Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 6/21/2016
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(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Specialty Chemicals Market Continues Soft Quarter
Jun 21, 2016 | Powder Bulk Solids
The Specialty Chemicals Market Volume Index, a tool created by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), continued the second quarter of 2016 on a soft note, slipping 0.3 percent on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis in May. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Gets New Powers to Regulate Toxic Chemicals, But Progress Takes Time
Jun 21, 2016 | Chicago Tribune
By Michael Hawthorne
With new evidence surfacing almost weekly about how Americans are absorbing hormone-disrupting chemicals — sometimes merely from sitting on a sofa or drinking from a plastic cup — the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is getting sweeping new powers... -
(ACC Mentioned) Bipartisan Passage of TSCA Seen as a Win by Both Sides on the Issue
Jun 20, 2016 | Plastics News
By Clare Goldsberry
When the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was passed earlier this month with bipartisan support, SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association lauded the first update of the act in four decades. “The U.S. plastics industry and its partners have worked tirelessly... -
(ACC Mentioned) VADXX: Turning Plastic Back into Petrol
Jun 21, 2016 | Akron Legal News
By Richard Weiner
Looking like something out of a 1950’s science fiction movie, the new recycling plant on Waterloo Road, near the blimp hanger, houses radical new technology that may help with eliminating plastic waste and, at the same time, creating petroleum products... -
Obama to Sign TSCA Reform on Wednesday
Jun 20, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Colby Bermel
President Obama on Wednesday will sign into law the first major update to the nation's chemical laws in nearly 40 years, the White House announced today. -
TSCA Reform 'Best Science' Mandate May Influence EPA IRIS Assessments
Jun 20, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Provisions in the landmark Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform bill -- which President Obama is slated to sign into law June 22 -- requiring EPA to ensure TSCA regulatory actions use the “best available science” could change how the agency conducts... -
Strange Brew: How Chemical Reform Legislation Falls Short
Jun 21, 2016 | GreenBiz
By Zach Bernstein
It’s taken a very long time — 40 years, in fact — but a major federal law is finally getting a makeover. -
Sen. Carper Applauds Work to Revamp Chemical Safety Laws
Jun 20, 2016 | Delaware Public Media
By Tom Bryne
Sen. Tom Carper is touting recently passed federal legislation that aims to bolster chemical safety oversight nationwide. -
Detoxifying Congressional Politics
Jun 20, 2016 | Enumclaw Courier-Herald
By Don Brunell
Thankfully, June 8 marked a milestone for Congress. Members came together and overwhelmingly approved a sweeping bill that regulates tens of thousands of toxic chemicals in everyday products, from household cleaners to clothing and furniture. -
EPA Expects Long Lead Time for Lead, Copper Rule
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Michael J. Bologna
While revising the lead-and-copper rule remains an urgent priority for the Environmental Protection Agency, a senior agency official June 20 assured municipal water system operators they would have significant lead time to implement the rule. -
PCBs and Other Organic Pollutants Reach the Deep Ocean
Jun 21, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Deirdre Lockwood
Ocean pollution isn’t just a plastic problem. An alphabet soup of persistent organic pollutants—including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) used as flame retardants, and more—are carried by the wind and rivers into the ocean -
Canada Reconsidering Toxic Status of 741 Substances
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Canada is proposing to increase reporting requirements for 741 substances subject to regulatory controls in the U.S., it said June 20. -
Canada Says 16 VOCs off Toxics List, Aligning with U.S.
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Canada has declared that 16 volatile organic compounds are not toxic because they do not significantly contribute to smog, aligning Canada's approach to the substances with that of the U.S. -
Upton, Bishop Offer Conference Committee Assurances
Jun 20, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss
Two top House chairmen today pledged to work with wary Democrats in conference committee talks to produce a final energy bill that President Obama would sign. -
EPA's Clean Power Plan Defense Came Soon After Stay
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Environmental Protection Agency officials began to coalesce around the talking points they would use to publicly defend the Clean Power Plan within hours of the U.S. Supreme Court taking the unprecedented step of halting the carbon dioxide standards'... -
Climate Action Will Make Our Cities Safer
Jun 20, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Jay Fisette
In Arlington County, as with much of the country, climate change has turned up the heat. Our residents are feeling the effects. And when it comes to taking action on climate to protect our communities, we are not waiting. -
At Pennsylvania Wells, Methane Gas Leaking Everywhere
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer Oldham
A mail box sits on an abandoned well pipe near blooming peonies, logs snag on metal casings rising out of a creek, children swing next to rusted pump jacks. -
Colorado West Slope Producers Lash Out at Feds over Mancos Shale
Jun 20, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
Colorado oil/natural gas industry advocates lashed out on Friday at the Obama administration for "completely ignoring" new U.S. Geological Society (USGS) estimates on the extent of potential reserves in the Mancos Shale along the Western Slope. -
Ship Channel Pilots Say Low-Sulphur Fuel Likely Caused 2015 Collision and Chemical Spill
Jun 19, 2016 | Houston Chronicle
By Lise Olsen
The Houston Pilots Association contends that a Ship Channel crash and chemical spill in March 2015 was most likely caused by a switch to ultra low-sulphur fuel oil that led one of two vessels that collided, the Conti Peridot, to unexpectedly lose power only seconds before the accident. -
PHMSA Issues Advisory Following Plains Spill
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Pipeline operators should ensure that line segments are both buried and insulated, have effective coating and corrosion control systems and conduct in-line inspections for threats... -
5th Circuit to Hear Arguments on Venue for Suits over EPA Haze Air Plan
Jun 21, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit will hear oral arguments June 22 over which appellate court should hear Texas' case challenging EPA's imposition of a haze emissions control plan on the state, with the agency urging the court to dismiss the suit... -
EPA Needs More Time for Some Sulfur Dioxide Designations
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
The Environmental Protection Agency needs more time to complete the designations process for certain areas under the 2010 national air quality standards for sulfur dioxide (Sierra Club v. McCarthy, N.D. Cal., No. 13-cv-3953,notice filed 6/20/16).
Industry and Association News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Specialty Chemicals Market Continues Soft Quarter
Jun 21, 2016 | Powder Bulk Solids
The Specialty Chemicals Market Volume Index, a tool created by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), continued the second quarter of 2016 on a soft note, slipping 0.3 percent on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis in May.
The trend has been choppy and May’s decline was preceded by a revised 0.5 percent decline in April and a 0.2 percent drop in March. Weakness in oilfield chemicals and mining chemicals has weighed on overall volumes. Of the 28 specialty chemical segments we monitor, eight expanded in May, with plastic additives and plasticizers experiencing large gains (1.0 percent or more) in underlying market volumes.
The overall specialty chemicals volume index was off 1.8 percent year-over-year (Y/Y) also on a 3MMA basis. Year-earlier comparisons were generally in the 4.0 percent to 6.8 percent range during 2012-2014 but since February 2015 they have fallen below that range as the downturn in the oil and gas sectors affected headline volumes. In addition, the strong U.S. dollar has adversely affected a number of export-oriented customer industries. Weakness spread to other segments as well and year-earlier comparisons have been negative since second quarter 2015. Still, on a Y/Y basis, gains are fairly widespread among most market and functional specialty chemical segments. With few exceptions, however, year-earlier comparisons have been moderating.
Specialty chemicals are materials manufactured on the basis of the unique performance or function and provide a wide variety of effects on which many other sectors and end-use products rely. They can be individual molecules or mixtures of molecules, known as formulations. The physical and chemical characteristics of the single molecule or mixtures along with the composition of the mixtures influence the performance end product. Individual market sectors that rely on such products include automobile, aerospace, agriculture, cosmetics, and food, among others.
Specialty chemicals differ from commodity chemicals. They may only have one or two uses, while commodities may have multiple or different applications for each chemical. Commodity chemicals make up most of the production volume in the global marketplace, while specialty chemicals make up most of the diversity in commerce at any given time, and are relatively high value with greater market growth rates. Some areas where specialty chemicals are used include adhesives, cleaning materials, cosmetic additives, construction materials, food additives, fragrances and detergents
This data is the only timely source of market trends for twenty-eight market and functional specialty chemical segments. Chemistry directly touches over ninety-six percent of all manufactured goods, and trends in these specialty chemical segments provide a detailed view of trends in manufacturing. The data also sheds light on how various consumer end-use markets are performing compared to others in the marketplace.For related articles, news, and equipment reviews, Visit our Equipment Zones
http://www.powderbulksolids.com/news/U-S-Specialty-Chemicals-Market-Continues-Soft-Quarter-06-20-2016
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Gets New Powers to Regulate Toxic Chemicals, But Progress Takes Time
Jun 21, 2016 | Chicago Tribune
By Michael Hawthorne
With new evidence surfacing almost weekly about how Americans are absorbing hormone-disrupting chemicals — sometimes merely from sitting on a sofa or drinking from a plastic cup — the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is getting sweeping new powers to regulate toxic substances in furniture, toys, electronics and household products.
Legislation sent this month to President Barack Obama for his expected signature will give the EPA more authority to order safety tests for chemicals and set deadlines for the agency to determine whether dangerous compounds should be restricted or forced off the market. The EPA also will be required to take additional steps to ensure pregnant women, children and other vulnerable populations are protected.
But even in the best-case scenarios envisioned by lawmakers who backed the unusual bipartisan compromise, it will take the EPA more than a decade to determine the fate of a few dozen chemicals the agency already has identified because they are suspected of posing significant health hazards.
For instance, though the EPA knows people are regularly exposed to certain flame retardants and studies show the widely used chemicals are harmful, it could take at least seven years under the new system before rules are in place regulating their use. Chemical companies could get another five years to comply with regulations.
Meeting those deadlines will depend on more money and manpower at a federal agency that is routinely attacked by the Republican majority in Congress and that GOP candidate Donald Trump has vowed to gut if elected president. Several bureaucratic and judicial hurdles also remain that could delay changes sought by consumers and retailers.
"This isn't going to be an overnight success," said Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund who spent years pushing for an overhaul of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the only major environmental statute that hasn't been updated by Congress since it originally took effect. "The reason it's going to take a long time to work is because we've been in such a deep hole for such a long time."
Scientists are finding a vast array of chemicals in air, water, food and people, often decades after the compounds were first added to consumer products. In a new analysis of peer-reviewed studies and other data, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group tallied more than 400 known or suspected carcinogens that have been detected in Americans, including nine found at high enough levels to pose a cancer risk.
Under existing law, the chemical industry has been allowed to put products on the market without safety testing and to keep many of its formulas secret. Regulators largely have been prohibited from taking action unless they could prove a chemical poses an "unreasonable risk" — a threshold so burdensome the EPA couldn't even ban asbestos, a well-documented carcinogen that has killed thousands of people who suffered devastating lung diseases.
Agency officials still will have only 90 days to judge a new chemical before it can enter the market. But the EPA will be able to order testing without years of rulemaking and will be required to identify high-priority chemicals for review, with an initial focus on about 90 compounds.
"We know these chemicals accumulate in the environment and can cause cancer, neurological disorders and impaired reproduction," said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who helped revive reform efforts in 2013 following a Tribune investigationabout toxic flame retardants. "For too long, the Environmental Protection Agency has lacked the authority to meaningfully regulate dangerous chemicals and keep them off the market."
Members of Congress from both parties, chemical industry representatives and some public health groups hailed the compromise bill as a substantial improvement that balances competing interests.
Some leading industry officials began supporting a new national safety law after a growing number of states, motivated by a lack of action at the federal level, enacted bans on specific compounds. Some states, including California and Washington, established programs to study chemicals and draw attention to harmful substances.
The industry's congressional allies, led by Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana and Republican Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, secured new limits on state actions when the EPA is studying a chemical. But the provision isn't as sweeping as the total ban on state authority sought by some companies.
"No question that this is a significant bill that will have a meaningful impact on the economy and the marketplace," said Anne Kolton, a spokeswoman for the American Chemistry Council, the industry's chief trade group. "It is a compromise, so naturally no one got everything they would have wanted had they been able to craft a reform bill on their own."
Two widely used flame retardants highlighted by the Tribune's "Playing With Fire"investigation are examples of how current law fails to guarantee the safety of chemicals in commonly used consumer products.
The EPA approved one flame retardant, known as Firemaster 550, more than a decade ago even though the manufacturer's own health studies found that exposing rats to high doses can lower birth weight, alter female genitalia and cause skeletal malformations. More recent studies suggest the chemical ingredients can trigger obesity, anxiety and other problems at significantly lower levels.
Chemtura, the Philadelphia-based company that makes the flame retardant, says it introduced the chemical mixture because it offered a "better environmental profile" than Penta, another flame retardant it voluntarily withdrew from the market after studies found it builds up in people and triggers health problems.
Another flame retardant, known as TDCPP or chlorinated tris, was voluntarily removed from children's pajamas during the late 1970s after scientists found it could mutate DNA. California lists it as a known carcinogen.
Yet manufacturers continued to add the chemical to other products. Duke University chemist Heather Stapleton found that until recently chlorinated tris was commonly added to household furniture cushions.
Both flame retardants are on the list of chemicals the EPA will assess under the new law. The Environmental Working Group estimates it could take the agency nearly three decades just to finish risk assessments for Firemaster 550, chlorinated tris and about 90 other compounds. Imposing and enforcing regulations would take even longer.
"How is that going to reassure the public?" asked David Andrews, the group's senior scientist. "Some of these chemicals are going to end up remaining on the market for another generation."
Other substances on the EPA's priority list include asbestos and arsenic, the bisphenol A used in thermal paper and food can linings, and plasticizers known as phthalates. While the agency wraps up those reviews, Andrews said, other worrisome compounds likely will emerge, further challenging the limited agency staff.
The most encouraging signs of change may be seen in the marketplace, not in Congress. With parents and advocates clamoring for safer products, retailers like Wal-Mart and Target have been pushing suppliers to avoid entire families of chemicals rather than merely replacing one compound with something slightly different.
Andy Igrejas, executive director of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families advocacy coalition, said the new law should do more good than harm.
"This is not a champagne moment," he wrote in a blog post to fellow advocates. "But you deserve a beer at least."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-toxic-chemicals-epa-met-20160620-story.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Bipartisan Passage of TSCA Seen as a Win by Both Sides on the Issue
Jun 20, 2016 | Plastics News
By Clare Goldsberry
When the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was passed earlier this month with bipartisan support, SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association lauded the first update of the act in four decades. “The U.S. plastics industry and its partners have worked tirelessly with multiple congresses and administrations to make our nation’s outdated chemical regulatory infrastructure stronger and more responsive to the needs of today’s consumers and companies,” said a statement released by SPI.
“The consensus-based bill is the product of thoughtful discussions by House and Senate negotiators. It gives consumers the confidence in the products they depend upon each day, while giving companies a more predictable regulatory system that’s based on science rather than rhetoric.”
We can only hope that the “science” prevails over the rhetoric when it comes to the chemicals used in the plastics industry. For way too many years, the plastics industry has been on the receiving end of rhetoric surrounding the toxicity of various plastic materials and additives, and the industry has done little to meet those criticisms head on and confront those who would overthrow the science for the hype.
While SPI considers the passage of this act a victory for science and the plastic industry, Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families (SC,HF), an activist group that often goes after plastics as a danger to society, also sees the passage as a victory. A release from SC,HF lauds the efforts of the group’s supporters to create “something that is at least a net positive for public health and the environment.” SC,HF says that the updated bill does not solve “the problem of toxic chemicals and their impact on public health in the United States,” but the good news is that the reforms offered in the bill mean “the EPS can get in on the action of advancing public health and environmental protection.”
SC,HF urges its supporters to “keep holding your retailers accountable for what they sell through our Mind the Store campaign,” and also “help us keep EPA’s feet to the fire to use their new powers to the maximum degree.” SC,HF didn’t get what it wanted out of this bill, primarily because the “chemical industry’s power in the political process was too great and reflects a normalization of the corrupting influence of big money,” said SC,HF’s release.
The win for this activist group included the fact that “key legal roadblocks that have prevented EPA from taking action on chemicals have mostly been removed. The provision requiring identification and protection for disproportionately exposed populations provides a powerful new handle for environmental justice communities and workers like firefighters. The requirement to identify and protect populations that are disproportionately susceptible to injury provides a potentially powerful handle to protect the developing fetus and child from endocrine-disrupting chemicals.”
Listen up, plastics industry. That statement means that the war on BPA and other additives in plastics has only just begun! SC,HF tells its supporters that “the fact is you still have a critical job to do. In the parlance of the show [ Game of Thrones ], 'your watch has not ended.'” State authority was probably the most contentious issue in this debate, something the coalition fought hard to protect. “I’m sorry that we could not do better,” said SC,HF. “The early or ‘pause’ preemption in the bill is a ridiculous idea that became the proverbial ‘pound of flesh’ that the American Chemistry Council (ACC) demanded in this debate.” SC,HF fought to avoid this but lost.
The flip side, however, noted SC,HF, is that “TSCA is now reformed and no one— no one —can credibly argue that it takes the place of state chemical regulatory activity. ACC will be peddling that line in state capitols, but we both know that they are completely full of crap. The pace of chemical reviews will simply be too slow to make that claim stick,” said SC,HF. “TSCA reform is finally here and it falls demonstrably short of what’s needed to fully protect public health and the environment. Your service at the state level . . . is still critical. That sound you’re hearing is not the buzzer, but the opening bell.”
The activist group’s message to the EPA is now that you have this new authority, “are you ready to use it?” The new TSCA bill implements a slower schedule in the process of determining toxic chemicals, but SC,HF says that even if the pace is slow, “it’s on you to ensure the maximum public health improvements are extracted from this process. We encourage you to take the protection of disproportionately exposed and susceptible populations to heart and ensure your evaluations and restrictions reflect the realities of toxic chemical exposure in this country.”
SC,HF knows that there will be “push-back” from the chemicals industry, but the activist group and its supporters—“the broader public health community, environmental groups, mom bloggers and others—are rooting for you” and will get the funding together to see that the EPA can do the job it needs to do to protect the public.
SPI, in its release, is waving the victory banner. “This is a great day for the U.S. plastics industry and its nearly one million workers and their families,” it noted. “We look forward to continuing to grow the American economy by manufacturing the safest, strongest and most technologically advanced products and materials.”
While SPI may consider passage of the TSCA a victory, it can’t rest on its laurels. Industry will continue to be dogged by these activist groups that will continue to spread hype about the evils of plastics. Given the new-found powers of the EPA, industry trade groups are going to have to step up to the plate to make sure that, at the end of the day, science wins out.
http://www.plasticstoday.com/bipartisan-passage-tsca-seen-win-both-sides-issue/66952342524805
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(ACC Mentioned) VADXX: Turning Plastic Back into Petrol
Jun 21, 2016 | Akron Legal News
By Richard Weiner
Looking like something out of a 1950’s science fiction movie, the new recycling plant on Waterloo Road, near the blimp hanger, houses radical new technology that may help with eliminating plastic waste and, at the same time, creating petroleum products that could also lessen the need to drill.
VADXX’s technology essentially reverses the process of creating plastic out of petroleum, said William Ullom, the company’s founder and chief engineer.
“We are in the business of converting waste polymers—plastic--into useful commodity products, which could be fuel or other petrochemicals,” said Ullom. “It is a very frugal process. Very environmentally conscious.”
VADXX’s technology is getting national recognition.
“VADXX is on the leading edge of companies that are finding innovative ways to turn post-use non-recycled plastics into fuels and other valuable commodities” said Craig Cookson, senior director of recycling and recovery for the American Chemistry Council.
“We’re excited about the work VADXX is doing and look forward to following their progress.”
The more than $20 million facility features a seven-step process that takes mountains of shredded plastic and other waste and turns it into gasoline and other useful carbon products.
“One man’s trash,” said Ullom, “is another man’s treasure.”
And at the core of that process, said Ullom, is Mother Nature.
“Our technology is very different from other approaches,” said Ullom. “I was trained as a geologist, working in oil, coal, and metals, but in oil in a big way. Eventually I became frontier exploration manager for a large oil company and I learned how mother nature makes crude oil. There’s a process for that.”
Crude oil, or petroleum itself is composed of numerous carbon compounds and metals, and is the material that everything from plastic to gasoline is made from, said Ullom.
When the 1986 oil industry collapse occurred, Ullom owned a small oil company. “I sold that company and came to Ohio, and I started an environmental consulting firm.”
“One day, (Ullom) is looking for and producing ‘gushers’, and another he is looking for ways to remediate the damage left behind by petro-chemical spills & leakage to industrial/commercial sites,” said Terry Martell, chief operating officer of the Akron Global Business Accelerator where VADXX began.
One day, actually while in the shower, Ullom said he had an epiphany. Putting it simply, he said he knew that nature has a process for producing crude oil and natural gas in rocks. That process he said is “continual.” It takes place over long periods of time under certain environmental conditions and without any breaks.
Ullom was cognizant of existent research on extracting petrochemicals from plastics, but those methods, he said, were not continuous processes.
“They did not do what the developers said they did,” he said.
So Ullom said he set about trying to re-create the processes that nature uses to create petrochemicals by using waste products that have been created using those same petrochemicals.
After years of research and testing, including a test facility in downtown Akron, and millions of dollars in investments, Ullom said he and VADXX stand almost ready to open their new plant on Waterloo Road. Numerous pipes, shredders, extruders, boilers and other sophisticated machinery are undergoing their commissioning.
“Every gallon of crude that we create is a gallon that does not need to be fracked,” said Ullom. “And every pound of plastic that we recycle is a pound that does not wind up in a landfill.”
The process, he said, is “cheaper than fracking” per gallon of usable petrochemical.
“About 25 percent of all landfill materials contain polymer waste that could be diverted into the feedstock for producing oil products in VADXX plants,” said Martell.
He said that even extends to his morning cup of coffee. He throws his coffee cup and stirring stick into his own personal recycling drum on the floor of the plant, next to the mountains of pre-shredded raw materials that come from local rubber and plastics recyclers.
“After commission, we expect to be able to process two-and-a-half tons of material at optimum,” he said. “Plastic that does not go into the ground or the water. That will produce about 300 pounds of product (crude oil and other carbon products) per day.”
Ullom said he thinks that VADXX can “work on” the problem of plastic in the ocean as well as on land. A New York Times report from 2015 stated that some 8 million metric tons of plastics are put into the oceans each year.
“That plastic is not a solid island,” he said. “The dangerous part in the marine environment is that it causes problems from the small up to the top of the food chain. Pollutants stick to it. Fish eat it. It is concentrated poison in the ocean.”
Because a number of chemicals go into the making of plastic and artificial rubber, that number of chemicals are then extracted by VADXX’s processes and they go beyond just crude oil, he said, addint that the Waterloo plant is designed to make every chemical in the process usable.
“Every molecule going up a smokestack is one I can’t sell,” said Ullom. “I’m greedy. This process is completely non-polluting and clean. I am trying not to be wasteful.”
The International Resin Identification Coding System identifies seven types of recyclable plastics, each designated by a number stamped onto the product.
“Plastics we like are [recycling] numbers 2,4,5 and 6,” he said. “That includes dairy containers, herbicide containers, and those little black plastic plant containers, along with their trays and labels.”
The products that VADXX’s seven-step process produce include crude oil, but also other carbon-based products, including a substitute for coke (used in steelmaking) and hi-test gasoline, which Ullom said he has used to power his lawnmower.
“The gas is as good as anything you can get at a gas station,” he said.
And if there is paint on a piece of raw material, he said, “paint turns into salt recovered as a carbon product and is saleable.”
Even waste heat, he said, will be converted into a product to be sold as well as contributing back to the plant’s power grid.
Ullom said that the lengthy process has been helped along by the city of Akron, both at the Accelerator and with the land and building for the pilot plant.
The largest influx of capital has come from a private investment firm, he said.
Ullom said that he hopes the technology could be scalable to the point that it could change the entire relationship that the human race has with its waste plastics.
VADXX’s website is here: http://investvx.wpengine.com/
http://www.akronlegalnews.com/editorial/15514
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Obama to Sign TSCA Reform on Wednesday
Jun 20, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Colby Bermel
This story was updated at 5:50 p.m.
President Obama on Wednesday will sign into law the first major update to the nation's chemical laws in nearly 40 years, the White House announced today.
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), sponsor of H.R. 2576, will attend the signing ceremony, a spokesman confirmed.
Shimkus' bill to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act, the "Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act," was sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee upon its introduction in May 2015.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the committee's ranking member, announced his opposition to the legislation in the eleventh hour but ended up supporting the bill and even won a few concessions (E&E Daily, June 9). Pallone will also attend.
A spokesman for Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, did not comment in time for publication on whether Upton will be at the ceremony.
The chairman was next to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) when Ryan signed the enrolled version of the TSCA bill last week, however (E&ENews PM, June 14).
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who introduced the TSCA legislation in the Senate, will be standing by the president during the event, a spokeswoman said.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a champion of chemical reform and ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, will also be present.
Boxer's Republican counterpart on the committee, Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), has already said he will not attend the signing ceremony with Obama. "No. That's all right," the chairman toldE&ENews PM last week. "Doesn't make it any more major, does it?"
The signing will be held in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building's South Court Auditorium at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/06/20/stories/1060039109
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TSCA Reform 'Best Science' Mandate May Influence EPA IRIS Assessments
Jun 20, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Provisions in the landmark Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform bill -- which President Obama is slated to sign into law June 22 -- requiring EPA to ensure TSCA regulatory actions use the “best available science” could change how the agency conducts Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) risk assessments, stakeholders say.
TSCA risk evaluations of chemicals to determine whether they meet the statute's safety standard of unreasonable risk to human health or the environment are distinct from IRIS assessments that analyze risks from chemicals and set risk values that often become the basis of rules in other programs.
But former agency officials, industry sources and others say that the language in the TSCA reform deal could give EPA a more focused direction on how to conduct IRIS assessments, helping the agency to overcome long-running criticisms that some IRIS reviews “cherry pick” science or contain other data flaws.
Although IRIS assessments of chemicals are done by EPA's Office of Research & Development (ORD) and not covered by TSCA, it is possible that ORD might adopt some of the best science standards for TSCA risk evaluations outlined in the bill, sources say. TSCA risk evaluations are conducted by the Office of Chemical Safety & Pollution Prevention (OSCPP).
While the IRIS program is housed in a different office, and each office has its own way of doing things, “I was told once that OCSPP is one of the biggest customers of ORD," and ORD generally wants to ensure that its work is useful to the program offices, former OSCPP Assistant Administrator Steve Owens, now an attorney with Squire Patton Boggs, said during a June 16 interview with Inside EPA.
It is possible that IRIS program managers could take some of the reform bill’s provisions into account, given that OCSPP relies on some IRIS data, Owens said.
One industry source notes that EPA will soon start implementing TSCA reform at a time of ongoing overhaul to the IRIS program. Those changes were spurred by a 2011 review from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that criticized the agency's draft IRIS assessment of the human health risks of formaldehyde.
The TSCA reform best science language could give EPA staff “a little bit more muscle” and direction in conducting risk assessments, one former agency source says, as it outlines standards for evaluating risks from chemicals.
'Best Available Science'
The bill, known as the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, in honor of the late Sen. Lautenberg (D-NJ) who for years unsuccessfully tried to advance TSCA reform in the Senate, would establish a set of standards for ensuring EPA acts in a manner “consistent with the best available science.”
The standards would apply to any action EPA takes under TSCA's testing, new chemicals, and risk management authority, and require the agency to pursue a series of measures, including considering whether models, studies, and methods have been independently peer reviewed; any uncertainty related to the data, and other factors. EPA would also be required under the bill to make decisions based on the weight of the scientific evidence.
EPA to date has pursued few risk evaluations under its existing TSCA authority, notably its failed attempt to ban asbestos that a federal appeals court rejected in 1991. More recently, the agency has launched a handful of chemical “work plan” reviews that are in various stages of the evaluation process.
IRIS' human health risk analyses are often the basis for EPA risk management and regulatory decisions under air, water and waste authorities, but the influential program has long been a focus of criticism from Congress, NAS, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and regulated entities for delays, selective use of science, and other criticisms.
The House approved the final TSCA deal May 24, followed by the Senate's approval June 7. The bill was presented to Obama for his signature on June 14, with a signing ceremony set for June 22.
Senators' Analyses
Ahead of the upper chamber's floor vote on the TSCA reform deal, Democratic and Republican senators made remarks intended to influence how EPA implements the scientific standards.
In separate GOP and Democratic statements of legislative intent submitted to the June 7 Congressional Record, lawmakers on both sides discussed the new scientific standards language, with Senate Democrats and Republicans diverging on the purpose behind the weight of evidence provisions.
According to the Democrats' analysis signed by Sens. Tom Udall (D-NM), a lead author of the bill, Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW) ranking member Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and fellow Senate Democrats Edward Markey (MA) and Jeff Merkley (OR), the weight of evidence language is “not intended to prevent the agency from considering academic studies, or any other category of study.”
The senators in their analysis define the “weight of evidence” as a “systematic review method that uses a pre-es tablished protocol to comprehensively, objectively, transparently, and consistently, identify and evaluate each stream of evidence, including strengths, limitations, and relevance of each study and to integrate evidence as necessary and appropriate based upon strengths, limitations, and relevance.”
But in a GOP analysis, which EPW Chairman Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and panel member David Vitter (R-LA) entered into the June 7 Congressional Record, the senators say the language will help ensure EPA “bases scientific decisions on the weight of the scientific evidence rather than one or two individual cherry-picked studies” and forces the agency to “show their work” increasing overall transparency.
Vitter said, “For far too long Federal agencies have manipulated science to fit predetermined political outcomes, hiding information and underlying data, rather than using open and transparent science to justify fair and objective decision making, and that the bill “seeks to change all of that” through the scientific standards provisions.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/tsca-reform-best-science-mandate-may-influence-epa-iris-assessments
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Strange Brew: How Chemical Reform Legislation Falls Short
Jun 21, 2016 | GreenBiz
By Zach Bernstein
It’s taken a very long time — 40 years, in fact — but a major federal law is finally getting a makeover.
The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the national law designed to regulate potentially toxic chemicals, hasn’t been updated since 1976, and there’s wide agreement that the law is inadequate to keeping consumers safe. Now, after years of back and forth, both the House and Senate have finally passed a compromise bill, which the President is expected to sign by the end of the month.
So is this bill the right way to address our broken chemical regulatory system? Let’s break it down.
The good...
One major reform is fixing the EPA’s authority to test potentially dangerous chemicals. This is important, since, contrary to popular opinion, the vast majority of chemicals in the market havenever been tested.
In fact, of the approximately 80,000 chemicals currently in use, 62,000 were on the market when TSCA was passed in 1976, and so were ‘grandfathered’ in. And of the remaining 18,000 or so, the EPA has only been able to mandate testing on 200 of them. Under existing law, the EPA simply doesn’t have the authority to set safety standards or obtain sufficient information from manufacturers.
This is a disaster waiting to happen: Companies that produce chemicals, or use them as production inputs, risk major losses if health hazards surface later (think fiberglass and asbestos). That can bankrupt companies and destroy entire industries. Making matters worse, companies that do have the know-how to produce safer alternatives have difficulty building a market against more dangerous competitors whose risks have not been disclosed.
This reform bill would help responsible companies by requiring the EPA to evaluate the potential risks of chemicals in commerce, giving it more ability to test new and existing chemicals, and prevent new chemicals from entering the marketplace until they have been found to be safe. This is, without question, an improvement over the existing TSCA law.
...With the bad?
One major weakness in the reform bill is how slow the process would work. The EPA is required to initiate testing on only 30 of those chemicals in the first five years after the law is passed. Half of those would be chemicals on the agency’s “work plan,” a master list of the known worst chemicals.
That’s a good place to start, but the process is too slow. A full review that results in a final determination could take up to seven years, and for most of that time, states would not be allowed to take be restricted from taking faster action (more on that later). Congress missed the opportunity to put in place a more robust testing schedule that would have improved safety more quickly.
Another weakness in this reform bill is that, due to what’s known as Confidential Business Information (CBI), proprietary chemical formulations are information considered trade secret.
Under the current system, a company has wide latitude to claim CBI and avoid sharing data that would reveal a product’s potential safety profile. This tactic limits the amount of information the EPA — as well as manufacturers and consumers — can get to assess safety.
The new bill, meanwhile, requires companies to re-substantiate previous claims that their formulations deserve CBI status. If they do, the information becomes available to the EPA and certain health professionals.
Giving the EPA more data on the safety of certain chemicals is a step in the right direction, but that data must also be made widely available throughout the supply chain — especially to consumers. This legislation does not meet that need.
Worse yet, the bill will actually slow the testing process for chemicals at the state level. States that wanted to move faster on regulating potentially toxic chemicals will have to wait up to three years while the EPA completes its review. States could pursue a waiver if they have a compelling reason, but some opponents are claiming the waiver process is too complicated.Existing state regulations would remain in place, but future efforts will be considerably restrained.
One step forward, two steps back?
The good things in this reform bill are significant. Giving the EPA the authority to actually test more chemicals that could be dangerous is an essential improvement that addresses a major flaw of the original law. And yes, any congressional action is going to require some compromises for a bill to become law.
The problem is that some of those compromises, like slowing the pace of the EPA’s reviews, or prohibiting states from regulating toxic chemicals while the EPA is looking into them,seriously weaken the bill’s effectiveness.
Real reform needs to include three main principles: transparency, safety and innovation. While this bill offers some good things by letting consumers know what’s in some of the products they use, and protecting them from the worst chemicals, it simply doesn’t go far enough. And that means truly innovative companies will still have to sell against more dangerous competitors, even if the EPA now has some teeth to go after them.
This reform bill’s mixed reviews explain why many businesses, including Earth Friendly Products, Seventh Generation, Naturepedic and the Honest Company — all members of the Companies for Safer Chemicals Coalition — had very mixed feelings about this bill. While they all recognized the positive things this legislation would accomplish, they were also very disappointed that it didn’t go further, and would slow the progress states were making on chemical reform.
Compromise is basic to our type of government, and it’s unusual for one side to get everything it wants, so the fact that this bill has flaws should be no surprise. In this bill, however, the positive changes are seriously outweighed by the missed opportunities. The 40-year stalemate on reform has been broken, but the fight to create truly sustainable chemical policy must continue.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/strange-brew-how-chemical-reform-legislation-falls-short
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Sen. Carper Applauds Work to Revamp Chemical Safety Laws
Jun 20, 2016 | Delaware Public Media
By Tom Bryne
Sen. Tom Carper is touting recently passed federal legislation that aims to bolster chemical safety oversight nationwide.
Carper visited CRODA’s Atlas Point chemical plant in New Castle Monday to discuss the overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Delaware’s senior senator says 40 year-old law was ineffective and outdated, with the EPA fully vetting only a handful of chemicals during its existence. That, he says, left many unable to trust the safety standards in place to protect them from potentially hazardous toxic substances.
“One of the key questions for me was can we have one rigorous federal standard? Can we make sure that we are looking at chemicals before they are out and in the environment and in the things that we live in and work with? ” said Carper.
Carper says the bill does that and addresses the issue of a patchwork of regulations created when states jumped in to fill the void left by TSCA's deficits, though he adds achieving that “great compromise” and delivering stronger chemical oversight through common sense regulation was not easy.
“It’s taken us a long time to get to the point where we came up with a rigorous federal standard and gave the states the right to help enforce that federal standard – not to set their own – but enforce what EPA came up with," said Carper. "We also want to make sure we don’t lose all our manufacturing jobs and I think this legislation will help provide not only a safer environment, but also for businesses predictability and certainty that will allow the to grow and expand.”
Groups as diverse as the Chemical Industry Council of Delaware and Environmental Defense Fund backed the bill, which passed both the House and Senate with strong bipartisan support.
It only needs President Obama’s signature to become law.
http://delawarepublic.org/post/sen-carper-appauds-work-revamp-chemical-safety-laws#stream/0
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Detoxifying Congressional Politics
Jun 20, 2016 | Enumclaw Courier-Herald
By Don Brunell
Thankfully, June 8 marked a milestone for Congress. Members came together and overwhelmingly approved a sweeping bill that regulates tens of thousands of toxic chemicals in everyday products, from household cleaners to clothing and furniture.
The legislation capped more than three years of arduous work by Republicans and Democrats and business and environmental leaders who systematically plowed through volumes of complex, confusing and sometime contradicting state and federal environmental laws and regulations dealing with toxic chemicals.
It updates the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act to require the Environmental Protection Agency to evaluate new and existing chemicals against a new, risk-based safety standard that includes considerations for particularly vulnerable people such as children and pregnant women.
It also establishes written deadlines for the EPA to act and makes it tougher for the industry to claim chemical information is proprietary and therefore secret.
Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., one of the bill's chief sponsors, told Associated Press correspondent Matthew Daly: "for the first time in 40 years, the United States of America will have a chemical safety program that works … and protects families from dangerous chemicals in their daily lives."
"The new bill requires the EPA to set priorities for substances with the greatest likelihood of presenting a risk to the public and establishes a process that's both effective and not unnecessarily onerous on companies so that beneficial products can get to market," Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa said in an interview with Kent Hoover, national bureau chief of Biz Journals. "This will help both job creation and retention, and environmental concerns."
Although the legislation has wide support, it has some detractors.
"At issue here are potential new hurdles, delays and restrictions on states' ability to enact their own restrictions on toxics. Instead of being a national leader on controlling toxic chemicals, Washington will now have to fall in line behind the feds and wait for EPA to take the lead," Rob Duff, chief of staff on environmental issues for Gov. Jay Inslee (D) told the Seattle Times in May.
However, the 181-page bill specifies that any state law or rule in place before April 22 would not be pre-empted by federal law.
Importantly, the national legislation sets new safety standards for asbestos and other dangerous chemicals, including formaldehyde, styrene and Bisphenol A, better known as BPA, that have gone largely unregulated for decades.
While in Washington State, lawmakers and interest groups have their share of differences and disagreements, they have a history of working together on key sensitive environmental issues.
In the early 1980s, business, environmental and legislative leaders came together to streamline our State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). The changes, pushed by Gov. John Spellman (R), enabled SEPA applicants to focus on an environmental checklist of significant concerns for projects.
In 1999, the landmark Forest and Fish Law brought together tribal, environmental, business and government leaders. Gov. Gary Locke (D) signed the bipartisan bill aimed at protecting water quality for fish, wildlife and people while allowing logging, tree planting and forest management on private forestlands.
In 2002, business, environmental, municipal and state leaders came together to hammer out rules governing activities along our state's shorelines. Then Attorney General Christine Gregoire (D) helped mediate an out-of-court settlement of conflicting litigation. Locke pushed the agreement through the legislature with bipartisan support.
The bottom line is our system will work, if people are willing to set aside difference and come together for the common good. While it is a long and bumpy road, in the end, we are all better served by laws which are clear, logical and function efficiently.
Warning: Patience, persistence and understanding are required.
http://www.courierherald.com/business/383706061.html
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EPA Expects Long Lead Time for Lead, Copper Rule
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Michael J. Bologna
While revising the lead-and-copper rule remains an urgent priority for the Environmental Protection Agency, a senior agency official June 20 assured municipal water system operators they would have significant lead time to implement the rule.
Eric Burneson, director of the standards and risk management division of the EPA's Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, said the current trajectory of the rulemaking project suggests an implementation gap of at least three years for system operators. The gap reflects the processes of drafting and issuing a proposed rule, conducting a public comment process, and drafting and issuing a final rule with implementation deadlines.
“So we have a number of years between when we actually make these regulations and you in the regulated community will have to implement them,” Burneson told water professionals attending the American Water Works Association's annual conference in Chicago.
Burneson reiterated the EPA's previously stated commitment to issue a proposed lead and copper rule in 2017. He noted that the proposed rule would reflect national issues brought to light by the Flint, Mich., lead crisis, including a reassessment of the sampling regime under the rule, lead service line replacement requirements and risk communication techniques.
Learning From Flint
In drafting the rule, Burneson said the EPA would draw on recommendations from the National Drinking Water Advisory Council and the agency's experience in Flint.
“We are going to be looking at those recommendations and recommendations we've received from other stakeholders,” he said. “We are going to build on the national experiences we had implementing the rule, and we are going to learn from our experiences with Flint.”
Burneson added that the agency would issue regulations under Section 1417 of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) on lead free plumbing by the end of the year.
The regulations respond to a 2014 revision to the act that established the definition for “lead free” as a weighted average of 0.25 percent lead calculated across the wetted surfaces of a pipe, pipe fitting, plumbing fitting, and fixture and 0.2 percent lead for solder and flux.
PFOS, PFOA
On a different drinking water theme, Burneson defended the EPA's recent health advisories establishing voluntary benchmarks designed to guide local water systems determining safe concentration levels of certain highly fluorinated chemicals in drinking water.
On May 19, the EPA set the same benchmark—0.07 microgram per liter or 70 parts per trillion—in its two lifetime drinking water health advisories on perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).
The EPA said individual or combined exposure to the chemicals could trigger negative health effects including cancer. The two chemical compounds were widely used in consumer products such as carpeting, giving them water- or stain-resistant qualities.
A water system professional from Colorado questioned the EPA's rationale for issuing the health advisories, accusing the agency of setting off a “media nightmare” for water system operators. The official said most of the country had no knowledge of the substances and little warning from the EPA that such public health guidance would be released. He was skeptical of any health benefits from expensive water system modifications targeting PFOS and PFOA.
Burneson conceded the EPA could have done more to notify communities of its guidance statement. At the same time, he said announcements dealing with “emerging contaminants” have proved a particular challenge to the agency.
“We are looking for opportunities to learn how to lead and improve the way we've done things,” he said. “We all appreciate that emerging contaminants present a particular challenge. We call them emerging contaminants because the science is constantly changing. So one of the things we struggle with is getting the science out there in a way that is useful and informative to people trying to make decisions in a timely and effective manner.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92216352&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92216352&jd=92216352
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PCBs and Other Organic Pollutants Reach the Deep Ocean
Jun 21, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Deirdre Lockwood
Ocean pollution isn’t just a plastic problem. An alphabet soup of persistent organic pollutants—including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) used as flame retardants, and more—are carried by the wind and rivers into the ocean. A new study bolsters findings from scant prior sampling showing that these compounds have penetrated deeper than 2,000 m below the surface (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2016, DOI:10.1021/acs.est.5b05891).
To gauge the impact of these pollutants on marine life, oceanographers want to know their abundance, how widely they are distributed, and how they get there. But it’s a challenge to measure them at sea because the pollutants have relatively low concentrations, demanding careful sampling techniques and precautions to avoid contamination. The research cruises required to take these open ocean samples are also very expensive. Until now, there have been only three studies of persistent organic pollutants in the deep ocean, at just a few different sites. Given how big the ocean is, there’s a lot of missing information, says Rainer Lohmann of the University of Rhode Island.
To help fill in the gaps, Lohmann and his colleagues deployed samplers at various depths from the surface to 2,500 m to measure organic pollutants dissolved in the water. Unlike those stuck to particles in the water column, dissolved pollutants are readily available to organisms. The team sampled at two mooring sites, one in the north Atlantic and the other in the middle of the tropical Atlantic. The samplers contained polyethylene films of various thicknesses that sorbed dissolved contaminants. After a year, the researchers collected the films, extracted the compounds, and analyzed them for 78 pollutants, including PCBs, PBDEs, organochloride pesticides, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Using each compound’s concentration on the sampling film and the film thickness, the researchers could calculate its concentration in the water.
Most of the pollutant concentrations at the surface ranged from 0 to 50 pg/L, and matched findings from previous studies fairly well. Results for deeper samples were more surprising. A previous study from the 1980s in the north Atlantic showed that PCB concentrations declined with depth. In contrast, Lohmann and his colleagues found that PCBs at their two sites were most abundant at depths of 500 to 800 m—though still in the pg/L range—and then declined to concentrations similar to those at the surface in deeper water. PCBs were banned in many parts of the world in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Based on the composition of chlorofluorocarbons in the water, which indicates when water masses were last at the surface, the researchers found that the samples from the tropical Atlantic with maximum PCB concentration were at the surface in the 1970s, at the peak of PCB production. With this and other evidence, the researchers suggest that ocean currents that carry water from the surface to the deep ocean may be the main way the pollutants reach these depths.
The deep ocean is “clearly not highly polluted” with these compounds, Lohmann says, but they are surprisingly prevalent “for what we thought of as being a fairly pristine body of water.”
In contrast to the results for PCBs, the team found that more recently produced PBDEs were more abundant at the surface and declined with depth. This suggests that these compounds are just beginning to penetrate the ocean.
Anna Sobek, a marine chemist at Stockholm University who also studies persistent organic pollutants in the deep ocean, calls the study impressive. The levels the team detected are not high enough to cause acute toxic effects on marine organisms, she says. But because marine life is simultaneously exposed to many chemicals, even at low levels, “this could still be problematic,” she says.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/web/2016/06/PCBs-organic-pollutants-reach-deep.html
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Canada Reconsidering Toxic Status of 741 Substances
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Canada is proposing to increase reporting requirements for 741 substances subject to regulatory controls in the U.S., it said June 20.
The changes largely would affect industries that use specialty chemicals, including for research purposes, in addition to chemicals used by industries that produce dyes, coatings and personal care products.
The government is proposing to remove the substances from the Non-Domestic Substances List under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act to ensure better reporting that will help determine if the chemicals could be considered toxic, Environment and Climate Change Canada said in a noticein the June 18 Canada Gazette, Part I.
The proposed changes follow a biannual review of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Substances Control Act Chemical Substances Inventory that identified them as subject to controls in the U.S., but not in Canada, according to the department.
“Risk management controls imposed by other jurisdictions can signal potential concerns in Canada; therefore, more stringent reporting requirements are needed for these substances,” it said.
The notice is open to comment from interested parties through Aug. 17.
Substances that have been on the EPA list for more than one year and are not subject to regulatory controls in either the U.S. or Canada are added to Canada's Non-Domestic Substances List, while substances that have become subject to U.S. regulatory controls are proposed for removal from the Canadian list, the department said.
Reporting Requirements
All new substances in Canada are subject to reporting requirements under the New Substances Notification Regulations (Chemicals and Polymers), but those on the Non-Domestic Substances List are subject to less stringent requirements.
Industries that manufacture or import new substances not on the list must notify the government at least five days before the quantity of the chemical exceeds 100 kilograms in a calendar year, 60 days before the quantity exceeds 1,000 kilograms and 75 days before it exceeds 10,000 kilograms.
The regulations impose reporting requirements only for chemicals that are on the list if quantities exceed 1,000 or 10,000 kilograms, and the reporting period is shorter—30 days and 60 days, respectively.
The department said it will consider delaying removal of a substance from the Non-Domestic Substances List if additional time is needed to ensure compliance with the more stringent reporting requirements that would apply, Environment and Climate Change Canada said.
The 741 substances include: estrogen substitute diethylstilbestrol; biochemical tool methylnitronitrosoguanidine; azo dye component benzidine; azo dye Direct Brown 1A; perfluorohexadecanoic acid, a specialty chemical used in protein research; coatings component polyethylene glycol o-phenylphenyl ether acrylate; insecticide component didecyldimethylammonium perfluorooctane sulfonate; and a form of 1-propanaminium used in personal care products.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92216350&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92216350&jd=92216350
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Canada Says 16 VOCs off Toxics List, Aligning with U.S.
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Menyasz
Canada has declared that 16 volatile organic compounds are not toxic because they do not significantly contribute to smog, aligning Canada's approach to the substances with that of the U.S.
The change would make the substances available for industry to use in manufacturing products such as refrigerants, fire suppressants, heat transfer fluids, foam-blowing agents, aerosol propellants, adhesives, solvents, coatings, cosmetics, cleaners, degreasers and food packaging.
Many volatile organic compounds contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone, a component of smog. The substances were added in 2003 to the List of Toxic Substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, but some compounds were excluded at the time due to their minimal impact, Environment and Climate Change Canada said June 15.
Canada's exclusion list mirrors that of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which conducted scientific assessments concluding that the 16 compounds contribute negligibly to ozone formation and added them to its exclusion list, the department said in an order in the Canada Gazette, Part I.
“The department has examined the scientific approach used by the U.S. EPA and agrees with these assessments,” it said. “There are unnecessary limitations on the use of these compounds in product formulations in Canada, and the regulatory definitions of volatile organic compounds in the United States and Canada are not aligned.”
Dropping the chemicals from the List of Toxic Substances eliminates their coverage under the Volatile Organic Compound Concentration Limits for Automotive Refinishing Products Regulations, as well as under the Volatile Organic Compound Concentration Limits for Architectural Coatings Regulations, it said.
All but one submission received after publication for public comment in May 2015 of a draft order supported the proposal to exclude the 16 substances from the List of Toxic Substances, Environment and Climate Change Canada said. One comment opposed the exclusion of t-butyl acetate on the basis of concerns about its potential human health impacts, the department said.
And while industry supported the changes, several industry groups asked for a more effective mechanism to accelerate future updates to the exclusion list, it said. The department said it will continue to monitor changes to the U.S. list of excluded substances and will propose further changes in Canada if deemed appropriate.
The compounds are:
• 1,1,1,2,2,3,3-heptafluoro-3-methoxy-propane (HFE-7000);
• 3-ethoxy-1,1,1,2,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,6-dodecafluoro-2-(trifluoromethyl) hexane (HFE-7500);
• 1,1,1,2,3,3,3-heptafluoropropane (HFC-227ea);
• methyl formate (HCOOH3);
• t-butyl acetate;
• 1,1,1,2,2,3,4,5,5,5-decafluoro-3-methoxy-4-trifluoromethyl-pentane (HFE-7300);
• propylene carbonate;
• dimethyl carbonate;
• trans-1,3,3,3-tetrafluoropropene (HFO-1234ze);
• HCF2OCF2H (HFE-134);
• HCF2OCF2OCF2H (HFE-236cal2);
• HCF2OCF2CF2OCF2H (HFE-338pcc13);
• HCF2OCF2OCF2CF2OCF2H;
• 2,3,3,3-tetrafluoropropene (HFO-1234yf);
• trans 1-chloro-3,3,3-trifluoroprop-1-ene [HCFO-1233zd(E)]; and
• 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol.
HFC-227ea, methyl formate, t-butyl acetate, propylene carbonate, dimethyl carbonate, 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol, HFO-1234yf, HCFO-1233zd(E) and HFO-1234ze are on Canada's Domestic Substances List, so their use, manufacture or importation will no longer require any reporting or notification, the department said.
However, HFE-7500 and HFE-7300 are on Canada's Non-domestic Substances List because they have not yet been used, manufactured or imported, so they will remain subject to the New Substances Notification Regulations (Chemicals and Polymers) but with reduced reporting requirements, it said.
The remaining substances are on neither the Domestic Substances List nor the Non-domestic Substances List, so companies that intend to import or manufacture them are required to notify the department, it said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92216329&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92216329&jd=92216329
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Upton, Bishop Offer Conference Committee Assurances
Jun 20, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss
Two top House chairmen today pledged to work with wary Democrats in conference committee talks to produce a final energy bill that President Obama would sign.
In a joint statement, Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said they were committed to working with members from both parties on both sides of the Capitol to sort out the thorny differences between the chambers' competing energy bills.
While brief, the joint statement released this afternoon addresses a key concern by Democrats, which has stalled the launch of formal negotiations. Members of the minority worry about Republicans pushing poison pill provisions.
"At the end of the day, our goal is to get something to the president that he will sign into law," said Upton and Bishop. "From our perspective, a bill that the president will veto is a waste of time and effort and casts aside the hard work we've put in up to this point."
They added, "We remain committed to working in a bicameral, bipartisan manner and remain hopeful we can set aside our differences and move ahead with a formal conference between the two chambers."
The joint statement comes as the pair are expected to meet again this week with their respective ranking members, Democratic Reps. Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to talk about a possible conference (E&E Daily, June 20).
The House named conferees to merge both chamber's energy bills last month, but the Senate has not yet set a vote to launch the talks (Greenwire, May 26).
Cantwell has repeatedly criticized the House for adding bills to its energy package that have drawn White House veto threats.
She has also compared the House's bill, which passed the chamber with a handful of Democrats, with the Senate's S. 2012, which passed the chamber 85-12 in April.
The Upton-Bishop statement stops short of taking the veto-threatened House bills off the table for conference talks but states the obvious -- that ultimately any final bill the conference passes will need to garner the support of the White House. Murkowski has emphasized the point repeatedly in recent weeks (E&E Daily, June 9).
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/06/20/stories/1060039108
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EPA's Clean Power Plan Defense Came Soon After Stay
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Environmental Protection Agency officials began to coalesce around the talking points they would use to publicly defend the Clean Power Plan within hours of the U.S. Supreme Court taking the unprecedented step of halting the carbon dioxide standards' implementation, internal agency e-mails show.
“You can't stay climate change, and you can't stay climate action,” Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a Feb. 10 e-mail to all staff, the day after the stay was issued. “The rule fits squarely within the four corners of the Clean Air Act—a statute we have been successfully implementing for 45 years.”
Internal agency e-mails, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, show senior EPA officials expressed surprise at the Supreme Court's decision but quickly emphasized it would not stop action on climate change and their belief the Clean Power Plan (RIN:2060-AR33)—which sets limits on carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector in each state—is legally sound.
“This is obviously very disappointing, and we are all absorbing it this evening,” Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator for air and radiation, wrote just hours after the stay was issued. “It is not a decision on the merits, however, and we remain as sure as [we] were yesterday of the sound legal basis for the rule.”
Those internal communications contain strikingly similar language to the agency's initial public statement after the Supreme Court's action, which said “you can't stay climate change and you can't stay climate action” and “we believe strongly in this rule and we will continue working with our partners to address carbon pollution.” Those similarities came even though the agency's response remained under development in the immediate aftermath of the court's decision. EPA's director of speechwriting, Becky Fried, acknowledged in a Feb. 10 e-mail that the communications strategy was “still evolving” in the midst of calls with the White House and other stakeholders about the implications of the stay.
Supporters Write Senior Officials
Individuals representing a host of interests also wrote senior agency officials to offer words of encouragement in the days following the High Court's 5-4 decision to stay the regulation even before an appellate court could hear argument in the case (West Virginia v. EPA,U.S. , No. 15A773, 2/9/16).
“Thinking of you today—hang in there,” Cheryl LaFleur, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, wrote to McCarthy on Feb. 10.
“I know it's been a rough week,” Heather Zichal, former climate policy architect for the Obama administration, wrote McCabe on Feb. 11. “Just wanted you to know I'm thinking about you.”
Officials also got welcome news from a number of states, including Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland, that indicated they would move ahead with implementing the Clean Power Plan despite the court's decision.
“Think how remarkable it is to have even three states (VA, CO and now PA) voluntarily say they are going to move forward with a federally required program that is stayed—really, I'm not sure that's ever happened before,” McCabe wrote on Feb. 11.
Long Nights Shown
The internal e-mails also show senior EPA officials had especially long nights immediately after the stay was issued. McCabe and McCarthy, in particular, were responding to various correspondence into the wee hours of the morning.
McCabe sent an e-mail to other offices within the air division not directly involved with the Clean Power Plan at 3:59 a.m. on Feb. 10 to inform them about “what we were saying” and to assure them “we will of course push on with our defense of the rule.”
In response to words of encouragement from Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, McCarthy wrote Feb. 13 at 1:50 a.m.: “Keep the faith, stay active and good things will happen.”
After President Barack Obama made public remarks Feb. 11 once again reaffirming his strong support for the regulation and its legality, Joseph Goffman, associate assistant administrator and senior counsel in the EPA's air office, sent around a link to Tom Petty's “I Won't Back Down.”
McCarthy replied at 1:22 a.m. on Feb. 12: “Love it.”
New Twist With Scalia's Death
In the days after the Supreme Court's decision, officials held meetings with White House staff and others to develop talking points to address the stay. They also discussed how to prepare McCarthy for congressional hearings and answered questions from state officials about the impacts of the court's decision.
But another curve ball came Feb. 13 with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who voted in favor of the stay. News of the justice's death rippled through the ranks of EPA leaders throughout the day.
Cynthia Giles, EPA assistant administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, first circulated news of the death with a terse e-mail at 5:24 p.m.: “Justice Scalia died.”
“Oh wow—didn't expect that, but he was 79,” McCabe said in response at 10:39 p.m.
“May his soul find peace,” Goffman replied at 10:54 p.m.
None of the e-mails released under FOIA directly discussed what impact Scalia's death might have on the ongoing litigation over the Clean Power Plan. Many were marked as protected by attorney-client privilege or otherwise marked as “deliberative.”
But Lori Stewart, another official within the air office, likely summarized the thoughts of many within the agency's inner circle: “Just an incredible week.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92216333&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92216333&jd=92216333
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Climate Action Will Make Our Cities Safer
Jun 20, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Jay Fisette
In Arlington County, as with much of the country, climate change has turned up the heat. Our residents are feeling the effects. And when it comes to taking action on climate to protect our communities, we are not waiting.
Local governments are the first responders to storm-related power outages, flooding, and threats to public health. The City of Norfolk already suffers from recurrent flooding due to sea level rise, and much of Virginia’s coastline is at elevated risk of catastrophic impacts from hurricanes and tidal floods that could put homes and businesses literally underwater.
We know that American cities and counties are on the front lines of climate change. It’s no surprise, then, that cities are also on the cutting edge of responding to this challenge. Climate change is not an abstract issue for us. These changes aren’t mere disruptions; they impose real costs on municipal budgets by requiring expensive infrastructure improvements and put the health of our families and communities at risk
Across the country, municipal governments are making progress by setting ambitious targets for improved energy efficiency and renewable energy generation. In 2013, after several years of extensive stakeholder engagement and research, Arlington County set a goal of reducing carbon pollution by 75 percent by 2050. Arlington is well on its way toward achieving this goal, thanks in large part to 30 percent-50 percent reductions in electricity use in several major county facilities.
We set this target because we know that reducing air pollution is good for Virginians’ health. We know that prioritizing clean energy sources is a smart economic policy that will support job growth. And while we’re doing what we can to mitigate the dangerous impacts of climate change, we know we can’t do it alone.
Recognizing this, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the Clean Power Plan, which sets the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution from fossil-fuel power plants and encourages greater energy efficiency and investments in clean, renewable sources of energy. These standards will produce up to $54 billion in annual climate and health benefits per year by the time they are fully implemented.
The federal court charged with considering the polluter-backed lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan recently announced that arguments in this case will be heard before the full court without delay. This decision reflects the importance and urgency of dealing with this growing threat.
This is why Arlington County, along with 50 other city and county governments from 28 states, signed a brief detailing why the Clean Power Plan is critical to the safety and economic prospects of communities across the country. We joined with a powerful majority of Americans who support the Clean Power Plan, and a broad coalition of individuals and organizations—including faith groups, professional medical associations, businesses, and more—in filing these “friend of the court” briefs earlier this year.
We cannot let our best chance to secure a healthy and safe environment for our children and grandchildren slip through our fingers. All of us need to stand up for practical public health protections like the Clean Power Plan, support the transition to greater efficiency and other clean energy, and work together to create the safer and more sustainable future our children deserve. If not, we’ll have a lot more to sweat than the heat.
Jay Fisette is the vice chair of the Arlington County Board.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/284129-climate-action-will-make-our-cities-safer
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At Pennsylvania Wells, Methane Gas Leaking Everywhere
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer Oldham
A mail box sits on an abandoned well pipe near blooming peonies, logs snag on metal casings rising out of a creek, children swing next to rusted pump jacks.
In Pennsylvania, birthplace of the U.S. oil industry, century-old abandoned oil wells have long been part of the landscape. Nobody gave much thought to it when many were left unplugged or filled haphazardly with dirt, lumber and cannon balls that slipped or rotted away.
But the holes—hundreds of thousands of them pockmark the state—are the focus of growing alarm, especially those in close proximity to new wells fracked in the Marcellus shale formation, the nation's largest natural-gas field. They leak methane, which contaminates water, adds to global warming and occasionally explodes; four people have been killed in the past dozen years.
“We had so much methane in our water, the inspector told us not to smoke a cigar or light a candle in the bath,” said Joe Thomas, a machinist who lives with his wife, Cheryl, on a 40-acre farm with at least 60 abandoned wells. Patches of emerald-hued oil leech to the surface, transforming the ground into a soupy mess.
Hundreds like the Thomases live over lost wells.
Reviewing Rules
Now the state's attorney general is reviewing rules requiring drillers to document wells within 1,000 feet of a new fracking site. This puts Pennsylvania among states such as California, Texas, Ohio, Wyoming and Colorado confronting the environmentally catastrophic legacy of booms as fracking and home development expand over former drilling sites.
As the number of fracked wells increases, so does the chance they might interact with lost wells. Pennsylvania regulators have documented several instances of fracking too close to an abandoned hole, causing methane to leak into homes, the air or water.
At least 3.5 million wells have been drilled in America since operators plumbed the first hole in the small Pennsylvania town of Titusville back in 1859. It was oil pumped from this rugged landscape, near the state's western border with Ohio, that John D. Rockefeller started refining a few years later in a venture that would evolve into the Standard Oil Trust.
Years of Work
Today, about a quarter of the 3.5 million wells across America are active, leaving an inventory of 2.6 million that are no longer in use. The locations of some inactive wells are documented, but little is known of the whereabouts of wells drilled before permitting regulations were enacted 60 years ago. Only 10 percent of abandoned wells are recorded in state databases—meaning there are years of work ahead to locate and plug them. Seth Pelepko of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection says the agency has plugged only 3,000 such sites in 30 years.
Regulators are ramping up detection efforts, including testing the use of drones equipped with magnetometers. For the moment, however, they rely on a low-tech solution of “citizen scientists” who hunt for leaking wells near watersheds and recreation areas in the Allegheny National Forest.
Laurie Barr is one.
On a recent search, Barr overcame her fear of rattlesnakes sunning in dense grass, bears lurking in hemlock groves and bees—she's allergic—nesting in moss-covered logs. Wearing an orange pocketed vest stuffed with a GPS, mace, a water tester and a methane sniffer, Barr forded a stream and hiked downhill deep into the trees. She urged companions to “remember that rock” to find the way back. The stones, however, all looked the same.
Oil Sheen
An hour later, she came upon a decades-old rusty pipe and overturned well equipment sticking out of a ravine. Fluid poured out of the abandoned well, which Barr reported to regulators in 2014. The noonday sun reflected a rainbow-colored sheen of oil off a pool surrounding the site. Officials have yet to investigate.
“If you were in Pittsburgh and knew this was happening thousands of times in your watershed, you wouldn't be so happy,” said Barr, who co-founded Save Our Streams Pennsylvania in 2011 to search for such sites. She's located about 1,000; most hadn't been recorded in the state's system. The state is clarifying coordinates before visiting some wells, said the department's Pelepko.
Hiking through swamps, Barr pointed out a well spewing orange bacteria into a stream, a hole frequented by deer, burping methane and brine, and a long rusted pipe with gas bubbling around it into the Allegheny Reservoir.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
“The assumption was these wells are not emitting much methane and we don't need to worry about them,” said Mary Kang, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in California who co-authored a widely cited paper on Pennsylvania's wells. “Yet these old wells are emitting methane into the atmosphere, and they are worth considering in greenhouse gas emissions inventories.”
Officials also are warning private-property owners of health risks. Generations of Pennsylvanians relied on the oil patch for their livelihood and became desensitized to the industrial footprint left behind.
The Thomases, who live near the New York border, have become aware that such wells pose risks. Recently, Barr held her methane sniffer over a muddy, oily hole she dubbed “the fudge pot” at their farm as blackbirds harassed a crow overhead. Beeping wildly, the device soon hit its limit. The well is now in line to be capped.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92216335&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92216335&jd=92216335
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Colorado West Slope Producers Lash Out at Feds over Mancos Shale
Jun 20, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
Colorado oil/natural gas industry advocates lashed out on Friday at the Obama administration for "completely ignoring" new U.S. Geological Society (USGS) estimates on the extent of potential reserves in the Mancos Shale along the Western Slope. In play is the industry's long-held contention that leases on federal lands in the area should not be arbitrarily canceled.
In a joint letter to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA), West Slope COGA, and the Western Energy Alliance (WEA) accused the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and BLM of "disregarding" new information on the value and importance of the Mancos resource.
The trio of industry backers asked the federal agencies to reconsider comments to a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) submitted in January, along with comments given at a subsequent conference held with USFS officials regarding moves to finalize its Forest Plan, which the industry has argued all but eliminates future natural gas leasing in parts of the Mancos.
West Slope COGA Executive Director David Ludlam told NGI's Shale Daily that the federal agencies have a legal obligation to consider the latest USGS estimates for the Mancos (see Shale Daily, June 8) before developing the final EIS and a record of decision on the Forest Plan.
"All of the analysis underlying the environmental assessment is no longer relevant or valid," Ludlam said. The agencies “have to conduct a reasonable development scenario, and the key word is 'significant' new information."
USFS and BLM have not issued the final environmental assessment and decision, so COGA and WEA are arguing they have no choice but to consider the updated USGS information that concludes the Piceance Basin's Mancos Shale in Colorado contains an estimated 66 Tcf of natural gas, sharply higher than a 2003 estimate of 1.6 Tcf. It is the second-largest assessment of potential continuous gas resources ever conducted by USGS.
"This announcement by USGS not only constitutes new information but is, in fact, 'significant new information' that triggers a legal obligation for BLM to reopen and republish the draft EIS alternatives," the groups said in their letter to BLM Project Manager Greg Larson in Colorado.
Contending that the goal of BLM leadership in Washington, DC, may be to complete the decision making on this area before the November elections, the letter noted that "the most significant upward revision in the history of USGS, if ignored, will constitute arbitrary and capricious action rending the ROD vulnerable to legal challenge."
New USGS data doesn't just move the resource estimates a few percentage points, but represent "a 40-fold increase" in technically recoverable natural gas within the White River National Forest, which has been a center of contention for years between the industry and federal government (see Shale Daily, Feb. 16).
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/106820-colorado-west-slope-producers-lash-out-at-feds-over-mancos-shale
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Ship Channel Pilots Say Low-Sulphur Fuel Likely Caused 2015 Collision and Chemical Spill
Jun 19, 2016 | Houston Chronicle
By Lise Olsen
The Houston Pilots Association contends that a Ship Channel crash and chemical spill in March 2015 was most likely caused by a switch to ultra low-sulphur fuel oil that led one of two vessels that collided, the Conti Peridot, to unexpectedly lose power only seconds before the accident.
The pilots' conclusion stands in contrast to a summary released earlier this month of an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, which described pilot decision-making as the "probable cause" of the accident.
In a rebuttal to the NTSB, the pilots note that the March 9 collision and leak came only six days after the U.S. Coast Guard issued a "Marine Safety Alert" that warned that a new North American and Caribbean environmental requirement to use ultra low-sulphur fuel oil had been associated with other pollution events and unexpected "losses of propulsion" in ships nationwide, according to a government document. George C. "Chris" Reeser, the Conti Peridot's pilot, and the Houston Pilots' current and past presiding officers all say they believe that the root cause of the crash was likely the combination of that fuel and the ship's poor handling characteristics, according to an interview with pilot leaders and Reeser's attorney, Jim Brown. Together, those factors caused the bulk carrier to swerve and slow just when it needed speed to pass the other vessel, the Carla Maersk, a tanker, they argue. And unpredicted fog on the channel made it more difficult for the pilot to maneuver, they said.
Brown and pilot leaders spoke in an interview a week after the NTSB released the summary of its report, which cited Reeser's "inability" to control the ship and his "lack of communication with other vessels" as the probable cause of the collision. In a news conference, the NTSB chairman stated the pilot should have done more to alert others about his ship's poor handling and coordinated better with the vessel's master and crew. The NTSB's report is preliminary but marks the fifth time that the agency has described actions by Houston-based pilots as contributing to accidents it investigated in the Ship Channel and the Port of Houston since 2011, records show.
Pilots have contested other NTSB recommendations in the past.
NTSB's conclusions
In this case, the NTSB considered the pilots' arguments about effects of ultra low-sulphur fuel on the Conti Peridot, said Terry Williams, a spokesman for the agency. But fuel was not mentioned in the preliminary summary. Instead, the report urges pilots to address communication and bridge management issues.
The NTSB's report also recommended that the local harbor safety committee study ways to help avoid accidents during the rapid onset of fog and other foul weather, including considering requirements to increase spacing between ships and require one-way traffic or anchoring.
The pilots association, an elite private group, provides mandatory guide services to all large commercial vessels that enter the Port of Houston. Its mission is to prevent accidents in the winding, largely man-made channel, considered one of the most treacherous U.S. port pathways.
In the group interview, pilots defended their safety record. They said they disagree with the NTSB's conclusions of the cause of the Conti Peridot accident and emphasized that serious accidents represent a tiny fraction of an average of 20,500 annual trips they made in recent years. Simultaneously, pilots also are defending themselves in a wave of litigation filed in the aftermath of the Conti Peridot-Carla Maersk crash, federal court records show.
More than 3,000 people have claimed their properties or their health were harmed by the release of 88,000 gallons of methyl tert-butyl ether, or MTBE, a volatile and highly flammable substance used as an additive in gasoline. It leaked though a gaping hole in the tanker's punctured hull after the collision, according to litigation pending in both Houston federal and state courts.
The crash produced an 8-foot wave that spewed soiled water into the lawns of coastal homes. Toxic fumes quickly reached crowded nearby port terminals that smelled like turpentine and sickened stevedores and truck drivers alike, related federal court records say. The Ship Channel remained closed for three days.
Sudden loss of speed
Maersk, the tanker's owner, denies responsibility and claims the accident cost the company $20 million in losses. Many litigants have blamed the pilots aboard both ships for their injuries and losses as well as Maersk, federal court records show.
Under Texas law, Port of Houston Commissioners also act as the Board of Pilot Commissioners, reviewing ship channel accidents and deciding whether to discipline pilots or require retraining. A port investigative committee holds hearings on some accidents; disciplinary action is rare.
Both the Houston Pilots - and the port's investigative committee - found that both pilots acted properly and were unable to avoid the accident, port records show.
In a port hearing held about the accident in December, Reeser described the problems he had with the Conti Peridot, including an unexplained loss of speed he experienced in the seconds before the collision.
According to a transcript, Reeser read a warning about the ship's poor handing characteristics only minutes after boarding the Conti Peridot on the morning of the accident. The 4-year-old merchant ship had already been red-flagged in a computerized log of 200 problematic ships that his fellow pilots had created.
Still, Reeser didn't hesitate. It was raining, but visibility was good. No fog was forecast.
"I just said to myself: 'It's going to be a long day,' " Reeser said in the hearing. He successfully steered the "sluggish" ship for the three hours before fog gathered and visibility "went to zero" just as he neared a long line of vessels on March 9, 2015. On the last pass, the bulk carrier fishtailed "all over the channel."
Reeser gave an order to increase power, but his speed dropped instead, a copy of the ship's records provided by the pilots shows.
He radioed a warning only about a minute before colliding with Carla Maersk, an outbound tanker loaded with MTBE.
After hearing Reeser's testimony, the port's investigative committee recommended training, but no disciplinary action, though the review remains pending. (Lisa Ashley, a spokeswoman for the port, said officials will review the final NTSB report before deciding whether to approve the committee's recommendation.)
For years, the National Transportation Safety Board has led teams to investigate accidents in the air, on rails and at sea. The agency has recently stepped up its efforts to probe maritime accidents - releasing 32 reports on maritime accidents in 2015, compared with just four in 2012. Its most recent Houston investigative reports repeatedly have flagged communications issues as causes of concern. Fog was a factor in two recent collisions - and the latest report urged the local harbor safety committee to consider ways to reduce risks.
Data analysis
The Lone Star Harbor Safety Committee, a diverse group of maritime industry representatives and government officials, will meet in August to consider the NTSB's latest report, said James Prazak, the current committee chair.
Steve Nerheim, director of the Coast Guard's Houston/Galveston Vessel Traffic Service, said that his agency already "is moving forward to engage with the harbor safety committee to take whatever actions are warranted."
Nerheim said local safety subcommittees already have been analyzing channel accident data and persistent reports of loss of propulsion among ships here, the issue the Houston pilots blame for the costly March 2015 collision.
Various harbor safety committee members already identified fluctuations in local populations of menhaden as one root cause and have worked on ways to warn mariners. Low-sulphur fuel is another possibility, he said. For each of the last three years, 60 ships reported losses in propulsion in the area's waterways. Collisions are much less common - though 14 occurred in 2015, double the previous year, according to the vessel traffic service's most recent statistics.
Some of the region's worst collisions and major spills occurred in heavy fog. But Nerheim said he's not sure if developing common protocols for moving ships during fog could work in Houston. Though a coordinated response for fog already is used by authorities in San Francisco, Houston's fog is more seasonal and sporadic, making it difficult to predict, he said.
The NTSB has completed five reports in the Houston channel and port and one in the Texas City Channel since 2011. In two of those cases, the captains of towing vessels were identified as the probable causes of collisions. Pilots' actions were identified as the probable causes in four cases and criticized in a fifth crash.
The port has taken action - issuing a letter of caution - against only one pilot whose actions were flagged in recent NTSB reports, port records show.
The Board of Pilot Commissioners issued that "letter of caution" to another pilot involved in a collision that also occurred in March 2015, records show.
In that case, a tanker called the Chembulk Houston collided with a container ship called the Monte Alegre only four days before the collision involving the Conti Peridot. The NTSB said the probable cause of the collision was that an experienced pilot increased the speed of his vessel while a rookie pilot aboard a tanker was attempting to overtake and pass him. The senior pilot failed to alert his counterpart in radio communications before the crash that he was accelerating, the NTSB concluded.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Ship-channel-pilots-say-low-sulphur-fuel-likely-8312157.php
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PHMSA Issues Advisory Following Plains Spill
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Pipeline operators should ensure that line segments are both buried and insulated, have effective coating and corrosion control systems and conduct in-line inspections for threats, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said in an advisory bulletin scheduled to be published in the Federal Register June 21.
The notice to owners and operators of all hazardous liquid, carbon dioxide and gas pipelines, follows the 2015 incident in which a pipeline in California owned by Plains All American Pipeline LP ruptured spilling 140,000 gallons of crude oil along the Santa Barbara coast.
The spill occurred after the buried pipe line failed due to extensive external corrosion that occurred under the insulated coating, according to the pipeline regulator.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92216334&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92216334&jd=92216334
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5th Circuit to Hear Arguments on Venue for Suits over EPA Haze Air Plan
Jun 21, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit will hear oral arguments June 22 over which appellate court should hear Texas' case challenging EPA's imposition of a haze emissions control plan on the state, with the agency urging the court to dismiss the suit or transfer it to the D.C. Circuit due to its precedential value for future haze emissions plans.
Texas and power sector groups filed their 5th Circuit suit, State of Texas, et al. v. EPA, et al., over the agency's Jan. 5 rule that rejected state implementation plans (SIPs) crafted by the Lone Star State and Oklahoma for how they would cut haze-forming air pollution in order to comply with EPA's regional haze program. In place of the SIPs, the agency imposed federal implementation plans (FIPs) through which it directly wrote the haze control mandates.
Texas argues that EPA's FIP for the state is unlawfully stringent and uses a new methodology at odds with past practice in order to impose costly pollution control mandates on industry. The rule's opponents have also filed suit in the 10th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Oklahoma, and also in the D.C. Circuit.
However, they say the proper venue is the 5th Circuit, which includes Texas, because the rule primarily impacts that state. Although EPA disapproved Oklahoma's plan, it did so because of pollution from Texas sources that impacts Oklahoma, and the regulatory burden would fall in Texas industry, Texas argues.
The venue for the suit could be important for the future of EPA's haze program and its FIP authority, because the D.C. Circuit is seen by many legal observers as more sympathetic to EPA than the 5th Circuit, located in Louisiana. The agency has touted the plan as a blueprint for other states to follow, containing the agency's latest thinking on how states should craft measures to ensure “reasonable further progress” (RFP) in haze reduction.
EPA's haze program seeks to restore visibility to natural conditions in “Class 1” areas -- national parks and wilderness areas -- by 2064. In the first phase of the program, from 2008 to 2018, states' SIPs focused on imposing best available retrofit technology (BART) on eligible sources, chiefly power plants. BART is a one-time requirement, and the next wave of haze plans covering the period 2018 to 2028 will instead be based on RFP.
Critics claim that EPA in the Texas FIP departed from the established "four-factor" analysis for determining RFP by adding another consideration, the potential visibility improvement.
The four factors are: time necessary for compliance, energy and non-air quality environmental impacts of compliance, remaining useful life of the source, and the costs of compliance.
Industry groups further decried EPA's selection of a smaller universe of sources than all possible sources in the state that could impact visibility. The agency in the final FIP for Texas said this would have been impractical, and distorts the analysis to exclude possible cost-effective emissions reductions.
'Nationwide Scope'
EPA in its FIP rule also included a finding that the regulation has “nationwide scope or effect,” which under the Clean Air Act would require that challenges to the rule be heard in the D.C. Circuit.
The agency justifies this claim on the basis that methodology for RFP in the rule is intended to shape all states' future plans, and because the rule applies to two states in two judicial circuits.
In a June 1 letter on the venue issue, the Department of Justice (DOJ) on EPA's behalf says, “EPA made a finding that the Final Rule is based on a determination of nationwide scope or effect for two independent reasons. First, EPA announced in the Final Rule its clarified interpretations of statutory and regulatory provisions pertaining to the transport of haze between states. The clarified interpretations guide all of the States, and EPA, in the implementation of the regional haze program, and are thus a determination of nationwide scope or effect.”
Second, “EPA premised its finding on the equally dispositive fact that the determination in the Final Rule has scope or effect in two different judicial circuits,” DOJ says.
DOJ argues that although the FIPs are regionally and not nationally applicable, they nonetheless have nationwide scope or effect and hence any litigation over them belongs in the D.C. Circuit.
DOJ says that state and industry litigants conflate national applicability with nationwide scope or effect, when in fact these terms have independent meaning. DOJ adds, “Even if EPA’s finding were subject to review (which EPA contends it is not), such review is only available in the D.C. Circuit.”
DOJ relies heavily on the prior findings of the 5th Circuit in Luminant Generation LLC, v. EPA, et al, a suit brought by Texas and industry groups against the agency's “SIP Call” rule that requires 36 states to remove regulatory exemptions from their SIPs. The court agreed to dismiss the suit despite arguments by the state and industry that the provisions of the rule applicable to Texas should be heard in the 5th Circuit, and Texas petitioners are now pursuing their case in the broader D.C. Circuit action, Walter Coke, et al. v. EPA, et al.
'Regional Rulemaking'
Texas in a June 1 letter counters that, “The Rule is the epitome of a local or regional rulemaking, which the [Clean Air Act] directs to the 'appropriate circuit.' While Texas and Oklahoma are located in different circuits, the locus of the Rule’s applicability is Texas.”
Texas further says that DOJ in its briefing confuses “jurisdiction” with “venue,” that the law grants jurisdiction to all federal courts of appeals, and that the law only speaks to venue with respect to nationally applicable rules or those with nationwide scope or effect.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, in their June 1 letter support EPA and argue that the court need not reach the issue of whether the determination of nationwide scope or effect is judicially reviewable, or the alleged distinction between jurisdiction and venue. “In transferring these cases, the Court need not reach the question of whether the forum provisions . . . are jurisdictional or whether they relate only to venue because Congress clearly intended rules of nationwide scope and effect to be reviewed in the D.C. Circuit regardless,” say Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association in their filing.
The groups say, “nor does the Court need to reach the question of whether EPA’s finding of 'nationwide scope and effect' is a reviewable agency action as Petitioners assert . . . because, assuming it is reviewable, EPA’s published finding is eminently reasonable, comports with the statutory requirements, and should be upheld.”
Industry's Arguments
Meanwhile, industry groups including Luminant, the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG) and others in their June 1 letter say, “The rule involves only EPA’s determination to approve or disapprove portions of the regional haze SIPs of Texas and Oklahoma, promulgate separate FIPs for these two neighboring states, and impose emission controls only on eight power plants in Texas.
“The only regulatory changes that EPA’s rule effectuates are changes to two subparts in the Code of Federal Regulations that respectively concern the approved SIP provisions in Texas and Oklahoma. Thus, EPA’s rule does not involve all, or even many, parts of the country,” they conclude.
Nor does the air law support a rule being necessarily nationwide in scope or effect simply because it extends across two judicial circuits, they say.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/5th-circuit-hear-arguments-venue-suits-over-epa-haze-air-plan
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EPA Needs More Time for Some Sulfur Dioxide Designations
Jun 21, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
The Environmental Protection Agency needs more time to complete the designations process for certain areas under the 2010 national air quality standards for sulfur dioxide (Sierra Club v. McCarthy, N.D. Cal., No. 13-cv-3953,notice filed 6/20/16).
The agency reached an agreement with the Sierra Club to extend by 60 days a July 2 deadline for final area designations under the national ambient air quality standards for sulfur dioxide of 75 parts per billion, according to a June 20 court filing. If approved by a federal district court judge, the EPA would have until Aug. 31 to complete designations for the following areas:
• Freestone and Anderson counties in Texas;
• Rusk, Gregg and Panola counties in Texas;
• Titus County, Texas;
• Milam County, Texas and
• Muskogee County, Okla.
The EPA in 2013 designated 29 areas in 16 states as not in nonattainment of the sulfur dioxide standards, but it deferred decisions on other areas of the country due to inadequate monitoring data. The agency, under the terms of a consent decree with the Sierra Club, is taking a phased approach to making the rest of those attainment designations.
The first deadline included in that consent decree requires the EPA to act by July 2 to designate all areas that show violations based on three years of monitoring data. Alternately they may have stationary sources that emitted more than 16,000 tons of sulfur dioxide in 2012 or emitted more than 2,600 tons of sulfur dioxide and had an average emissions rate above 0.45 pounds of sulfur dioxide per 1 million British thermal units of heat input in 2012.
The EPA in February proposed to find that 12 areas in eight states don't meet the standards. Once nonattainment designations are finalized, the states will be required to submit plans to the EPA detailing the steps they will take to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, which predominantly comes from coal and oil combustion, and eventually meet the federal standards.
The 60-day extension would only apply to the five areas in Texas and Oklahoma. The agency will take action for all other areas by the July 2 deadline, according to the court filing.
Additional deadlines included in the consent decree that require subsequent designations in 2017 and 2020 are not affected by the 60-day extension.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92216345&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92216345&jd=92216345
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