about 1 percent between 2013 and 2014. -
The U.S. Has Been Emitting a Lot More Methane Than We Thought, Says EPA
Apr 15, 2016 | The Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
The Environmental Protection Agency has released a major upward revision to its estimates of total emissions of methane, a hard-hitting if short-lived greenhouse gas, in an annual inventory that the agency submits to the United Nations.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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Full Text of Stories Below
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Apr 19, 2016 | U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources
Location: 366 Dirksen Senate Office Building / 10:00 AM
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold an oversight hearing on Tuesday, April 19, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. to examine challenges and opportunities for oil and gas development in different price environments.
The hearing will be webcast live on the committee’s website, and an archived video will be available shortly after the hearing is complete. Witness testimony will be available on the website at the start of the hearing.
Opening RemarksSen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
Chairman
Senate Energy and Natural Resources CommitteeSen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.)
Ranking Member
Senate Energy and Natural Resources CommitteeWitness Panel 1
Mr. Jason Bordoff
Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs
Founding Director, Center for Global Energy Policy, Columbia UniversityMr. Oren Cass
Senior Fellow
Manhattan InstituteMs. Suzanne Minter
Manager, Oil and Gas Consulting Services
Bentek EnergyMs. Leslie Palti-Guzman
Director of Global Gas
The Rapidan GroupMr. Michael Ratner
Specialist in Energy Policy, Congressional Research Service
Library of Congresshttp://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings-and-business-meetings?ID=09D0B7BA-ADD3-4E2E-9EEF-FADE250FD38F
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Examining the President’s FY 2017 Budget Request for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Apr 19, 2016 | U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works
Location: 406 Dirksen / 10:00 AM
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold an oversight hearing entitled, "Examining the President’s FY 2017 budget request for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”
TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 2016
10:00 AM
Room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building
By Order of the Chairman
James M. InhofePanel 1
Gina McCarthy
Administrator
EPAhttp://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings?ID=FE189FF7-93E6-4580-A8AB-5320210F6B34
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Pipelines: Securing the Veins of the American Economy
Apr 19, 2016 | Transportation Security Subcommittee, Infrastructure Protection
Location: 311 Cannon House Office Building / 2:00 PM
Over 2.6 million miles of pipelines transport energy within the United States. This hearing will examine how the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) works with pipeline stakeholders to secure this critical infrastructure.
WITNESSES
Ms. Sonya Proctor
Surface Division Director
Office of Security Policy and Industry Engagement
Transportation Security Administration
U.S. Department of Homeland SecurityMr. Andrew Black
President and CEO
Association of Oil Pipe LinesMs. Kathleen S. Judge
Director of Risk and Compliance for Global Security
National Grid
Testifying on behalf of the American Gas AssociationDr. Paul W. Parfomak
Specialist in Energy and Infrastructure Policy
Congressional Research Service
Library of Congresshttps://homeland.house.gov/hearing/pipelines-securing-veins-american-economy/
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(ACC Mentioned) Industrial Production Falls in March, But Chemical Production Rises, ACC Says
Apr 15, 2016 | Chemical Engineering
By Scott Jenkins
Overall industrial production declined 0.6% in March, but the chemical industry was one of few industry sectors experiencing production growth, according to the latest Weekly Chemistry and Economic Report from the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.;www.americanchemistry.com).
While the March decline in industrial production leaves the level down 2.0% year-over-year, chemical production, excluding pharmaceuticals, was up 0.9% in March, following a 1.0% dip in February.
“Many segments posted growth in March,” the ACC report says, including organic chemistry, plastic resins, synthetic rubber, coatings, adhesives, consumer products, fertilizers, crop protection, and pharmaceuticals. “These gains were partially offset by lower production of inorganic chemicals, manufactured fibers and other specialties,” the report says.
Meanwhile, much of the headline decline in overall industrial production can be attributed to contraction in mining and utilities, the ACC report noted.
http://www.chemengonline.com/industrial-production-falls-in-march-but-chemical-production-rises-acc-says/
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(ACC Mentioned) Polymer Sector Faces Fall-Out from US Silica Exposure Rule
Apr 18, 2016 | European Rubber Journal
A new federal rule aimed at protecting workers from silica exposure will have more significant impact on the polymer sector than some may think.
Under the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules, permitted exposures to silica in the construction industry would be cut to 50 microgrammes (mg) per cubic meter of air over an eight-hour period from 250mg. In other industries, which have a 100 microgram standard, it will also be reduced to 50mg.
The rules are set to take effect…
For full story: http://www.european-rubber-journal.com/2016/04/18/polymer-sector-face-fall-us-silica-exposure-rule/
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(ACC Mentioned) Stopping Production of Certain Paraffins Called Illegal
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency exceeded its legal authority in its preliminary decision to end production of five medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins and not allow another two new chemicals in that group to enter commerce, according to individual companies and trade associations.
“The complete review of the scientific evidence suggests that EPA has an insufficient legal basis to propose a ban on these substances,” wrote the American Chemistry Council in comments to the agency.
The chemistry council's comments summarized views from a coalition of trade associations representing chemical manufacturers and other manufacturers, such as companies making motor equipment, wire, and nuts and bolts.
The coalition weighed in on preliminary risk assessments the EPA released in December 2015 for the seven chemicals (80 Fed. Reg. 79,886); (247 DEN A-6, 12/28/15).
Based on conclusions in the preliminary risk assessments, the EPA proposed to halt the production of five chemicals and prohibit two from being made.
The EPA also requested use, environmental, waste management and other information to refine those analyses.
Comments and requested information were due March 23.
Chlorinated Solvents in Use for Decades
Chlorinated solvents have been in commerce for decades in applications such as lubricants, metal working fluids, flame retardants for plastics, and weather resistant coatings for steel construction and industrial flooring.
The EPA and regulators in other countries have raised concerns for years about a subset of the chlorinated paraffin family, called short-chain chlorinated paraffins, because the agency says they are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic to aquatic organisms at low concentrations.
The EPA also has been investigating medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins. The risk assessments of the seven chemicals listed in its December notice conclude they “may present an unreasonable risk” to aquatic organisms following acute and chronic exposures. The chemicals also “may be very persistent and very bioaccumulative,” EPA's risk assessments said.
Based on these concerns, the EPA's December notice said the agency has informed Dover Chemical Corp., which makes three of the chemicals, and INOVYN Americas Inc., which makes two of the chemicals, that—absent submission of sufficient information to address its environmental concerns—the agency has concluded they should stop making those chemicals.
The EPA said it has told Qualice LLC, which would like to manufacture the remaining two, that—absent submission of the same environmental information—the agency has concluded manufacture should not commence.
ACC Coalition: Significant Economic Disruption
The EPA's decision would have substantial economic impact, the American Chemistry Council's coalition wrote.
Companies reported making or importing about 48 million pounds of medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins in 2012, the coalition said.
“Downstream processors and end users have told EPA that for some applications they have no substitutes for medium and long-chain chlorinated paraffins, and for others more than five years are needed to identify, qualify and move to a substitute material,” it said.
The proposed ban on the production and importation of the chemicals would result in significant economic disruption to materials needed by the aerospace, automotive, construction, defense, metallurgy, polymer manufacturing and other industry sectors, the coalition said.
EPA Notice Stems from TSCA Inventory Dispute
Michael Boucher, partner with Dentons US LLP, offered Bloomberg BNA his insights April 13 about the risk assessments and why they and the agency's data request are unusual.
He also summarized perspectives different industries likely have on the agency's actions and ways the agency may move forward.
“Nothing about this process is normal,” said Boucher, who represents companies that process medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins into various industrial fluids.
The critical, “atypical” aspect, he said, is that the EPA is handling all seven chemicals as new chemicals although at least five—the ones produced by Dover and INOVYN—have been in commerce.
As part of a legal settlement involving disputes over the identity of chemicals already on the Toxic Substances Control Act inventory, Dover and Ineos Chlor Americas, Inc., now INOVYN, agreed to stop manufacturing short-chain chlorinated paraffins (163 DEN A-8, 8/23/12).
Both companies maintained their medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins are legally in commerce, but they agreed to submit premanufacture notices (PMNs) for them to address the EPA's allegation the chemicals were not on the TSCA inventory.
Under TSCA, chemicals being made, sold or distributed in the U.S. must be on that inventory. Any others are deemed “new chemicals.”
Manufacturers wishing to make or import new chemicals must submit PMNs to the agency, so the EPA has the opportunity to determine whether the chemicals may pose an unreasonable risk.
Because chlorinated paraffins have long been in commerce, the EPA had extensive information it could use for its risk assessments and it posted the data in the docket for its December notice, Boucher said.
The EPA routinely conducts risk assessments for new chemicals, but the assessments are not typically placed in public dockets due to the proprietary business information they contain, he said.
Regulatory Options; Types of Reactions
The agency's conclusion in this case that all seven chemicals may pose an unreasonable risk would allow the EPA to control the risk through several means, Boucher said.
The agency could propose a seldom-used type of rule, authorized under TSCA's new chemicals section, banning or restricting the new chemicals, he said.
The EPA also could control the risks through a Section 5(e) order, which implements a new chemicals provision of the Toxic Substances Control Act, he said.
If the EPA pursues the Section 5(e) order route, which Boucher said was more likely, the order's wording could effectively ban the chemicals from the market.
The orders would apply, however, only to Dover, INOVYN and Qualice, Boucher said.
The EPA would have to follow the Section 5(e) orders with significant new use rules (SNURS) that would restrict or ban any other company from making, importing or processing the chemicals, Boucher said.
In light of these regulatory options, industry comments fell into three basic bins, he said:
• manufacturers and importers of chemicals generally and those making the specific chemicals disputed the EPA's risk assessments and preliminary conclusions;
• chemical companies and their trade associations disputed the legality of EPA using TSCA's new chemicals authorities to regulate chemicals already in commerce; and
• companies that process and use medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins provided information about those uses and reasons they need continued access to the chemicals.
Chemical Manufacturers Challenge Risk Assessments
“Given the long-term and continuous use of these materials EPA does not need to rely solely upon models to predict levels in the environment; there are extensive measured data that allow for the assessment of the levels of these chemicals in the environment,” the Chlorinated Paraffins Industry Association wrote.
The American Chemistry Council coalition said “EPA has overstated many aspects of the potential risks for these substances.”
“The coalition believes that the risk assessments do not provide an adequate basis to support EPA's key conclusions medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins are expected to be persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals or that ongoing uses are exceeding concentrations of concern for aquatic and sediment-dwelling organisms,” the ACC wrote.
Legality of Process Challenged
In separate comments, the ACC's coalition and Dow said medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins have been in use in the U.S. for decades and were part of the initial TSCA inventory established in 1979.
The chlorinated paraffins on the TSCA inventory are complex mixtures not individual molecular structures, the ACC coalition and Dow said.
EPA encouraged companies to report broad categorical names for chlorinated paraffins on the inventory, meaning many similar compounds may fall under specific Chemical Abstracts Service numbers, they said.
Manufacturers, processors and users of chlorinated paraffins relied in good faith on these existing TSCA Inventory listings before EPA brought its enforcement actions against Dover and INOVYN, Dow said.
If the EPA wanted to make the TSCA inventory identity of chlorinated paraffins more specific, it could have done so using other procedures, Dow argues.
“It was inappropriate, as a matter of law and fact, for the EPA to utilize this more specific nomenclature as a legal predicate in the enforcement actions against Dover and INOVYN,” the company asserts.
Dow, the ACC coalition and the Chlorinated Paraffins Industry Association described regulatory options available to the EPA that would not involve the ban of what the agency has deemed new chemicals.
Boeing: Chemicals ‘Critical' to Aerospace
The Boeing Co. told the EPA: “Continued use of these materials is critical to the aerospace industry.”
“Materials used in manufacturing and maintaining an aircraft have to be developed by material formulators, qualified by Boeing and then certified by the Federal Aviation Administration,” it said.
“Sudden removal of these materials from commerce could therefore hamper the industry's ability to build and maintain aircraft.” Boeing said.
The Industrial Fasteners Association, which represents companies making screws, nuts, bolts said the fluids its members use, which contain the medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins, are key to cutting, grinding and machining parts with the precision manufacturers need.
The Chemical Users Coalition, which represents companies, such as the American Honda Motor Corp., IBM Corp., Intel Corp. and Procter & Gamble Co., said it was struggling to determine the extent to which the medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins are part of their members' supply chains.
These as yet incomplete efforts nave shown uses in metalworking fluids that create a wide range of needed machine parts, the Chemical Users Coalition said.
Specialized applications in military hardware also have been identified, it said.
Critical Next Steps
Boucher said the comments submitted by chemical manufacturers and processors raise different but related concerns.
The manufacturers of these chemicals specifically want to keep them on the market as long as possible, he said.
Chemical companies and associations representing organizations that purchase and use chemicals already in commerce, are concerned about the precedent EPA would set by banning or restricting a “new” chemical that has long been in commerce, he said.
Chemical users also want sufficient time to find useful substitutes for the chlorinated paraffins, he noted.
Critical conversations that should result from the agency's actions include a discussion of the scope of any ban or restriction the EPA may pursue, and a discussion of how much time companies will have to use existing stocks of the chemicals that already have been produced, Boucher said.
The agency could set different deadlines to phase out different uses of the chemicals.
Trend for Chemical Users
This rulemaking illustrates an important lesson about the role chemical users should play if Congress revises TSCA or the law continues to be implemented with the vigor seen in recent years, Boucher said.
“You can't leave it to the manufacturers and importers to defend the uses of your chemicals,” he said.
Everybody up and down the supply chain needs to participate in TSCA's implementation, Boucher concluded.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=87438457&vname=dennotallissues&fn=87438457&jd=87438457
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Environmentalists Call For Broad Reforms To TSCA New Chemicals Program
Apr 15, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Environmentalists are calling for sweeping revisions to EPA's Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) new chemicals program, saying lawmakers should incorporate the changes into pending House and Senate TSCA reform bills because the revisions are necessary to address gaps in public health information on chemicals used in oil and gas drilling.
"Without addressing these issues, reformers will leave behind millions of people across the country who seek simply to verify the identity and safety of the chemicals used to frack and drill for oil and gas in their communities," the Partnership for Policy Integrity (PPI) says in an April 7 report, "Toxic Secrets: Companies Exploit Weak U.S. Chemical Rules to Hide Fracking Risks."
But one oil and gas industry official says, "I doubt that this report will alter the framework of the legislation," or would be taken up by lawmakers in a future Congress if TSCA reform does not pass during the 114th Congress, saying it is unlikely that provisions outside the framework of the two bills currently pending in the chambers will pass at this point. "There is a consensus among much of industry and some key environmental groups that the bills represent positive changes to TSCA," that source says.
The report highlights what it says are three major failings of EPA's TSCA section 5 program for reviewing new chemicals: lack of mandatory health testing, overly broad confidential business information provisions and "unrealistic exposure assumptions" that accidental releases do not often occur.
The report says that neither the broader Senate bill, S. 697, nor the more narrow House bill, H.R. 2576, contain the necessary revisions to the new chemicals program, though the Senate bill would require EPA to make an affirmative safety determination for new chemicals before they could enter the marketplace.
Top Democrats and Republicans on the Senate environment and House energy panels are working to try to develop a consensus bill that could potentially avoid the need for Congress to hold a formal conference committee to craft a final bill.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a Jan. 20 letter to Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr., top Democrat on the House energy panel, that EPA favors the new chemical provisions in the Senate bill in accordance with the agency's 2009 principles on TSCA reform, one of which said that EPA should conclude whether or not new chemicals meet the safety standard before being allowed to enter the market.
CBI Claims
The letter also highlights that while the agency is pleased that both bills make improvements to substantiation requirements that must be made by industry to support confidential business information (CBI), EPA has concerns with a provisions in the House bill that would allow "formulas" of chemical substances to be withheld as CBI claims in health studies.
EPA says the provision marks a change from the current law, which says formulaic information can only be withheld as CBI if it would disclose process information. "Thus, the House provision would decrease transparency and shield from the public relevant chemical information in some cases, the specific identity of a chemical that is the subject of a health and safety study," EPA says.
But the PPI report says the bills should be revised to require pre-manufacturing health testing, public disclosure of the identities and chemical abstract service numbers of chemicals and of oil and gas wells where the chemicals are used, and third-party monitoring for chemical releases in the air, soil and water. Additionally, the report calls for reform bills to clarify that in the context of drilling and hydraulic fracturing chemicals it is "reasonably foreseeable" that they will be released to the environment when assessing risks, and to remove CBI provisions so that EPA can publicly disclose risk assessments and regulatory determinations for new and existing chemicals.
The PPI report outlines a novel review of EPA's health assessments and regulatory determinations for 105 chemicals commonly used in fracking and drilling that the agency reviewed under section 5 of TSCA between 2009 and 2014 using records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.
The report says it found that health studies were made public in only 2 percent of cases, or two cases of 99, and that despite expressing health concerns in 88 cases, the agency requested health studies in just five. "EPA approved almost all of these chemicals for manufacture, and the agency subsequently received notice that 37 of 70 chemicals expected to be produced at higher volumes (more than 22,000 pounds to millions of pounds per year) were, in fact, manufactured," the report says.
'Critical Improvements'
Also concerning the new chemicals program, Environmental Defense Fund's Richard Denison in a March 17 blog post says that the Senate bill makes "moderate but critical improvements to these provisions" including shortening EPA's typical 90-day review period for new chemicals when a positive safety determination can be made more quickly while ensuring that chemicals cannot enter the market when information is insufficient to make an affirmative safety finding. But the House bill would not make any changes to the current program, Denison points out.
Meanwhile, Environmental Health News reported April 6 that a new study published last week in Science and the Total Environment adds to evidence that some chemicals in drilling wastewater might be endocrine disruptors, saying that samples taken near the West Virginia fracking wastewater disposal facility and downstream had "considerably higher activity for a number of hormones, including estrogen, androgen and thyroid receptors, than reference samples in the watershed far from any disposal sites."
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/environmentalists-call-broad-reforms-tsca-new-chemicals-program
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Resolution Calling for Tougher Toxin Regulation Moves to Senate
Apr 15, 2016 | VT Digger
By Mike Polhamus
The Vermont House approved a resolution this week urging Congress to pass tougher laws regulating toxic chemicals in the United States.
The resolution urges Congress to strengthen the law under which the Environmental Protection Agency regulates toxic chemicals, called the Toxic Substances Control Act. Congress is considering two pieces of legislation to revise and possibly strengthen that law.
The resolution asks Congress to go beyond either of those pieces of legislation and to require all new chemicals to undergo testing before they’re introduced into commerce. Currently there are no EPA testing requirements for new and existing chemicals, of which more than 80,000 are thought to be currently in use.
In addition, it asks that Congress remove provisions in the legislation that would prohibit states from regulating chemicals that the federal government does not.
Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976, and since then the EPA has used its authority to regulate only five substances.
Environmental advocates say a precedent-setting case in the 1990s, in which a judge found that under this law the EPA lacked authority to regulate asbestos, shows that the Toxic Substances Control Act doesn’t work. Incidents such as widespread contamination of Bennington County drinking water with the suspected carcinogen perfluorooctanoic acid show that reform is needed, advocates say.
In the absence of federal regulation, states must act on their own, said Rep. David Deen, D-Westminster, chairman of the House Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources Committee.
“If they can’t get it together to enact meaningful reform, then I’m building an agenda to start taking action here in Vermont next year,” he said last week. “It really should be a federal responsibility, but short of a federal responsibility I think Vermonters have a right to protect themselves.”
Deen’s committee sponsored the resolution, which is now in the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee.
http://vtdigger.org/2016/04/15/resolution-calling-for-tougher-toxin-regulation-moves-to-senate/
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EPA Rulemaking to Manage TCE May Protect 330,000
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
he Environmental Protection Agency is developing a proposed rule that would ban or restrict trichloroethylene's use for vapor degreasing, according to the April 14 update of the agency's Actions Initiated by Month website.
The EPA rulemaking process, which began in February, follows a final risk assessment released in June 2014 that concluded about 30,000 workers at small degreasing operations face increased health risks (123 DEN A-4, 6/26/14).
The agency intends to propose its TCE vapor degreasing rule by December, the EPA said in a separate Regulatory Development and Retrospective Review Tracker updated April 14 (Regulation Identifier Number, RIN: 2070-AK11).
Vapor Exposures, Risks
Vapor degreasing with trichloroethylene typically involves using equipment that suspends dirty parts over boiling solvent and under cooling coils.
As the warm vapors touch the comparatively cool parts, the vapors condense, dissolving oil, waxes, carbon deposits and other contaminants. The machine parts are then further cleaned through processes such as immersion rinsing and ultrasonic cleaning.
The risks from TCE emissions released into the workplace at some small degreasing operations could exceed one additional case of cancer out of 10,000 people exposed.
Pregnant workers at small operations also face an increased risk of their child being harmed, the EPA's assessment said. “The greatest concern is for developmental effects (i.e., fetal cardiac defects),” the assessment found.
The kidney functions and immune systems of workers also could be harmed, it said.
Second Rulemaking Under Way
A separate Section 6 rulemaking (RIN: 2070-AK03) to address health risks resulting from TCE's use as a spotting agent in dry cleaning and in commercial and consumer aerosol spray degreasers has been under development at the EPA since November 2014.
The agency's TCE assessment concluded the solvent could harm the health of about 300,000 workers at dry-cleaning facilities. The EPA intends to propose that rule by September.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=87438476&vname=dennotallissues&fn=87438476&jd=87438476
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Commission Science Committee Finds BMHCA 'Not Safe'
Apr 15, 2016 | Chemical Watch
A revised opinion on the substance 2-(4-tert-Butylbenzyl)propionaldehyde (BMHCA) has found it is not safe for use as fragrance ingredient in cosmetic leave-on and rinse-off type products.
The opinion, from the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS), also found the substance poses a risk of inducing skin sensitisation in humans.
BMHCA is a fragrance ingredient known as lysmeral. It is used in compounds in:decorative cosmetics;fine fragrances;shampoos;toilet soaps and other toiletries; andnon-cosmetic products such as household cleaners and detergents.
The SCCS says BMHCA is neither safe for use as a fragrance ingredient in cosmetic leave-on and rinse-off type products at the concentration limit set by the International Fragrance Association (Ifra) in 2013 (margin of safety 3.6), nor at a revised 2015 MoS of 53.
The SCCS says no firm conclusion can be drawn on mutagenicity.
It adds that, based on new data received during a consultation on the substance, a reassessment of BMHCA is foreseen.
https://chemicalwatch.com/46601/commission-science-committee-finds-bmhca-not-safe
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European Commission Sets Out Terminology for Nanomaterial Assessment
Apr 18, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
An attempt to harmonize the terminology used when risk assessing nanomaterials is a step toward better regulation of substances at the nanoscale, the Nanotechnology Industries Association told Bloomberg BNA April 15.
In a report published April 12, the European Commission's in-house science service, the Joint Research Center (JRC), offered definitions for 43 terms relevant for risk assessment of nanomaterials, an activity the JRC report said would benefit from “consistent use of terminology.”
Definitions were provided for “terms with international regulatory relevance,” and for those “that have a specific meaning and use” under the European Union's REACH law (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation and authorization of chemicals), the JRC report said.
Terms covered by the report included “chemical safety assessment,” “data gap,” “exposure scenario,” “nanoform,” and “read-across.”
Nanomaterials are technically materials measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter.
JRC technical reports are respected resources that have demonstrable value, and can be widely used, but it has no binding legal effect, Lynn Bergeson, managing partner of the U.S.-headquartered law firm Bergeson & Campbell PC, told Bloomberg BNA. Her law firm has monitored nanotechnology policy developments for more than 10 years.
“If it is favorably received, it could become the default lexicon by virtue of its utility and popularity, but in a strictly legal context, the terms would need to be codified more formally to be ‘enforceable' or have a more consequential legal and regulatory impact,” Bergeson said.
Bigger Picture
The glossary of terms was drawn up by NANoREG, an EU-funding research project.
Guillaume Flament, public and regulatory affairs officer with the Nanotechnology Industries Association, a partner in NANoREG, told Bloomberg BNA that the aim of the project was to “test the tests” that are used to evaluate the environmental and health risks of nanomaterials.
The terminology in the JRC report was mostly of relevance for regulatory testing of nanomaterials, but could “end up being useful for industry,” Flament said.
The work of NANoREG and other EU projects was part of an effort to assemble “a very big picture of where we are and what we need to do” to manage the risks of nanomaterials, he said. Other work is going on within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Bergeson said agreeing to common terms and definitions necessarily involves some policy decision.
“It is not my understanding that any one partner intended to invite a particular political or partisan view to the process,” she said. “However, definitional ‘clarity' can result in exceedingly consequential regulatory implications.”
ECHA Welcomes Terminology
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) told Bloomberg BNA April 15 that it “welcomes the report as a contribution to the overall discussion on nanomaterials,” and the report will complement a March study from the agency and two other organizations on the use of read-across and grouping for different nanoforms of the same substance (62 DEN A-10, 3/31/16).
Guidance that will provide REACH “registrants with further information on the meaning of specific nano terms” is under development, ECHA added.
REACH does not require nanoforms of a substance to be registered separately from the substance at normal scale, but registration dossiers should describe for different uses of a substance, including nano-specific uses, how that substance can be handled safely.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=87438464&vname=dennotallissues&fn=87438464&jd=87438464
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(ACC Mentioned) Letter: Why America Needs New, Energy Friendly President
Apr 18, 2016 | Dispatch Argus
By Mike Steffen
Despite bipartisan support in Congress and from voters in coastal states, the Obama administration has a shortsighted policy that keeps 87 percent of federally controlled offshore acreage off limits to energy exploration (americasoffshoreenergy.com/#/?section=unlocking-americas-offshore-energy-opportunity).
Expanding access to America’s energy resources is vital to our future energy security and growth. Oil production in the western Gulf of Mexico is projected to reach 1.9 million barrels per day by 2017, accounting for 21 percent of total U.S. crude oil production. It’s critical that the Interior Department’s final 2017-2022 leasing plan maintains maximum opportunities here, and in Alaska’s Cook inlet, and Beaufort and Chukchi seas. These areas contain more recoverable oil and gas than the Atlantic and Pacific coasts combined.
The economic impact of federal decisions on resource access extends well beyond the oil and natural gas industry. Affordable U.S. energy has ignited an American manufacturing revival, reducing power and materials costs for producers of steel, chemicals, refined fuels, plastics, fertilizers, and numerous other products. Manufacturing accounts for more than 30 percent of U.S. energy consumption, and industry leaders are upset with the administration’s offshore policy.
For example, the National Association of Manufacturers says that the administration’s misguided plans are hurting their competitiveness, the ability to create jobs, and economic growth. The American Chemistry Council reports that the administration’s approach will harm American manufacturers who rely on secure and affordable supplies of energy in order to compete in global markets.
We need a new president who is energy friendly.
http://www.qconline.com/opinion/letters/letter-why-america-needs-new-energy-friendly-president/article_20a04d91-25dd-51a7-ae3d-23add8485807.html
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Energy Bill Returns to Floor After Surprise Deal
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
The Senate is expected to resume consideration of what could be the first broad energy bill in nearly a decade the week of April 18 after a surprise deal revived the bill weeks after it stalled on the floor.
The 424-page, five-part bill (S. 2012) includes a wide range of provisions, including measures to expedite the federal approval process for liquefied natural gas exports, streamline the approval process for electric transmission lines, increase cybersecurity protections for the electricity grid and expedite the licensing process for hydropower projects.
The Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015, which is supported by groups representing such companies as Cheniere Energy Inc., Devon Energy Corp. and ConocoPhillips, also incorporates the bulk of long-stalled energy efficiency legislation (S. 720). That bill would authorize funding for measures to increase energy conservation in the federal data centers, establish voluntary national model building codes and boost energy efficiency in the manufacturing and commercial sectors, among other things.
Progress on the bill, which was first brought to the floor at the end of January, had been moving along swiftly until an agreement to provide direct funding in the bill to help Flint, Mich., cope with lead-tainted drinking water fell apart, leading Democrats to make good on a vow to block the bill (24 DEN A-5, 2/5/16).
The picture was further complicated when Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) announced he, too, had a hold on an agreement to bring the bill forward over a planned amendment related to oil and gas revenue sharing he said would harm his home state if passed.
After weeks of negotiations the logjam broke when Senate leaders reached an agreement to separate the Flint funding issue from the bill and remove the amendment that had drawn Nelson's objections (72 DEN A-8, 4/14/16).
Lots of Amendments Ahead
As part of the deal, the Senate will voice vote nearly 30 amendments including a measure by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) requiring the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to conduct a review of the well control rule's economic impact on small businesses.
Other amendments slated for a voice vote include an amendment by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) requiring the Energy Department to conduct a study that “quantifies the impacts of solar energy projects on birds” and an amendment by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) authorizing more than a billion dollars for a carbon capture coal technology program.
In addition, the deal sets up eight roll call votes, including an amendment by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) that would instruct federal loan agencies to assess a borrower's expected energy costs when financing a house.
Other roll call amendments include a measure by Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) requiring a study of a transmission project through his state by Clean Line Energy Partners that he opposes, and an amendment by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) that would direct the Departments of Energy and Treasury to submit a plan to Congress to develop $50 billion in Clean Energy Victory Bonds. Each amendment is subject to a 60-vote affirmative threshold.
Speaking on the Senate floor Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he expected the Senate to pass the underlying bill and praised Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the respective chair and ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who helped push the bill over the finish line.
“Senators Murkowski and Cantwell never gave up even when passage of the bill seemed impossible,” he said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=87438485&vname=dennotallissues&fn=87438485&jd=87438485
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Senate Looks to Finish Bipartisan Package this Week
Apr 18, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss
After two months of talks to clear out roadblocks, Senate leaders are looking to wrap up the bipartisan energy bill (S. 2012) this week.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who wrote the bill with ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), said last week the exact timing is up to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
"We're ready to go as soon as the leader gives us the word," she told reporters Thursday, one day after the surprise deal came together setting up a series of amendment votes and final passage.
The breakthrough followed Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow's decision to lift her hold backed by fellow Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters; the pair have been angling to use the bill as a vehicle for steering aid to the residents of Flint, Mich. They say they have a new vehicle in mind (E&E Daily, April 14).
The deal additionally dropped a pair of planned votes on sharing of federal revenues generated by offshore oil and gas drilling. An amendment by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) would have allowed Gulf of Mexico states a greater share of federal revenues, while expanding such sharing with a handful of Southeastern states. A competing plan by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) would have repealed the 2006 law.
Cassidy last week announced that Senate leaders have promised him a floor vote on his amendment at a later date to be determined (E&ENews PM, April 14).
The timing of the amendment votes, which are expected to take a few hours, is unclear, although aides say tomorrow is a likely day to finish the bill. If the Senate passes the bill and it's successfully conferenced with a House companion sponsored by Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), it would mark the first comprehensive energy law since the George W. Bush administration.
Speaking to Boston's WBUR "Here & Now" program Friday, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the administration is "very encouraged" by the bill, which he said contains "many positive elements."
He lauded the bill's provisions to modernize the electric grid. "What we see is a collection of risks that we need to get together for resilience of the grid in the 21st century," Moniz said, citing cyberattacks, fiscal challenges and energy storage. "We need to address this technologically."
While Murkowski and Cantwell sought to avoid particularly contentious issues in the legislation, the end result has drawn fire from both sides of the political spectrum.
Environmentalists, who oppose provisions intended to expedite permitting decisions on natural gas exports (E&E Daily, July 29, 2015), on Friday outlined a laundry list of provisions they oppose, including the bill's definition of biomass, funding for methane hydrate research, a "delay" for the Energy Department's disputed gas furnace rule, nuclear support and aspects of the bill's hydropower section.
"These provisions weaken protections for our land, air, water and public health," wrote the Natural Resources Defense Council and nine other groups. "If anything, the bill has become more problematic as it has moved through the legislative process. This is not the first time we have raised these objections."
The groups urge lawmakers to "fix the bill" in conference with the House, while vowing to "vigorously oppose a final bill if it would do damage to the environment."
And Heritage Action for America, which issued a "key vote alert" on the bill in January, was reviewing the amendments Friday, with additional comments likely this week, said spokesman Dan Holler in an email.
That includes the more than two dozen amendments slated to be passed en bloc by voice vote -- a tactic Holler said "minimizes transparency."
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/04/18/stories/1060035760
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Energy Bill Faces Senate Test; House Sets Markup
Apr 18, 2016 | E&E Daily
By George Cahlink
Spending priorities for energy, nuclear and agriculture programs and scores of water projects will come into focus this week as fiscal 2017 funding bills work their ways through both the Senate and House.
The first test of a Senate bipartisan truce to move ahead with the annual appropriations measures will come this week with planned action on the energy and water spending legislation. It is the first such bill to move to the floor in either chamber this year.
The Senate will take a procedural vote as early as this evening to begin debating the legislation and considering amendments. Lawmakers are likely to reach the 60 votes necessary because of the agreement to stick with spending levels set last year.
The energy and water spending bill, approved unanimously by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week, would provide a total of $37.5 billion, including dollars for the Energy Department, Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It's a $355 million increase over current spending.
Appropriators last week previewed a few amendments they plan to offer on the floor, with the most contentious being Sen. John Hoeven's (R-N.D.) push to defund the U.S. EPA-Army Corps' Clean Water Act jurisdictional rule.
Last year, Hoeven successfully included the rider to the separate EPA spending bill, but the measure never made it to the floor or into the year-end spending deal.
Additional hot-button amendments are likely to pour in when the Senate takes up the bill. A key challenge will be for lawmakers wanting program increases to find cuts elsewhere.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) will offer an amendment to boost funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, which would see $297.7 million under the bill, a $1.7 million boost over current levels.
Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) supports the program but noted the difficulty in finding an appropriate offset (Greenwire, April 14).
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) will offer an amendment aimed at boosting wind energy funding. He's certain to face opposition from Alexander, a longtime critic of federal support for wind.
On Thursday, Alexander noted the spending bill already includes $50 million for offshore wind -- a priority for Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), an appropriator.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) plans to offer an amendment to boost funding to clear the Mississippi River in his state, a major shipping conduit plagued with sediment from heavy flooding earlier this year.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) plans to offer an amendment to require a Government Accountability Office review of the domestic effects of crude oil exports. He called it a "relatively minor, noncontroversial" proposal that has already been backed by the chamber on a 62-29 vote.
However, Coons agreed to work with Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on revisions ahead of floor action that would also require the review to include any "positive" economic effects of lifting the ban.
Lawmakers may also push amendments to address the ongoing California drought, particularly ones seeking to alter the pumping operations in the state's engineered water projects to allocate more water to farmers and cities.House action
The House Appropriations Committee will mark up its $37.4 billion energy and water development spending bill tomorrow that largely ignores the White House's requests and takes on several of its top policies.
The legislation, approved last week in subcommittee, would appropriate $259 million above current spending and $168 million above the president's request.
The proposed increase would be less than 1 percent over fiscal 2016 funding, a move in keeping with Republicans' calls for strict limits on discretionary spending.
Democrats are likely to try to reverse plans to provide a $150 million boost for the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Republicans added the money in a bid to revive the site.
The administration has shuttered the project, which has been long been opposed by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, but pro-Yucca lawmakers are looking ahead to the Nevada Democrat's retirement this term.
Democrats may try to restore some dollars for the Energy Department's Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. The House bill would give the agency about $1 billion less than the White House wanted.
The office is key to the administration's plans to address climate change through Mission Innovation, a global plan among 20 countries to double clean energy research and development spending in five years.Divisions
House and Senate appropriators are split on the fate of a contentious mixed oxide (MOX) fuel facility in South Carolina, which the Obama administration wants to shutter.
The House energy and water spending bill would allocate $345 million for the facility, flat from last year. But the Senate's bill would provide $270 million, in line with DOE's request, while staying silent on the fate of the facility (E&ENews PM, April 13).
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said neither chamber was providing enough funding to move forward with construction in a meaningful way, but he hopes his ally, Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), will find a solution for the $4.5 billion facility that is nearly a decade in the making. McCain said he would probably hold a separate hearing on MOX in the coming weeks (E&E Daily, April 15).
The House Appropriations Committee tomorrow is also set to move a $21.3 billion bill for agriculture, rural development and food programs, which is $451 million less than current spending and $218 million below the administration's request.
The panel's ranking member, Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), said during last week's subcommittee markup that he had only "minor concerns" about the proposal, including what he called inadequate funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Democrats also are likely to raise concerns about a provision in the bill that would seek to block federal regulation of large and premium cigars. Past flashpoints, such as banning horse slaughter, aren't part of the bill.
The House spending measures won't move to the floor until at least mid-May. The chamber has yet to adopt a fiscal 2017 budget, and, without one, it can't consider any appropriations bills until after May 15 (see related story).
Both the energy and water, and agriculture measures would likely be among the first fiscal 2017 spending bills to make it to the House floor, given their generally bipartisan support.
Schedule: The markup is Tuesday, April 19, at 10:30 a.m. in 2359 Rayburn.
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/04/18/stories/1060035765
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Why Fracking has Become Such a Critical Issue in the New York Primaries
Apr 15, 2016 | The Washington Post
By Philip Bump
Fracking is based on water. A narrow shaft is dug straight down and then horizontally through a formation of shale -- flat, layered rock. Water (mixed with some chemicals) is pumped in at high pressure, and the rock fractures. (Hence "fracking," which is short for "hydraulic fracturing.") The fractures allow oil or natural gas to seep out and rise toward the surface.
There are three environmental problems with this. The problem with oil is that it releases carbon dioxide and other pollutants when burned, exacerbating climate change. Natural gas -- mostly methane -- is much, much cleaner when burned, but if it escapes from the fracking site directly into the atmosphere, it's a much more potent greenhouse gas. (And studies suggest that a lot of methane does escape from fracking sites into the atmosphere, where it traps heat.) But perhaps the biggest environmental issue with fracking is that leftover wastewater. The wastewater is usually disposed of by being injected into deep wells at high pressure, where it can possibly seep into groundwater. Those wastewater wells have also been linked to an increase in earthquakes in fracking regions.
Fracking regions are defined by the presence of the critical element: shale. So the biggest boom in production has been in western North Dakota and eastern Montana, over a shale formation called the Bakken.
The Bakken is being fracked like crazy, with North Dakota consistently seeing the biggest population growth in the country thanks to the booming industry. (It's also indirectly why gasoline prices have fallen. Middle Eastern nations have let prices fall in part in an attempt to make fracking not profitable.)
There's another big shale formation, the Marcellus, that underlies the northern part of Appalachia, extending up into Western New York. But the Marcellus is not seeing the same sort of growth, in part because it overlaps with more developed areas, and in part because of politics.
If you drive through the Finger Lakes region of Western New York, a series of a dozen long, narrow lakes carved into the ground by ancient glaciers, you'll see lawn signs for a number of political causes. This is a more conservative part of the state than New York City, so there are excoriations of legislation introducing new gun laws, for example. But there are also a number of signs for and against fracking. For, because the region needs jobs, and jobs have been the third most important byproduct of the fracking boom after oil and gas; against, because of the risks posed by fracking -- particularly from that wastewater. The purity of the Finger Lakes is one of the main industries in the region, and spoiling the lakes with leaking wastewater would be enormously harmful.
Whether or not the state should allow fracking had been a contentious issue for Gov. Andrew Cuomo for years. It wasn't until after he won reelection in 2014 that Cuomo (D) finally nixed fracking in the state, after previously suggesting that he might allow it in the economically depressed counties along the state's southern border.
With the advent of the 2016 presidential race, though, it's been reintroduced (thanks, too, to the fact that Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale extends extensively, votes shortly after New York).
During an interview with MSNBC, for example, Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas running for the Republican nomination, told the network's Chuck Todd that not allowing fracking was a mistake. Responding to a question about his dismissal of "New York values," Cruz explained that he meant the bad policies of liberal New York politicians. "[F]or example, you look at the policies of Governor Cuomo where just next door in Pennsylvania they've been experiencing incredible economic boom developing the Marcellus Shale," Cruz said, "and yet knucklehead Democratic politicians here think New Yorkers don't want jobs. You've got the Marcellus Shale here. You could have thousands and thousands of high-paying jobs if the politicians would just let you develop the resources that are here, and I want to see more jobs and more economic opportunity for New Yorkers."
The reason Cuomo didn't approve fracking, though, is that a lot of Democrats live and work and vote in the state, and for a large, vocal subset of Democrats, fracking is a nonstarter because of that water pollution and because it's an expansion of the fossil fuel industry.
During the Democratic debate on Thursday night, the two Democratic contenders for the presidency had a very different debate over the process. It's worth quoting at length.
MODERATOR ERROL LOUIS: Secretary Clinton, as secretary of state, you also pioneered a program to promote fracking around the world, as you described. Fracking, of course, a way of extracting natural gas. Now as a candidate for president, you say that by the time you're done with all your rules and regulations, fracking will be restricted in many places around the country. Why have you changed your view on fracking?
HILLARY CLINTON: No, well, I don't think I've changed my view on what we need to do to go from where we are, where the world is heavily dependent on coal and oil, but principally coal, to where we need to be, which is clean renewable energy, and one of the bridge fuels is natural gas.
And so for both economic and environmental and strategic reasons, it was American policy to try to help countries get out from under the constant use of coal, building coal plants all the time, also to get out from under, especially if they were in Europe, the pressure from Russia, which has been incredibly intense. So we did say natural gas is a bridge. We want to cross that bridge as quickly as possible, because in order to deal with climate change, we have got to move as rapidly as we can.
That's why I've set big goals. I want to see us deploy a half a billion more solar panels by the end of my first term and enough clean energy to provide electricity to every home in America within 10 years.
So I have big, bold goals, but I know in order to get from where we are, where the world is still burning way too much coal, where the world is still too intimidated by countries and providers like Russia, we have got to make a very firm but decisive move in the direction of clean energy.
LOUIS: Thank you, secretary. All right, senator?
BERNIE SANDERS: All right, here is -- here is a real difference. This is a difference between understanding that we have a crisis of historical consequence here, and incrementalism and those little steps are not enough.
Not right now. Not on climate change. Now, the truth is, as secretary of state, Secretary Clinton actively supported fracking technology around the world. Second of all, right now, we have got to tell the fossil fuel industry that their short-term profits are not more important than the future of this planet.
And that means -- and I would ask you to respond. Are you in favor of a tax on carbon so that we can transit away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy at the level and speed we need to do?
What's presented here is another microcosm of the differences in the approaches of the two candidates. Clinton is strategic and incremental. Sanders is dogmatic and ambitious.
Clinton's point about bridge fuels is entirely correct. At the beginning of President Obama's first term in office, the idea that transitioning from coal to natural gas as a means of fighting climate change was widely accepted. The Sierra Club was even on-board with the idea of embracing natural gas. Again, burning natural gas is much, much cleaner than burning coal.
As the New Yorker explained in a great 2011 article on the industry, this was just as drillers had figured out the key technological issue to make fracking work: the horizontal drilling. Innovations in the ability extend a well through the shale unleashed the fracking boom, which in turn led to a glut of natural gas. At the same time, fracking shifted the debate over natural gas from one about bridge fuels to one about the process of fracking itself. Apparent seepage of methane and wastewater into water supplies and water systems drew negative attention to the process, and public opinion shifted.
That's where Bernie Sanders is now. Fracking is emblematic of the problems with relying on fossil fuels generally. It is to oil and gas what Citizens United is to campaign finance -- a not-well-understood phenomenon that's become a partisan shorthand. Sanders invokes "fracking" because he knows it prompts a visceral, negative response. Clinton's description of the politics eight years ago is correct, but the politics on the subject have changed.
In New York, which votes next Tuesday, those politics sit very near the surface. It's more a complicated issue outside of New York City, where the drilling would happen and the much-needed jobs would appear. But there are an awful lot of environmentally sensitive Democrats in the city for whom the idea itself is unacceptable. Giving us three political positions: It should be allowed (Cruz), it held promise (Clinton), it can't happen (Sanders).
Fracking sits at a fascinating nexus in American society and politics, a job creator that can help or can hurt climate change and which bears other environmental risks. Which is why the debate over it takes so many forms -- and why that debate is playing out about a mile above a shale formation that's been buried under New York State for hundreds of millions of years.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/15/why-fracking-has-become-such-a-critical-issue-in-the-new-york-primaries/
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Clinton: Natural Gas is a Bridge Fuel to be Crossed 'Quickly'
Apr 15, 2016 | Politico (Morning Energy)
By Eric Wolff
CLINTON: NATURAL GAS IS A BRIDGE FUEL TO BE CROSSED 'QUICKLY': The Democratic presidential candidates are stepping up their fight over natural gas as they drill for votes in the frack-phobic state of New York ahead of Tuesday's primary. Hillary Clinton argued at last night's Democratic debate that supporting fracking during her years as secretary of State was necessary to help wean the world from coal power and to assist Europe in getting out from under Russian pressure. The subject of New York's own fracking ban never came up at the debate, but Sen. Bernie Sanders brought back attacks that Clinton fostered fracking in other countries, an issue he's highlighted to the delight of his green backers. "For economic and strategic reasons it was American policy to try to help countries get out from under the constant use of coal, building coal plants all the time," Clinton said. "So we did say natural gas is a bridge. We want to cross that bridge as quickly as possible ... in order to deal with climate change."
Story Continued Below
Sanders: Paris agreement 'a lot of paper': In attacking what he sees as "incrementalism" in dealing with climate change, Sanders gave little credibility to the 195-nation Paris climate change agreement. "Of course the agreement is a step forward, but you know agreements and I know agreements, there's a lot of paper there," Sanders said. "We've got to get beyond paper right now." Clinton said she was "bewildered by how to respond," and the agreement "gives you the framework to actually take the action."
Hillary ducks carbon tax question: Sanders called on Clinton to commit to supporting a carbon tax to facilitate a move to low-carbon economy. Clinton avoided the question with a long winded answer outlining how she supported Obama's carbon rules and the importance of getting the president's Supreme Court nominee approved.
Republicans didn't miss their chance to attack the ban: Republican candidates campaigning in New York Thursday hammered the state's fracking ban. As POLITICO New York's Scott Waldman reports, frontrunner Donald Trump said the state is in, "deep trouble" because of the ban. "You look at Pennsylvania, right along the line they have machines all over the place and people driving around: You know the expression, they are driving in their Cadillacs," Trump said in an interview in Albany. "And on the other side of the line, which is just an artificial line, and people are literally in poverty. It’s just so incredible and we never took advantage." Speaking in Buffalo during a taping of an MSNBC town hall, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz blamed “knuckleheaded Democratic politicians” for the fracking ban, the Associated Press reported.
FINALLY FRIDAY AND WE'RE FREE AGAIN! I'm your host Eric Wolff, and I hope everyone feels like they had a productive week. Look at what happened: The energy bill realized it wasn't dead yet (It feels like singing!), energy and water approps moved in both chambers, the final well control rule emerged, and a presidential debate delved into fracking. Solid work, peeps! ME gives you the weekend off — which you'll need, because next week have more appropriations AND that energy bill may hit the Senate floor. As always, send your tips, quips, and comments to ewolff@politico.com, or follow us on Twitter @ericwolff, @Morning_Energy, and@POLITICOPro.
WATER IS FOR FIGHTING OVER: House Republicans loaded up a water and energy appropriation bill with drought relief provisions in a power move intended to force the issue on recalcitrant Senate Democrats. As Pro's Annie Snider reports, the energy and water appropriation bill that passed out of a House subcommittee Wednesday contained key sections of Rep. David Valadao's bill that Democrats and environmentalists oppose. The Senate energy and water bill, which contains none of the drought provisions, will likely reach the Senate floor next week, setting up a conference where the two bills would have to be reconciled. House Republicans expect that will give them more leverage than they might otherwise have if the government were funded by an omnibus negotiated by top leaders, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told a conference audience on Wednesday. "So it's not that just one leader can say no and kick everything out and kick the voices of millions of people out that want to do something about it," he said.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein has her own bill that she released in February. The bill contains less prescriptive language than Valadao's, and would fund longer-term solutions, like desalination. Feinstein and her staff have been pushing hard to move her legislation forward.
Murkowski and Cantwell ride again? Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Maria Cantwell, whose collaboration produced a bipartisan energy policy overhaul that could reach the Senate floor as soon as next week, may soon be free to turn their attention to water issues. Cantwell released a water-policy white paper last month, while Murkowski has shone interest in technological solutions to water problems and regulatory streamlining.
WELL CONTROL RULE UNDER CONTROL: The Interior Department released offshore drilling safety rules Thursday that give industry a little more flexibility than the proposed rule, but not enough to avoid backlash. As Pro's Elana Schor reports, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement called for stricter monitoring of the drilling process in the final rule, and it mandated additional inspections of blowout preventers, the piece of equipment on the Deepwater Horizon rig that failed to operate in the massive 2010 BP oil spill. Republicans like Louisiana Sen. David Vitter slammed the rule, saying it "is bad news for Louisiana, and certainly has the potential to kick our oil and gas industry while it's down." Florida Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson praised the rule, but said it wasn't enough, "While these much-needed regulations are a step in the right direction, they do not eliminate the threat we face from offshore drilling activities," he said in a statement.
EXPECTED TODAY — FIX TO MERCURY RULE: Today is the day EPA promised a federal court it would finish its shiny new “appropriate and necessary” finding to address the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that EPA should have considered costs when it first decided to regulate power plants for mercury. The new finding itself shouldn’t be surprising — EPA’s proposal in December said that, after weighing costs, it still believes it did the right thing and would have written basically the same regulation. That should have the effect of keeping the mercury rule in place, despite the court’s ruling, just in time for Saturday, which marks the deadline for the last few power plants to either come into compliance or shut down. The White House Office of Management and Budget finished its review of the fix on Wednesday. Michigan is currently asking the Supreme Court to force EPA to start from scratch, and EPA critics like Murray Energy have vowed to challenge this fix as well.
JUSTICE REVEALS DEETS ON ALLEGED CHINESE NUCLEAR TECH THIEF: The Justice Department unsealed a two-count indictment against Allen Ho, aka Szuhsiung Ho, on Thursday for allegedly conspiring to procure and develop nuclear power technology for a Chinese state-owned power company without legal authorization from the Energy Department. Ho, a U.S. citizen, was also charged with conspiracy to act in the U.S. as an agent of a foreign government and for not registering with the Justice Department. According to messages quoted in the indictment, beginning circa 1997, Ho was tasked with putting together a “comprehensive team to provide technology transfer” that would allow the China General Nuclear Power Co. to “bypass the research stage and go directly to the final design and manufacturing phase.” Ho’s team allegedly sought computer programs and technology related to small modular reactors and reactor fuel assemblies. If convicted, one of the conspiracy charges carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine, while the other carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison along with fines and supervised release.
T&I RELEASES PHMSA REAUTHORIZATION: The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released its own bill to reauthorize the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration on Thursday. As Pro's Andrew Restuccia reports, the bill resembles a reauthorization proposed by the Energy and Commerce Committee, though it adds a provision requiring rules for underground natural gas storage, a response to the massive Aliso Canyon leak, and it requires PHMSA to update Congress every 60 days on rules it was told to write in its 2011 reauthorization but has not yet completed.
WHAT HAPPENS AT 1.5 DEGREES CELSIUS? The U.N.’s climate science panel, the IPCC, has agreed to look into the impact of a 1.5 degree Celsius global warming increase, rather than the 2 degree target usually considered in climate negotiations. The report will examine the effects of a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees in 2018. On top of that, the IPCC will put together two other special reports — one on how climate change affects oceans and the cryosphere (frozen water such as glaciers and ice caps), and another on climate change and increasingly dry land, land degradation, sustainable land management and food security.
COAL INDUSTRY UNDER SO MUCH PRESSURE, MAY BECOME DIAMOND INDUSTRY: And the hits keep coming for the coal industry: On Thursday, Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, released its first list of 52 coal-dependent companies it would not longer invest in, including Peabody Energy, which declared bankruptcy on Wednesday, and American Electric Power. ME's European colleagues report that coal miners in Romania started a 320-kilometer “desperation march” to Bucharest this week to call for the rescue of their employer even as the Czech Republic's New World Resources bought itself all of a week to avoid a collapse of its own. On Wednesday, Austrian utility Verbund said it will sell its two remaining coal plants. “By 2020, we want to completely exit thermal power production and move to 100 percent renewables,” company spokeswoman Ingun Metelko said. POLITICO Europe's Sara Stefanini has the details on the demise of European coal.
AGU TO LET EXXON CONTINUE PAYING FOR BREAKFAST: The American Geophysical Union, a society of Earth and space scientists, decided it would keep ExxonMobil as a sponsor, AGU President Margaret Leinen, wrote on Thursday in a blog post, "In the end, by a majority vote, the board passed a motion that approved “continuing our current engagement between ExxonMobil and AGU including acceptance of funding from ExxonMobil.” The AGU's total support from Exxon in 2015 was $35,000 for a student breakfast at the organization's Fall Meeting Leinan.
WATER REGULATORS SIGN ON WITH FORMER COLE AIDE: The Ground Water Protection Council, made up of state groundwater regulators, hired Capitol Hill Consulting Group's Stratton Edwards, former legislative counsel for Republican Rep. Tom Cole, to lobby on the energy and water appropriations bill. Cole hails from a state where earthquakes have underscored fracking concerns. The council's top board members are from oil- and gas-producing states such as Texas and Ohio.
NOM NOM NOM: The White House plans to nominate Energy Dept. lawyer Susan Beard as Energy Department Inspector General. Beard has been the assistant general counsel for general law at DOE since 2004, and has held several agency legal positions since 1989.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-energy/2016/04/clinton-natural-gas-is-a-bridge-fuel-to-be-crossed-quickly-213784#ixzz46B8RZWKp
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POLITICOMagazineMagazine HomeToday's CoverOpinionLatest StoriesWeekly Email SignupsWhat Works2016 ElectionDelegate TrackerPresidential ResultsSenate ResultsHouse ResultsGovernor Results2016 Election SchedulePolicyAgricultureCybersecurityDefenseEducationeHealthEnergy & EnvironmentFinance & TaxHealth CareLabor & EmploymentTechnologyTradeTransportation & InfrastructurePROAlready a Pro?Why Go Pro?Latest 505050NEW04/18/16 07:15 AM EDTPATRIOTS’ DAY -- BAKER’s very good money year (so far) -- BARR FOUNDATION prez picks up ROSENBERG tab
BAKER’s very good money year (so far)
04/18/16 06:58 AM EDTTrump’s campaign manager mangles Florida facts – Two governors and a Tallahassee wedding – Banfill fills DNC post – Leon County’s restaurant dog tax -- Great white prowls Keys reef
Trump’s campaign manager mangles Florida facts.
SUPREME COURT
04/18/16 05:39 AM EDTImmigration prompts role reversal at Supreme Court
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Liberals and conservatives swap sides on issue of when states can challenge the federal government in court.
2016
04/18/16 05:37 AM EDTHow the Hyper-Liberal Enclaves of America Could Pick the GOP Nominee
By SHANE GOLDMACHER
From Berkeley to the Bronx, the GOP’s most isolated members could get the last laugh.
OFF MESSAGE
04/18/16 05:37 AM EDTPodcast: Kirsten Gillibrand
By POLITICO STAFF
Read the full transcript here, and Glenn Thrush's take on the interview here.
DEFENSE
04/18/16 05:35 AM EDTMilitary reform effort claims latest casualty
By AUSTIN WRIGHT and JEREMY HERB
Brad Carson helped open all combat jobs to women, set maternity leave at 12 weeks and worked to open the door for transgender troops. But when he tried...
2016
04/18/16 05:34 AM EDTWhy Trump may be costing Democrats millions for their convention
By ANNA PALMER and BRIANNA GURCIULLO
The GOP is struggling to raise cash from corporate donors, and now Democrats are feeling the pinch.
OFF MESSAGE
04/18/16 05:27 AM EDTGillibrand's tearful plea to Bernie: Give up your guns
By GLENN THRUSH
"I just don't think he's fully getting how horrible it is for these families.”
OFF MESSAGE
04/18/16 05:24 AM EDTFull Transcript: POLITICO's Glenn Thrush interviews Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
By GLENN THRUSH
So it is spring here in lovely Albany, and spring for you means many things. Can I see your right arm? I am told it is a golden right arm.The French town that lost 15 boys to jihad
Inside the Parisian suburb earning unwelcome comparisons to Molenbeek.Spain counts cost of inevitable new elections
By DIEGO TORRES
Spain’s bickering politicians can’t even agree on how to keep campaign costs down.
04/18/16 12:00 AM EDTFederal court releases poet Ezra Pound, April 18, 1958
By ANDREW GLASS
He was one of the 20th century’s most venerated poets.
Updated 04/17/16 10:42 PM EDTPuerto Rico default bill on life support
By COLIN WILHELM and RACHAEL BADE
The territory is facing default.
04/17/16 09:23 PM EDTTrump insiders frustrated at Lewandowski’s attack on Florida GOP
By MARC CAPUTO
‘A complete amateur,’ one Trump source says of the campaign manager’s error-filled appearance on Fox.
2016
Updated 04/17/16 05:11 PM EDTClinton allies quietly shape general-election map
By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI
By hoarding ad space in battleground states, they hope to keep Republicans on defense, no matter who is their nominee.
SUPREME COURT
04/17/16 04:44 PM EDTObama's immigration legacy goes to court
By SEUNG MIN KIM
The president's historic legacy is also on the line in United States vs. Texas.
2016
04/17/16 03:14 PM EDTRNC rules clash erupts
By ALEX ISENSTADT and SHANE GOLDMACHER
The chairman of the GOP's powerful Rules Committee accuses party leadership of a "breach of trust."
04/17/16 12:37 PM EDTManafort vows Trump will protest Missouri, Colorado results
By COLIN WILHELM
Manafort said that protests needed to be filed soon, but offered no timeline.
CONGRESS
Updated 04/17/16 12:23 PM EDTShuster, tea party challenger trade blows at rancorous debate
By SARAH WHEATON
The House transportation chairman is forced to answer for his relationship with an airline lobbyist as he scrambles to save his seat.
04/17/16 12:21 PM EDTHillary Clinton: Trump's insults not even worth a response
By COLIN WILHELM
“What I am concerned about is how he goes after everybody else," Clinton said.
2016
Updated 04/17/16 11:42 AM EDTBernie's Roman holiday
By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI
The Vermont senator gains a global audience on a frenetic Vatican tour.
04/17/16 11:00 AM EDTPriebus dismisses Trump's 'rigged' claims as a lot of hot air
By COLIN WILHELM
"I’m not at odds” with Trump, Preibus said.
04/17/16 10:15 AM EDTKasich: 'Winning is accumulating delegates'
By COLIN WILHELM
Kasich argues that he is the most electable candidate in the general election.
04/17/16 09:55 AM EDTSanders taunts Clinton again on Wall Street ties
By COLIN WILHELM
He pledged that more than his 2014 taxes would be made public soon.
04/17/16 09:32 AM EDT'Seinfeld' meets Sanders on 'SNL'
By KRISTEN EAST
Julia Louis-Dreyfus reprises an old character opposite Larry David.
04/17/16 09:13 AM EDTClooney hopes Sanders stays in the race
By COLIN WILHELM
“I think what he's saying in this election is important if you're a Democrat,” Clooney said.
04/17/16 08:46 AM EDT92 days to Cleveland, 205 days to election – TRUMP warns RNC will have ‘rough July’ at convention -- KAREEM endorses – QUEEN BEE blesses HBO – JOSH ROGIN, ALI WEINBERG wedding -- B’DAY: Julie Davis
Trump loses delegates. Again.
2016
04/17/16 08:18 AM EDTTrump massacred in delegate fights once more
By KYLE CHENEY and KATIE GLUECK
More than 90 delegates were up for grabs Saturday. And Ted Cruz grabbed most of them. Again.
2016
04/17/16 07:39 AM EDTCould Trump Be Impeached Shortly After He Takes Office?
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN
We asked dozens of insiders about this highly improbable but much-discussed scenario.
04/16/16 10:52 PM EDTRules Committee votes to investigate Louisiana election, April 17, 1997
By ANDREW GLASS
Democrats began to invoke a Senate rule to block all committee meetings whenever the body was in session.
04/16/16 10:43 PM EDTKareem Abdul-Jabbar endorses Hillary Clinton
By KRISTEN EAST
He says Americans have a choice "between hell and reason.”Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says Americans have a choice "between hell and reason.”As Miami GOP picks delegates, Trump backers say they’re being left out
04/16/16 07:12 PM EDTRosie's comeback: O'Donnell slams Trump in new interview
By KRISTEN EAST
She says Trump is "not even qualified to run a game show."
04/16/16 06:27 PM EDTCruz sweeps Wyoming delegates
By KRISTEN EAST
He wins all 14 of the delegates available.
04/16/16 05:50 PM EDTNevada's Sandoval endorses Kasich
By KRISTEN EAST
Sandoval endorses weeks after his own state's caucus.
04/16/16 11:32 AM EDTFeds, Judicial Watch strike deal on Clinton email depositions
By JOSH GERSTEIN
There's no indication that lawyers for Mills, Abedin and Pagliano are on board.
04/16/16 11:27 AM EDTSenate Republicans move to settle rift over leadership terms
By BURGESS EVERETT
Lee is unlikely to win any referendum in the conference.
04/16/16 10:22 AM EDTWOMEN MAY HAVE TO WAIT for a face on a U.S. bill: ‘Hamilton’ saves Hamilton -- 5 MINUTES WITH BERNIE: Sanders thanks the Pope -- OBAMA has lunch with the Queen on Friday – ‘CONFIRMATION’ on HBO at 8
Sanders gets his meeting with Pope Francis.
2016
04/16/16 07:31 AM EDTIn the Big Apple, Political Fortunes Can Change in a New York Minute
By TODD S. PURDUM
You think Clinton and Trump have the primaries locked up? Whaddya talkin’?
04/16/16 07:29 AM EDT5 numbers that matter in New York
By STEVEN SHEPARD
POLITICO's take on the biggest numbers in politics this week.
2016
04/16/16 07:24 AM EDTTrump likely to win West Virginia but lose delegates
By KYLE CHENEY
An arcane ballot process, complex rules and even the alphabet threaten to hold Trump back.Bernie Sanders secures five-minute meeting with Pope Francis
04/16/16 12:35 AM EDTBernard Baruch coins term 'Cold War,' April 16, 1947
By ANDREW GLASS
On this day in 1947, Bernard Baruch, a multimillionaire financier and adviser to presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman, coined the term "Cold...
04/16/16 12:14 AM EDTClinton committee raised $33 million in first quarter
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
The report shows that the joint account, called the Hillary Victory Fund, spent heavily trying to develop a small donor base for Clinton’s presidential...
04/15/16 11:06 PM EDTBill Clinton: Sanders backers would 'shoot every third person on Wall Street'
By HANNA TRUDO
"One of the few things I really haven't enjoyed about this primary: I think it's fine that all these young students have been so enthusiastic for...
04/15/16 09:17 PM EDTTrump: Cruz supported Chinese currency manipulation
By BEN SCHRECKINGER
It is not clear which representatives of Chinese interests Trump believes pressured Cruz.
04/15/16 08:13 PM EDTSanders’ tax return: As ‘boring’ as promised
By TOBY ECKERT and HANNA TRUDO
Most of his earnings came from his $174,000 salary as a U.S. senator, as well as Social Security benefits.
04/15/16 07:44 PM EDTBiden: Pope Francis wouldn't endorse Sanders' policies
By HANNA TRUDO
Bernie Sanders temporarily stopped campaigning ahead of Tuesday's New York primary to speak at a Vatican conference about income inequality.
2016
04/15/16 06:22 PM EDTBernie's fanboy moment: A meeting with Pope Francis
By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI
Sanders gets what he came for: a 5-minute courtesy call by Pope Francis.Italy’s tangled oil and gas referendum
By SARA STEFANINIYou're All Caught Up
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POLITICOMorning Energy
The one-stop source for energy and environment news Subscribe115SHARES Facebook Twitter Google + Email Comment PrintABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Wolff is an energy reporter and author of Morning Energy. Prior to joining POLITICO in 2015, he covered the EPA for SNL Energy, an electric power trade publication. He started at the New York Sun, but he cut his teeth covering the real estate crisis and the emergence of solar power in San Diego County for the late North County Times, a daily newspaper.
He is married and living in Washington, D.C. with newborn twins. Think happy thoughts. MOST READRNC rules clash eruptsTrump insiders frustrated at Lewandowski’s attack on Florida GOPTrump massacred in delegate fights once moreThe nation’s cartoonists on the week in politicsCould Trump Be Impeached Shortly After He Takes Office?Clinton allies quietly shape general-election mapMy Night at the Playboy Mansion With Donald TrumpFeds, Judicial Watch strike deal on Clinton email depositionsClooney hopes Sanders stays in the raceHow the GOP Made Obama One of America’s Most Powerful PresidentsMORNING ENERGY - POLITICO ARCHIVEFriday, 4/15/16Thursday, 4/14/16Wednesday, 4/13/16Tuesday, 4/12/16Monday, 4/11/16View the Full Morning Energy Archives » POLITICO MAGAZINEHow the Hyper-Liberal Enclaves of America Could Pick the GOP Nominee
By SHANE GOLDMACHERCould Trump Be Impeached Shortly After He Takes Office?
By DARREN SAMUELSOHNShould We Be Turning Japanese?
By MICHAEL AUSLINMy Night at the Playboy Mansion With Donald Trump
By SURYA YALAMANCHILIClinton: Natural gas is a bridge fuel to be crossed 'quickly'
By ERIC WOLFF
04/15/16 10:00 AM EDT
With help from Alex Guillén, Darius Dixon, and Sara Stefanini
CLINTON: NATURAL GAS IS A BRIDGE FUEL TO BE CROSSED 'QUICKLY': The Democratic presidential candidates are stepping up their fight over natural gas as they drill for votes in the frack-phobic state of New York ahead of Tuesday's primary. Hillary Clinton argued at last night's Democratic debate that supporting fracking during her years as secretary of State was necessary to help wean the world from coal power and to assist Europe in getting out from under Russian pressure. The subject of New York's own fracking ban never came up at the debate, but Sen. Bernie Sanders brought back attacks that Clinton fostered fracking in other countries, an issue he's highlighted to the delight of his green backers. "For economic and strategic reasons it was American policy to try to help countries get out from under the constant use of coal, building coal plants all the time," Clinton said. "So we did say natural gas is a bridge. We want to cross that bridge as quickly as possible ... in order to deal with climate change."
Sanders: Paris agreement 'a lot of paper': In attacking what he sees as "incrementalism" in dealing with climate change, Sanders gave little credibility to the 195-nation Paris climate change agreement. "Of course the agreement is a step forward, but you know agreements and I know agreements, there's a lot of paper there," Sanders said. "We've got to get beyond paper right now." Clinton said she was "bewildered by how to respond," and the agreement "gives you the framework to actually take the action."
Hillary ducks carbon tax question: Sanders called on Clinton to commit to supporting a carbon tax to facilitate a move to low-carbon economy. Clinton avoided the question with a long winded answer outlining how she supported Obama's carbon rules and the importance of getting the president's Supreme Court nominee approved.
Republicans didn't miss their chance to attack the ban: Republican candidates campaigning in New York Thursday hammered the state's fracking ban. As POLITICO New York's Scott Waldman reports, frontrunner Donald Trump said the state is in, "deep trouble" because of the ban. "You look at Pennsylvania, right along the line they have machines all over the place and people driving around: You know the expression, they are driving in their Cadillacs," Trump said in an interview in Albany. "And on the other side of the line, which is just an artificial line, and people are literally in poverty. It’s just so incredible and we never took advantage." Speaking in Buffalo during a taping of an MSNBC town hall, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz blamed “knuckleheaded Democratic politicians” for the fracking ban, the Associated Press reported.
FINALLY FRIDAY AND WE'RE FREE AGAIN! I'm your host Eric Wolff, and I hope everyone feels like they had a productive week. Look at what happened: The energy bill realized it wasn't dead yet (It feels like singing!), energy and water approps moved in both chambers, the final well control rule emerged, and a presidential debate delved into fracking. Solid work, peeps! ME gives you the weekend off — which you'll need, because next week have more appropriations AND that energy bill may hit the Senate floor. As always, send your tips, quips, and comments to ewolff@politico.com, or follow us on Twitter @ericwolff,@Morning_Energy, and @POLITICOPro.
WATER IS FOR FIGHTING OVER: House Republicans loaded up a water and energy appropriation bill with drought relief provisions in a power move intended to force the issue on recalcitrant Senate Democrats. As Pro's Annie Snider reports, the energy and water appropriation bill that passed out of a House subcommittee Wednesday contained key sections of Rep. David Valadao's bill that Democrats and environmentalists oppose. The Senate energy and water bill, which contains none of the drought provisions, will likely reach the Senate floor next week, setting up a conference where the two bills would have to be reconciled. House Republicans expect that will give them more leverage than they might otherwise have if the government were funded by an omnibus negotiated by top leaders, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told a conference audience on Wednesday. "So it's not that just one leader can say no and kick everything out and kick the voices of millions of people out that want to do something about it," he said.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein has her own bill that she released in February. The bill contains less prescriptive language than Valadao's, and would fund longer-term solutions, like desalination. Feinstein and her staff have been pushing hard to move her legislation forward.
Murkowski and Cantwell ride again? Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Maria Cantwell, whose collaboration produced a bipartisan energy policy overhaul that could reach the Senate floor as soon as next week, may soon be free to turn their attention to water issues. Cantwell released a water-policy white paper last month, while Murkowski has shone interest in technological solutions to water problems and regulatory streamlining.
WELL CONTROL RULE UNDER CONTROL: The Interior Department released offshore drilling safety rules Thursday that give industry a little more flexibility than the proposed rule, but not enough to avoid backlash. As Pro's Elana Schorreports, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement called for stricter monitoring of the drilling process in the final rule, and it mandated additional inspections of blowout preventers, the piece of equipment on the Deepwater Horizon rig that failed to operate in the massive 2010 BP oil spill. Republicans like Louisiana Sen. David Vitter slammed the rule, saying it "is bad news for Louisiana, and certainly has the potential to kick our oil and gas industry while it's down." Florida Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson praised the rule, but said it wasn't enough, "While these much-needed regulations are a step in the right direction, they do not eliminate the threat we face from offshore drilling activities," he said in a statement.
EXPECTED TODAY — FIX TO MERCURY RULE: Today is the day EPA promised a federal court it would finish its shiny new “appropriate and necessary” finding to address the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that EPA should have considered costs when it first decided to regulate power plants for mercury. The new finding itself shouldn’t be surprising — EPA’s proposal in December said that, after weighing costs, it still believes it did the right thing and would have written basically the same regulation. That should have the effect of keeping the mercury rule in place, despite the court’s ruling, just in time for Saturday, which marks the deadline for the last few power plants to either come into compliance or shut down. The White House Office of Management and Budget finished its review of the fix on Wednesday. Michigan is currently asking the Supreme Court to force EPA to start from scratch, and EPA critics like Murray Energy have vowed to challenge this fix as well.
JUSTICE REVEALS DEETS ON ALLEGED CHINESE NUCLEAR TECH THIEF: The Justice Department unsealed a two-count indictment against Allen Ho, aka Szuhsiung Ho, on Thursday for allegedly conspiring to procure and develop nuclear power technology for a Chinese state-owned power company without legal authorization from the Energy Department. Ho, a U.S. citizen, was also charged with conspiracy to act in the U.S. as an agent of a foreign government and for not registering with the Justice Department. According to messages quoted in the indictment, beginning circa 1997, Ho was tasked with putting together a “comprehensive team to provide technology transfer” that would allow the China General Nuclear Power Co. to “bypass the research stage and go directly to the final design and manufacturing phase.” Ho’s team allegedly sought computer programs and technology related to small modular reactors and reactor fuel assemblies. If convicted, one of the conspiracy charges carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine, while the other carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison along with fines and supervised release.
T&I RELEASES PHMSA REAUTHORIZATION: The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released its own bill to reauthorize the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration on Thursday. As Pro's Andrew Restuccia reports, the bill resembles a reauthorization proposed by the Energy and Commerce Committee, though it adds a provision requiring rules for underground natural gas storage, a response to the massive Aliso Canyon leak, and it requires PHMSA to update Congress every 60 days on rules it was told to write in its 2011 reauthorization but has not yet completed.
WHAT HAPPENS AT 1.5 DEGREES CELSIUS? The U.N.’s climate science panel, the IPCC, has agreed to look into the impact of a 1.5 degree Celsius global warming increase, rather than the 2 degree target usually considered in climate negotiations. The report will examine the effects of a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees in 2018. On top of that, the IPCC will put together two other special reports — one on how climate change affects oceans and the cryosphere (frozen water such as glaciers and ice caps), and another on climate change and increasingly dry land, land degradation, sustainable land management and food security.
COAL INDUSTRY UNDER SO MUCH PRESSURE, MAY BECOME DIAMOND INDUSTRY: And the hits keep coming for the coal industry: On Thursday, Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, released its first list of 52 coal-dependent companies it would not longer invest in, including Peabody Energy, which declared bankruptcy on Wednesday, and American Electric Power. ME's European colleagues report that coal miners in Romania started a 320-kilometer “desperation march” to Bucharest this week to call for the rescue of their employer even as the Czech Republic's New World Resources bought itself all of a week to avoid a collapse of its own. On Wednesday, Austrian utility Verbund said it will sell its two remaining coal plants. “By 2020, we want to completely exit thermal power production and move to 100 percent renewables,” company spokeswoman Ingun Metelko said. POLITICO Europe's Sara Stefanini has the details on the demise of European coal.
AGU TO LET EXXON CONTINUE PAYING FOR BREAKFAST: The American Geophysical Union, a society of Earth and space scientists, decided it would keep ExxonMobil as a sponsor, AGU President Margaret Leinen, wrote on Thursday in a blog post, "In the end, by a majority vote, the board passed a motion that approved “continuing our current engagement between ExxonMobil and AGU including acceptance of funding from ExxonMobil.” The AGU's total support from Exxon in 2015 was $35,000 for a student breakfast at the organization's Fall Meeting Leinan.
WATER REGULATORS SIGN ON WITH FORMER COLE AIDE: The Ground Water Protection Council, made up of state groundwater regulators, hired Capitol Hill Consulting Group's Stratton Edwards, former legislative counsel for Republican Rep. Tom Cole, to lobby on the energy and water appropriations bill. Cole hails from a state where earthquakes have underscored fracking concerns. The council's top board members are from oil- and gas-producing states such as Texas and Ohio.
NOM NOM NOM: The White House plans to nominate Energy Dept. lawyer Susan Beard as Energy Department Inspector General. Beard has been the assistant general counsel for general law at DOE since 2004, and has held several agency legal positions since 1989.
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-energy/2016/04/clinton-natural-gas-is-a-bridge-fuel-to-be-crossed-quickly-213784
-
Administration Tries to Fix Air Pollution Rule After Supreme Court Loss
Apr 15, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Obama administration moved Friday to repair the problem with a major air pollution rule that the Supreme Court said last year was illegal.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a formal notice amending the 2012 limits on mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants, saying that the costs of regulating the emissions are reasonable and far outweighed by the public health benefits.
Regulators had previously made a similar finding during the process of writing the rule, but the Supreme Court said that analysis should have happened before the agency even decided to start writing it.
The action closes a major chapter in the fight over the landmark regulation dubbed MATS, one of the most expensive Obama administration rules and the reason for a recent wave of closures of coal-fired power plants, which often require retrofits to comply. It means the EPA can continue enforcing the rule for now — which it started doing in April 2015 — although even the Friday fix is likely to be challenged by the same Republican states and energy industry interests who led the previous litigation.
The EPA said its supplemental change “is confirming that it is appropriate and necessary to regulate emissions of toxic air pollutants, including mercury, nickel, arsenic and others, from power plants. This finding is particularly well-founded in light of the significant health risks toxic air pollution pose to the American public, and the fact that the public benefits achieved by the 2012 standards far outweigh the costs.”
The agency largely took the cost-benefit analysis that it had already completed and applied it to the supplemental change. That predicted public health benefits of up to $90 billion annually due to reductions in the ailments caused by those airborne pollutants.
The rule is separate from the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which limits carbon dioxide pollutants from power plants. That regulation is being litigated and was put on hold by the Supreme Court.
In last year's Michigan v. EPA, the court ruled that the Clean Air Act had a specific mandate, only for the mercury rule, that the EPA first find that such a regulation is “necessary and appropriate,” and that the EPA ought to have completed a cost-benefit analysis before it decided to regulate.
But the Supreme Court declined to put the mercury rule on hold. In the 5-4 ruling, the justices did not ask the EPA to stop enforcing the rule. Later, both the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refused to halt the rule.
http://www.thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/276455-obama-admin-tries-to-fix-air-pollution-rule-after-supreme-court
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Petitioners Fire Latest Volley in Clean Power Plan Fray
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Attempting to justify its Clean Power Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency merely “ties itself in knots” by downplaying issues about whether Congress granted it the authority to issue the regulation, petitioners said in a reply brief April 15 (West Virginia v. EPA, D.C. Cir. , No. 15-1363, reply briefs filed 4/15/16).
More than two dozen states, industry, utility and other groups argue the regulation seeks to fundamentally transform the domestic energy sector by relying on the “unprecedented assertion” that Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act permits it to effectively shut down existing fossil fuel power plants in favor of “new, EPA-favored plants” to replace them.
“EPA urges this Court to uphold the rule because it addresses what EPA views as ‘the nation's most important and urgent environmental challenge,' ” the brief states. “But this case is not about the wisdom of any particular policy; it is about whether EPA acted within its delegated authority, as all federal agencies must do. Because it has not, the rule must be vacated.”
The reply brief comes nearly two weeks after a broad coalition of elected officials, major companies, health and environmental organizations and former EPA officials defended the agency's interpretation of its authority under the Clean Air Act to curb carbon dioxide pollution from existing power plants (64 DEN A-1, 4/4/16).
Final briefs in the litigation are due April 22.
Oral arguments in the litigation are slated for June 2 and possibly June 3 before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit panel of Judges Judith Rogers, Karen LeCraft Henderson and Sri Srinivasan. The U.S. Supreme Court has stayed the regulation pending the completion of litigation.
Separate Procedural Brief
In a separate brief, petitioners said the docket underlying the Clean Power Plan is “replete with fatal procedural and record-based flaws” that require the rule to be vacated.
Namely, according to the brief, the EPA's proposed rule did nothing to suggest the agency was “contemplating nationwide, uniform rates for coal- and natural gas-fired units” and did not offer petitioners adequate opportunities to comment on the approach.
Though the EPA suggests the states should ask the agency for reconsideration under Section 307(d)(7)(B) of the Clean Air Act, the brief said such a remedy “cannot apply where there has been a wholesale failure of notice. Holding otherwise invites evasion of the rulemaking process.”
The brief also says the agency's definition of best system of emission reduction—which the petitioners say strays “far from the statute and past practice”—under the Clean Power Plan is impermissible because “no individual regulated source, on its own, can meet the uniform national standards with any demonstrated control technology. Not one.”
In addition, the brief argues the EPA has not adequately shown existing infrastructure is in place to accommodate the regulation and that the agency has not shown the Clean Power Plan would not compromise grid reliability.
‘Wholesale Lawmaking by an Agency.'
A third brief, filed by intervening groups backing state petitioners, argued the Clean Power Plan represented an effort by the EPA to “usurp lawmaking authority that belongs to Congress or judicial power that belongs to the courts” and is a literal “power grab.”
“The rule runs roughshod over individual liberties and makes policy judgments reserved for Congress, not a politically unaccountable agency,” the brief said. “Never before has such a sweeping regulation been premised on anything resembling EPA's outlandish suggestion that Congress in 1990 effectively enacted two different versions of Section 111(d), the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.”
WESCO International Inc., Norfolk Southern Corp., Peabody Energy Corp. and the Gulf Coast Lignite Council were among the groups on the brief.
The brief argues the EPA “flouts a clear statutory prohibition” by regulating units already covered under hazardous air pollutant standards from Section 112 of the Clean Air Act. Such an action contradicts regulatory positions taken by the EPA during both Democratic and Republican administrations, it said.
“EPA would transform Section 111(d) into a general enabling act, giving the agency authority over the entire electric grid, not to mention the entire American economy,” the brief said. “EPA would convert an obscure, little-used provision into the most powerful section of the CAA, rendering much of the remainder surplusage.”
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EPA Reaffirms Finding on Power Plant Mercury Rule
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
Cost considerations do not alter the Environmental Protection Agency's determination that it is “appropriate and necessary” to regulate power plants under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act, a finding that led to promulgation of the mercury and air toxics standards, the agency concluded.
The final supplemental finding, signed by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy April 14 and posted online April 15, was issued in response to a 2015 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 5-4 opinion authored by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the court held that the EPA erred when it did not consider cost in its threshold decision on whether to move ahead with the promulgation of hazardous air pollutant standards for the power sector (Michigan v. EPA, 135 S. Ct. 2699, 2015 BL 207163, 80 ERC 1577 (2015);125 DEN A-1, 6/30/15).
The supplemental finding (RIN 2060-AS76), which must be published in the Federal Register before it takes effect, was welcomed by the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund and other environmental groups that helped defend the regulation in court. However, it is expected to trigger another round of litigation by states and industry groups that oppose the power plant regulation and who may use the supplemental rulemaking as an avenue to challenge the EPA's long-standing practice of counting the co-benefits of regulations (52 DEN B-1, 3/17/16).
“I'd expect that they have their challenges to the rule ready to go,” Adam Riedel, an associate with Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, LLP, told Bloomberg BNA April 15.
Riedel added that the finding is likely to have minimal effect on most power plants, given that the majority have already made the necessary investments to come into compliance. Most plants were required to comply with MATS by April 2015, but some received a one-year extension that delayed the compliance date until April 15, 2016.
EPA Takes Two Approaches
While the Michigan v. EPA decision held that the EPA was required to consider cost in making the “appropriate and necessary” finding, the court did not specify how it must do so. The agency's supplemental finding used two separate approaches to cost based on existing information in the record developed when the agency promulgated the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards in 2012, which were projected to cost the power industry as much as $9.6 billion annually.
In its preferred approach, the EPA evaluated four cost metrics to determine if implementing the MATS rule would be reasonable for the power sector. Those metrics are:
• a comparison of the power sector's annual revenues with the projected cost of compliance,
• a comparison of the power sector's overall annual capital expenditures with the projected capital expenditures required to comply with MATS,
• the projected effect of compliance costs on retail electricity prices and
• possible effects on reliability of the nation's power grid related to power plant retirements attributed to the MATS rule.
Those four metrics were weighed against the EPA's prior conclusions about the health and environmental hazards related to power plant emissions of mercury and other pollutants, as well as the level of emissions reductions that would be achieved through regulation under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act, the agency said.
“The evaluations across each of the different metrics reveal that the cost of complying with MATS—compared to historical annual revenues, annual capital expenditures, and impacts on retail electricity prices—is well within the range of historical variability,” the agency said. “The EPA further finds that the power sector is able to comply with the rule's requirements while maintaining its ability to perform its primary and unique function—the generation, transmission, and distribution of reliable electricity at reasonable cost to consumers.”
The secondary approach taken by the EPA involved a full cost-benefit analysis conducted by the agency in support of the MATS rule, which identified as much as $90 billion in annual benefits associated with implementation.
‘Substantial' Benefits Identified
The agency said in its finding that the cost-benefit analysis demonstrates that the benefits of the MATS rule “are substantial and far outweigh” the costs.
Sanjay Narayan, an attorney for the Sierra Club who helped defend the MATS rule, told Bloomberg BNA that the EPA's conclusions were not surprising because the benefits of regulating power plants under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act have long been clear. He described the regulation as a “tremendous bargain” for the public, with benefits outweighing costs by a 9-1 ratio.
“It's not a close call,” Narayan said.
Narayan said that now that the supplemental finding has been issued, the courts will likely be asked to consider whether the EPA's chosen approaches toward cost consideration are reasonable.
Opponents of the MATS rule, including Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R), Southern Co. and the Utility Air Regulatory Group, lined up several potential legal arguments in comments on the proposed supplemental finding, including allegations that the EPA's proposal was flawed because the agency did not conduct a new cost-benefit analysis (15 DEN A-15, 1/25/16).
Riedel of Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, LLP said those comments foreshadowed that lawsuits will challenge the EPA's preferred approach as being an inappropriate way to consider cost. While the Supreme Court's Michigan v. EPA opinion did not contain much guidance on how the EPA should consider cost, petitioners will likely argue that the court wanted the EPA to go back and do a new, full cost-benefit analysis of the rule's effects on the power sector, Riedel said.
On the secondary approach, the likely legal challenge will be on the EPA's use of co-benefits to support the regulation, Riedel said. Many comments on the proposal raised concerns about the EPA's decision to count the benefits associated with reducing fine particulate matter and other pollutants not directly regulated under Section 112, a practice that Chief Justice John Roberts questioned during March 2015 oral arguments in Michigan v. EPA.
William Kovacs, senior vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, criticized the use of co-benefits to justify the MATS rule in a statement issued in response to EPA's supplemental finding.
“We need increased transparency in the federal rulemaking process so the public, and the regulated companies, know exactly what is being targeted by each regulation, how much implementation will actually cost, and how the public benefits,” Kovacs. “Almost all of the benefits of this so-called mercury regulation actually come from purely incidental reductions of fine particulate matter emissions, which are already well below the level that EPA considers safe.”
Riedel said the inclusion of two independent approaches was a way for the EPA to “protect against having to do this all over again.” While the EPA was very clear that they want the court to review the preferred approach, the secondary approach serves as a backstop in case petitioners were successful in their argument that the Supreme Court wanted the EPA to conduct a full cost-benefit analysis.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=87438487&vname=dennotallissues&fn=87438487&jd=87438487
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EPA 'Ties itself in Knots,' Foes Tell Judges
Apr 15, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Robin Bravender
U.S. EPA is tying "itself in knots" in its legal defense of the Obama administration's signature climate change rule, the agency's challengers told a federal court today.
The agency is "torn between touting the rule's significance and downplaying the extraordinary nature of what it seeks to do," a broad coalition of states, industries and others say in their latest filings in a massive lawsuit looking to upend EPA's Clean Power Plan.
Today marked the deadline for the roughly 150 parties suing over the regulation to reply to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Obama administration last month submitted its defense of what it called an "eminently reasonable" regulation to cut power plants' greenhouse gas emissions (E&ENews PM, March 28).
Despite EPA's claims, challengers argue today in a consolidated brief to the court that "EPA does seek fundamentally" to transform the domestic energy industry. "EPA's novel contention that it may require emission reductions premised on altering the nation's mix of electric generation -- resulting in a rule with sweeping implications -- cannot stand because EPA has not shown clear congressional authorization," they say.
The agency, its foes say, failed to acknowledge the Supreme Court's "unequivocal statement" that it expects Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign agencies decisions of vast "economic and political significance." EPA, the brief adds, "cannot deny that altering how electricity is produced in this country is a decision of vast economic and political significance," and the notion that the Clean Air Act section EPA used to issue the rule clearly "confers that monumental power on EPA strains credulity."
The challengers dispute EPA's interpretation that the term "best system of emission reduction" can refer to a single gridwide system to reduce emissions, rather than an emission limitation that individual sources can achieve. They also reiterated their claims of "double-regulation," arguing that the Clean Air Act "flatly forbids" EPA from regulating power plants' greenhouse gas emissions under the law's Section 111(d) when the agency is already regulating those sources' hazardous air pollutants under Section 112.
EPA argues its "regulation of different pollutants under a different statutory program does not nullify its authority under Section 111(d)." The agency contends that its interpretation of "ambiguous" language in the law is consistent with the Clean Air Act's purpose and the legislative history.
States, industries and others also say the EPA rule violates the 10th Amendment "by commandeering and coercing state officials" because it forces states to carry out federal policy whether under state or federal plans.
"EPA urges this court to uphold the rule because it addresses what EPA views as 'the nation's most important and urgent environmental challenge,'" the challengers say. "But this case is not about the wisdom of any particular policy; it is about whether EPA acted within its delegated authority, as all federal agencies must do. Because it has not, the rule must be vacated."
The broad coalition of state and industry critics of the regulation filed a second document today laying out criticisms of the rule's "fatal procedural and record-based flaws." That includes an argument that EPA's final rule was vastly different from its proposal and is therefore illegal.
Coal companies intervening in the case and represented by Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe filed a separate reply brief today arguing that EPA should not be given the deference courts typically grant to agency rules.
"EPA argues this case involves 'ambiguous' statutory language and garden-variety application of Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council," the coal companies' brief says, referring to a case that found courts should defer to agencies' reasonable interpretation of the law when the statute is ambiguous.
"But this case is not ordinary, as the Supreme Court's unprecedented stay order confirms," the brief adds. The Supreme Court earlier this year took the unprecedented step of putting the Clean Power Plan on ice while the court fight plays out in the D.C. Circuit.
Tribe and the coal companies argue that the Clean Air Act is "not a constitution, and EPA is not a legislature (not even a junior-varsity one)." The companies also warn that under EPA's "expansive interpretation" of its authority, "EPA could even impose a mandate on power plants to reforest Indonesia!"
Final briefs from all parties in the case are due next Friday. The three-judge panel is slated to hear oral arguments in the case on June 2.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/04/15/stories/1060035737
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Federal Agencies Provide FAST Act Guidance
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amy Phillips
Federal transit, rail, and highway agencies have provided joint guidance on implementing recent surface transportation statutory provisions geared toward speeding environmental reviews and analysis of impacts to historic properties, parks and wildlife refuges.
The Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, signed on Dec. 4, 2015, aims to further streamline transportation projects, including revised environmental reviews for surface transportation projects under the National Environmental Policy Act and new ways to evaluate impacts to historic sites, parks, and refuges under Section 4(f) of the Act.
The two question-and-answer style guidance documents were issued jointly by the Federal Transit Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Federal Railroad Administration. The first guidance document concerns the applicability of the revised environmental review provisions at 23 U.S.C. 139 to various types of projects. The second Q&A guidance document provides information on the applicability of the new statutory revisions aimed at streamlining compliance with Section 4(f). The documents, dated March 30, were released by FTA on April 12.
NEPA Implementation Guidance
The NEPA-related Q&A document provides guidance on applicability of the new provisions for rail and other projects. Specifically, the agencies note the following:
• FRA is required to apply the environmental review process at 23 U.S.C. 139 to its projects to the greatest extent feasible, but it does not apply to projects with environmental impact statements published prior to the date of enactment (Dec. 4, 2015) or for which funding was approved prior to that date;
• the limitation on claims applies to railroad projects, but it is 2 years instead of 150 days for those projects;
• changes made under Section 1304 of the act apply to FHWA and FTA projects for which a notice of intent to develop an EIS is published after the date of enactment, and to FHWA and FTA projects for which an applicant submits a request for the Secretary of Transportation to designate a lead agency after that date;
• revised environmental review requirements regarding notice of initiation only automatically apply to projects evaluated with EISs and is discretionary for other environmental documents. In general, FHWA will make such determinations on a project-by-project basis, whereas FTA and FRA will only apply the requirements to EISs;
• project development procedures related to federal permitting improvement under Title 41 do not apply to FHWA, FTA, or FRA; however, separate provisions require the agencies to provide information on projects with EISs or environmental assessments for inclusion on the federal “permitting dashboard”; and
• the agencies will provide additional guidance on implementing the Section 1304 environmental review provisions.
Section 4(f) Guidance
The second Q&A guidance document provides information on the applicability of new statutory provisions on environmental requirements for parks, recreation areas, wildlife and waterfowl refuges, and historic sites under Section 4(f). The guidance notes that the FAST Act requires the agencies to align Section 4(f) with NEPA and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act “to the maximum extent practicable.”
The law also creates an alternative process for agencies to comply for historic sites when the agencies determine there is no feasible and prudent alternative to avoid use of an historic site. The “optional” process would require additional concurrence points, and agencies are permitted to use their existing Section 4(f) procedures instead, the guidance said.
The guidance also notes the following related to the Section 4(f) provisions:
• Section 1303 exempts from Section 4(f) review the use of historic, common post-1945 concrete or steel bridges and culverts that are exempt from individual review under Section 106;
• the Section 4(f) exemption for railroad and transit lines applies for projects where the environmental review was initiated after the date of enactment; it does not apply to projects for which funding was approved prior to the date of enactment. It does not apply to rail stations, transit stations, bridges or tunnels on a line that has been abandoned or is not in use. The guidance specifies types of facilities that are not considered “abandoned or not in use” for purposes of the exemption and it specifies that the exemption does not satisfy Section 106 consultation requirements;
• the Section 106 exemption for railroad rights-of-way, which would be parallel to the exemption for the Interstate Highway System, will not take effect until action is taken by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
The April 12 announcement of the guidance documents noted that the three agencies are “developing additional guidance that will be announced as it is developed.” It recommends directing project-specific questions to the agencies' regional offices.
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House Panel Schedules Pipeline Safety Bill Markup
Apr 15, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has scheduled an April 20 markup for legislation it released April 14 that would reauthorize the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a Republican committee aide told Bloomberg BNA April 15. In addition to reauthorizing PHMSA for four years, the legislation (H.R. 4937) also includes language giving the department emergency authority in the event of accidents and requires PHMSA to set federal minimum safety standards for underground natural gas storage facilities. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to mark up a draft version of its own PHMSA reauthorization legislation sometime this month.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=87438492&vname=dennotallissues&fn=87438492&jd=87438492
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House Transportation Panel to Vote on Safety Bill
Apr 18, 2016 | E&E Daily
By Hannah Hess
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will vote this week on legislation to reauthorize the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, one of three pipeline-safety bills moving through Congress.
Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) told E&E Daily on Friday that his committee is working with the Transportation panel and "getting close" to holding its own markup of a separate PHMSA reauthorization.
"I don't expect any big blowups or anything like that," Upton said. "I think that we're in harmony, and so I'm expecting that things proceed pretty well."
Created by the Department of Transportation in 2004, PHMSA develops and enforces regulations for 2.6 million miles of U.S. gas and hazardous liquid pipelines.
The agency, on the hook for long-awaited regulations on natural gas pipelines, has come under fire on Capitol Hill for failing to pass that rule and address several other congressional mandates dating back to 2011 (E&E Daily, Feb. 26).
In March, the Senate passed its own measure to reauthorize the agency through fiscal 2019. Like the House bills, it would direct PHMSA to prioritize implementation of specific directives required in its last authorization before initiating new rules (E&E Daily, March 4).
Unlike the Senate bills, House legislation would give the Transportation secretary "emergency order" authority.
The provision is a top priority for Democrats, who say it would allow PHMSA to implement necessary safety actions without going through a lengthy rulemaking. For instance, DOT used its emergency order authority last year to limit the speed of oil trains traveling through major cities (EnergyWire, April 20, 2015).
Republican lawmakers blasted the language during a recent subcommittee markup of the legislation (Greenwire, March 16).
The Transportation Committee bill, up for a vote Wednesday, includes additional language that would provide for judicial review of such orders and place limits on the secretary's authority. The emergency order authority is tailored to the pipeline sector, "taking into account public health and safety, network, and customer impacts," the committee stated last week when it released the bill (E&E Daily, April 15).
Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), a co-sponsor, did not elaborate on the differences when asked about the provision by E&E Daily.
"We have three bills right now that we plan on working through details," Denham said. "But they all three are very, very close on holding the administration accountable to their current rulemaking and actually making our pipelines across the country much safer than they are today."
Upton said he had not seen a side-by-side comparison of the two bills, "but I feel pretty good that we'll be able to work it out."Pressure grows
The agency is also in the midst of a reorganization called PHMSA 2021, a plan to make the agency more data-driven and transparent. Administrator Marie Therese Dominguez, who took office last year, announced the planned improvements in February.
Denham said, "We expect as PHMSA continues to restructure that they'll restructure in such a way that this bill will allow them to get the rulemaking done quickly and start meeting some deadlines."
The worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, spanning 16 weeks in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, has renewed urgency to the ongoing debate.
California lawmakers demanded language requiring PHMSA to set federal minimum safety standards for underground natural gas storage facilities to be incorporated in the reauthorization as part of an ongoing effort to reduce methane pollution.
All three versions of the bill also include language that would also establish a working group on information sharing. PHMSA would work with states, industry stakeholders and safety groups to develop recommendations on how to create a data-sharing system that can improve safety while shielding proprietary data.
Lawmakers on the Homeland Security Committee are also entering the debate.
Tomorrow, the Transportation Security Subcommittee will hold a hearing titled "Pipelines: Securing the Veins of the American Economy" to examine how the Transportation Security Administration works with pipeline stakeholders to secure infrastructure.
The panel will hear from Andrew Black, head of the Association of Oil Pipe Lines, and a witness from the American Gas Association, among others.
Upton said to "stay tuned" for news from the Energy and Commerce Committee on an upcoming markup of their legislation.
Schedule: The Homeland Security subcommittee hearing is Tuesday, April 19, at 2 p.m. in 311 Cannon.
Witnesses: Sonya Proctor, surface division director, Office of Security Policy and Industry Engagement, Transportation Security Administration; Andrew Black, president and CEO of the Association of Oil Pipe Lines; Kathleen S. Judge, director of risk and compliance for global security at National Grid USA, testifying on behalf of the American Gas Association; and Paul W. Parfomak, specialist in energy and infrastructure policy, Congressional Research Service.
Schedule: The Transportation Committee markup is Wednesday, April 20, at 10 a.m. in 2167 Rayburn.
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2016/04/18/stories/1060035758
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Oil and Gas Sector No. 1 Methane Emitter -- EPA
Apr 15, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly
U.S. EPA published today its final greenhouse gas inventory showing total U.S. emissions rose about 1 percent between 2013 and 2014.
Revising previous estimates of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, EPA found natural gas systems were the country's largest source of methane in 2014, accounting for a third of total emissions.
EPA will likely use this final version of the inventory to support its decision to draft methane regulations for existing oil and gas operations.
"Data on oil and gas show that methane emissions from the sector are higher than previously estimated," EPA said in a statement accompanying the greenhouse gas inventory.
The Obama administration will submit the 558-page report to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, to show progress toward President Obama's pledge that the United States would reduce greenhouse gas emissions between 26 and 28 percent by 2025 compared with 2005 levels.
EPA found that total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 were 6,870.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, or 6,108 million metric tons when offsetting carbon sinks are taken into account.
While there was a slight increase in emissions between 2013 and 2014, total U.S. emissions in 2014 were 8.6 percent lower than 2005 levels, taking into account carbon sinks.
The slight increase in total greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 was due to increased fuel use in residential and commercial sectors because of increased winter heating demands. That year also saw an increase in fuel use in the transportation sector and an increase in miles traveled by vehicles.
"National GHG emissions are going down over the long term," EPA said, "but minor variability year-to-year is to be expected."
By sector, power plants were the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in 2014, accounting for 30 percent of total emissions. They were followed by the transportation sector at 26 percent, and industry and manufacturing at 21 percent.
Along with reporting total U.S. emission figures, EPA's inventory also calculates releases of various greenhouse gases. The agency's methane figures are particularly important this year, given that it's poised to take steps to regulate methane emissions in the Obama administration's final year. The inventory will likely help guide those rules.
Methane, according to EPA, is a greenhouse gas that's more than 25 times as potent as CO2.
Total U.S. methane emissions in 2014 were 730.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. That's a decrease of 5.6 percent compared with 1990 levels, but an increase from 2005 levels of 717.4 million metric tons.'Significant new emissions'
In a change from its draft inventory, EPA found that the natural gas sector was the biggest methane emitter, followed by livestock production and landfills. The draft had ranked landfills first, followed by livestock production and natural gas systems (Greenwire, Feb. 22).
EPA said that the inventory includes "significant new emissions" data gathered through its greenhouse gas reporting program.
In an email, EPA said the draft contains updated numbers for the oil and gas sector only for 2013. The final inventory includes updated methane emissions estimates for the entire 1990-2014 time series, "allowing a complete comparison of methane sources," the agency said. EPA revised prior emissions estimates upward by about 30 percent, it added.
According to the final version, natural gas systems in 2014 emitted a total of 176.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, up from 175.6 million metric tons in 2013.
While natural gas emissions in 2014 were slightly down from their 2005 level, they've trended upward since at least 2010.
That finding undercuts the argument that the oil and gas industry has been making that regulations over the sector are not necessary because voluntary actions have reduced methane emissions over the past several years.
Environmentalists quickly jumped on the inventory as showing that new methane limits are needed for the petroleum industry.
"Data gathered in the field show that the oil and gas methane problem is much larger than government or industry was telling us, and today EPA is rightly making a necessary set of corrections," said Mark Brownstein, vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund's climate and energy program. "Fortunately, major reductions in methane pollution are possible with some simple technologies and systematic efforts to find and fix leaks."
Still, the oil and gas industry pushed back against new regulations in the wake of the final inventory's release, arguing that the big increase in natural gas production in recent years hasn't produced a proportionate spike in methane emissions.
"Even if we assume that EPA's estimates are correct we still see that natural gas production has skyrocketed without a corresponding crisis in methane emissions," Katie Brown, a spokesperson for industry group Energy in Depth, wrote in an email. "Over an eleven-year period, methane emissions from natural gas systems were basically flat, even as production increased 42 percent. EPA's data still do not indicate that methane emissions will significantly increase, as EPA has claimed to help justify its costly new methane rules."
EPA is planning to soon issue what's known in regulatory parlance as an information collection request to kick off the rulemaking process to regulate methane emissions from existing oil and gas operations.
Rules limiting emissions from existing operations, though, will likely not be completed under the Obama administration (Greenwire, March 10).
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/04/15/stories/1060035735
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The U.S. Has Been Emitting a Lot More Methane Than We Thought, Says EPA
Apr 15, 2016 | The Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
This story has been updated.
The Environmental Protection Agency has released a major upward revision to its estimates of total emissions of methane, a hard-hitting if short-lived greenhouse gas, in an annual inventory that the agency submits to the United Nations. The revisions will further up the stakes in a political battle overregulations that the agency is preparing to issue that could affect operations at thousands of oil and gas wells.
“Data on oil and gas show that methane emissions from the sector are higher than previously estimated,” said the agency in a news release upon the report’s release. “The oil and gas sector is the largest emitting-sector for methane and accounts for a third of total U.S. methane emissions.”
Prior inventories, such as last year’s report, which provided data through the year 2013, had suggested that the U.S.’s highest source of methane wasruminant animals like cattle and other livestock, rather than the oil and gas industry.
The agency revised upward total methane emissions in the U.S. for the year 2013 from 636.3 million metric tons to 721.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, driven in significant part by increased estimates of emissions from oil and gas operations. And the overall methane emissions number is still higher for 2014, the most recent year in the inventory, at 730.8 million metric tons.
“What EPA essentially is doing is restating the numbers using the better data, that has been collected from the field,” said Mark Brownstein, who heads the oil and gas program at the Environmental Defense Fund, which has focused heavily on the methane issue in recent years. “What has long been thought is that emissions in the field are higher than what had been historically reported in EPA’s emissions inventory, and now, when you use that better data, it is higher.”
Some of the most substantial upward revisions involved emissions from natural gas and petroleum systems across the country — an emissions source that has increasingly been targeted by environmentalists, who say that the boom in domestic oil and gas production has driven greater methane emissions.
The EPA revised its methane numbers upward for multiple years in its inventory. According to the agency, the average increase per year due to its revisions was 12.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents for natural gas systems (now the largest category of methane emissions), and 20.7 million metric tons for petroleum systems.
Methane totals are reported in units of “carbon dioxide equivalents” so that scientists can better make an apples-to-apples comparison between different greenhouse gases. Methane is known to have a much larger warming effect than carbon dioxide, but only over a short time period, whereas carbon dioxide has a far longer time of residence in the atmosphere.
“The big picture is that, yes, EPA’s estimate of methane emissions has increased, most likely due to them receiving better data,” said Kristin Igusky, an expert on methane with the World Resources Institute. “Because methane emissions are greater than we previously thought, it’s that much more important that policies are put into place to bring emissions down in this category,” she said.
It’s important to emphasize that the latest upward revisions only account for a relatively small fraction of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which were predominantly in the form of carbon dioxide, rather than methane. Overall, emissions increased about 1 percent from the year 2013 to 2014, the last year in the newest inventory, according to the EPA.
Yet the upward methane revisions were still substantial when considered as a percentage. For instance, an analysis provided by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) found that if you compare oil and gas emissions for the year 2014 in the EPA’s latest inventory, with emissions for 2013 in the last year’s inventory, then there is a 34 percent increase — and the group said that 31 percent of that is “solely due to methodological change.”
A growing body of scientific research has suggested of late that EPA’s prior estimates of methane emissions might be too low. “An overall increase is appropriate, given what we’ve been seeing for the last few years,” said Stanford University researcher Rob Jackson, who has published a number of these studies.
The EDF’s Brownstein observed that, “Overall, these numbers refute the industry claim that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry have been declining over time.”
But a major industry group, the American Petroleum Institute, disputed the numbers Friday. “They’ve made a significant modification to the inventory estimates, and we believe that it is seriously flawed,” said Kyle Isakower, the group’s vice president of regulatory and economic policy.
Concerns about methane emissions from leaking oil and gas operations and systems has led to more and more emphasis on controlling these sources, fast, to lessen warming in the short term. President Obama and Canadian premier Justin Trudeau just jointly announced plans to seek a cut in oil and gas methane emissions by 40 or 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025.
But if the new EPA data are right, 2012 levels themselves were considerably higher than previously thought.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/04/15/epa-issues-large-upward-revision-to-u-s-methane-emissions/
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