Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 5/2/2016
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(ACC Mentioned) Must We Wait for Proof of Ills Before Banning Flame Retardants?
May 2, 2016 | Boston Globe
By Kathryn Rodgers
Thank you to David Abel for highlighting the disproportionate health burden that firefighters bear in “Ban sought on flame retardants” (Metro, April 25). Robert Simon, of the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical companies, misses key information... -
Industry Groups Puzzled by EPA's New Refrigerant Deadline
May 2, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
The air conditioning and heating industry is objecting to U.S. EPA speeding up by a year the deadline in the latest efforts to curtail hydrofluorocarbons that have a high global warming potential. -
Do Your Household Cleaners Have the EPA’s Safer Choice Label?
May 2, 2016 | EcoWatch
By Jennifer McPartland
Like millions of Americans, you might have wondered what chemicals are in those cleaning bottles under the kitchen sink. -
NGOs Still Coordinating Multistate Rule Preparations
May 2, 2016 | E&E Power Plays
By Emily Holden and Rod Kuckro
While some states are openly moving forward with preparations for the Clean Power Plan, others are resorting to less-formal stakeholder conversations, especially in the face of potential spending or planning restrictions from legislatures. -
LCV's Karpinski Says Clinton Most Effective on Advancing New Energy Economy; State Races to Shape Power Plan's Future
May 2, 2016 | E&E TV
On the heels of the signing of the Paris Agreement, climate and energy issues continue to play an oblique role in the presidential race. As the general election nears, how will climate and energy play, and how could these issues shape the final outcome? During today's OnPoint... -
Christie Official: N.J. Has No Plans to Comply with Climate Rule
May 2, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Elizabeth Harball
A top official to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) told an environment advisory board gathered to discuss a federal climate change regulation that the state has no plans to comply. -
Wyo. Pollution Study Seeps into Fracking Rule Battle
May 2, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
A controversial new study on water contamination from oil and gas development has made its way to a high-stakes legal battle over hydraulic fracturing. The question now is whether the court should consider it. -
How Fracking Funds the Radical Right
May 2, 2016 | New Republic
By Audrea Lim
Harold Hamm, as Gary Sernovitz describes him in The Green and the Black, is a quintessential rags-to-riches American success story. The “shack-raised Hamm ‘talked like a hick’” and also repaired cars and pumped gas before becoming an Oklahoma oilman... -
Colorado High Court Rules Local Bans on Fracking Are Illegal
May 2, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Dan Frosch
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that municipalities can’t bar hydraulic fracturing, a long awaited decision in a legal battle that has rippled across this energy rich state. -
Why We’re Still So Incredibly Confused About Methane’s Role in Global Warming
May 2, 2016 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
It’s perhaps the most contentious issue in U.S. climate change policy right now: How can we deal with emissions of methane, a powerful if short-lived greenhouse gas, which has many sources but appears to be leaking into the air in considerable volumes from U.S. oil... -
G7 Calls for Continued Energy Investment Despite Low Oil and Gas Prices
May 2, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Sara Stefanini
G7 energy ministers today acknowledged the importance of investment in clean and efficient energy, and stressed the need to maintain investment in upstream energy supplies and infrastructure. -
Ransomware Strikes Mich. Utility
May 2, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
A municipal utility in Michigan confirmed it has been hit by "ransomware," a type of computer virus that locks up files and holds the digital key hostage. -
MARC, Amtrak Service Disruptions Monday Due to CSX Train Derailment
May 2, 2016 | Washington Post
By Luz Lazo and Faiz Siddiqui
Three cars remain to be re-railed Monday morning at the scene of Sunday’s derailment of a CSX train in Northeast Washington, federal investigators said. -
Construction Starts on Dakota Access Oil Pipeline
May 2, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
Officials at Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) said the Dakota Access Pipeline LLC unit has begun construction on the four-state, 1,154-mile project to ship Bakken crude oil to markets along the East, West and Gulf coasts. They expect the project to be completed by the end of this year. -
Texas High Court Strikes Down Houston's Air Pollution Rules
May 2, 2016 | Tribune News Service
By Susan Carroll
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday struck down Houston's air quality ordinances, ruling the city overstepped its authority to police polluters and handing industry advocates a major victory. -
Protecting the Environment is Critical for a Stronger America
May 2, 2016 | The Hill - Contributors Blog
By Amanda D. Rodewald
It's budget time again, and the House Republicans have released a new plan: "A Balanced Budget for a Stronger America." There is little to disagree with in the opening line of the budget: "A strong America is built on opportunity and the passion and talents of a free people... -
Texas Floods Flush Fracking Chemicals, Crude Oil into Rivers
May 2, 2016 | Dallas Morning News (In E&E Greenwire)
By Chris Siron
Recent floods across Texas have overwhelmed oils wells and hydraulic fracturing sites, causing crude oil and toxic chemicals to flush into the state's rivers.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Must We Wait for Proof of Ills Before Banning Flame Retardants?
May 2, 2016 | Boston Globe
By Kathryn Rodgers
Thank you to David Abel for highlighting the disproportionate health burden that firefighters bear in “Ban sought on flame retardants” (Metro, April 25). Robert Simon, of the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical companies, misses key information about the chemicals the state is now considering banning.
Of the 12 flame-retardant chemicals included in the proposed legislation, none has received a pass for safety. These chemicals already either have been banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency, are being considered for effects on human health and potential regulation by the EPA, or have not been studied enough to make a determination.
Simon asserts that there is no so-called proof that these chemicals cause cancer among firefighters. However, we know that these chemicals are found in the bodies of firefighters and that some of these chemicals cause cancers in animal studies.
To satisfy industry’s call for proof, I suppose one could conduct an experiment in humans and expose half of them to high levels of flame retardants, and then wait to see if the people get cancer years later. Who wants to sign up for that?
Kathryn Rodgers
Staff scientist
Silent Spring Institute
Newton
The institute is a nonprofit research organization advancing science on cancer prevention and environmental health.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2016/05/01/must-wait-for-proof-ills-before-banning-flame-retardants/xl2ae8hyb4eitaqMERa4rK/story.html
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Industry Groups Puzzled by EPA's New Refrigerant Deadline
May 2, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
The air conditioning and heating industry is objecting to U.S. EPA speeding up by a year the deadline in the latest efforts to curtail hydrofluorocarbons that have a high global warming potential.
The agency issued a proposal in late March that in part calls for phasing out three types of HFC-containing refrigerants from use in chillers. The proposal incorporates what was seen as an unprecedented agreement between industry and environmentalists to eliminate the heat-trapping chemicals -- except for one detail.
EPA's proposal would move up the groups' agreed-upon timeline by a year, from Jan. 1, 2025, to Jan. 1, 2024.
"From our point of view, seriously? One year?" said Francis Dietz, a spokesman for the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute. "We're just sort of confused."
Dietz said bumping ahead the timeline by a year would make it difficult for some manufacturers to line up equipment to incorporate alternatives to the HFCs.
At issue are chillers used to cool large- and medium-sized buildings. They're generally more efficient, but also more expensive, to use for cooling buildings than rooftop air conditioning units.
Up to two-thirds of chillers use as a refrigerant the hydrofluorocarbon known as 134A, according to Alex Hillbrand, a technical analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The compound is 1,400 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, according to the latest figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Environmentalists view the phase-down of HFCs as a key part of achieving broader climate change goals.
Limiting HFC use worldwide has the potential to prevent up to 200 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent from being released into the atmosphere by 2050 and could avoid up to 0.5 degree Celsius of warming by 2100, according to the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.
"Along with methane and black carbon, mitigating HFCs will get us to a place where our carbon cuts can make a difference," Hillbrand said.
In February, the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council told EPA that they had reached an agreement on an eight-year timeline for phasing out three HFCs used in chillers, including 134A.
While the two groups have worked on other efficiency rules issued by the Department of Energy, the agreement was the first time they've come together on HFCs. The groups asked EPA to finalize the timeline through its Significant New Alternatives Policy, or SNAP, program.
"This schedule provides adequate time for industry to launch products that have been tested and certified by the existing laboratories and certification agencies," AHRI and NRDC wrote (Greenwire, Feb. 2).
The alternatives would have a lower global warming potential. On NRDC's side, Hillbrand said, the eight-year time frame was meant to ensure that manufacturers would make the investment in alternatives with lower global warming potential and not be tempted to switch to cheaper rooftop units.
EPA's proposal is technically similar to the agreement, but the agency bumped up the timeline by a year. EPA did not give an explanation for why it chose the timelines it did.
"Why not give the extra year?" Dietz said. "You're talking about organizations that are not going sailing together every weekend. I think that that ought to carry some weight."
Dietz said the eight-year target was already an accelerated timeline for industry to make the necessary changes to incorporate alternative refrigerants.
"It's important because each manufacturer has different processes in terms of research and development, product testing, getting manufacturing lines ready for different equipment, that sort of thing," he said. "There are some of our manufacturers for whom the earlier date might work, and then there are some who need that extra time."
Hillbrand said NRDC is trying to figure out what the climate impacts of speeding up the timeline by a year would be. He said NRDC was enthusiastic about the proposal but acknowledged AHRI's concerns.
"A lot of the spirit of NRDC's concerns are addressed in EPA's proposal," Hillbrand said. But, he added, "it doesn't reflect the fact that we went through a long process of industry going forward in the development timelines."
EPA on April 18 opened a comment period on the proposal, which includes the phaseout of other refrigerants along with the HFCs used in chillers. The environmental and industry groups say they may file joint comments.
The Obama administration has already used the proposed measures to demonstrate to the international community that the United States is committed to amending the Montreal Protocol this year to phase down HFCs. Nations are expected to agree to an amendment later this year.
"This new proposal would reduce the use and emissions of some of the most harmful HFCs, which are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a statement, "and approves safer, more climate-friendly alternatives to protect public health and our environment."
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/05/02/stories/1060036559
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Do Your Household Cleaners Have the EPA’s Safer Choice Label?
May 2, 2016 | EcoWatch
By Jennifer McPartland
Like millions of Americans, you might have wondered what chemicals are in those cleaning bottles under the kitchen sink.
Are they safe to use when time comes to mop floors, wipe counters and scrub a toilet? Are their strong vapors toxic and can they hurt your skin?
Thanks to a federal labeling program, shoppers can now find products that meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) standard as a Safer Choice for families—and pets. The program won’t child-proof products or necessarily make chemicals harmless, but it will help ensure that their ingredients are safer.
2,500 Products Labeled So Far
The voluntary Safer Choice program seeks to recognize and bring consumer awareness to products that are leading the way when it comes to safer ingredients.
For a product to carry the Safer Choice logo, all its ingredients must pass the program’s health and environment criteria. It must also meet requirements around packaging, performance and ingredient disclosure.
Today, there are shockingly few federal ingredient disclosure requirements for cleaning products. So Safer Choice makes a big step in the right direction here, but we’d like to see the program go even further when it comes to requiring disclosure of fragrances.
Currently, shoppers can choose from more than 2,500 Safer Choice products, most of which are household and industrial cleaners.
Leading retailers such as Wegman’s, Safeway, Staples, Office Depot and Costco have made significant strides toward offering Safer Choice products on their shelves. At the same time, Walmart is working on getting its private label products recognized by the program per itssustainable chemistry policy and Target rewards points to products with Safer Choice certification through its sustainable product index.
Kids Need a Safer Choice
There is growing evidence that certain chemicals in common use can harm our health and children whose bodies are still developing are especially at risk.
Children typically eat, drink and breathe more relative to their body weight. They are often on the floor where dirt and dust that contain toxic substances settle and they love to put those little hands in their mouths.
The truth is, our current chemical safety law doesn’t do enough to keep children safe from chemicals in our homes. Even for a chemist like myself it can be hard to always know which product ingredients are cause for greater concern.
Safer Choice is a step in the right direction, but we also know that more needs to be done to keep toxic chemicals out of everyday household products.
We Know Labels Work
The Energy Star program showed the power of an EPA-backed label. For years, it’s helped consumers find more energy efficient appliances and encouraged companies to meet the demand for such products.
As shoppers now seek out the Safer Choice label and ask retailers to carry products carrying that label, more companies will participate by adding more certified products to the shelves. This will, in turn, spur innovation and development of safer chemicals and products for everyone.
So, next time you’re looking to restock those cleaners under your kitchen sink, be on the lookout for that label.
http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/02/epa-safer-choice-label/
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NGOs Still Coordinating Multistate Rule Preparations
May 2, 2016 | E&E Power Plays
By Emily Holden and Rod Kuckro
While some states are openly moving forward with preparations for the Clean Power Plan, others are resorting to less-formal stakeholder conversations, especially in the face of potential spending or planning restrictions from legislatures.
Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center, a group that has been coordinating state talks on the U.S. EPA rule, said those actions can have a "chilling effect" in some states.
"Even if you would like to have constructive dialogue, you might want to have your own stakeholder process move forward, your formal processes -- some of them have definitely backed off doing that in the interim," Arroyo said.
But she said states are participating in informal planning efforts.
"Many of them feel like at the very least it's helpful for them to talk across state lines," Arroyo said.
Arroyo's group last week sent a letter signed by 14 state officials requesting more information and technical help from EPA on the rule. The letter was not necessarily meant as a show of support for the Clean Power Plan, but as a prudent step for states that feel they still must plan, in case the rule is upheld (ClimateWire, April 29).
The Georgetown Climate Center, however, hasn't convened states to talk about the rule since the stay and may not do so until the fall, Arroyo said.
Dave Clegern, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, said Western states are looking for similar details.
Ten out of 13 originally participating Western states are still attending meetings organized by the Center for the New Energy Economy in Colorado, former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) confirmed last week.
Clegern said Western states want guidance on what final portions of the Clean Power Plan might look like "just because it's so key to everything we're doing."
"It'll be much easier for everyone to work together if we have that model," Clegern said, referring to model carbon trading rules EPA has yet to finish.
While state officials can come under political fire for working on the Clean Power Plan, legislators are also seeing attacks for thwarting rule preparations.
The Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund is launching a five-figure radio adagainst two Democratic Pennsylvania lawmakers, John Yudichak and John Blake. The two voted to require legislative approval of Gov. Tom Wolf's (D) work on the rule. Wolf vetoed that measure.
The Institute for Policy Integrity this week released a policy brief arguing that states and EPA can still prepare for carbon cuts under the stay.
In other additions to our Power Plan Hub toolbox, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy released guidance on low-income energy efficiency options.
The Climate Law and Policy Project also has a new report on using revenues from carbon trading to spur more emissions reductions.
On Thursday in Illinois, the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago hosts aconversation between lawyers Sean Donahue and Tom Lorenzen, who are on opposing sides of the case, about whether the rule will survive legal challenges.
In case you missed it:
· West Coast states are continuing work on how to mesh their power sectors with federal carbon regulations (ClimateWire, April 29).
· Other states are moving forward on preparations, although less formally (ClimateWire, April 27).
· Colorado Democrats shot down a bill to halt state carbon planning talks (ClimateWire, April 28).
· The American Energy Alliance, a prominent conservative energy group, says it is backing a push in state legislatures across the United States to bar funding for work on the rule (ClimateWire, April 28).
· EPA sent the Office of Management and Budget a portion of the rule that would cover credit for early development of renewable power and low-income energy efficiency projects (ClimateWire, April 27).
· CPP challengers want five hours of oral arguments in front of federal judges in June (Greenwire, April 29).
· A North Dakota lawmaker opposing the Clean Power Plan says he would want to open the Clean Air Act up for revision if the rule fails (ClimateWire, April 29).
Reporter Debra Kahn contributed.
http://www.eenews.net/interactive/clean_power_plan/column_posts/1060036556
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May 2, 2016 | E&E TV
On the heels of the signing of the Paris Agreement, climate and energy issues continue to play an oblique role in the presidential race. As the general election nears, how will climate and energy play, and how could these issues shape the final outcome? During today's OnPoint, Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, explains why he believes former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is best-suited to advance the new energy economy. He also discusses key Senate and House races that will directly affect state action on climate change.
Monica Trauzzi: Hello and welcome to OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. With me today is Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. Gene, it's always nice to have you on the show.
Gene Karpinski: Great to see you again, Monica.
Monica Trauzzi: All right, Gene, so on the heels of the signing of the Paris Agreement, climate and energy issues continue to play more of an oblique role in the presidential campaign. We see more discussion, of course, on the Democratic side. Much has been said about Hillary Clinton's acceptance of money from fossil fuel companies, and of course LCV has endorsed Clinton for president. Does this hurt her environmental record, the fact that she has accepted money? Or the confidence in her commitment to advance the Obama climate agenda? Do you think there's any impact?
Gene Karpinski: No, actually, we don't. And to be clear -- and thank you for noting that -- we got into the presidential race the earliest we've ever been in a presidential race by far, before any votes were cast back in November. We interviewed all three Democratic candidates, none of the Republicans. We didn't make the time for them because they were all climate deniers and opposed to a Clean Power Plan. We got in early and we were all in for Hillary because, most importantly, she's the most effective person to get the job done starting on day one.
As you know, we've made incredible progress in the last nine months, from the Clean Power Plan to the rejection of Keystone to the Paris Agreement back in December, and the signing, as you said, earlier this month, to a moratorium on coal leasing, extended wind energy tax credits -- it's a whole host of progress. That just shows all that's at stake in November. Because clearly Hillary Clinton is a leader on these issues, she's speaking.
We liked the fact in the Democratic primary there's been competition among all three candidates as to who can have the best plan. That's what we like. But clearly she's had a very strong plan, she'll be a great leader, she'll get the job done from day one, and that's what it's all about. And as you know, sadly, the two leading Republican candidates, not do they only oppose the Clean Power Plan, which is silly in and of itself, but they're hard-core climate change deniers. They're really doubling down on the denial. Donald Trump has said publicly it's a hoax. Ted Cruz has said it's pseudo-science. They don't get it at all. So the good news about that, I think there will be a sharpened conversation in the general election, because Hillary Clinton has been leaning into these issues, talking about it all the time. And both of the leading Republican candidates are hard-core deniers.
Monica Trauzzi: So you don't worry about any ties to the fossil fuel?
Gene Karpinski: No, look, clearly she's been a leader, she's been a champion, she speaks about this all the time very strongly, so that's not a concern. The concern is making sure she wins in November, because all that's at stake, given all the progress we've made particularly in the last nine months with President Obama really in ... the issues, using his executive authority, we can't go backwards. That's what's at stake, she gets it, and we need to build on that progress, and that's why it's such a critical election.
Monica Trauzzi: Wall Street's ties to the energy industry run deep and Clinton has spoken before Wall Street audiences, this has been widely reported, and received hefty payments for those speeches on several occasions. Are you privy to what she said during those speeches, and should there be cause for concern among Democrats who are looking for her to move the country towards a more clean energy future and away from Big Oil?
Gene Karpinski: I obviously was never in the room for those conversations, haven't been privy to what went on. But again, we're not at all worried. Most importantly, you have to look at what she's talking about, what her plan is, who her advisers are. She's clearly leaning in one direction. She's seen what President Obama has done and she's said that's the right direction, we need to double down and do more. Solar panels, renewable electricity, reduce carbon pollution, be a world leader like she was when she was secretary of State. That's what it's all about. It's about what the candidate's been saying, what the candidate's been doing, what their track record is, and we are totally confident that when she gets in that office she'll be building on the progress we've made and do a lot more. Sadly, it's very clear that both Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz will go in the opposite direction, and that's why so much is at stake in November.
Monica Trauzzi: Do you think she should release those transcripts?
Gene Karpinski: You know, no. I think what she said is what she says, which is, if everyone releases all their transcripts to every private speech they gave, then let's have at it, but I don't think that's going to happen. If you ask the voters, that's not what they care about. That's not an important issue in the campaign. So that's up to them to figure that out, and I think she's made clear what she said about that. I don't think that's going to happen on the other side either. That's kind of like a red herring, so to speak, about what's really at stake here, which is the clean energy future and solving the climate crisis. She's laid down a strong plan. Republicans want to go backwards. That's what's at stake here.
Monica Trauzzi: Bernie Sanders has a 95 percent lifetime score from LCV. Why not endorse him?
Gene Karpinski: Well, you know, hats off to him for being not just a consistent vote as he has been as a senator, but also talking about this issue all the time. But like I said, we interviewed all the candidates. We had lengthy conversations with all of them, and we have a political committee that has that interview. Then we go to our entire board. It's the only endorsement decision we go to our full board. We had a great conversation with them last year. And it was very clear from all the conversations we had that Hillary Clinton would be the most effective from day one to get the job done. She's worked these issues, she knows these issues, she understands how the executive branch can work, she's been around it for many, many years as you know, so she'll make sure we build on that progress.
We'd like to think that we can legislate in the Congress. Some day that will happen again. We actually did get the extension of the solar and wind tax credits in the last year, that was great, but most of the effort is going to have to be in the short term at least through the executive branch. She gets it, she knows it, she has people around her that know how to do that. We're totally excited about having her be the next president.
Monica Trauzzi: Let's talk about the other side. With the limited policy information we have, what do you believe realistically a Trump presidency would mean for energy and environment issues, and particular the energy economy?
Gene Karpinski: Well, he just doesn't get it. Everything we've heard about him he says climate change isn't really a problem. That was the interview with The Washington Post. He literally is in public town halls saying it's a hoax. He just doesn't understand what the future's about. So I think it's scary from all kinds of levels. Understanding what the new energy economy should be about and building for the future, it doesn't seem like he understands that at all. Being an international leader, you know, President Obama has really stepped up, as you said, both in Paris back in December and signing the agreement with Secretary Kerry last week, that's hugely important leadership in the world. Because if we don't lead ... the fact that China and India are in these conversations is because we became leaders in going forward and cutting carbon pollution. We need that kind of leadership.
I don't think Mr. Trump gets that at all. And Mr. Cruz, you know, from Texas, tied to the oil companies, his lifetime score is less than 5 percent. They just don't get this. They have a different view. They're totally aligned with the fossil fuel industry, and that will just take it backwards. Given the stakes, given how serious the climate change crisis has become, we see the evidence all the time, we have to keep going forward. Both of them will take us backwards, they just don't get it.
Monica Trauzzi: Much of the success of the Clean Power Plan will be based on what happens at the state and local levels, and what members of Congress do. Are the state and local races just as critical as the presidential race to either advancing or derailing the Obama climate agenda?
Gene Karpinski: Let's start with the fact that having a climate champion in the White House is probably the single most important thing. But as you said, in implementing the Clean Power Plan, one, you have to have a court that gets the plan. So what's at stake in November, we wish the Senate would do their job now and put a new justice on the Supreme Court. That's a difficult challenge, as we know, but we're all in for that effort, but we need to have a court that gets it, and eventually we'll get there. But then really a lot of the decisions, as you said, Monica, are going to be back at the states.
So take an example, we're heavily involved in some governors races this year. Someone like Jay Inslee from the great state of Washington, they have been a leader in pushing forward on a clean energy future. In fact, Jay wrote a book about it. He has a cap on pollution as part of his program. I'd like to call him the greenest governor in the country. We'll be helping to make sure he gets elected.
A place like North Carolina, Governor McCrory, is horrible on this stuff. But the current attorney general who refused to join the lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan is trying to be the next governor. So you have Roy Cooper, an environmental champion, against Mr. McCrory, who is horrible. So the stakes are high in a place like North Carolina, a place like Washington and other places.
And if you look forward to 2018, there are a lot more governors races at stake. Some of the biggest polluting states like Ohio, like Pennsylvania, like Michigan, like Wisconsin, where a lot of these coal-fired power plants are, those governors are up in 2018. So a lot of what happens, in particularly the governors races, when it comes to implementing the Clean Power Plan, they're at stake -- some in '16 and even more in 2018.
Monica Trauzzi: And obviously the balance of the House and Senate are at play as well heading into November. Which races have you identified as the most crucial particularly on energy and environmental issues?
Gene Karpinski: We're looking at a handful of Senate races in particular where the contrast between the candidates is very sharp. So take the example of Pennsylvania. We got in early in the primary to endorse Katie McGinty. She just won her primary last Tuesday. Her whole life has been about fighting for environmental protection and for climate change. I first met her when she was working for Al Gore back in 1989, this has been her life, her commitment. We got in early, she won the primary. She's got a really tough race against Mr. Toomey. Toomey's lifetime score I believe is a 7, so he almost always votes the wrong way. Having Katie McGinty rather than Pat Toomey in the Senate from Pennsylvania is one example.
Go to Wisconsin -- Ron Johnson, 5 percent lifetime score, consistent climate change denier. And he's actually proud of it. And again, he just doesn't get it. Russ Feingold trying to become the new senator from Wisconsin, he was the senator of Wisconsin, had a 95 percent lifetime score. He's campaigning on these issues, he's talking about these issues, that's an important race. And again, we're looking at places where there's a sharp contrast between a climate change champion like Katie McGinty or Russ Feingold, and a climate denier like Pat Toomey and Ron Johnson.
Monica Trauzzi: It's an exciting time to be involved in politics.
Gene Karpinski: It's a scary time because so much is at stake, but our issues are part of the conversation, which is important. And the good news, as you know, the public's on our side. The public supports the Clean Power Plan, they support the clean energy future, they support what we did in Paris. So we need to make sure that public gets out and votes, and that's what's at stake.
Monica Trauzzi: All right, we'll end it right there. Thank you. Thank you for your time.
Gene Karpinski: Good to see you, Monica, thank you.
Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching; we'll see you back here tomorrow.
http://www.eenews.net/tv/videos/2125/transcript
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Christie Official: N.J. Has No Plans to Comply with Climate Rule
May 2, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Elizabeth Harball
A top official to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) told an environment advisory board gathered to discuss a federal climate change regulation that the state has no plans to comply.
John Giordano, assistant commissioner for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, took the floor midway through a daylong meeting of the 18-member state advisory group to reiterate the state's opposition to U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan. New Jersey is one of 27 states suing to challenge the rule in court.
"New Jersey is already doing more to reduce CO2 emissions than the Clean Power Plan ever could, even if it survives legal challenge, which we don't expect," Giordano said to attendees, according to written notes provided by DEP. "Here in New Jersey, striving for clean power is already in our DNA; we don't need EPA's re-engineering."
Giordano continued, "So, just to clarify, in case there is any misconception or misunderstanding, we are not acquiescing to EPA and currently [are] not developing a Clean Power Plan. While we have an excellent understanding of EPA's regulation, we are litigating the agency's strategy that excludes New Jersey's successes at reducing carbon intensity from our power sector."
DEP spokesman Bob Considine said in an email that the fact that the Clean Air Council held the Clean Power Plan meeting last week does not indicate New Jersey is looking at how it could comply with the federal rule, which would require the state to reduce its carbon emissions rate 23 percent from 2012 levels by 2030.
"Each year, a hearing on a topic of interest is decided upon," and the Clean Power Plan was this year's chosen topic, Considine said.
"The Clean Air Council meeting is a forum for a free exchange of ideas, consistent with the Christie Administration's goals for transparency and public discourse," he added.
A call for mass-based trading
The Clean Air Council, which advises the New Jersey DEP on air regulations, includes 14 gubernatorial appointees. According to a handout provided by the council, the group held the meeting to seek feedback on a wide range of topics related to Clean Power Plan implementation, including what carbon-trading options other states may consider under the rule and whether the state should participate in the Clean Energy Incentive Program, which rewards early construction of renewable energy and energy efficiency in low-income communities.
Jackson Morris, Eastern energy director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, presented at the meeting and described the overall dialogue as "generally pretty productive."
"We heard from a lot of different folks, none of which I heard were obstructionist, and all of which were presenting thoughts on a path forward for New Jersey," Morris said.
In his presentation, Morris noted that if the Clean Power Plan is upheld by the court system, New Jersey must submit a state compliance plan to EPA or the agency will regulate its power plants directly through a federal plan.
Morris also recommended that the state develop a mass-based carbon trading strategy, arguing that its participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate power-sector carbon-trading system in the Northeast that already works under this model, was a "proven winner" for New Jersey before Christie opted to remove the state from the program in 2011.
Pam Kiely of the Environmental Defense Fund, who also presented at the meeting, called it "a very constructive and open conversation," though she added, "they were certainly clear that, as a state, they oppose the rule."
Kiely said that during her presentation, she argued that the Clean Power Plan provides flexibility to states in how they can comply with the rule.
Critics slam meeting as 'sham'
Another presenter at the meeting, Ken Colburn of the Regulatory Assistance Project, told the council how state planning for the rule could be conducted in the context of larger energy industry changes and New Jersey's goals and policies for the sector.
"To its credit, New Jersey understands this context and is wisely exploring how it might align implementation of the [Clean Power Plan] -- if it survives litigation -- with the state's Energy Master Plan," Colburn said in an email, referring to the state's long-term plan for managing energy prices and demand under the Christie administration.
However, not everyone who attended the meeting was happy with how it went.
The New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club released a statement calling it a "sham," and Director Jeff Tittel, who also attended, said he believes Christie administration officials have no interest in pursuing any action related to the Clean Power Plan based on the statements Giordano and others made at the meeting.
Tittel, a frequent critic of the Christie administration, argued that if the governor had not taken actions like removing the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the state would be well-positioned to meet the goals of EPA's climate rule.
"These goals are relatively modest for New Jersey," Tittel said.
This story also appears in EnergyWire.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2016/05/02/stories/1060036545
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Wyo. Pollution Study Seeps into Fracking Rule Battle
May 2, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
A controversial new study on water contamination from oil and gas development has made its way to a high-stakes legal battle over hydraulic fracturing. The question now is whether the court should consider it.
The research, released last month, ties water pollution to oil and gas activity in Pavillion, Wyo. -- the site of a yearslong investigation that was abandoned by U.S. EPA in 2013. A former EPA scientist now at Stanford University followed up on the agency's work and determined that water wells in the small town were likely contaminated with fracking wastes stored in unlined pits (ClimateWire, April 4).
Environmental groups defending the Obama administration's new rule for fracking on public lands flagged the study for a federal court last week. As the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming weighs whether the fracking rule is legal, it should consider the findings of the latest Pavillion study, the groups argued.
"The Citizen Groups submit the attached articles to ensure that the Court is not left with an incomplete picture of the Pavillion research," lawyers for the Sierra Club, Earthworks, the Wilderness Society, the Conservation Colorado Education Fund and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance wrote in a legal brief.
The study's findings, they say, underscore the very purpose of the fracking rule: to protect against environmental and health damage from fracking. The rule sets new requirements for well construction, wastewater management and chemical disclosure, and requires operators to submit drilling plans and obtain Bureau of Land Management approval before fracking.
"By requiring advance review and approval, BLM's hydraulic fracturing rule allows the agency to identify such operations and ensure that measures are taken to protect usable aquifers," they wrote.
But according to Western states challenging the fracking rule, the newest Pavillion research has no place in the litigation. Not only is the environmentalists' request out of line with court procedural rules, they said, it's also not relevant to the litigation.
"[T]he so-called supplemental authority is not 'pertinent and significant,'" lawyers for Wyoming, Colorado and Utah told the court Friday. "Instead, the Special Interest Groups' sur-reply is an attempt to rebut the factual conclusions of a Wyoming water quality study that post-dates the fracking rule."
The states added that even the original EPA Pavillion study was irrelevant because BLM didn't use the study as a basis for the fracking rule.
Judge Scott Skavdahl has discretion over whether to accept the Stanford study as a "supplemental authority" in the case. The Obama appointee has previously focused on broader questions of agency jurisdiction in the litigation, zeroing in on whether BLM has authority to regulate fracking.
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060036555
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How Fracking Funds the Radical Right
May 2, 2016 | New Republic
By Audrea Lim
Harold Hamm, as Gary Sernovitz describes him in The Green and the Black, is a quintessential rags-to-riches American success story. The “shack-raised Hamm ‘talked like a hick’” and also repaired cars and pumped gas before becoming an Oklahoma oilman, with decades of successes and failures that amounted to a fairly unextraordinary career. Then horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing—“fracking”—technology arrived. This could unlock the vast oil and gas reserves throughout America that were trapped beneath impermeable shale rocks—in the Bakken, Eagle Ford, Permian, and Marcellus regions—and that had long ago been written off by industry as inaccessible, second-rate. In fact, by the twenty-first century, all the onshore reserves in the lower 48 were thought to be near tapped out. But within less than a decade, the “shale revolution”—or fracking boom—transformed the U.S. into the world’s leading producer of oil and gas.
Hamm, founder and CEO of Continental Resources, understood the potential of this technology before most. Driven by an almost-otherworldly ambition (“I wanted to put myself in a position to find the ancient wealth,” he told the writer Gregory Zuckerman in his book The Frackers), he adopted a “high-risk strategy to secure large amounts of oil” in these foregone regions, and was “relentless in trying techniques until one worked.” Some of his experiments failed, but eventually he succeeded, and by 2015, his fortune amounted to $12.2 billion.
“The more I study Hamm’s career, the more I admire him,” writes Sernovitz, a novelist-turned-Managing Director of an oil-and-gas-focused private equity firm. Assessing the U.S. fracking boom, Sernovitz frames it as the story of “disruptive innovators” who, like Hamm or Jeff Bezos, began by selling scrappy, low-margin products that bigger, more sophisticated companies (like Exxon Mobil) had abandoned. Eventually, through continuous innovation, these products wind up taking over the entire industry, just as shale oil has now flooded the world market. Why, asks Sernovitz, has the concept of “disruptive innovation” been applied only to the tech industry, and not to the fracking boom? Is it because the end product hasn’t changed—it’s still oil and gas, no matter how it gets out of the ground—or because these innovations are seen as “akin to someone replacing leather with performance fabrics on horse saddles: perfectly reasonable but irrelevant to the march of time”?
This is a good question, and one that is surely connected to how we view these end products today: as essentially passé. Fossil fuels, in an era dominated by the climate change debate, seem to belong to a past that we simply don’t know yet how to put behind us. But on Sernovitz’s reading, a thoughtful public discussion about this transition has been forestalled by a massive polarization of the debate—environmentalists against; industry for—which has flattened, in the public eye, the differences within industry, such as between big oil and the little guys, or between oil and what he points out is “cleaner” natural gas. These differences, he claims, might offer a way out of our predicament, but fracking has fallen victim to the broad vilification of big oil—especially Exxon Mobil or Koch Industries—and to misinformation about how the fracking process affects groundwater.
The result has been a disproportionate focus on the local impacts of fracking, including environmental health and the inconveniences to individual landowners, at the same time as the “Keystonization” of energy issues has made automatic targets of any new liquefied natural gas terminals (gas is liquefied so it can be transported by ship), drilling wells, and pipelines. In fact, Sernovitz argues, the story of the shale boom includes both winners and losers in every region and demographic—and big oil, which long ago abandoned these shale reserves, is counted among the losers. (Winners include: shale companies; landowners who got rich by leasing their land to them; and the U.S. manufacturing sector, which has thrived on the low price of petroleum products.) But despite all the noise about fracking, Sernovitz thinks that fracking’s great contribution remains unrecognized. The boom, he argues, has unlocked a plentiful domestic supply of natural gas to bridge the transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
The Green and the Black is an argument for fracking that attempts a middle way between two contradictory but inescapable facts: that global warming demands a shift away from fossil fuels, and that the project of raising living standards for a growing population requires a major increase in energy production. No doubt this is a worthy project—if anything, it is the project for ushering mankind into a sustainable future—and Sernovitz’s attempt is thoughtful and entertaining. But is fracking really the answer?
Sernovitz, a well-meaning supporter of Obama’s environmental program, does not dismiss the many offenses that have tarnished the oil and gas industry’s reputation: their secrecy and deceit in perpetuating climate change denial; the catastrophic spills, including Deepwater Horizon; or the alleged connection between Shell and the killing of Nigerian activists. He also, to his credit, acknowledges the many issues around fracking that have turned off many Americans: air pollution from flaring; the earthquakes in Oklahoma; the accidents and spills (500 to 800 per year in Colorado since 2010); or the water contamination (256 water wells in Pennsylvania from 2008 to 2015)—to name just a few. These should not be downplayed, he argues, but they are also largely the result of lax regulation and a poor understanding of techniques and geology in the early stages of the boom. Things are changing, he claims. “Industry is getting better at minimizing the impact of the boom on air, water, and land through a desire for profits (and avoided lawsuits), an ethic of responsibility, and an awareness that operators are being watched ever more closely by regulators, activists, and the press.”
I’m not sure Sernovitz’s faith in the goodwill of companies and the regulatory system’s capacity to intervene is warranted. To what extent do attempts to avoid controversy and nuisance actually amount to the same behaviors as acting responsibly? As anyone who has ever admonished a child (or been a child admonished) knows, stricter guidelines around cookies inspire smarter strategies for skirting the rules just as often as they inspire compliance—not because children are evil, but because children ultimately want the cookies. And if the controversies that companies face, such as local resistance based on water safety concerns, fall short of actually threatening their operations or bottom line, will they still be compelled to address them?
However, this is not Sernovitz’s focus; his main defense of fracking is that natural gas can act as a “bridge fuel,” or a cleaner alternative to oil until solar and other renewable technologies are cheap enough to replace fossil fuels in an economically-viable way. Already, the shale boom is helping America transition away from coal, thanks to the low price of natural gas—a result of the over-abundant supply—and the growing momentum of environmental campaigns against coal (which also, not incidentally, received large donations from another pioneer of the shale revolution, the recently-deceased Aubrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy). These same forces have also rendered dirtier, more carbon-intensive fossil fuels like the Canadian tar sands virtually unprofitable (for now). But in arguing his “bridge fuel” thesis, Sernovitz also provides his own counterargument: that the shale boom, as it exists today, actually produces far more oil than it does natural gas (78 percent of U.S. rigs in 2014 were drilling for oil). This means that fracking is just as likely to slow the transition away from fossil fuels.
“I believe that the difficult (but necessary) global effort to reduce oil and coal demand should be joined by a supply fight to reduce emissions: not a fight against supply but a fight withsupply,” writes Sernovitz, critiquing the environmental movement for focusing its energies on divestment from big oil—or in other words, on supply. The only strategy that will work, he claims, is to target consumer demand. But Sernovitz’s story also includes the revival of U.S. manufacturing—one of the winners of the shale revolution—as well as consumers purchasing fewer hybrid cars like the Prius, both because of low gas prices (from 2014 to 2015, U.S. sales of alternative energy cars decreased by 13 percent, while sales of luxury SUVs increased by 37 percent). The suggestion here is that a cheap and abundant supply of oil can also create more demand for it. This begs the question: How are more expensive technologies like solar supposed to compete with natural gas so long as gas remains this cheap? After all, new investment in natural gas (including pipelines and LNG terminals for export, transportation, and distribution) will help keep gas affordable. And will a sense of morality be enough to encourage consumers to switch to the Prius, or convert to solar, if cheap oil and gas will continue to have the market cornered for the foreseeable future?
Markets always exist within a political system—which Sernovitz doesn’t discuss. And Harold Hamm, whose career he admires, also appears as a character in a different story, about the making of a political system that arose at roughly the same time that the shale revolution kicked off.
In Dark Money, the journalist Jane Mayer describes how a network of ultra-wealthy libertarians, centered around the Koch brothers, bankrolled a vast array of organizations to push their radical free-market agenda—for lower taxation and government regulation of businesses—into the mainstream. The most visible manifestation of this program has been the Tea Party, which was widely considered a populist uprising. However, this was just one part of their systematic, three-stage plan to mass-produce a far-right revolution: by training the next generation of libertarian scholars (through research institutes and think tanks like the Cato Institute); mass-marketing their ideas through advocacy groups (like Tea Party-affiliated organizations Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners); and by mobilizing those groups to lobby and pressure politicians. As Mayer documents in meticulous, impressive detail, the influence of this “Kochtopus” has been vast, weakening consensus on climate change and blocking meaningful efforts at finance, labor, and environmental reform. And their impact is a reflection on their size, which dwarfs the Republican Party. The Koch network has three times as many staff members as the Republican National Committee and boasts a 2016 budget that is double what the RNC spent in 2012.
The Koch brothers—the backbone of an oil, gas, and commodities conglomerate that controls at least four refineries, the third largest lease-holder in the Canadian tar sands, and 4,000 miles of pipelines throughout the U.S.—have poured millions of their own money into this program. However, their allies include hundreds of other wealthy donors who not only share their ideological beliefs, but whose corporate and personal interests also align with this agenda. The nucleus of this network, as Mayer describes, is formed by coal, oil, and gas magnates, “a Who’s Who of America’s most successful and most conservative fossil fuel barons, the majority of whom were private, independent operators of privately owned companies.”
Harold Hamm is one of them, and so is Larry Nichols, head of Devon Energy, formerchairman of the American Petroleum Institute (the leading oil industry trade association), and another “founding father” of the shale revolution, as Sernovitz calls him. These two are not people associated with what the industry calls the “majors”—public companies like Exxon Mobil, Shell, or BP—but they have just as much to lose from the threat of tighter environmental regulations or carbon caps: “They were men who had either made or inherited enormous fortunes in ‘extractive’ energy without having to answer to public shareholders or much of anyone else,” writes Mayer.
As late as 2003, over 75 percent of Republicans supported strict environmental regulation, while a 2013 study of published papers found a 97 percent consensus among them about the fact that climate change is caused by humans. This has been the target of a concerted effort, funded by Koch and friends, to confuse voters about the existence of a scientific consensus, including through manufactured scandals like “Climategate” and smear campaigns against scientists. Both the New York and California Attorneys General are currently investigating whether ExxonMobil misled the public about the effect of fossil fuels on global warming, but between 2005 and 2008, the Koch brothers alone spent nearly three times as much as ExxonMobil on the climate denial campaign. And this was just a portion of the half-billion dollars behind climate denial. Most of that money was raised from anonymous donors, through organizations like DonorsTrust, which some evidence suggests has ties to the Koch network.
Then there is the campaign spending and lobbying. The victory in 2000 of Bush-Cheney over Al Gore and his environmentalist agenda, which has been attributed to support from the coal industry, ushered in enormous subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuel companies, as well as the exemption of fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act, known as the “Halliburton Loophole.” (Koch Industries also donated $800,000 to the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign and to other Republicans.) When the fracking boom took off just a few years later, Halliburton—the oilfield services company which Cheney previously headed as CEO—was a “major player,” writes Mayer, “illustrating that free-market advocates greatly benefited from government favors.” However, the work of the Kochtopus did not end when Obama entered office. As Mayer describes, in 2010, when the cap-and-trade bill reached the Senate, the Republican Lindsey Graham pulled his support after being targeted in another smear campaign by Tea Party activists and a political front group, American Solutions, whose funders included large fossil fuel interests including Larry Nichols.
In light of all this, how useful is Sernovitz’s distinction between “big oil” and the rest of the industry? A solution could lie in simply recategorizing Nichols and Hamm as the bad apples, and continuing to celebrate fracking’s underappreciated contributions. (Hamm is also connected with campaigns vilifying Oklahoma’s wind industry; was accused of pressuring the Dean of the University of Oklahoma to fire researchers studying the Oklahoma quakes; and chaired the energy advisory committee of Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, which sought to hand decision-making power about drilling on federal lands to the states). But Mayer’s investigation suggests a more fundamental problem: that the rest of the industry, however ethically and responsibly they have carried out their business, has also benefitted from the work of Koch and friends. And unfortunately, so have the rest of us—albeit in a less direct way—who are now enjoying the manifold benefits of cheaper oil and gas.
In effect, this is the problem with Sernovitz’s call to target consumer demand: by influencing the political system, industry has already skewed the entire playing field. On the one hand lax government regulations and increased government subsidies help to reduce costs for producers, while on the other hand the abundance of cheap oil and gas, along with campaigns that confuse consumers about environmental issues, lessens the urgency of switching from the SUV to the Prius—or better yet, of pushing local leaders to fund better public transportation. This ensures a continued demand for oil.
And the Kochtopus is only one part of the story. Lies, Incorporated, authored by radio host Ari Rabin-Havt (with the support of the nonprofit watchdog Media Matters), is a pithy work of media analysis that shows how ideological groups, backed by large sums of money, have been perpetuating lies on key political issues for decades, and not just on climate change (Lies, Incorporated tells a story about climate denial similar to Mayer’s). Beginning with the tobacco industry’s deceit on the health effects of smoking, Rabin-Havt shows how moneyed interests have shaped public discourse on a range of issues in precisely this way, including debt, health care, immigration, and gun control.
And this fact—of the disproportionate influence of big money on American politics and economy—makes clear why targeting big oil producers still matters, whether they are publicly-traded companies like ExxonMobil or private companies like Hamm’s Continental Resources. Not only are they reaping the largest share of profits and reshaping America’s political and economic system to better support their interests, but by injecting their money into the realm of media and public discourse, they are also reshaping the terms of debate.
https://newrepublic.com/article/133201/fracking-funds-radical-right
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Colorado High Court Rules Local Bans on Fracking Are Illegal
May 2, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Dan Frosch
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that municipalities can’t bar hydraulic fracturing, a long awaited decision in a legal battle that has rippled across this energy rich state.
In a pair of rulings, Colorado’s high court found that measures passed by the cities of Fort Collins and Longmont that sought to halt the controversial drilling technique known as fracking “were preempted by state law and, therefore… invalid and unenforceable.”
The decisions uphold lower court rulings and come amid a long-running battle over fracking in northeastern Colorado, which sits atop a large shale formation. In recent years, cities along the state’s fast growing Front Range have sought to limit the practice amid concerns that drilling is taking place too close to population centers.
The legal dispute dates back to 2012, when voters in Longmont approved a ban on fracking. A year later, Fort Collins voters passed a five-year moratorium on the practice.
But two district court judges subsequently ruled that the bans were illegal under state law, after the Colorado Oil & Gas Association filed a pair of lawsuits seeking to overturn them. The Supreme Court took up the case after both cities appealed.
In a statement, Fort Collins said that while it was still reviewing the ruling, “it is clear that the Supreme Court has found that the Fort Collins moratorium on hydraulic fracturing is in operational conflict with Colorado law.”
Longmont was expected to issue a comment on the ruling later Monday.
Pete Maysmith, executive director of the environmental group Conservation Colorado, which filed an amicus brief in support of Fort Collins, said the group was evaluating the decisions “but at first glance, they are disappointing.”
The American Petroleum Institute praised the Colorado decision, saying it “protects private property rights, which are a main driver for the energy renaissance in this country.”
The fight over fracking also has unfolded elsewhere around the country as municipalities have also sought to limit or bar fracking and the energy industry has tried to beat back such efforts.
Last year, for example, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a law prohibiting fracking bans, making it harder for local municipalities to limit where oil and gas wells are drilled. The measure was passed in response to a fracking ban passed by the north Texas city of Denton.
Other states have taken a variety of stances on fracking, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In 2015, New York banned fracking statewide. Conversely, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled last year that the state has the exclusive authority to permit oil and gas drilling, limiting local government power on the issue.
The debate over fracking has been especially charged in Colorado. In 2014, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, convened a task force to deal with the issue amid a controversial push to ban fracking statewide. The group completed its work last year but didn’t resolve the role of local governments in limiting drilling.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/colorado-high-court-rules-local-bans-on-fracking-are-illegal-1462208729
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Why We’re Still So Incredibly Confused About Methane’s Role in Global Warming
May 2, 2016 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
It’s perhaps the most contentious issue in U.S. climate change policy right now: How can we deal with emissions of methane, a powerful if short-lived greenhouse gas, which has many sources but appears to be leaking into the air in considerable volumes from U.S. oil and gas operations?
The Obama administration is expected to release new methane regulations for new sources of emissions very soon, and the EPA recently revised upwards, considerably, its estimates of how much methane is leaking into the atmosphere from the U.S. energy industry. And yet at the same time, there remains considerable scientific uncertainty and debate over just how much methane the U.S. is emitting and how much that has changed due to the current oil and gas boom — and over what those emissions even mean.
A new study in Nature Climate Change, for instance, gets at why understanding the importance of methane can be such a difficult, confusing affair. In particular, it takes issue with some of the math that has often been used to compare the consequences of emitting methane with the impact of the chief, long-lived global warming gas, carbon dioxide. And it finds that really, we may not even know how important our methane emissions are in the first place until we also know how quickly we’re able to get carbon dioxide under control.
“People are placing too much emphasis on methane,” says Raymond Pierrehumbert, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford and one of the paper’s authors. “And really, people should prove that we can actually get the CO2 emissions down first, before worrying about whether we are doing enough to get methane emissions down.”
The study was led by Myles Allen, also of Oxford, with colleagues from several other UK universities as well as institutions in Norway and New Zealand.
The key problem addressed by the study is that greenhouse gases are all different, and yet nonetheless, policymakers and analysts have a tendency to pool them all together by using a common metric, “carbon dioxide equivalents.” Thus, according to the EPA, while in 2014 the U.S. emitted 5.556 billion tons of carbon dioxide, it emitted 6.871 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents — the number rises because of the inclusion of emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases.
But all of these gases are different — after a pulse of methane is emitted into the atmosphere, half of it is no longer there after 8.3 years, and then only a quarter is left after another 8.3 years, and so on. That’s very different from the behavior of a pulse emission of carbon dioxide, some of which remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
The usual way to convert emissions of methane, black carbon, and other so-called short lived climate pollutants into carbon dioxide equivalents involves calculating their “global warming potential” over 100 years — thus, according to EPA, methane has 28 to 36 times as much warming impact as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a century. But the new study in Nature Climate Change finds that because methane has a shorter atmospheric life than carbon dioxide, the truth is that this gas – along with black carbon and various hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs — really has an impact over 20 to 40 years, rather than 100. (The calculation is actually for all uses of the global warming potential approach, not just for methane.)
“The appearance of 100 years in the name of the metric really deceives a lot of people into thinking this is telling us something about temperature 100 years out, whereas it’s not,” says Pierrehumbert.
All of this may seem technical, but here’s why it matters. Governments are struggling to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages, and would prefer holding it to 1.5 degrees — which means eventually bringing carbon dioxide emissions to zero. If the temperature peaks soon, say by the year 2050, then controlling the warming caused by methane, and other short-lived climate pollutants like black carbon, would mean a lower total peak temperature, the new study finds. In that case, these emissions definitely matter.
But if we don’t get carbon dioxide under control and peak emissions by 2050, the new study suggests, then today’s methane emissions become irrelevant. They simply won’t be causing warming any longer. But a significant amount of the carbon dioxide we emit today will still be in the atmosphere.
Or as the study puts it, the global warming potential approach “is an effective metric to limit peak warming if and only if emissions of all climate pollutants, most notably co2, are being reduced such that temperatures are expected to stabilize within the next 20-40 years.”
“If we knew we were going to peak by say 2050, then there is a lot of value in putting efforts into some of the short lived stuff,” says Pierrehumbert. “But if we don’t do a good job with CO2, that means as far as temperature targets go, the money we put into methane and black carbon, as far as climate goes anyway, is wasted.”
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t cut methane emissions – there remain many other reasons for doing so, including climate-related ones. For instance, if natural gas operations in the U.S. cut down on accidental releases of methane then they will have more natural gas to sell in electricity markets — and if that natural gas displaces coal, overall carbon dioxide emissions will go down.
But it does mean, Pierrehumbert argues, that we need more clarity when it comes to what we are actually dealing with when it comes to methane — and this is an inherent problem when you’re comparing what his paper calls a “cumulative” greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, with one that is “short-lived,” like methane.
In the end, this may all seem technical, but the fact is that countries of the world are embarking on a new project of lowering their emissions, and reporting the progress they have made to one another under the Paris climate agreement. And as long as confusion remains over the role of carbon dioxide versus methane and other greenhouse gases, confusion will also remain over just how close everyone is to meeting the goals.
In reaction to the new study, Duke University’s Drew Shindell, who heads the scientific advisory panel of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, which focuses on the problem of short-lived climate pollutants like methane, said he didn’t disagree with any of the new study’s calculations — or with the point that some of the metrics used can be misleading.
The concept of global warming potential, Shindell says, was “proposed originally as an example of how difficult it is to compare things, and then it becomes the thing that everybody uses and nobody really understands.”
However, Shindell objects to the idea that this analysis is the only way to look at the benefits of reducing short-lived climate pollutants, like methane or black carbon, because these pollutants also have other consequences outside of their impact on planetary temperature — such as local air quality problems that can make people sick or even kill them.
“There are huge societal benefits, separate from peak warming,” of reducing these pollutants, Shindell says.
The new study, of course, can also be taken to mean that methane emissions really do matter to global warming — at least if the world is otherwise really acting fast on carbon dioxide. The new work “seems to stand for the proposition that methane and other short term climate forcing pollutants play a unique and important role in accelerating warming in the near term and that the conventional method of normalizing all climate pollutants to a 100 year global warming potential does not capture this,” adds Mark Brownstein of the Environmental Defense Fund, which has focused heavily on the methane emissions problem. “It’s another paper that argues for the importance of focusing on methane as a distinct opportunity.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/05/02/why-were-still-so-incredibly-confused-about-methanes-role-in-global-warming/
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G7 Calls for Continued Energy Investment Despite Low Oil and Gas Prices
May 2, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Sara Stefanini
G7 energy ministers today acknowledged the importance of investment in clean and efficient energy, and stressed the need to maintain investment in upstream energy supplies and infrastructure.
Energy chiefs from the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, Canada and Japan, plus the EU, met in Kitakyushu, Japan on Sunday and today to discuss the effects of lower oil and gas prices, the Paris climate agreement, and nuclear energy safety.
The oil and gas price slump makes it harder to invest in new energy projects worldwide, Miguel Arias Cañete, climate action and energy commissioner, said today.
“However, the global and European energy and climate challenges will not go way, and certainly not at as result of lower energy prices,” he said. The G7 “must work together on the transition towards a more competitive, secure and sustainable energy system, and this will require significant investment.”
The G7 ministers said they support natural gas as a less carbon-intensive fossil fuel, including in transportation.
One way expand and globalize the gas market, both by pipeline and ship, is to relax destination clauses in contracts between buyers and sellers, which require the buyer to receive the supplies at a fixed destination regardless of the demand.
Gazprom’s use of such clauses is under investigation by the EU’s antitrust department, and Asian liquefied natural gas importers — led by Japan — have fought exporters like Australia over the past few years to introduce more flexibility into their contracts, as new U.S. exporters have done.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Ransomware Strikes Mich. Utility
May 2, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
A municipal utility in Michigan confirmed it has been hit by "ransomware," a type of computer virus that locks up files and holds the digital key hostage.
The attack on Lansing Board of Water & Light marks the first known time ransomware has infected a power utility in the United States.
"Today we were the victim of ransomware that came in through a phishing virus and infected our corporate networks," LBWL said in an April 25 statement. "We immediately instated a self-imposed lockdown to all of our corporate networks to protect the system while developing a solution."
The city-owned public utility said service had not been affected for its nearly 100,000 electricity customers in central Michigan. The company's general manager, Dick Peffley, did not respond to a phone message seeking comment. It's not clear whether LBWL will decide to pay the hackers to unlock its corporate files, or whether the hackers specifically targeted the utility due to the criticality of its services.
The ransomware threat has loomed large in the power industry recently, particularly for smaller utilities with less funding for advanced cybersecurity defenses.
On Friday, the FBI issued a bulletin warning of an uptick in attacks on key organizations such as hospitals.
"The inability to access the important data these kinds of organizations keep can be catastrophic in terms of the loss of sensitive or proprietary information, the disruption to regular operations, financial losses incurred to restore systems and files, and the potential harm to an organization's reputation," the FBI said.
A recent exercise organized by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners rehearsed how regulators would respond to an advanced, targeted ransomware threat (EnergyWire, March 7).
That scenario involved hackers who got all the way into the industrial control system network -- computers that run grid components such as power breakers.
There is no evidence the hackers in the Michigan case made it that far. LBWL said its physical operations, including water and electricity services, had not been compromised.
But the case still spooked industrial cybersecurity experts, who took to Twitter to voice their concerns.
"The horror scenario of ransomware on an ICS network is coming sooner than I would like ...," said Reid Wightman, director of Digital Bond Labs.
A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security documented three cases of the Cryptolocker ransomware worming its way into unnamed "energy organizations" in 2014, but the report failed to specify whether the organizations were electric utilities.
LBWL said federal officials are investigating the cyberattack. Representatives from DHS and the FBI's Detroit bureau did not respond to requests for comment on the case.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/05/02/stories/1060036550
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MARC, Amtrak Service Disruptions Monday Due to CSX Train Derailment
May 2, 2016 | Washington Post
By Luz Lazo and Faiz Siddiqui
Updated at 10:05 a.m.
Three cars remain to be re-railed Monday morning at the scene of Sunday’s derailment of a CSX train in Northeast Washington, federal investigators said.
A total of 16 rail cars went off the tracks during the incident that spilled chemicals along a busy rail corridor and snarled traffic as emergency personnel sought to contain the leaks and clear the wreckage. The 175-car train was traveling from Cumberland, Md., to Hamlet, N.C., when it derailed at 6:40 a.m. Sunday.
The Federal Railroad Administration said the cars carrying sodium hydroxide and ethanol are upright and being offloaded. The offloading is expected to be completed Monday afternoon, officials said.
It is still unclear what caused the train to derail. Federal investigators said Monday that it could be a year before findings and probable cause are released.
Commuters should continue to expect disruptions on the MARC Brunswick Line. Amtrak isn’t running the service from Washington to Chicago. Metro’s walkway bridge over the CSX track remains closed.
Updated at 9:02 a.m.
CSX said the Sunday morning derailment in Northeast Washington caused a total of 16 rails cars to go off the tracks.
The freight train operator said its crews worked overnight to remove some rail cars that had derailed and others that had not, as cleanup efforts continued.
By mid-morning Monday, CSX said it was removing ethanol from a rail car that had been leaking so the car could be removed from the crash site. At least one of the rail cars leaked sodium hydroxide.
In a statement issued Monday, CSX said “air monitoring continues to demonstrate no adverse effects to air quality.”
For commuters, the derailment meant delays on the MARC commuter rail lines and some lines of Amtrak. Metro service was not affected in Monday’s morning rush hour by the Sunday CSX event.
Original post at 5:25 a.m.
MARC and Amtrak riders should expect delays in their Monday commutes after a derailment Sunday of a freight train in Northeast Washington as crews are still dealing with the cleanup along the lines used by the commuter trains.
On MARC, service will not operate full service on the Brunswick Line on Monday. The MARC Brunswick Line will run as far south as Silver Spring. From there, passengers can transfer to Metro at no charge to continue their commute into D.C.
The Amtrak line from Washington to Chicago will not run Monday, but the Northeast Corridor lines will run as normal, officials said.
The changes are a result of a derailment early Sunday morning near the Rhode Island Metro stop on rail lines used by MARC, Amtrak and CSX. It was a CSX freight train that derailed in that area.
The derailment had affected Metro’s Red Line service as well on Sunday. But on Monday morning, Metro said its service was back to normal.
Transportation officials recommended several other alternatives for riders on MARC and Amtrak lines.
The early Sunday derailment at Ninth Street and Rhode Island Avenue NE in Washington stopped all rail traffic in the corridor, which is shared by CSX, Amtrak and MARC trains.
The CSX train was traveling from Cumberland, Md., to Hamlet, N.C., when 14 rail cars derailed at 6:40 a.m. The train had three locomotives and 175 total cars, including 94 loaded cars carrying mixed freight.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2016/05/01/marc-amtrak-service-disruptions-monday-due-to-csx-train-derailment/
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Construction Starts on Dakota Access Oil Pipeline
May 2, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
Officials at Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) said the Dakota Access Pipeline LLC unit has begun construction on the four-state, 1,154-mile project to ship Bakken crude oil to markets along the East, West and Gulf coasts. They expect the project to be completed by the end of this year.
"We have begun work on the project and anticipate project-wide construction activities to ramp up in the coming month with completion toward the end of the year," an ETP spokesperson told NGI's Shale Daily on Friday.
The start of the long-anticipated Bakken oil pipeline outlet comes following Thursday's announcement by the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) that it has denied all of the remaining motions for rehearing in the approval it finalized earlier this month (see Shale Daily, April 11). Iowa was the last of the four states to authorize the project.
On Thursday, the IUB also ordered a complaint proceeding to be established for a particular landowner and established procedures to address any additional complaints regarding the pipeline activities in lining up the final rights-of-way for the project.
"The board noted that this order is the final agency decision on all pending motions for rehearing or reconsideration," said an IUB spokesperson, noting that Dakota Access still has some paperwork to complete with the IUB based on some of the compliance requirements. Further challenges would have to be done in court based on judicial review timelines starting from Thursday's date (April 28).
In March, the IUB ordered the initial conditioned approval for the $3.8 billion crude oil project (seeShale Daily, March 11). Subsequently, the board said Dakota Access "substantially complied" with the requirements of the board’s original order and issued a hazardous liquid pipeline permit to Dakota Access LLC.
As of the last report from ETP, not all of the rights-of-way had been acquired for the massive project, but about 88% of it was in hand (see Shale Daily, April 1). Dakota Access holds the easements needed to cross the nearly 3,700 separate properties along its complete route. On a state-by-state basis, the percentages varied, but Iowa remained the lowest -- 97% in North Dakota; 93% in South Dakota; 92% in Illinois; and 82% in Iowa.
North Dakota pipeline officials said in March they expect big things from Dakota Access in terms of opening up future markets for Bakken crude (see Shale Daily, March 14). A year-end 2016 start for the pipeline is expected along with the eventual potential to move up to half of the Bakken's 1 million b/d production to various markets.
Officials emphasized that to meet the end-of-year startup will require multiple construction spreads being worked on simultaneously.
As planned, Dakota Access will have 100,000 b/d of capacity for its initial segment to the Stanley and Ramberg tank terminals in North Dakota, from which takeaway capacity would be expanded to carry up to 600,000 b/d between Watford City's tank terminal and the South Dakota border.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/106259-construction-starts-on-dakota-access-oil-pipeline
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Texas High Court Strikes Down Houston's Air Pollution Rules
May 2, 2016 | Tribune News Service
By Susan Carroll
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday struck down Houston's air quality ordinances, ruling the city overstepped its authority to police polluters and handing industry advocates a major victory.
In an 8-1 decision, the justices ruled that ordinances requiring businesses to pay registration fees and allowing criminal sanctions for emissions violations were inconsistent with state law.
The Business Coalition for Clean Air Appeal Group, which includes giants such as Exxon Mobil and Dow Chemical Company, accused the city in a 2008 lawsuit of creating an "enforcement regime" that goes beyond its role permitted under state law.
In 2014, about 2,800 businesses were registered with the city, which collected nearly $1.5 million through the program that year.
"What the city is trying to do is not consistent with what the Legislature has decided," said Evan Young, an attorney for the coalition. "This ruling sends the message that clear, evenhanded statewide regulation is something the Texas Supreme Court takes seriously."
City Attorney Donna Edmundson issued a statement saying the court's decision "will not dampen the city's efforts" to assist the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality with the enforcement of environmental laws. The statement said the city will employ "other legal mechanisms" allowed under state law to monitor and take action against polluters. A spokeswoman said the city hadn't decided whether to appeal.
Adrian Shelley, executive director of the advocacy group Air Alliance Houston, said the decision was "not the least bit surprising" but dismaying nonetheless.
"It's pretty in-keeping with both previous judicial decisions and the direction in which our state government is moving," he said.He cited the state Legislature's passage of a bill last session that caps the amount local governments can collect through environmental lawsuits, Gov. Greg Abbott's filing of a brief in support of the industry advocates in this case, and a prior legal case that made its way to the Texas Supreme Court.
"There will be more polluters who pollute with impunity," Shelley said. "There will be a little poorer public health in the city as a result."
Frustration with TCEQ
Houston battled smoggy skies for decades and has failed to comply with federal ozone standards. The 10-county area includes the largest petrochemical complex in the country, hundreds of chemical plants and a bustling port.
Under the ordinances, the city collects registration fees from companies in order to investigate potential violations of air pollution laws.
City officials have defended the ordinances since their passage in 2007, arguing they helped fill an enforcement gap created by understaffing at TCEQ, the state agency responsible for monitoring and punishing polluters.
The city said legal mechanisms it could use against polluters include requesting that TCEQ investigate suspected polluters, seeking injunctive relief and penalties in civil court against suspected violators and notifying TCEQ of violations deemed to be criminal in nature.
Former Mayor Bill White pushed for the ordinances after growing frustrated with TCEQ. He and City Council members voted to amend a 1992 ordinance and start requiring businesses to pay registration fees based on their size and emissions. The fees range from $130 for a dry cleaning plant with fewer than six employees to $3,200 for plants emitting more than 10 tons annually of airborne contaminants.
The ordinances also authorized city health officers to seek civil, administrative and criminal sanctions for violations that can be prosecuted in municipal court, with fines of up to $2,000 per day for repeat violators.
Undermining state authority
For years, industry groups have argued that the city ordinances interfere with TCEQ's enforcement authority.
A Harris County district court judge sided with industry advocates and enjoined the city from enforcing the ordinance in March 2011. The city appealed, and in 2013, the First District Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's decision.
Abbott filed a brief in August in support of the industry group, saying the city's ordinance interferes with TCEQ's enforcement powers and could harm mom-and-pop businesses like dry cleaners.
The justices wrote in their opinion Friday that if the TCEQ chose not to take enforcement action against a company, it did not give the city the legal authority to step in.
"By authorizing criminal prosecution even when the TCEQ determines an administrative or civil remedy -- or even no penalty at all -- to be the appropriate remedy, the city effectively moots the TCEQ's discretion and the TCEQ's authority to select an enforcement mechanism," the opinion states. "This is impermissible."
City inspections allowed
Similar ordinances are in place elsewhere in the state, including in San Antonio.
Even without the city ordinances, state law allows city personnel to enter and inspect facilities, Young added. Cities also can contract with TCEQ to help with enforcement under its supervision.
Local governments also can sue polluters in civil district courts, but only with approval of the local governing body and if TCEQ joins as a party.
Young said the industry group "has never tried to undermine the importance of state environmental law."
"What matters," he said, is that enforcement is "done in a safe, efficient, clear, evenhanded way."
http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructure/tns-texas-houston-court-air-pollution.html
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Protecting the Environment is Critical for a Stronger America
May 2, 2016 | The Hill - Contributors Blog
By Amanda D. Rodewald
It's budget time again, and the House Republicans have released a new plan: "A Balanced Budget for a Stronger America." There is little to disagree with in the opening line of the budget: "A strong America is built on opportunity and the passion and talents of a free people who are empowered to pursue that opportunity, determine their own future, and achieve success." Yet a closer look reveals that the budget would significantly erode many regulations, rules and mandates designed to protect our environment, while at the same time expanding energy development likely to a carry hefty environmental toll.
Why is it that some politicians now seem to believe that a strong America is not compatible with a clean, safe and sustainable America?
We hear disturbing anti-environment sentiments from the current Republican presidential candidates. Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in an effort to cut spending and curb regulations. While more tempered in their comments, the other Republican candidates have called for massive cuts to reduce the reach of the EPA. The expressed rationale for these views is that current efforts to protect our environment bear too great a cost and prevent us from prospering as a nation.
Interestingly, that position contrasts sharply with that of former President Richard Nixon, who created the EPA. A Republican, Nixon recognized that "clean air is not free, and neither is clean water" in his Jan. 22, 1970 State of the Union and asserted later that year that the national government should lead a "coordinated attack on the pollutants which debase the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land that grows our food."
Nixon understood what today's Republican candidates seem to miss: that our ability to pursue opportunity, chart our individual and collective destinies, and achieve success is stronger in a country that protects the health of its people by reducing their exposure to dangerous toxins. Certainly, the GOP indicates through rhetoric that it is tuned in strongly to issues of public safety. Well, if we measure risk by numbers of premature deaths, the risk from terrorism is dwarfed by that posed by contaminants in our environment.
Though vilified by some politicians, the EPA has made our country a cleaner, safer and healthier place. One striking example is that emissions of common air pollutants have dropped almost 70 percent since the EPA was created in 1970. Did this achievement come at great economic cost? Quite the opposite: The U.S. gross domestic product grew over 200 percent and jobs in the private sector increased by 88 percent during the same period.
Environmental protection is also a job-creating industry. One study found that over 4 million environmental jobs were created in the U.S. from 1970 to 2003; importantly, these jobs were concentrated in manufacturing and professional, scientific, and technical services that all states are trying to attract. Air pollution control equipment generated revenues of $18 billion in 2008, including roughly $3 billion in exports. According to a U.S. Department of Commerce report, our efforts to protect the environment have positioned the U.S. as the world's largest producer and consumer of environmental protection technologies worldwide.
Surprised? The reality is that environmental protection can drive innovation, and many policies implemented in the past have made us a cleaner and more prosperous country. The Clean Air Act, in particular, is estimated to have benefits that exceed costs by a factor of more than 30 to one. Most of the economic benefits are attributed to reductions in premature deaths — up to 230,000 lives saved and over 17 million lost work days avoided annually by 2020). Even relatively small changes can result in huge benefits, like the 2011 revisions to the Clean Air Act standards that prevented an additional 11,000 premature deaths, 2,800 cases of chronic bronchitis, 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks, 5,700 hospital and emergency room visits, and over 3 million restricted activity days, according to one study. The value of these benefits amounts to $37 billion to $90 billion each year, and even more if one considers that over a half-million sick days would be avoided each year and more than 50,000 new jobs created.
Those are impressive benefits from the Clean Air Act alone, but even a cursory glance at other EPA accomplishments turns up other examples. For instance, the EPA has cleaned up millions of acres of contaminated land that can again provide ecological, economic and recreational opportunities. The agency has also developed an advanced network of sewage treatment facilities to make our rivers and lakes safe for swimming, tourism and fishing, and has cleaned the Great Lakes, which supply drinking water for millions of Americans.
Aside from potentially forgoing benefits, are we ready to bear the real human and economic costs of gutting environmental regulations? The massive public health crisis stemming from contaminated water in Flint, Mich. shows both how much Americans value a clean environment and the degree of our reliance upon regulations and enforcement at the federal level. For a decade now, the EPA's Office of Water has faced 15 percent annual budget reductions and lost more than 10 percent of its employees. As reported by The New York Times, the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators "said federal officials had slashed drinking-water grants, 17 states had cut drinking-water budgets by more than a fifth, and 27 had cut spending on full-time employees," with "serious implications for states' ability to protect public health." Our nation is outraged over what is happening to Flint residents, so why would we create, or be complicit in, efforts that will lead to similar crises elsewhere?
We all aspire to the strong America described in the opening line of the Republicans' budget, but that strong America is built not only upon opportunity, passion and talents, but also upon a clean, safe and healthy environment. Gutting environmental protections is risky for our economic andphysical well-being. Republicans and Democrats should work toward a budget that allows our economy and our environment to prosper.
Rodewald is director of conservation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, professor in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University, faculty fellow at Cornell University's Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, and a Robert F. Schumann Faculty Fellow. Views expressed in her column are hers alone and do not represent those of these institutions.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/278343-protecting-environment-is-critical-for-a-stronger
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Texas Floods Flush Fracking Chemicals, Crude Oil into Rivers
May 2, 2016 | Dallas Morning News (In E&E Greenwire)
By Chris Siron
Recent floods across Texas have overwhelmed oils wells and hydraulic fracturing sites, causing crude oil and toxic chemicals to flush into the state's rivers.
Tipped tanks and flooded production sites during the March flood of the Sabine River have sent sheens and plumes spreading, according to state emergency management officials.
The Texas Railroad Commission said it has effectively responded to the problems.
"I'm confident that once the agency is notified, we're taking appropriate measures," commission spokesman Rich Parsons said.
Walter Tsou, a physician and past president of the American Public Health Association, is not so sure.
"That's a potential disaster," Tsou said. "I'm sure it will get into the groundwater and streams and creeks. In other areas, cattle that drank the fracking fluid actually died an hour after drinking it. There are potential carcinogens that can lead to leukemia, brain cancer and other endocrine disruptors that can affect premature births. So it is not good to drink fracked wastewater."
Some worry the commission is not holding the oil and gas industry accountable. According to one watchdog group's accounting, commissioners receive more than half of their campaign contributions from the industry.
Spokeswoman Ramona Nye said that on the contrary, spill prevention is the commission's top priority (Chris Siron, AP/Dallas Morning News, May 1).
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/05/02/stories/1060036568
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