Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 7/1/16
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(ACC Mentioned) With Landmark Law Finally in Place, Pressure's on EPA
Jul 1, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Colby Bermel
President Obama's signing of bipartisan legislation last week overhauling 40-year-old federal chemical laws was a watershed moment for industry and environmentalists alike. -
President Signs Bipartisan Law Revamping Toxic Substances Control Act
Jun 30, 2016 | Lexology
By John E. Griffith, Jr., Paul Wierenga and Catherine B. Campbell
President Barack Obama has signed into law the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (available here) − the first significant set of amendments to the core regulatory program under Title I of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) since its original enactment in 1976. -
NASF: Congress Moves to Pass Toxic Chemicals Reform Act Legislation
Jul 1, 2016 | Products Finishing
Efforts to modernize the U.S. rules for chemicals under the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) have been underway for the past several years and success is near. -
Scientists, Health Professionals Urge Action To Protect Children From Toxic Chemicals
Jul 1, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Sonya Lunder
Today, a distinguished group of 50 scientists, health professionals and advocates called for urgent action to protect children from the harmful effects of toxic chemicals. -
Minn. PUC Aligns Carbon Cost with Clean Power Plan
Jul 1, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Jeffrey Tomich
Minnesota utility regulators will push back by three years the date when utilities must factor into their long-range plans the cost of complying with carbon dioxide regulations. -
EPW GOP Fears 'Back-Door' Enforcement With EPA Oil & Gas Data Queries
Jun 30, 2016 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW) Republicans fear that EPA is attempting “back-door” enforcement of limits on the greenhouse gas (GHG) methane from oil and gas operations through Clean Air Act data requests on industry's emissions, even though the agency has not issued a methane rule for existing drilling sources. -
U.S. Shale Oil's Achilles Heel Shows Signs of Mending
Jul 1, 2016 | The New York Times
By Ernest Scheyder and Terry Wade
Since the beginning of the U.S. fracking revolution, oil producers have struggled with a vexing problem: after an initial burst, crude output from new shale wells falls much faster than from conventional wells. -
A Cleaner and Greater America Through Energy Innovation
Jul 1, 2016 | The Hill - Pundits Blog
By Bradley A. Blakeman
The secret to America's greatness lies in our ability to identify a need and then find a solution. In the past 150 years, America invented the top 11 of the 13 greatest inventions that changed the world and those innovations came about roughly every 7.25 years. -
2 Dead in Texas Oil Tanker Incident
Jul 1, 2016 | E&E Energywire
Two workers died Tuesday morning after inhaling toxic fumes in an oil tanker near Lytle, Texas, according to a Bexar County spokeswoman. -
Texas City and Buncefield: Will We Ever Learn?
Jul 1, 2016 | Occupational Health & Safety
By David Dana
Ten years on, we take a glance at how and why incidents such as the Texas City, Texas, and Buncefield explosions occurred. We also briefly consider how vital safety culture and management systems are in fostering a safe working environment. -
It’s Time for Railroads to Compete
Jul 1, 2016 | Journal of Commerce
By Jennifer Hedrick
America’s freight rail industry is a crucial element of the nation’s economic success. Many Journal of Commerce readers, including intermodal shippers, enjoy the benefits of a competitive transportation marketplace. -
How Industrial Hygienists Assist in Rail Emergencies
Jul 1, 2016 | Occupational Health & Safety
By Jerry Laws
Industrial hygienists are well prepared to perform an important role during the response to a railroad hazardous materials emergency, several experienced experts said during an AIHce 2016 session about rail crude oil spills on May 24.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
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(ACC Mentioned) With Landmark Law Finally in Place, Pressure's on EPA
Jul 1, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Colby Bermel
President Obama's signing of bipartisan legislation last week overhauling 40-year-old federal chemical laws was a watershed moment for industry and environmentalists alike.
The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act -- named to honor the New Jersey senator who led reform efforts for several years before his death in 2013 -- is aimed at modernizing the regulatory process and installing checkpoints for U.S. EPA to implement reforms.
Passage of H.R. 2576 was itself a milestone in deadlocked Washington as interest groups from all sides worked with lawmakers on complicated provisions for updating the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.
"I want the American people to know that this is proof that even in the current polarized political climate here in Washington, things can work. It's possible," Obama said at the signing ceremony last week. "We can keep families safe and unleash the engine of American innovation. We can protect the planet and keep creating jobs. If we can get this bill done, it means that somewhere out there on the horizon, we can make our politics less toxic as well" (Greenwire, June 22).
Now comes the hard part.
While industry and advocacy groups are celebrating the new law, the test is whether EPA can meet the law's deadlines to write and enforce the rules governing the more than 85,000 commercial chemicals in the TSCA inventory.
Two provisions were immediately enacted after Obama signed the TSCA reform measure June 22. The first requires that EPA review new chemicals within 90 days of industry bringing them to the agency. EPA and manufacturers can also negotiate an extension of this deadline.
Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, praised this provision, saying it transformed a passive review system.
"That, I think, is a really key difference. The fact that EPA now has to put its blessing on a chemical and say, 'We've looked at this, and we have enough information to believe that this chemical is likely to be safe' is a pretty different thing than saying, 'Well, we looked and haven't really found anything that raises a big red flag, so there it goes,'" Denison said.
"It's not a complete revolutionary change to the way that program worked, but it's significantly different, and it starts to create a much stronger incentive for companies to come in with more information, more evidence of safety than they ever have."
A new chemical becomes an "existing" one once it's catalogued in EPA's inventory. Then the agency will designate a chemical as high- or low-priority. High-priority chemicals fall under the law's "unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment" standard.
The other enacted provision addresses confidential business information. Any company asserting that bringing a new chemical to EPA for review will cause it competitive harm will have to justify this disclosure in an appeal. The agency has 90 days to review those claims.
This fall, EPA must move to set up the Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals, which will be similar to the agency's Chemical Safety Advisory Committee.
"It's clear that the congressionally mandated committee is broader in scope than those members of the CSAC," said Mike Walls, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs for the American Chemistry Council. "I think that EPA's got to make some fundamental decisions, maybe even start over from scratch, to form this Science Advisory Committee rather than carrying two committees."
EPA said it will post a Federal Register notice on plans for the new committee in September, with a public comment period to end in early November.
Reviews start
The first notable EPA deadline under the law hits in December, when the agency must identify 10 chemicals that will be subject to risk evaluations.
Chemicals selected for review by the agency are virtually guaranteed to be high-priority.
Once the 10 chemicals are identified, risk evaluations must be done for each. The law calls for completing the evaluations within three years of designation, with a six-month extension possible if more data are needed.
If EPA meets its 10-chemical nomination deadline -- 180 days away from the Lautenberg law's June 22 signing -- those final evaluations would be due Dec. 19, 2019, or up to a maximum of June 19, 2020, with the extension.
The same three-year evaluation period applies to any future chemical designated as high-priority.
Anyone can nominate a chemical for consideration.
Last week, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called on EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to include perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) among the first 10 chemicals considered. PFOA was used to make Teflon cookware, plastics and fabrics.
Residents of three New York towns -- Hoosick, Hoosick Falls and Petersburgh -- have been exposed to PFOA in their drinking water, she said in a letter to McCarthy, with tests showing the chemical in their bloodstreams at 50 or 100 times above the national average. There's no legal standard limiting PFOA in drinking water, but the chemical has been linked to health problems -- organ damage, birth defects and cancer -- in laboratory animals (Greenwire, May 20).
There will likely be pressure for EPA to consider asbestos.
Under TSCA, the Clean Air Act and a Consumer Product Safety Commission ban, asbestos cannot be used in certain products. But the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization is expected to lobby for asbestos to be one of the 10 high-priority chemicals.
"ADAO will continue to be a stakeholder at the table pushing for an expedited full ban on asbestos," the group's president, Linda Reinstein, wrote in a blog post last week.
Deadlines loom
EPA's major hurdles hit next June: six provisions, with three mandates over which EPA can be sued for blowing deadlines.
"We've historically seen EPA subject to strict time frames, say, under the Clean Air Act, for particular rules," said Bart Seitz, an attorney who specializes in health and safety issues at Baker Botts law firm in Washington, D.C.
He added, "I'm hoping that we don't get into that kind of situation here."
Steve Owens, assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention from 2009 through 2011, warned that "anybody can throw a big stink bomb in the middle of it and blow up the process."
But he said stakeholders were unlikely to want to draw out the rulemaking with a lawsuit.
"I think the remedy for a deadline suit is for a court to order EPA to do the rule it was required to do," ACC's Walls said. "I think there may be some value to a court reinforcing Congress' directions to the agency."
But EDF's Denison, for one, doesn't want any of this trouble.
"I'm of the view that those deadlines are vitally important for EPA to get the resources it needs and to be able to really push this forward," he said. "We're dealing with a part of the agency that has not had to make too many decisions in the past, and now they're in a position of having to make a lot of decisions."
Critics of the original TSCA legislation, signed by President Ford in 1976, say the law lacked teeth.
EPA acknowledged the law's weakness, saying the Lautenberg bill "addresses fundamental flaws in TSCA that have, for nearly 40 years, limited EPA's ability to protect the public from dangerous chemicals."
3 key rules
The new law offers three main rules to provide regulatory muscle: inventory reset, prioritization and risk evaluation.
The prioritization rule will be the process EPA uses to designate chemicals as high- or low-priority.
By December 2019, the agency will have to designate 20 chemicals as high-priority and 20 as low-priority. The 10 declared high-priority this December can be part of the 2019 list.
Manufacturers are required to present upfront as much information as they have on an existing chemical subject to the prioritization process.
"The incentive is going to be pretty strong for companies to be developing information upfront, because if you don't, [the chemicals] are going to be slower getting to market," Denison said. "The industry hates the idea of the minimum information sets upfront. But if EPA can create the incentive structure and then have the authority to require the data, which they do under the new law, that's a pretty good way to split the difference."
But Josh Bloom, a regulatory specialist at the Meyers Nave law firm in California's Bay Area, said it's "like an 800-pound gorilla coming at us."
"Unless you do your homework upfront, you're not going to get the chemical in the stream of commerce," said Bloom, who heads his firm's land use and environmental law groups. "There's definitely a framework in which you have to operate now."
After prioritization comes risk evaluation, which can take up to 3 ½ years after EPA determines whether a chemical presents an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment. Only high-priority chemicals go through the evaluation, while low-priority materials can go straight to market.
But this designation can be challenged in court. A risk management process of up to two years occurs after a chemical receives an unreasonable-risk determination.
EPA isn't the only federal agency involved in risk evaluation. Others -- the Food and Drug Administration, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Energy Department and Defense Department, among others -- provide feedback for EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
Some say having more agencies involved complicates regulation. Consider phthalates -- used to make plastics flexible. Phthalates found in floor tiles fall under EPA's jurisdiction, but when the chemical is in nail polish, FDA takes over.
"This is one of the complications in the federal landscape," Denison said. "It's an artificial barrier because our bodies don't care where we get [toxic chemicals] from. It's the cumulative, the aggregate of all those, that matters."
Environmentalists pointed to the 2006 European Union regulation called REACH -- Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals -- as a holistic model of what the United States should adopt in their perfect world. REACH evaluates chemicals in all their uses, unlike the Lautenberg Act, which primarily deals with EPA-related applications.
Proposed versions of the inventory, prioritization and evaluation rules are expected to appear in the Federal Register in mid-December, according to EPA's implementation plan. Final versions are expected next June.
A provision that's not a rule but is being treated like one involves fees. The Lautenberg Act lets EPA impose a charge on manufacturers whose chemical is under review.
"I think EPA has a strong incentive to get that fee rule done so it's bringing in revenue that allows it to expand the evaluation process," Walls said.
'A lot on their plate'
Can EPA meet its deadlines? The agency says yes.
"EPA recognizes that the new law imposes a number of new responsibilities on EPA, with comparatively short deadlines. The agency takes these responsibilities and deadlines seriously," a spokeswoman told Greenwire. "We have a long-standing history of assessing chemicals and will bring that experience to bear as we move forward."
But key players have their doubts.
"Developing four rules in a year is pretty ambitious," EDF's Denison said. "They're taking these deadlines pretty seriously, I think. It's good, because I don't think you want the first thing that people see from the law is [EPA] missing all of the deadlines."
While EPA possesses the "intellectual capability" for rulemaking, Baker Botts' Seitz said, "I am a little concerned about EPA's capacity to implement everything -- not just financially, but I think there's a lot of demands on the agency."
Bloom of Meyers Nave agrees, saying EPA is a broad-scoped agency that might get diverted from its chemicals mission.
"It's a lot on their plate. What's their budget going to look like going forward? What are their enforcement priorities?" he asked. "... It's really up in the air, no pun intended, what [the Lautenberg Act] is going to look like."
But others are cautiously optimistic.
"It's a challenging environment for EPA; there's no doubt about it," ACC's Walls said. "I'm absolutely confident that EPA certainly has the current resources to stand up the system and rules, especially financial resources."
Owens, the man who headed EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention and now is a principal at Squire Patton Boggs in Phoenix, is also optimistic.
"One of the biggest takeaways I have from my experience there is that rulemakings are not easy," Owens said. "Doing one rulemaking is a heavy enough lift. Trying to do four major rulemakings simultaneously is a Herculean task.
"At the same time, they're continuing to do the same things that they've already been doing," he said. "Having said that, EPA -- at least OCSPP -- has had a good running start on this effort, which I think will help them get these rules done within the next year and get them done well."
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/07/01/stories/1060039735
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President Signs Bipartisan Law Revamping Toxic Substances Control Act
Jun 30, 2016 | Lexology
By John E. Griffith, Jr., Paul Wierenga and Catherine B. Campbell
President Barack Obama has signed into law the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (available here) − the first significant set of amendments to the core regulatory program under Title I of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) since its original enactment in 1976.
The Act, signed by the President on June 22, 2016, represents a bipartisan effort in both the House and Senate to expand EPA’s authority to regulate chemical manufacturing and usage.
Significant changes under the Act include:
PRIORITIZATION AND RISK ASSESSMENT
The Act requires EPA to evaluate the safety of all existing chemicals in commerce, starting with those most likely to present risks. EPA must establish a process to determine which chemicals are “high” or “low” priority substances. A high priority designation triggers the requirement for EPA to complete a risk evaluation to determine, based on a new “risk-based” safety standard, whether the chemical poses an “unreasonable risk.” This risk-based evaluation excludes consideration of “costs or nonrisk factors” and requires consideration of unreasonable risk to susceptible and highly exposed populations.
Although cost may not be considered by EPA in evaluating risk, it may consider cost, including the availability of alternatives, when determining how to regulate a chemical. The Act continues to require that EPA conduct pre-market review of new chemicals (or significant new use of an existing chemical), but now requires application of the new risk-based evaluation methods to make an affirmative finding on safety before the new chemical (or use) is allowed into the marketplace.
PREEMPTION
Due to the increasing number and diversity of state chemical regulations, the scope of TSCA preemption has been a long-standing issue. Varying or conflicting state regulation can lead to increased compliance costs, reduced economies of scale, and diminished industry supply chains.
Accordingly, the Act provides some clarity as to the state-federal relationship under TSCA by preempting state action on a chemical when: (1) EPA finds through its risk-based evaluation that the chemical does not present an unreasonable risk; or (2) EPA has taken a final action to manage the chemical’s risk. In addition, state action on a chemical must temporarily “pause” while EPA’s risk evaluation of the chemical is underway, subject to certain exceptions including waiver by EPA. All state actions taken prior to April 22, 2016, however, are preserved under the Act.
CONFIDENTIALITY
Traditionally, under TSCA, to obtain Confidential Business Information (CBI) protection of information that the submitter believes warrants confidential treatment, the submitter was only required to designate the information as CBI. TSCA did not expressly require substantiation of confidentiality by the submitter or review of confidentiality claims by EPA. CBI protection also continued indefinitely, unless EPA determined that the information no longer qualified for protection as CBI and provided the submitter with written notice prior to public disclosure.
Under the Act, submitters must now substantiate, and re-substantiate after 10 years, certain claims of confidentiality, including claims involving chemical identities in health and safety studies. Further, the Act requires EPA to review past confidentiality claims, including those for chemical identity, to determine if confidentiality is still warranted.
FEES
The Act eliminates the prior $2,500 cap on fees for reviews related to pre-manufacture notifications and proposals for significant new use and instead allows EPA to propose new fee schedules by rule, subject to notice and comment. In view of the additional work assigned to EPA under the Act, fees are likely to be significant. The Act also provides that a manufacturer seeking expedited review of a chemical may be required to pay EPA’s costs in performing that review.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1b73fd8a-5f4c-44c1-8ae5-ff842a6f4863
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NASF: Congress Moves to Pass Toxic Chemicals Reform Act Legislation
Jul 1, 2016 | Products Finishing
Efforts to modernize the U.S. rules for chemicals under the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) have been underway for the past several years and success is near. On May 24, the House approved the compromise measure by a 403 to 12 vote. Action in the Senate was delayed by a hold placed by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who said additional time was needed to review the legislation. The Senate is likely to pass the compromise bill, and the White House had indicated that the President would support and sign this bipartisan legislation.
The proposed legislation would overhaul current chemicals laws under TSCA, which was last updated in 1976. Based on the language in the compromise bill, the new requirements would include the following.
Use a chemical’s “conditions of use,” or how a chemical is made, processed, used or disposed of) to determine the risks it poses.
Mandate risk reviews for new and existing chemicals before they can enter the market.
For existing chemical substances, set priorities for the highest risk substances, conduct a risk evaluation, and implement risk management requirements.
Require three years for EPA to complete a risk evaluation and have annual plan identifying chemical substances subject to risk evaluation.
Propose risk management rules for chemical substance within one year of completing risk evaluation and final rule in another year.
Address Confidential Business Information claims protecting the identities of chemicals in commerce.
Set fees to fund program only after consultation with potentially subject parties.
Provide preemption for state actions to regulate chemical substances taken before April 22, 2016 to balance state and federal authority to regulate chemicals.
The surface finishing industry has a history of effectively managing risks associated with the use of metals and metal compounds. NASF has supported the effort to modernize a national chemical management system that takes a practical and science-based approach for the highest priority chemicals.
If you have any questions or would like additional information regarding TSCA reform legislation and its potential impact on the surface finishing industry, please contact Jeff Hannapel with NASF at jhannapel@thepolicygroup.com or Christian Richter at crichter@thepolicygroup.com.
Finishing Industry Targeted By OSHA “Overreach”
OSHA issued a new reporting rule for employers in May that could pose challenges for manufacturers, including most NASF members. The regulation becomes effective August 20 and would require employers to electronically submit their injury and illness records to OSHA. Actual reporting will be phased in beginning in 2017. In the past, injury and illness records were only accessible to OSHA during inspections.
Under the new provisions, OSHA plans to take that information and post it on the Internet for public access and review. This represents a major and historic shift in how employer records are handled. Among other things, your company may be put in the spotlight as unsafe if your injury and illness records are taken out of context and mischaracterized.
NASF has voiced concerns over the measure since OSHA first proposed it in 2014 through a broad-based industry group called the Coalition for Workplace Safety. The coalition at press time was considering litigation options against OSHA for exceeding its legal authority.
The regulation will apply to both large and small employers. Facilities with 250 or more employees in industries covered by the rule—which OSHA estimates to be around 34,000 locations—must electronically submit to OSHA injury and illness information from OSHA Forms 300, 300A and 301. Facilities with 20-249 employees on OSHA’s list of “high hazard” industries—or potentially another 432,000 locations – must electronically submit information from OSHA Form 300A only. Surface finishing operations are on that list.
In a new twist that was unexpected—and some argue may be subject to legal challenge—the rule also contains “whistleblower” requirements that did not appear in the original proposed rule in 2014. Under the new rule, OSHA itself can decide to issue a citation to an employer when the agency believes that an employer has discouraged or suppressed an employee from reporting an injury – even if that employee has never filed a whistleblower claim.
While NASF is still reviewing the just-published rule, this element, among other provisions, is a major flaw and OSHA appears to be clearly overreaching its legal authority. The rule has been one of U.S. labor leaders’ most important priorities for the Obama administration, partly as a way to get more access to all employers’ records. NASF has been closely tracking OSHA’s regulatory efforts in the final year of the Obama administration. We will keep the industry informed on new developments for the electronic reporting rule and a few other major OSHA rules expected to move in the coming months.
In the meantime, please go to nasf.org to find OSHA’s Fact Sheet and other agency information about the rule.
http://www.pfonline.com/articles/congress-moves-to-pass-toxic-chemicals-reform-act-legislation
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Scientists, Health Professionals Urge Action To Protect Children From Toxic Chemicals
Jul 1, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Sonya Lunder
Today, a distinguished group of 50 scientists, health professionals and advocates called for urgent action to protect children from the harmful effects of toxic chemicals.
Project Targeting Environmental Neuro-Developmental Risks, also known as TENDR, was convened to assess the impact of toxic chemicals on children’s brain and nervous system development. In a statementpublished in the prestigious journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the group concludes that American children are widely exposed to chemicals known to impair development. They identify six toxic chemical exposures that pose clear risks to children’s neurodevelopment, and opportunities for immediate action. The harmful chemicals include:
Organophosphate insecticides
PBDE flame retardants
Particulate air pollution
Lead
Mercury
PCBs
“The goal is to protect expectant mothers, infants and children from neurotoxic chemicals by stepping up efforts to curb air pollution, remediate old lead pipes, phase out certain pesticides, ban endocrine-disrupting chemicals used in food packaging and plastics and come up with a plan for getting rid of furniture laden with fire retardants,” wrote The New York Times’ Roni Caryn Rabin, in her piece on the landmark statement.
EWG applauds this strong call for action and shares TENDR's concerns about children’s exposures.
In two of our own biomonitoring studies, EWG identified 232 toxic chemicals inumbilical cord blood samples, including lead, mercury, PBDEs and PCBs. EWG has also demonstrated that young children have consistently greater exposures to PBDEsand other toxic flame retardants than adults who live in the same home. Children are more likely to play on the ground, and put their hands or toys in their mouths, increasing their exposure risks. Because of their smaller bodies, children also have proportionally greater exposures to pollutants in air, water and food.
EWG offers dozens of tools help parents protect their children from toxic chemicals in their food, water, personal care products and homes:
Pesticides. EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ identifies the fruits and vegetables with the most and least pesticide residue. The guide helps people make informed choices to reduce pesticides in their diets.
Mercury. EWG’s Good Seafood Guide identifies the safest and healthiest seafood for children and pregnant women. It also lists high-mercury species to be avoided.
Flame retardants. Parents can now purchase furniture and baby items without PBDEs, but these and other toxic chemicals are still found in many American homes. Our guide to fire retardants gives tips on limiting children’s exposures to chemicals that migrate out of foam furniture.
Lead. Parents should test paint in houses built before 1978 and use an EPA-certified contractor when renovating a house with lead-based paint. Some older homes have lead-contaminated water: Parents should find out if lead is a problem in their city and follow these tips to filter their tap water.
PCBs. More than 40 years after they were banned, these industrial chemicals continue to harm people and the environment. PCBs contaminate fatty meat and dairy products, as well as some seafood. Homes and schools, particularly those built between the ‘50s and ‘70s, may have higher levels of PCB residue.
The TENDR statement is a shift from the traditional view that scientists should remain neutral and not get involved in policy debates. EWG has been sounding the alarm on toxic chemicals and children’s health for more than two decades, and we welcome these powerful voices to the fight.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2016/07/scientists-health-professionals-urge-action-protect-children-toxic-chemicals
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Minn. PUC Aligns Carbon Cost with Clean Power Plan
Jul 1, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Jeffrey Tomich
Minnesota utility regulators will push back by three years the date when utilities must factor into their long-range plans the cost of complying with carbon dioxide regulations.
Commissioners voted unanimously to delay the date until 2022 to line up with the earliest implementation date for U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan.
A 2007 state law requires the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to establish a likely range of costs of future CO2 regulations on electric generation. The costs are included in annual integrated resource plans filed with the commission every year or two years.
The cost estimate helps influence decisions about what type of generation a utility builds or buys, or when to retire older power plants.
The regulatory cost values discussed by the commission at its meeting yesterday -- estimates of what it will cost utilities to comply with CO2 regulations -- are different than externality values that are meant to reflect the broader cost to society of CO2 emissions and climate change. Those costs are the subject of a different proceeding at the PUC.
The regulatory cost value for power plant CO2 emissions was initially adopted in 2007 and updated in 2009 to $9 to $34 a ton.
The PUC left the CO2 values unchanged yesterday. The commission, however, moved back the date on which the values should begin to be applied.
State agencies that advise the commission, clean energy groups and utilities agreed 2022 was an appropriate start date to apply regulatory values for CO2.
"We think it's possible that at this time in 2017 there will be more information from the ongoing legal proceedings about the Clean Power Plan that could inform whether 2022 is the appropriate first application date," said Jim Denniston, assistant general counsel for Xcel Energy Inc.
"We don't know if the 2022 start of the Clean Power Plan would change, but it's possible there would be more information about that."
Commissioner Nancy Lange agreed, and said it's yet unclear how significant those CO2 values will be in influencing utility investment decisions.
"The modeling that's coming out around the Clean Power Plan is showing that in many cases the Clean Power Plan isn't even the controlling force of carbon," she said. "It's other forces in the electric utility industry. We may have a regulatory cost of zero."
Externality request denied
The commission denied a request by clean energy advocates to initiate a separate proceeding to examine the relationship between the regulatory costs of CO2 emissions and the externality value of CO2 emissions.
Currently, utilities are required to apply externality values in their integrated resource plans for CO2 emissions before 2022 and apply the regulatory value for emissions in 2022 and beyond.
The clean energy groups -- Fresh Energy, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Sierra Club and Wind on the Wires -- said the Clean Power Plan will reduce CO2 emissions, but it won't eliminate them, so it's appropriate to study and reconcile the relationship between the two values.
Commissioners, however, agreed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce position that it's premature to begin another proceeding while the externality value has yet to be decided. Also, the department noted that both it and the PUC already face an "unprecedented workload."
In April, a Minnesota judge recommended that the PUC apply the federal "social cost of carbon" calculation to determine how new energy projects affect the environmental health and well-being of the state (ClimateWire, April 19).
It is up to the PUC to accept or reject the judge's nonbinding opinion, which would require utilities to factor in costs of $11 to $57 per ton of CO2 emitted.
This story also appears in ClimateWire.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/07/01/stories/1060039705
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EPW GOP Fears 'Back-Door' Enforcement With EPA Oil & Gas Data Queries
Jun 30, 2016 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW) Republicans fear that EPA is attempting “back-door” enforcement of limits on the greenhouse gas (GHG) methane from oil and gas operations through Clean Air Act data requests on industry's emissions, even though the agency has not issued a methane rule for existing drilling sources.
Under section 114 of the air law, which applies to emissions recordkeeping, inspections, monitoring, and entry, EPA has the authority to seek data that it uses to inform potential rules or enforcement actions.
During a June 29 EPW oversight panel hearing on EPA enforcement, full committee Chairman Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that the agency appears to be using the letters to pressure the oil and gas industry into reducing its methane emissions from existing operations in the absence of a final rule to curb such pollution.
“We've heard from the oil and gas companies that these are used to pressure them to curb and monitor methane emissions before EPA has even issued a methane rule for the industry. Do you contend that these are not enforcement letters -- that they are, as you've said, informational letters?” he asked EPA enforcement chief Cynthia Giles.
Giles, the sole witness at the hearing, answered that “section 114 letters are information gathering letters. They are not enforcement actions.”
Inhofe argued that increased use of section 114 letters and other compliance tools against oil and gas operations appears to be a “back-door effort” to regulate the sector even though EPA is still early in the process of investigating methane standards for existing sources.
The agency recently finalized a first-time methane rule for new sources in the oil and gas sector, but has only proposed a formal information collection request to collect data on methane emissions from existing industry sources, which could potentially inform a future rulemaking for such facilities.
Inhofe also questioned whether the Obama administration is pressuring EPA to step up methane controls before crafting a formal rule in order to meet its target, set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement of reducing overall emissions of GHGs such as methane by at least 26 percent in 2025. “Nobody knows how they're going to get there,” he said.
Giles responded that she has not discussed the issue with the White House.
Earlier in the hearing Giles told EPW oversight subcommittee Chairman Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) that she did not have specific information on how often the agency uses the section 114 letters.
In response, Rounds told her the agency should follow up and try to compile that data for Congress. “If there's a perception out there that the 114s have increased, and you're not sure that they have, it would be a fact that would be helpful to have in front of us,” Rounds said.
Small Facilities
Separate from the questions over the oil and gas sector, GOP senators at the hearing outlined their concerns that EPA appears to be focusing some enforcement efforts on small facilities across various sectors.
Inhofe and Rounds in opening statements argued that even though EPA's “Next Generation” compliance initiativeclaims to focus on major violators the agency is still to some degree targeting small facilities that are unable to effectively defend against a federal enforcement action.
“Our concern is, if it's a matter of a regulatory attack, and if it's something where it takes three years in court to defend against it, how do you fight big government? . . . How do you appropriately protect small business when they're fighting a government agency?” Rounds told Inside EPA after the hearing.
Meanwhile, Giles also mounted a new defense of EPA's treatment of the 2015 Gold King Mine spill, where an agency cleanup team accidentally released about 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater from a former mine site in Colorado, which went on to contaminate downstream waters in New Mexico, Arizona and tribal lands as well.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) at the June 29 hearing said EPA has treated its staff far more leniently than a private company that might commit the same violation. “People have gone to jail for doing something less than you did,” he said to Giles.
But Giles answered that her office would not have filed criminal charges against a private-sector cleanup crew that committed a similar spill, because it did not generate the pollutants it released and instead was trying to remedy contamination.
“Senator, the law and enforcement distinguishes between a company who makes and releases pollution and the entities that are trying to respond and clean up pollution that other people create. . . . We generally do not assess fines or pursue them as you're describing here” in such situations, she said. Instead, Giles continued, the agency requires the violator to clean up the spill and monitor ongoing environmental effects, which she said it has done.
TSCA Reform
Finally, speaking to Inhofe about the recent enactment of the law reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act, which EPW leadership shepherded through the Senate, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said he hopes EPA's toxics office will use its new authority under that statute to ban the controversial solvent trichloroethylene (TCE).
The chemical was once commonly used, but is facing increasing phaseouts and regulatory actions after the agency linked it to fetal cardiac birth defects in a 2011 risk assessment. EPA in April published a rule limiting some uses of TCE in consumer products, and is developing a separate action to restrict the chemical in spray degreasing activities.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/epw-gop-fears-back-door-enforcement-epa-oil-gas-data-queries
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U.S. Shale Oil's Achilles Heel Shows Signs of Mending
Jul 1, 2016 | The New York Times
By Ernest Scheyder and Terry Wade
Since the beginning of the U.S. fracking revolution, oil producers have struggled with a vexing problem: after an initial burst, crude output from new shale wells falls much faster than from conventional wells.
However, those well decline rates have been slowing across the United States over the past few years, according to data analysis provided exclusively to Reuters.
The trend, if sustained, would help ameliorate the industry’s most glaring weakness and cement its importance for worldwide production in years to come. It also helps explain shale drillers' resilience throughout the oil market's two-year slump.
While shale oil production revolutionized the oil industry over the past decade, bringing abundance of global oil supplies, high costs and rapid production declines have been its Achilles heel. That is beginning to change thanks to technological innovation and producers' focusing less on maximizing output and more on improving efficiency and productivity.
According to data compiled and analyzed by oilfield analytics firm NavPort for Reuters, output from the average new well in the Permian Basin of West Texas, the top U.S. oilfield, declined 18 percent from peak production through the fourth month of its life in 2015. That is much slower than the 31 percent drop seen for the same time frame in 2012 and the 28 percent decline in 2013, when the oil price crash started.
The change was even more dramatic in North Dakota's Bakken shale, where four-month decline rates for new wells fell to 16 percent in 2015 from almost 31 percent in 2012. (Graphic:http://tmsnrt.rs/292ScGY)
A slower decline means producers need to drill fewer new wells to sustain output, said Mukul Sharma, professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
"You can have cash flow without having to expend a lot of capital."
The recent decline rates mark a dramatic improvement from first-year 90 percent declines in the early years of the shale boom that made some investors question the sector's long-run viability.
NEW PHILOSOPHY
There are no 2016 figures yet, but oil executives expect the trend to continue this year and beyond.
Scott Sheffield, chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources Co, a top Permian producer, credited improved fracking techniques for helping stabilize production, which shareholders rewarded by lifting Pioneer's shares up about 9 percent over the past year.
"We're exposing more of the reservoir and breaking it up so we don't get as sharp a decline," Sheffield told a recent energy conference.
Slower declines also reflect producers' more conservative approach to operating wells. In the early years of the hydraulic fracturing boom, high crude prices encouraged operators to boost initial production as much as possible.
To do this, they would let wells flow fast by keeping pressure low on the ground's surface. About seven years ago, however, some shale operators in Louisiana found this ultimately hurt production later on by causing rock fractures to shut.
Now, many operators maintain surface pressures higher, which limits initial flow rates and slows a well's decline rate.
"Conventional wisdom has shifted," said John Lee, a professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University.
Sharma of the University of Texas said that while shale well decline rates remained far above a 10 percent first-year decline a conventional well might experience, they marked a radical improvement compared with early years of hydraulic fracturing.
Harold Hamm's Continental Resources Inc, for example, has told investors its new wells in Oklahoma's SCOOP region are now producing 40 percent more oil six months into their lives than as recently as last year.
Today's production techniques use larger volumes of sand and pressurized fluids to frack more spots along longer well bores, to extract more oil from the wells. (Graphic: http://tmsnrt.rs/296vBtQ)
Pioneer fracks its wells every 15 feet today compared to every 60 feet in 2013. It costs extra $500,000 per well to do so, but its wells produce two-thirds more oil than just three years ago, boosting profitability, Pioneer said.
To be sure, not all producers are seeing slower decline rates and the newer, more stable shale wells make up only a fraction of all producing U.S. oil wells, so their impact on overall domestic output is for now limited.
The Eagle Ford shale in southern Texas has seen decline rates slightly increase, for example, according to NavPort data.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/07/01/business/01reuters-usa-shale-declinerates.html
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A Cleaner and Greater America Through Energy Innovation
Jul 1, 2016 | The Hill - Pundits Blog
By Bradley A. Blakeman
The secret to America's greatness lies in our ability to identify a need and then find a solution. In the past 150 years, America invented the top 11 of the 13 greatest inventions that changed the world and those innovations came about roughly every 7.25 years.
Electricity, the telephone, the airplane, the assembly line, nuclear power and television are just some of America's great inventions that catapulted the nation's economy and made huge changes to the way we live and work.
Today, we are still responding to the needs of the marketplace, and energy is one sector that has really taken off. I recently became aware of a young American energy company that is leading the way in responsible, reliable and affordable power recoupment from flared natural gas. Just a few years ago, when driving out West, you could see bright flames burning from pipes off the side of the road and wonder what it was. It was the burning off of natural gas, a waste byproduct from oil and gas field exploration and drilling.
Mesa Natural Gas Solutions is a small Wyoming company that saw a need to recoup such lost energy. Today, Mesa runs generators that produce clean, reliable and affordable energy off untreated wellhead gas, providing electricity for on-site oil and gas equipment. Emissions that were once wasted and dirty are now working to power the drilling operations. It is a win-win. Energy is recouped and emissions are reduced.
It is a vital national interest for America to be energy independent and clean at the same time. Mesa has tackled both challenges with great success. The good news is that if it works in America, then it will work globally as well. America can then export its ingenuity to make the world more efficient and responsible too.
Not only is Mesa helping to make America more efficient and cleaner, the company is doing so with the help of a workforce that consists is 60 percent U.S. military veteran. These talented men and women are the driving force behind the company's success. Their leadership and team building skills — as well as their ability to overcome obstacles — contribute directly to Mesa's excellence. Mesa doesn't have to hire veterans; their leadership is honored to hire veterans.
In March 2016, Mesa was one of 30 employers selected from a pool of 2,424 as a finalist to receive the U.S. Department of Defense's Freedom Award for their support of employees who serve in the National Guard and Reserve. Mesa is the only private Wyoming employer to ever be named as a finalist for the Freedom Award.
America's continued greatness rests in our continued ability to continue to innovate and invent not only for ourselves, but for the needs of others as well. Congress should be on the lookout for outstanding American companies that are making a difference in all sectors of our economy. No great invention as ever been accomplished without a public/private partnership. Congress and the executive branch should be helping companies like Mesa innovate and spread their technology to better the nation.
A cleaner America means a cleaner world. It will not come by way of regulation alone; it will come out of necessity because, after all, that is the mother of invention.
Blakeman is professor of public policy, politics and international affairs at Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies and was a member of President George W. Bush's senior White House staff from 2001 to 2004. He is also a frequent contributor to Fox News and Fox Business Channel. He has no connection to Mesa Natural Gas Solutions.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/286187-a-cleaner-and-greater-american-through-energy
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2 Dead in Texas Oil Tanker Incident
Jul 1, 2016 | E&E Energywire
Two workers died Tuesday morning after inhaling toxic fumes in an oil tanker near Lytle, Texas, according to a Bexar County spokeswoman.
Laura Jesse said the incident happened at Pinnacle Truck Trailer & Rail, where tanker interiors are cleaned. Jesse said the workers were supposed to vent the large tanker for 24 hours but entered it unvented for unknown reasons.
Jesse said they were both declared dead at the scene.
Pinnacle manager Paul Smith did not return calls for comment.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/07/01/stories/1060039688
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Texas City and Buncefield: Will We Ever Learn?
Jul 1, 2016 | Occupational Health & Safety
By David Dana
Ten years on, we take a glance at how and why incidents such as the Texas City, Texas, and Buncefield explosions occurred. We also briefly consider how vital safety culture and management systems are in fostering a safe working environment.
Picture this: It is early in the morning, and you are standing at a gas station refueling your car. You drift off into your own little world when, "click"—the pump stops; your tank is almost full. Only now, this is not your fuel tank. It is a tank at the Buncefield Oil Storage Depot in Hertfordshire, England, and that little "click," that stopping mechanism, was supposed to have been triggered by a device called the "Independent High Level Switch." (MIIB, 2008).
The word "independent" highlights that this was a backup system. Referring back to you again, while filling your car’s tank, you would have been the backup system—and if the "click" did not work, you would have been covered in fuel and then would have let go of the fuel pump.
The point I am trying to make is that workplaces are supposed to have multiple protection layers in place. Those layers should always be in place to protect the workers, but this must go beyond simply the technical aspects of safety management.
What Were the Causes of the Explosions?
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (2007) highlighted that during a cold start-up, and after a series of communications blunders, a drain valve was shut for too long. This allowed heated fuel and vapor to build up to explosive levels. Level gauges and indicators also malfunctioned, and high-level alarms failed to activate to warn them of impending disaster.With Buncefield, there was a failure to manage the storage of incoming fuel when a tank overfilled because its fill gauge, high-level switch, and alarm failed to operate. No other mechanism was available to alert the control room staff of the impending overfill. (MIIB, 2008).
Gauges and level alarms were known to be unreliable and were reported on numerous occasions in both locations. (MIIB, 2008; CSB, 2007). However, in the case of Buncefield, a lever specifically designed to be padlocked into place when fluid levels were high, or to alarm when levels were low, was not padlocked into place to enable a system shut-off.
But that is the thing: There was no padlock—it was assumed to be an anti-tamper device. (MIIB, 2008). This actually may indicate a potential design weakness and a systems information loss that also could have contributed to the incident.
Duguid (2008) researched more than 1,000 incidents in the process industry and established some very interesting facts. Nearly 50 percent of incidents occurred during start-ups and/or were maintenance-related in some way. A further 20 percent of the incidents were attributed to operator error, which could have been prevented by better design. This report is alarmingly accurate when we consider Texas City and Buncefield and look at the outcomes of other major events, such as the Piper Alpha, Bhopal, and Flixborough, for example.
Kletz (2009, p. 593) rightly stated that, "We need to look over our fences and see the many opportunities we have to learn from accidents." Perhaps shamefully, even with advice from leading researchers, it appears that many organizations, including those involved in the Texas City and Buncefield incidents, overlooked that important lesson.
However, a couple of failed switches and alarms were not enough to cause both accidents. The failures go much deeper. In the case of Buncefield, there was evidence that equipment was malfunctioning and not operational. Managers failed to act on that knowledge given to them by the field team. (MIIB, 2007). The BP refinery in Texas City systematically collected the evidence, but corporate entities failed to correct the issues. (CSB, 2007).
Furthermore, standard operating procedures were not adhered to in both locations. Shortcuts were the order of the day, and not one corporate entity highlighted that recording and audit systems were not fit for use.
It appears that Texas City and Buncefield embraced a culture of continuing at all costs. Reflecting on the MIIB’s 2008 report, Buncefield's cost and business pressures link their behavior to the Ellsberg Paradox (1961): production versus protection. They appeared to believe that investing less on safety was acceptable until the explosion.
However, Texas City was different. CSB (2007) annotated that, from the 1999 BP/Amoco merger up until 2004, fixed spending was cut by 50 percent, which severely impacted safety. Despite operational-level staff providing regular comprehensive reports, inspections, audits, and reviews to increase safety (from fatal incidents, equipment, lack of training, workload and fatigue, for example), nothing was done to resolve the situation—corporate management entities failed to provide what was urgently required.
On the contrary, evidence from Buncefield's audits most relevant to the causal factors of the overflow showed 94.7 percent compliance. (Booth, 2011, p. 15). But the audits raise a critical issue. Based on Buncefield's audit figure and knowing that nothing was actually remediated at the Texas City facility, it appears evident that both locations knew what had to be done; it's just that they failed to actually do it.
Due to poor corporate oversight and strategic decision-making, these incidents evoked a paradigm shift in organizational behavior and influenced the creation and enforcement of new legislation to prevent similar situations from ever happening.
Nevertheless, even with these measures in place, catastrophic events still occur. As Reason (1998, p. 293) highlights, even having robust systems and evident safeguards in place has not stopped accidents repeating themselves.
How Did Texas City and Buncefield Respond to the Incidents?
Unfortunately, gaining a thorough contrast and comparison of the emergency responses of both incidents is difficult. Considerably more information is available for Buncefield than with Texas City, but this could be due to Buncefield's large community response requirement (evacuations, public information-sharing, and media management, for example), rather than just with an on-site response. (MIIB, 2008; COMAH, 2011, p. 70). Most of this worked very well through regular inter-agency meetings and exercises.Buncefield's blast did not cause fatalities. However, many received smoke inhalation injuries, including emergency responders. Texas City had many fatalities, but its emergency response was only discussed to the extent that it interfered with the investigation—there were only a few small, secondary fires and smoke. (CSB, 2007, p. 70).
It was a different story for Buncefield. No one envisaged the on-site emergency management team being harmed by what they were meant to control. Reflecting on my own experiences with emergency response, there were three main issues with that:
First, smoke-related information and advice for the responders and the public was lacking. An incident command also was not established to monitor and make decisions. Second, only smaller-scale incidents, such as train crashes, were planned for. Buncefield lasted for days and resources were stretched. Third, Buncefield planned for a worst-case scenario far smaller than what actually happened.
Due to no information being available, and again based on experience, the only real risk to the Texas City responders was navigating the debris field to extract all of the injured. There was no requirement for a community response, apart from an outside health care response.
Additionally, Buncefield had considerable groundwater contamination from water runoff. (COMAH, 2011, p. 5). This wasn't really due to any problem with the emergency response, rather the same loss of secondary and tertiary containment that allowed the fuel to spill in the first place.
What Recommendations Were Made Following the Incidents?
Both locations appeared negligent and showed a blatant disregard for policies, procedures, occupational safety and health, and the well-being and lives of their workforce. There was far too much emphasis on bowing to short-term cost pressures.The CSB (2007) and MIIB (2008) reports highlighted primary containment as a vital technical recommendation for major hazard risk control. As a result, shut-off safety controls were shifted from manual, human controls to automated systems. Importantly, neither Texas City nor Buncefield appeared to have followed their country's safety integrity system standard protocols in the first place. Perhaps adhering to these may have prevented both of the explosions. (COMAH, 2011, p. 5).
Critically, the CSB (2007) and the MIIB (2008) documents are also very similar in the respect that both convey the strong requirement to improve safety culture in the business organization. Ultimately, the Texas City and Buncefield incidents did not identify anything new about major incident prevention, rather, they served to reinforce some important process safety management principles that have been known for some time.
Could Other Sectors Learn from These Incidents?
Disaster may have been avoided if appropriate process safety management had been implemented at Texas City and Buncefield, but that in itself would not have been sufficient to prevent the incidents. If we are to ensure lessons learned are translated into improved practices across other sectors, we need to periodically review them to eliminate problems.Standardization would eliminate guesswork (Almklov, et al. 2014), as would openly sharing incident resources with authorities and experts. Additionally, perhaps an important lesson to take away from Buncefield is that subcontractor/subsidiary oversight must operate in an aligned and tight manner.
It takes time to change culture in most organizations, and this implies the necessity to create a detailed methodology in order to optimize the effectiveness of learning to ensure that accidents do not repeat themselves. A company can choose to invest wisely in a hard-hitting initiative from the executive level down or just idly sit by thinking it won't happen to them and that everyone and everything will be OK. That is a serious gamble. Some say that safety is not a choice, but it is exactly that: You either want to be safe, or you do not.
https://ohsonline.com/Articles/2016/07/01/Texas-City-and-Buncefield.aspx?Page=1
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It’s Time for Railroads to Compete
Jul 1, 2016 | Journal of Commerce
By Jennifer Hedrick
America’s freight rail industry is a crucial element of the nation’s economic success. Many Journal of Commerce readers, including intermodal shippers, enjoy the benefits of a competitive transportation marketplace. But when railroads have a monopoly over their customers and charge excessive rates by exerting inordinate market power over captive customers, the rules have to change to bring fair competition to that market.
Today’s federal regulations stifle rail-to-rail competition by blocking shipper access to a nearby competing rail line. These outdated and unfair regulations leave shippers with no choice but to pay the excessive rates of their sole railroad. The National Industrial Transportation League has advocated for quite some time to bring competitive choices to those now-closed markets.
We recently developed a detailed and conservative blueprint for a new approach at the Surface Transportation Board. Our new rule would not set rates for any railroad or shipper, nor is it a bid for unconstrained “open access” to rail lines. It would, however, create an opportunity for captive shippers paying the highest rates to seek a competitive bid for their business from another nearby railroad. Shippers would pay to have their railcars moved to the other railroad. The Association of American Railroads said shippers are trying to force “railroads to open up their tracks and facilities to other railroad competitors,” but the reality of our proposal is quite different.
Grounded in existing U.S. law, the rule we seek would expand the current practice of “competitive switching” by allowing companies with access to only one railroad the opportunity to “switch” their service to another nearby railroad in order to obtain competitive pricing and service.
The rule asks the Surface Transportation Board to exercise its existing authority to promote competitive switching arrangements that serve the public interest. The League’s rule also reflects the competitive access policy under which Canadian rail lines and their customers have prospered for decades, with one important difference: in Canada shippers can access a competing line as a matter of right.
Under our proposal, captive shippers would have to first pass a set of limiting tests. If successful, they could then negotiate with a second railroad just like their Canadian counterparts. The incumbent railroad rarely loses its customer to the other line in Canada. Why? Because they compete vigorously to keep their customers.
The League’s member companies want and need a financially strong rail industry. They compete for business and wouldn’t have it any other way. Competition is the cornerstone of the American economy, and American railroads should embrace it.
The Surface Transportation Board has the opportunity to promote competition in the freight rail industry by advancing the competitive switching rule we have proposed. We hope they seize that opportunity now.
Jennifer Hedrick is executive director of the National Industrial Transportation League.
http://www.joc.com/rail-intermodal/class-i-railroads/it%E2%80%99s-time-railroads-compete_20160630.html
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How Industrial Hygienists Assist in Rail Emergencies
Jul 1, 2016 | Occupational Health & Safety
By Jerry Laws
Industrial hygienists are well prepared to perform an important role during the response to a railroad hazardous materials emergency, several experienced experts said during an AIHce 2016 session about rail crude oil spills on May 24. Risk assessment, data analysis, and plan preparation (such as the health and safety plan, respiratory protection plan, and air monitoring plan) are important early in the response to such emergency incidents, and CIHs are equipped to do all of these, they stressed.
"With our knowledge, skills, and abilities, the training and education that industrial hygienists get, we're well prepared" to interpret data on the scope and nature of a hazmat spill following a derailment, said Billy Bullock, CIH, CSP, FAIHA, director of industrial hygiene with CSX Transportation. He mentioned several new roles the industrial hygienist can manage in such a situation: health and safety plan preparation, town hall meetings to inform the public, preparing news releases for area news media, interpreting data from air monitoring, working with the local health department, and serving as the liaison with area hospitals, which can improve their treatment of patients affected by the spill if they understand where exposures really are happening and where a gas plume from the spilled crude is moving, he said.
Bullock said the industrial hygienist's role is primarily in evaluating chemical exposures:
assessing the risk for inhalation hazards
supporting operational decisions
gathering valid scientific information
managing data and ensuring data quality
reporting and recordkeeping
"All of these things we do as part of our day job transfer to an emergency situation very, very well," he said, explaining that it's very important to gain the trust of local responders and officials, including fire department leaders, hazardous materials response teams, the health department, and city officials.
Another speaker, Laura Weems, CIH, CSP, CHMM, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Little Rock, Ark., agreed, saying industrial hygienists are well suited to anticipate, recognize, and respond to hazards and to control risks using science-based methods.
Cleanup Workers Face Inhalation, Fire, and Heat Stress Hazards
Scott Skelton, MS, CIH, senior industrial hygienist for CTEH, the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, LLC, and other speakers explained that the hazard assessment following a hazmat derailment begins by identifying the type of crude oil that has spilled. It’s critical to know its flammability and the status of the oil’s containment, he said, and if there is an active fire, officials in command of the response will have to decide whether cleanup personnel are wearing flame-resistant clothing or chemical-protective apparel and will default to protecting against the greater hazard, he explained.Benzene exposure—a dermal and inhalation hazard—is a concern in the early hours of a crude oil spill following the derailment, Skelton said. He discussed a 2015 test spill into a tank measuring 100 feet by 65 feet, where the benzene was completely lost and other lighter compounds also were lost 24 hours after the spill occurred. But that type of large surface area for a crude oil spill is not typical at actual derailments, he said. Still, he said the inhalation risk for cleanup workers is of most concern during the initial 24 hours of a spill.
"It's my opinion that heat stress is the most dangerous aspect," Skelton said. "With these [cleanup] guys, heat stress risk is extraordinary." The American Petroleum Institute (API)'s report on PPE use by workers involved in the cleanup of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill confirmed this, he added.
Patrick Brady, CIH, CSP, general director of hazardous materials safety for BNSF Railway Company, pointed out that crude oil spills from derailments are rare: 99.998 percent of the 1.7 million hazardous materials shipments moved by the railroad during 2015 were completed without an accidental release, he said.
Brady said the railroad pre-positions 253 first responders along with needed cleanup equipment at 60 locations along its rail network. "The best case planning for us is we don't rely on any local resources to be there at all," he said, so BNSF hires hazmat contractors for crude oil derailment response and brings in consultants from CTEH to interpret monitoring data. (Responding to a question from someone in the session's audience, he touted the AskRail™ app, a tool that gives emergency responders information about the hazardous materials inside a railcar or the contents being transported on an entire train. http://www.askrail.us/)
Dyron Hamlin, MS, PE, a chemical engineer with GHD, said hydrogen sulfide is the primary acute hazard faced by responders after a spill occurs. While an H2S concentration below 50 ppm is irritating, 50-100 ppm causes loss of the individual's sense of smell, and 100 ppm is immediately dangerous to life and health. If the crude oil in a railcar has 1 percent sulfur in the liquid, GHD personnel typically measure 300 ppm of H2S in the headspace inside the railcar, Hamlin said.
Echoing Skelton's comments, Hamlin said API found that 50 percent of the mass of typical crude oils is lost in the first 48 hours following a spill; following the Deepwater Horizon spill, the volatile organic compounds measured in the air during the response were lower than expected because of water dissolution in the Gulf of Mexico, he said.
He cautioned the audience members to keep in mind that all hazardous material railcars' contents are mixtures, which complicates the task of calculating boiling points and other factors important to responders and cleanup workers.
DOT Helps Out PHMSA Offers Rail Incident Training Resource
The U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration recently released a web-accessible Transportation Rail Incident Preparedness and Response training resource, saying it gives emergency responders critical information and best practices related to rail incidents involving Hazard Class 3 Flammable Liquids, such as crude oil and ethanol. It is off-the-shelf training that is available online and can be used anywhere throughout the country."TRIPR is the result of a concerted effort between federal agencies and rail safety stakeholders to improve emergency response organizations’ ability to prepare for and respond to rail incidents involving a release of flammable liquids like crude oil or ethanol," said PHMSA Administrator Marie Therese Dominguez. "We are committed to safety and providing responders with flexible, cost-effective training and resources that help them respond to hazmat incidents safely." The resource was developed in conjunction with other public safety agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, and EPA, in order to prepare first responders to safely manage incidents involving flammable liquids.
"Some of the most important actions we have taken during the last two years to increase the safety of transporting crude oil by rail have been providing more resources, better information, and quality training for first responders. This web-based training is another tool to help first responders in communities large and small, urban and rural, quickly and effectively respond if a derailment happens," said FRA Administrator Sarah E. Feinberg.
The TRIPR curriculum focuses on key hazmat response functions and incorporates three animated training scenarios and introductory videos to help instructors facilitate tabletop discussions. PHMSA announced that it plans to host a series of open houses nationwide to promote the curriculum. Visit http://dothazmat.vividlms.com/tools.asp to download the TRIPR materials.
https://ohsonline.com/Articles/2016/07/01/How-Industrial-Hygienists-Assist-in-Rail-Emergencies.aspx?admgarea=news&Page=1
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