Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 7/04/2016
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A Review of EPA's Regulatory Activity During the Obama Administration: Energy and Industrial Sectors
Jul 6, 2016 | Subcommittees: Energy and Power (114th Congress)
Location: 2322 Rayburn / 10 AM -
(ACC Mentioned) Global CPRI Soft For Second Quarter, ACC Says
Jul 1, 2016 | Chemical Engineering
By Scott Jenkins
The Global Chemical Production Regional Index (Global CPRI), compiled by the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) shows that the 2nd quarter continued on a soft note, with the headline index rising only 0.1% on a 3MMA basis. -
(ACC Blog) Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act: Protecting Americans’ Health And The Environment In The 21st Century
Jul 1, 2016 | American Chemistry Matters
By Anne Kolton
A little over a week ago, consumers across the country were given something they rightfully have demanded for years: more confidence in the safety of the chemicals used to make the products they purchase for themselves and their families. https://blog.americanchemistry.com/2016/07/lautenberg-chemical-safety-act-protecting-americans-health-and-the-environment-in-the-21st-century/ -
(ACC Mentioned) Toxic Tort and Environmental Litigation: TSCA Transformed! Reformed at Last! (7/16)
Jul 4, 2016 | BSK
By Liza R. Magley, Thomas R. Smith, and Richard L. Weber
On Wednesday, June 22, 2016, President Obama signed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (“Pub. L. No. 114-182”) into law, asserting “[i]f we can get this bill done, it means that somewhere out there on the horizon, we can make our politics less toxic as well.” -
Doubts Linger On EPA's Ability To Swiftly Ban Asbestos Under TSCA Law
Jul 1, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Environmentalists are raising doubts on EPA's ability to quickly ban asbestos using new authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform law, despite proponents of the law saying the new powers will help the agency overcome regulatory barriers that stymied its first attempt to regulate the known carcinogen in the 1990s. -
New Law Helps To Protect Americans From Dangerous Chemicals
Jul 2, 2016 | WTHITV10
By WKBN Staff
President Barack Obama signed the Frank R Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act into law last week. -
Chemicals Legislation Faces New Reforms in the UK, Europe and US Post Brexit
Jul 3, 2016 | Lexology
By Paul A. Davies, Julia A. Hatcher and Alice Gunn
Barack Obama signed the bipartisan Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act on 22 June of this year. -
RAHM: New Chemical Law a Win For Safety
Jul 2, 2016 | Herald Zeitung
By Dianne Rahm
Several weeks ago Congress finally took action to update the Toxic Substances and Control Act of 1976. -
The Problems Won’t Go Away: Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in the Arctic
Jul 4, 2016 | The Arctic Institute
By Doris Friedrich
While climate change and carbon have stolen the limelight in recent months, there has been little attention paid to Persistent Organic Pollutants—also known as POPs. -
Pending Bill Singles Out Hunting In National Forests
Jul 3, 2016 | Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette
By Bryan Hendricks
In his last meeting as a member of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Emon Mahony asked a question that reminded me of a bill pending in Congress, HR 2406. -
Notice of Proposed Lawsuit Alleging Clean Water Act Violations Preceeded Resignation of DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd
Jul 1, 2016 | Progress Queens
By Louis Flores
One week before New York City Hall announced the retirement of New York City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Emily Lloyd, the City was notified by a Manhattan law firm of an intent to sue the City over violations of the Clean Water Act and for retaliation against whistleblowers, Progress Queens has learned. -
(ACC Mentioned) California's Struggle Over The Chemical BPA Continues
Jul 2, 2016 | East Bay Times
By Ramin Skibba
Californians this summer are starting to see a new warning at checkout lines of grocery stores, pharmacies and convenience markets that the products on their shelves may include a dangerous chemical. -
(ACC Mentioned) With the Nation’s Toughest Ban, S.F. Puts the Smackdown on Styrofoam
Jul 1, 2016 | Takepart (In Yahoo News)
San Francisco residents will soon have to drink their to-go cups of coffee out of something else, because those soft Styrofoam cups will be no more. -
(ACC Mentioned) Every Last Drop of Shampoo Pours Out of This New Bottle
Jul 3, 2016 | Takepart
By Samantha Cowan
The squeeze, shake, repeat cycle of trying to get the last stubborn drops of shampoo out of a nearly empty bottle is a shower ritual. -
Protecting our most TENDR: Experts Call for Reducing Children’s Exposure to Neurodevelopmental Toxicants
Jul 1, 2016 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Jennifer McPartland
Today, a prominent group of health care professionals, scientists, and advocates including EDF published a consensus statement highlighting the significant scientific evidence linking impacts on children’s brain development to exposures to certain toxic chemicals. -
Dangerous Chemicals Hiding In Everyday Products
Jul 1, 2016 | CNN
By Nadia Kounang
It was long believed that you could acquire "better living through chemistry." But that may really not be the case. -
States Fight EPA's Denial of New Plant Rule Reconsideration
Jul 4, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Nearly half the states, led by West Virginia, filed a lawsuit in federal appeals court July 1 challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's denial of their petitions to reconsider its carbon dioxide emissions limits for new and modified power plants (West Virginia v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 16-1220, petition filed7/1/16). -
States Sue EPA Over Carbon Rule for New Power Plants
Jul 1, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A coalition of conservative states is again suing to stop President Obama’s carbon dioxide rule for newly built power plants. -
Advocates to Sue EPA Over Texas Pollution Exemption
Jul 4, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Several environmental organizations announced plans July 1 to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for not responding to their petition to overturn a Texas decision exempting large coal-fired power plants from federal air pollution limits during certain times. -
Everyone Declared a Winner in Cracker War
Jul 3, 2016 | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Anya Litvak
Perhaps sports culture is to blame for the regional divide — the one-upmanship — that guided how Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio tried to lure large projects to their borders until Shell decided to build an ethane cracker in Beaver County and everyone was declared a winner, said Dave Spigelmyer, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition. -
The Shale Boom’s New Winner: Propane
Jul 2, 2016 | The Wall Street Journal
By Ryan Dezember and Timothy Puko
The U.S. is exporting record volumes of propane, another way in which the shale boom has made the nation a more dominant force in the global energy trade. -
Mexico, U.S. Form New Energy Business Council
Jul 4, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily Pickrell
A newly formed private sector energy advisory council between Mexico and the U.S. will provide much-needed advice on how multiple players can operate competitively in the energy sphere. -
Obama Weighs Big Arctic Decision
Jul 3, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
Activists and industry are lining up for what will likely be the last major battle over Arctic drilling during the Obama administration. -
Four More Areas Don't Meet Sulfur Dioxide Air Standards: EPA
Jul 4, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
An additional four areas don't meet the 2010 national sulfur dioxide standards of 75 parts per billion, the Environmental Protection Agency said. -
Hillary Clinton’s Ambitious Climate Change Plan Avoids Carbon Tax
Jul 2, 2016 | The New York Times
By Coral Davenport
Hillary Clinton, courting young voters and the broader Democratic base, has promised to one-up President Obama on climate change, vowing to produce a third of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources by 2027, three years faster than Mr. Obama, while spending billions of dollars to transform the energy economy.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
TSCA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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A Review of EPA's Regulatory Activity During the Obama Administration: Energy and Industrial Sectors
Jul 6, 2016 | Subcommittees: Energy and Power (114th Congress)
WitnessesPanel I
Ms. Janet McCabe
Acting Assistant Administrator, Office of Air and Radiation, U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyWitness InvitationPanel II
Mr. Lynn D. Helms
Director, North Dakota Industrial Commission, Department of Mineral ResourcesWitness InvitationMr. Travis Kavulla
President, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners; Vice-Chairman, Montana Public Service CommissionWitness InvitationMr. Charles D. McConnell
Executive Director, Energy and Environment Initiative, Rice University; former Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, U.S. Department of EnergyWitness InvitationMr. David J. Porter
Chairman, Railroad Commission of TexasWitness InvitationMr. Robert Weissman
President, Public CitizenWitness InvitationDocumentsHearing NoticeBackground Memo -
(ACC Mentioned) Global CPRI Soft For Second Quarter, ACC Says
Jul 1, 2016 | Chemical Engineering
By Scott Jenkins
The Global Chemical Production Regional Index (Global CPRI), compiled by the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) shows that the 2nd quarter continued on a soft note, with the headline index rising only 0.1% on a 3MMA basis. This follows four months of stable activity but a fairly strong 4th quarter. The information was contained in the ACC’s latest Weekly Chemical and Economic Report.
During May, chemical production increased in North America, Central & Eastern Europe and Africa & the Middle East; was flat in Western Europe and Asia-Pacific; and fell in Latin America, the ACC report says. The Global CPRI was up 1.9% Y/Y on a 3MMA basis and stood at 108.3% of its average 2012 levels. Global capacity utilization declined 0.2 percentage points to 79.3%, off from 81.0% last May and below the long-term (1987-2015) average of 89.2%, the report adds.
In North America, the report says production rose 0.2%, up 1.3% Y/Y. In the U.S., production gained 0.1% on a 3MMA basis, with gains in inorganic chemistry, plastic resins, adhesives, other specialties, fertilizers, and crop protection partially offset by lower production of organic chemicals, synthetic rubber, manufactured fibers, coatings, consumer products, and pharmaceuticals. Canadian production advanced while Mexican chemical production declined, ACC notes.
In Latin America, production was off 5.6% Y/Y. On a Y/Y basis, Latin America is the weakest-performing region with chemical production off in Brazil as well as in Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela. Production was up in Chile, Peru and Uruguay.
In Western Europe, chemical production was flat during May and was up only 0.3% Y/Y. In Central and Eastern Europe, Y/Y growth was led by Russia (production was up 2.6%), the ACC report says.
Chemical production in Africa and the Middle East rose in May and was up 7.1% Y/Y, the strongest regional showing, the report says. Chemical production in the Asia-Pacific region was flat in May with weakness centered in India, South Korea and Singapore. Activity was flat in China but up elsewhere.
http://www.chemengonline.com/global-cpri-soft-for-second-quarter-acc-says/?printmode=1
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Jul 1, 2016 | American Chemistry Matters
By Anne Kolton
A little over a week ago, consumers across the country were given something they rightfully have demanded for years: more confidence in the safety of the chemicals used to make the products they purchase for themselves and their families.
But consumers didn’t just ask for the greater sense of safety that was given to them by the signing of “The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act.” They also wanted to be able to continue torely on those products to serve their intended purposes – products like sunscreens, bike helmets and laundry detergent. Yes, the chemistry behind the innovations had to be produced and used responsibly, but importantly, the products also had to work in the way consumers expected them. In other words, the chemistry had to be safe, innovative and effective.
A report today in one of the New York Times health blogs challenges this assertion, but does so in a way that betrays a fundamental understanding of how to make social and economic progress in the 21st century. More on that in a minute.
Balancing twin priorities of safety and innovation
American chemical manufacturers have long understood that consumers expect them to strike the right balance between creating innovations that enhance everyday products and drive economic growth, and protecting human and environmental health. While many NGOs and environmental groups for years have taken the position that those two goals are mutually exclusive, chemical manufacturers have always seen them as twin priorities that support one another.
In fact, one of the main reasons the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act became the first major environmental law to be updated in nearly 30 years is that other well-respected and highly-influential groups like theEnvironmental Defense Fund – once highly critical of industry’s position – understood that an effective way to protect human and environmental health was by balancing it with consumer expectations for innovation and economic and job growth. You couldn’t just deliver on one – you had to succeed in delivering on both. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical safety for the 21st Century Act did just that.
While the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act was a truly historic and bipartisan achievement, the spirit of compromise that helped bring chemical safety into the 21st doesn’t appear to sit well with those who continue to focus solely on advancing one side of the agenda. At the signing ceremony for the new bill, however, President Obama rebuffed any individual or group who may continue use partisan politics to stand in the way of progress:
And 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. 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.
Real progress is a two-way street
While compromise continues to be the preferable outcome for all sides, there will be times when one side will need to stand its ground and defend the twin priorities of human and environmental health and innovation from the other side trying to break them apart.
Enter that New York Times health blog I referenced earlier, which highlights a group that is critical of the bill President Obama signed in law to help protect people and planet. The group claims that the law doesn’t do enough to protect people and the environment, a claim which reveals their tunnel vision about how to make social and economic progress in today’s political climate. Not only are important health and environmental protections strengthened under the new law, they also work in a way that does not unnecessarily hinder the other side of progress: innovation and economic growth.
Since it is of critical importance to industry and to consumers alike, here’s what people need to know about the important health and environmental side of America’s new chemical safety regime:All chemicals are subject to a review by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the first time. New chemicals will undergo a risk-based review BEFORE they are allowed on the market. EPA’s risk evaluations must be based ONLY on human health and environmental considerations. EPA must consider risk to vulnerable groups like infants, pregnant women, and the elderly.EPA must focus on chemicals that are the highest priorities. EPA will establish a transparent, risk-based prioritization process to identify high and low priority chemicals that considers a chemical’s inherent hazards; uses; typical exposures to people, including vulnerable groups, and the environment; proximity to drinking water sources; and other relevant information. A thorough risk evaluation will be conducted on any chemical designated as “high-priority.”It’s now easier for EPA to require manufacturers conduct additional health and safety testing. This applies to any chemical for which EPA may believe more data is required to determine whether it meets the safety standard. In the past EPA had to demonstrate that a chemical didn’t meet the standard before it could require additional testing.The new law provides EPA with a full range of options to address risks posed by chemicals. EPA will apply risk management measures to any chemical found to present an unreasonable risk that could include labeling requirements, use restrictions, phase-outs, or bans.The new law strengthens transparency, credibility, and quality of science used to make EPA decisions. EPA must use the best-available science and base decisions on the weight of the scientific evidence, meaning the Agency must give the greatest weight to information from the highest-quality and most relevant studies.
While implementation of the new law will continue take place over the coming months, there are some important things that consumers will need to keep in mind which haven’t changed.
First, everything around us, including the entire human body and everything we eat and drink, is entirely made up of chemicals. Through extensive scientific research, real-world safe exposure levels are established for ingredients used in products. Such research takes into account important factors like how chemicals are used, whether people are actually exposed to them, at what level they are exposed and for how long.
Second, the mere presence of a substance does not imply that chemical will lead to adverse effects. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasizes, “The measurement of an environmental chemical in a person’s blood or urine does not by itself mean that the chemical causes disease.” In other words, exposure to trace levels a chemical does not signal impending harm to health and through the study of toxicology we know about dose, potency and safe exposure levels and how the human body processes a substance.
Coupled with a strong understanding and appreciation of the science, we strongly believe the modernized chemical regulatory system will help give consumers greater confidence in the safety of chemicals used in thousands of consumer products, provide companies with greater regulatory and marketplace certainty, and ensure that America remains the world’s leading innovator.
https://blog.americanchemistry.com/2016/07/lautenberg-chemical-safety-act-protecting-americans-health-and-the-environment-in-the-21st-century/
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(ACC Mentioned) Toxic Tort and Environmental Litigation: TSCA Transformed! Reformed at Last! (7/16)
Jul 4, 2016 | BSK
By Liza R. Magley, Thomas R. Smith, and Richard L. Weber
On Wednesday, June 22, 2016, President Obama signed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (“Pub. L. No. 114-182”) into law, asserting “[i]f we can get this bill done, it means that somewhere out there on the horizon, we can make our politics less toxic as well.”[1] Indeed, as we have reported in earlier publications, Pub. L. No. 114-182 is a bipartisan, bicameral compromise that fully overhauls the forty-year old Toxic Substances Control Act (“TSCA”), 15 U.S.C. § 2601,et. seq., thereby fundamentally altering the way the United States handles potentially toxic substances. While past attempts at reform have fallen short of a President’s desk, in the course of a year, Pub. L. No. 114-182 has changed this trend.
On June 23, 2015, the House voted in favor of TSCA reform 398-1, passing H.R. 2576 by an overwhelming majority. Six months later, on December 17, 2015, the Senate responded by passing H.R. 2576 by substitution amendment, meaning the Senate replaced the entirety of H.R. 2576’s text with the text from its Senate counterpart, S. 697. While these bills shared common features, two major differences stood out – namely, preemption and new chemical screening. After a series of bicameral and bipartisan negotiations and discussions, however, the Senate’s initially more controversial and far-reaching rules on preemption and new chemical screening made it into the bill’s compromise language.
Once this “final compromise bill” came to fruition, it did not take long for the House to take it up for a vote, and on May 24, 2016, it was again approved by an overwhelming majority, this time 403-12. Two weeks later, the Senate agreed with the House and approved the compromise language by voice vote. By June 14, 2016, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was presented to the President, who made it law by signing it on June 22, 2016. Reflecting the true nature of the compromises across interests and party lines to achieve this reform, representatives from the American Chemical Council, S.C. Johnson, the March of Dimes, the Environmental Defense Fund, and members of Congress from both the Republican and the Democratic Parties were present for President Obama’s signature.
Key elements of this law reforming TSCA include:
A mandate that EPA review each new chemical and make an affirmative determination as to its risks before the chemical can enter the marketplace;
Consideration of populations more susceptible to potential exposure or risks of exposure from certain chemicals;
Removal of costs as a permissible consideration when determining a chemical’s riskiness – the test is now whether the substance at issues presents an “unreasonable risk of injury,” without regard to cost factors; and
Preemption of state law from the initiation of EPA risk evaluation through final determination.
Reflecting the aggressive timetables for rulemaking by EPA required by this reform, the agency has already issued its first-year implementation plan for the new law. Thus, from Republicans to Democrats, Congressional leaders to industry and special interest groups, and the Legislative to the Executive branches, TSCA reform has shifted from a priority to a reality. For more information, please contact: Thomas R. Smith, Richard L. Weber, Liza R. Magley, any of the attorneys in our Toxic Tort and Environmental Litigation Practice, or the attorney in the firm with whom you are regularly in contact.
[1] U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, “President Obama Signs TSCA Reform Bill Into Law,” C-SPAN (June 22, 2016) available athttp://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/audio-video-rep?ID=977D2BE3-E96E-436F-A913-A980BF8E7B94.
http://www.bsk.com/media-center/3503-toxic-tort-environmental-litigation-tsca-transformed-reformed-at-last-7-
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Doubts Linger On EPA's Ability To Swiftly Ban Asbestos Under TSCA Law
Jul 1, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridget DiCosmo
Environmentalists are raising doubts on EPA's ability to quickly ban asbestos using new authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform law, despite proponents of the law saying the new powers will help the agency overcome regulatory barriers that stymied its first attempt to regulate the known carcinogen in the 1990s.
It is unclear whether EPA will select asbestos as one of the first chemicals to review under the law's new powers to assess and regulate existing chemicals already in commerce, advocates say. The final 66-page law signed by President Obama June 22 does not mention the substance nor require EPA to take any action to restrict it, and sources say it is unclear whether the agency will pursue a prohibition given industry claims that the chemical is no longer widely used.
EPA tried to ban asbestos using authority under the original 1976 TSCA, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in a 1991 ruling in Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA struck down the ban as unreasonable. The court said the agency had not met its burden of proof to establish the chemical's risk could not be reduced by any other regulatory means, and since then EPA has never proposed a similar limit on a chemical already in commerce.
In March 2015, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced an ultimately unsuccessful TSCA reform bill that would have explicitly authorized and required EPA to quickly ban asbestos.
At the time, one environmentalist said, “The true test of TSCA reform ought to be whether EPA can quickly ban asbestos” through revisions to the law's section 6 that deals with regulating existing substances.
However, the TSCA law -- known as the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act in honor of the late New Jersey Democratic Sen. Lautenberg -- lacks any such specific mention of asbestos.
Obama in his remarks at the law's signing ceremony cited the agency's inability to regulate asbestos as one of the reasons for supporting TSCA reform. “The system was so complex, it was so burdensome that our country hasn’t even been able to uphold a ban on asbestos -- a known carcinogen that kills as many as 10,000 Americans every year. I think a lot of Americans would be shocked by all that,” the president said. “I think most Americans would expect that we could come together to fix this law and do a better job protecting the American people.”
The new law overhauls the old TSCA and takes many steps to address the legal hurdles that hindered EPA's asbestos ban, including removing language that required the agency to promulgate the “least burdensome” alternative and clarifying that EPA should not consider costs when determining whether a chemical is safe.
Asbestos Action
But questions remains on when EPA will take action on asbestos, advocates say, given that the law is silent on the substance and its limits in commerce. In addition, various existing workplace and other restrictions on the use of asbestos may hinder a potential agency ban because the new law requires it to consider potential routes of exposure under conditions of use, and those routes could be reduced as a result of those restrictions.
EPA in a first-year implementation plan for the law released June 29 says that it plans to publish by mid-June 2017 the scope of evaluations of the first 10 chemicals it will assess under its expanded section 6 authority. Some advocacy groups are suggesting that asbestos be one of the first substances targeted.
In a June 22 press release, Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization President Linda Reinstein said, “EPA must limit delay by including asbestos in the list of the first chemicals it evaluates and quickly exercising its authority under this legislation to ban asbestos.”
Reinstein said that until a complete ban is in place, asbestos will still be found in construction materials, automobile parts and even children’s toys. The group says that asbestos exposure is the leading cause of mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer diagnosed in an estimated 3,000 people in the United States each year.
One former agency source says “I'd expect sooner or later” that EPA would target asbestos given the lengthy litigation history and the Congressional interest in the substance.
But one industry source says that asbestos has been largely removed from commerce and “wouldn't seem high-priority” for regulation under the new TSCA law. The TSCA revisions says that the agency must designate a chemical as “high priority” to target it for regulatory action under section 6.
Work Plans
EPA's 2014 work plan outlining its intended efforts to assess chemicals designated asbestos-like fibers and asbestos as “known human carcinogens” and as causing acute and chronic toxicity from inhalation exposure. However, the agency says that it has not yet initiated a risk assessment for the substances.
Under the new TSCA law, EPA's first 10 chemicals to undergo risk review must be drawn from the work plan, as well as at least half of the 20 chemicals the agency must slate for assessment within three and a half years of enactment.
But EPA must also give priority to chemicals that are listed in the work plan as having a “Persistence and Bioaccumulation Score” of 3; and those that are known human carcinogens with high acute and chronic toxicity.
EPA's work plan assigns a a score of 2 to asbestos, but it meets the other qualifications that would give it priority status.
“That makes it a little more likely asbestos could be on the list” of the first 10 chemicals to be reviewed, says the environmentalist.
But the source adds that EPA might face a challenge in regulating asbestos, given the limited scope of the chemical's use in commerce might a factor that EPA must consider, as well as costs and benefits in determining what type of regulation to impose. “That all has to be part of EPA's calculus,” that source says.
Moreover, EPA is still held to the same substantial evidence standard as in Corrosion Proof Fittings, the source adds. Environmentalists have argued that the ruling places a higher burden of proof on the agency than other environmental laws with different evidentiary standards.
The former agency source says that while the TCSA reform law doesn't “single out asbestos,” it does require EPA to look at known carcinogens, of which the chemical is one.
EPA Rulemakings
Meanwhile, TSCA officials announced during a June 30 webinar to discuss the law that EPA “anticipates” launching rulemakings under section 6(a) of the new law to restrict or prohibit manufacture, distribution in commerce, processing, use or disposal for two chemicals listed in its 2014 TSCA work plan.
The two chemicals are methylene chloride in paint stripper and the controversial solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) in spot cleaners and degreasing agents.
Markey during a June 29 Senate Environment & Public Works Committee hearing said that he hopes EPA's toxics office will use its new authority under that statute to ban the controversial solvent.
TCE 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.
Under the new law, EPA is mandated to within 180 days of enactment from the law's June 22 effective date ensure that risk evaluations are being conducted on 10 chemicals drawn from its 2014 update to the work plan.
EPA plans to issue the TCE and methylene chloride proposed rules by the end of this year and final rules in late 2017, according to its first-year implementation plan.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/doubts-linger-epas-ability-swiftly-ban-asbestos-under-tsca-law
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New Law Helps To Protect Americans From Dangerous Chemicals
Jul 2, 2016 | WTHITV10
By WKBN Staff
President Barack Obama signed the Frank R Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act into law last week.
The legislation was cosponsored by Senator Sherrod Brown, it requires more testing and regulations for dangerous chemicals.
The law overhauls the 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act, which has allowed tens of thousands of chemicals to go on the market without any oversight for safety.
“The workers and companies can know what the future holds with chemicals that are legal and which aren’t, which ones are toxic and which ones aren’t,” Brown said.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now has the authority to evaluate or protect consumers from known carcinogens like asbestos and Bisphenol A (BPA).
http://wthitv.com/2016/07/02/new-law-helps-to-protect-americans-from-dangerous-chemicals/
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Chemicals Legislation Faces New Reforms in the UK, Europe and US Post Brexit
Jul 3, 2016 | Lexology
By Paul A. Davies, Julia A. Hatcher and Alice Gunn
Barack Obama signed the bipartisan Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act on 22 June of this year. This Act, which came into immediate effect, amends the core provisions of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the primary federal law governing chemicals for the first time in 40 years.
The amendments mandate potentially significant actions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including: risk screening to identify “high-priority” chemicals; risk evaluation of those chemicals; and promulgation of restrictions (including a possible ban) on any chemical deemed to “present an unreasonable risk”. The amendments not only allow states and localities to continue enforcement of their existing chemicals laws, but also grant states some latitude – and, in the event of EPA inaction, wide latitude – to enact new laws.
The TSCA amendments establish a series of ambitious deadlines to implement the measures. Within the first six months, EPA must begin risk evaluations on 10 “high priority” substances. Within the first year, EPA is required to complete several formal rulemakings, including to establish processes for prioritisation of additional chemicals as “high priority”, for risk evaluation and for “resetting” the inventory of chemicals in commerce. Within the following six months, the EPA must work on additional guidance documents, policies and activities, including with respect to the protection of confidential business information (CBI).
TSCA and REACH
The main EU legislation governing chemicals is the 2006 REACH Regulation (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals). REACH requires EU manufacturers and importers to submit a registration for their chemical substances and for certain products containing those substances; this registration must include extensive data on safety and environmental impact.
Unlike REACH, the TSCA amendments do not require the registration of all chemicals in commerce, but do mandate a risk evaluation and restriction process with some definite parallels to the REACH Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC) Candidate listing and SVHC authorisation regime. Under the amendments, EPA must proactively evaluate risks by screening all chemical substances to identify “high-priority” substances, evaluating these high-priority substances to determine which “present an unreasonable risk” and promulgating regulations to restrict and even ban any such “unreasonable risk” substances. Similar to the REACH SVHC Candidate listing process, the screening and risk evaluation must occur solely based on risk without regard to costs, but at the regulation stage, as with REACH authorisation, EPA may consider costs and availability of substitutes.
Among the major changes in the TSCA amendments is new authority for EPA to order testing without undergoing a lengthy rulemaking or consent order process. EPA could exercise this new authority in ways which compliment REACH, given that scientific information gathered to evaluate chemical substances for the TSCA regime may be used in submissions to the EU, and vice versa.
Effects of Brexit
It is difficult to predict what the impact of the UK’s decision to leave the EU will be on the European chemicals framework. The UK government has up to two years to negotiate the terms of withdrawal from the EU after it serves formal notice and there will be ongoing negotiations to define the new relationship.
For UK businesses, the REACH regime will remain in place, initially at least, in order to avoid a legislative vacuum caused by the repeal of EU laws before new UK laws are in place. The REACH Regulation 2006 is directly applicable in UK law and will therefore need to be reintroduced, amended or allowed to lapse.
If the UK stays part of the single market by continuing its membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) (referred to as the “Norwegian model”), it will continue to be required to implement REACH. The UK would remain in the existing single market for chemicals and maintain its REACH registrations, but it would lose its ability to take part in EU decisions. EU member states are involved in the process of evaluating whether substances need to be authorised or restricted, which means that they can influence where substances may be useful for domestic environmental or economic reasons.
If the UK leaves the single market, REACH would not apply. As per other non-EU manufacturers, the UK would have to get importers or appointed only representatives (ORs) (third party representatives) in the EU to register their substances. Subsequently, UK manufacturers may have to restructure their supply chains to enable compliance and will have to supply all relevant information and documentation needed for registration.
Should REACH no longer apply in the UK, the validity of REACH registered manufacturers, importers and ORs is unclear. It also remains to be seen whether the 5,000 REACH registrations that have been made by companies in the UK (the second-highest number in the EU, only exceeded by Germany) will be deactivated and replaced by importers or ORs in the EU, thereby increasing the cost of compliance. In addition, joint-registrants may need to replace UK-based lead registrants, which could lead to conflict regarding data ownership and cost sharing.
However, if the UK develops a national chemicals policy, UK companies may be relieved from the regulatory burden of REACH and it might be possible to reintroduce certain substances that have been phased out in the EU. Manufacturing companies in the UK are keen to see REACH administrative burdens reduced, in particular SMEs which suffer from the costs of the regime.
The final deadline for REACH registration of existing chemical substances is 31 May 2018, for substances manufactured or imported into the EU in annual volumes between one and 100 tonnes. It is likely that registrations will need to be completed by UK companies to continue trading on the single market until Brexit is finalised, even though these registrations may end up being deactivated in the future. Ongoing obligations in relation to new substances, supply chains and authorisations will also continue to apply.
The chemical regulatory landscape is changing, and quickly. Businesses need to keep up-to-date with the legislative position of the UK, US, the EU and elsewhere, to monitor new laws and compliance measures.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=e564ea66-4f81-4679-ba65-7d0239a74e4c
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RAHM: New Chemical Law a Win For Safety
Jul 2, 2016 | Herald Zeitung
By Dianne Rahm
Several weeks ago Congress finally took action to update the Toxic Substances and Control Act of 1976.
For 40 years environmental groups had been working for changes in the law that governs the use of chemicals in this country. Most Americans would probably be quite surprised if they understood just how flawed the original TSCA was.
Access to full text unavailable – subscription required.
For full story: http://herald-zeitung.com/opinion/article_1b161cce-40b6-11e6-b837-ebacd63d3a3b.html
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The Problems Won’t Go Away: Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in the Arctic
Jul 4, 2016 | The Arctic Institute
By Doris Friedrich
While climate change and carbon have stolen the limelight in recent months, there has been little attention paid to Persistent Organic Pollutants—also known as POPs. As the name suggests, POPs are environmentally persistent, which means that they take a long time to degrade and can be transported over long distances. Due to the environmental conditions in the Arctic, they often end up “trapped” there.
Many of the chemicals classified as a POP were widely used globally in commercial products, in particular as pesticides and insecticides. The most well known pollutants include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), widely used in plastic products, and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), which in some countries is still used as protection against malaria, typhus, and other diseases spread by insects. Despite the implementation of the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, in some parts of the globe they remain in use even today.Pollution from afar
In the 1970s and 1980s, high levels of POPs were unexpectedly found in the Arctic, far away from the main sources of these pollutants. This discovery played a substantial role in the adoption of the 1998 Aarhus Protocol on Persistent Organic Pollutants1) on which the Stockholm Convention was built a few years later. In paragraph 3 of its preamble, the 2001 Stockholm Convention recognizes the vulnerability of Arctic regions, “Acknowledging that the Arctic ecosystems and Indigenous communities are particularly at risk because of the biomagnification of persistent organic pollutants and that contamination of their traditional foods is a public health issue.”
POPs can be produced and released by mines, military sites, smelters, power stations, and a variety of other sources. However, few of the pollutants actually originate in the Arctic. They are transported over long distances via air, water, and to a lesser extent migratory species, from regions further in the south. Once in the Arctic, the special environmental conditions tend to “trap” the pollutants as the cold favors their persistence compared to warmer environments. POPs are also stored and concentrated in animals’ fatty tissues through a process known as bioaccumulation. They are then passed on from one species to another, and accumulate over the length of the food chain, through another process known as biomagnification. Predator species higher up in the food chain, such as seals, bears or toothed whales, have potentially very high levels of pollutants. They are also often sources of sustenance for people living in the north. These twin processes create a situation where even a small amount of POPs can have important consequences for the larger arctic ecosystems.A brief history of progress thus far
The Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), also referred to as the Finnish Initiative, was the precursor of the Arctic Council. One of the main reasons for its establishment by the eight arctic states in 1991 was a series of scientific studies that found high levels of POPs and heavy metals in northern communities. Under the AEPS, five different working groups were established, such as the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), which monitors pollutants including POPs in the air, water, and biota in the Arctic.
Environmental concerns over the pollution of the arctic environment was one of the main drivers behind the subsequent establishment of the Arctic Council in 1996. The Arctic Council has since developed a long history of advocating for the resolution of environmental issues. During Finland’s Chairmanship from 2000 to 2002, for example, the Arctic Council was active in the negotiations of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Later, during the Icelandic Chairmanship from 2002 to 2004, it played a vital role in the implementation of the Convention.
Its current role in the elimination of POPs in the Arctic is less clear. In the last few years, it seems that the interest in POPs on the part of the Arctic Council has considerably decreased. Under the current U.S. Chairmanship for example, so-called short-lived climate forcers (SLCF) such as methane or soot are emphasized to the detriment of POPs and other pollutants.
In contrast to the resolutions of the Arctic Council, the Stockholm Convention is a legally binding international agreement on a global level. It was adopted in 2001, entered into force in 2004, and is managed by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Starting with a “dirty dozen” of chemicals, and after thorough research and several amendments, the Stockholm Convention currently recognizes around 30 POPs. 2)
As of today, 179 parties have ratified the Convention, including the eight arctic states with the exception of the United States. Denmark ratified, but excluded the territory of Greenland and the Faroe Islands from the provisions. Canada and Russia did ratify the original treaty, but not its subsequent amendments listing additional pollutants, such as endosulfan and HBCD, as POPs.3)
While the United States has until now refused to ratify the Stockholm Convention, it has implemented several measures against POPs. It signed the bilateral agreement with Canada for the Virtual Elimination of Persistent Toxic Substances in the Great Lakes, the regional protocol of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) on POPs under the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution and provided ample financial and technical support to countries across the globe supporting the reduction of POPs. The use of the original “Dirty Dozen” is banned within the United States, but several substances more recently added to the Stockholm Convention, such as different flame retardants, continue to be used. Moreover, some of the chemicals, such as chlordane, are still manufactured for export.4)
The stalemate in the ratification process continues despite many years of activism from Indigenous communities in the Arctic. In an open letter to the Alaska Dispatch, Vi Waghiyi of the traditional Yup’ik community in Savoonga Alaska writes: “The United States is one of only a handful of nations which have not signed the Stockholm Convention, and so is not bound by this latest ban. The U.S., along with Canada, remains the highest user of this toxic chemical [PCP or pentachlorophenol].”5)
While the U.S. Senate has not ratified the Convention, the U.S. still participates as an observer in meetings and in technical working groups. Not being party to the treaty, however, also has its drawbacks, as the United States is not able to participate in decisions on the inclusion of additional substances to the Convention—something that worries the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as chemical industry groups.6) Furthemore, the necessary legislative changes to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) prove to be extremely challenging despite serious attempts by several governments.
As one of the stated goals of the U.S. chairmanship of the Arctic Council is to improve living conditions in the Arctic—of which POPs undeniably have an impact—it is unclear how progress will be made in the current political climate.Effects on the environment
A review of scientific studies focusing on the period from 2002 to 2009 concludes that tissue concentrations in several arctic species exceed a POP threshold of concern, which is set at 1 part-per-million (ppm). The Arctic populations having the highest risk potential include polar bears, killer whales, ringed seals, several species of seabirds, such as gulls, as well as a few populations of Arctic charr and Greenland shark.7) In spring, which is a critical period for reproduction for many species, the melting ice and snow release the accumulated POPs into the environment. They are in turn ingested by wildlife. In winter, through the metabolism of fat reserves, in which they accumulated, the POPs are released and impact the organism.
The impacts on wildlife include:the interference with sex hormones, disturbing the reproduction cycle;the weakening of the immune system due to POPs’ impact on the thymus, an organ of the immune system that normally produces antibodies;an increased risk of tumors through damaged DNA;an increased risk of porphyria, a group of diseases in which the chemical substance porphyrin accumulates in the body, due to POPs’ effect on the production of red blood cells.
One example of a highly affected species is the wild reindeer, also known as caribou in North America. A study published last year in the journal Chemosphere found flame retardants—in this case polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs—in the feces of wild reindeer on Svalbard and in one of their favorite foods: moss.8) Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) were recognized as “new” POPs in the last few years. They were extensively used for several decades in a wide range of commercial and household products, from plastics to textiles and electronic equipment, and can be released into the environment during production, use, or dismantling of the products. The susceptibility of reindeer to POPs is not new. A 1997 study by AMAP already pointed to the accumulation of PCB over the food chain. Compared to the contaminated lichen, caribou in Canada’s Northwest Territories feeding on that lichen had 10 times its PCB levels. At the next level in the chain, PCB in wolves was 60 times that of the lichen at the bottom of the food chain.
Other species that have been victims of POPs are peregrine falcons and other birds of prey. Nesting along the Yukon River, their exposure to DDT during their migrations south led to a thinning of the eggshells and harmed reproduction. Peregrine falcons were classified as endangered in 1971, but recovered soon after DDT was banned. They were eventually delisted in 1999. This example demonstrates how dramatic the effects of persistent organic pollutants on wildlife or health in general can be. A paper recently published in The Journal of Wildlife Management further underlines the importance of long-term monitoring to a comprehensive understanding of the ramifications of diverse substances on the environment.9)A health threats to northerners
In addition to contributing to declines, diseases, and various abnormalities in wildlife species, persistent organic pollutants also represent a serious threat to human health and well-being. Similar to many animal species, their effects on humans include the promotion of certain types of cancers, birth defects, dysfunctional immune and reproductive systems, damage to the nervous system, and a generally higher susceptibility to diseases through a weakened immune system. Human exposure to POPs is mainly through contaminated food or through the transmission to future generations through the placenta and breast milk.
The high levels of POPs are especially dangerous in traditional subsistence foods in the Arctic, many of which are high up the food chain, rich in fat, and therefore rich in POPs. Marine and other mammals at the top of the food chain that contain high levels of POPs are traditional northern foods and central to the diets of Arctic Indigenous peoples. Furthermore, food prices in the North are high, which is why the local population relies more on subsistence foods and as a result are more exposed to the harmful effects of persistent pollutants.Remobilizing POPs: the effects of climate change
After initial decreasing trends, higher levels of gexachlorobenzene and PCBs, whose use has been restricted and which are no longer produced, were observed in the Arctic in the mid-2000s. The ACIA report of 2004 warns that warming probably speeds up the transport of pollutants to the Arctic and increased precipitation would lead to more POP deposits in the Arctic. In addition, the melting of snow, ice, and permafrost, releases the contaminants accumulated over decades in the form of melt water, which will then enter the food chain. The increased frequency of forest fires due to climate change could also release increasing amounts of pollutants into the air.10)
POPs have low water solubility. They are harder to dissolve in water and evaporate more easily. As a result, they bond strongly to particulate matter in aquatic sediments, which can serve as “sinks” for the pollutants. If the ecosystem is disturbed, such as in the case of global warming, these trapped POPs might be released. Because they are semi-volatile, they can further evaporate out of their storage if temperatures are warm enough. By contrast, in colder temperatures, these chemical compounds are less volatile. While the degradation of POPs is temperature-dependent, which suggests that they are likely to degrade faster in warmer temperatures—which would be beneficial—this factor is deemed as less influential.
Indirectly, climate change affects POP levels by causing changes in patterns of Arctic land use and emissions, increased activity in the Arctic such as mining or shipping11) or changing wildlife migration routes. The Pacific salmon, for instance, may move northwards into arctic rivers. Changing bird migrations can also transport POPs from marine to freshwater environments, where they might concentrate, as was the case in a specific watershed at Lake Ellasjoen on the Svalbard archipelago. Diseases and the spread of invasive species that are due to climate change, as well as diet shifts and nutritional changes, for example through temporal shifts in the diet of polar bears due to earlier ice break-up, can affect the distribution of the contaminants in the ecosystem and individual animals.12) Climate change may thus reduce the efforts and effectiveness of the Stockholm Convention.Recent trends and continuous monitoring
In the Arctic, long-term monitoring of POPs takes place in Canada, Iceland, Svalbard and Finland. In the Russian Arctic, monitoring of POPs previously had only been performed on a campaign basis covering periods of one to two years. Now, two POP air monitoring stations are being established.
Recent studies have witnessed that the levels of many POPs have decreased in the Arctic, reflecting their ban in the last decades under the Stockholm Convention or previous national or international regulations. However, this shows just how persistent the pollutants are and sheds light on the secondary emissions—that is emissions generated in atmospheric reactions between contaminants.13)
The steadily increasing list of new chemicals of concern poses further financial and technical challenges to the sampling at monitoring stations and scientific analyses of samples. Some of the new chemicals of emerging concern are more volatile than most “legacy POPs”, which makes them more difficult to trace. As a result, their actual level might not be reflected in monitoring data. Many of them may also have emission sources in the Arctic, for example in homes or landfills, in addition to being used in commerce.Policy takeaways
Research shows that the ban of certain POPs decades ago had positive effects on their levels in the Arctic and was very beneficial for wildlife populations and ecosystems. The ratification and implementation of the provisions of the Stockholm Convention, as well as the continuous update of the list of POPs should therefore prove favorable to the overall health of the population, in particular Indigenous peoples. The U.S., Canada, and Russia should follow the lead of other countries and practice what they preach by not only ratifying the Convention and phasing out these extremely harmful pollutants, but by also ratifying the amendments to account for additional pollutants of concern. The inclusion of Greenland is another missing piece in the puzzle. The results of such a comprehensive endeavor will take some time to materialize, but will certainly be worth the effort.
http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/persistent-organic-pollutants-pops-in-the-arctic/
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Pending Bill Singles Out Hunting In National Forests
Jul 3, 2016 | Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette
By Bryan Hendricks
In his last meeting as a member of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Emon Mahony asked a question that reminded me of a bill pending in Congress, HR 2406.
Its title is the Sportsman’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act of 2015, or the SHARE Act. It revises a variety of existing programs to expand access to, and opportunities for, hunting, fishing and recreational shooting. There’s an undercurrent in that language that we’ll revisit shortly.
Though it did not pertain to HR 2406, Mahony challenged a new regulation that bans spinning wing decoys on national wildlife refuges in Arkansas. Specifically, he asked what authority the state has to limit hunting methods and devices on federal property.
Jim Goodhart, the Game and Fish Commission’s lead counsel, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the AGFC to apply the ban to its national wildlife refuges in the state.
This, in a roundabout way, encompasses the SHARE Act, whose Section 1402 addresses hunting and fishing regulations in only six of the 154 national forests in the United States.
They are the Ozark, Ouachita and St. Francis national forests in Arkansas and Oklahoma, the Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana, the DeSoto National Forest in Mississippi and the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri.
Hunting is allowed in almost every national forest, so we are curious as to why Congress would single out only six.
Sect. 1402 (a) says the agriculture secretary or chief of the U.S. Forest Service may not establish policies, directives or regulations that restrict the type, season or method of hunting or recreational fishing on lands inside the national forest system.
Sect. B voids any existing prohibitions.
Sect. D preserves the authority of the states in question to manage hunting and fishing on national forest service lands.
The bill protects recreational shooting in national service lands and exempts lead ammunition and lead fishing tackle from restrictions imposed by the Toxic Substances Control Act, but this reference to hunting regulations in only six national forests puzzles us.
We cast a lure into our vast pool of experts, and we got a bite from Preston Sullivan of rural Franklin County, Miss., president of the Coalition for Ethical Deer Hunting.
Section 1402 of the SHARE Act, Sullivan said, is meant to preserve or restore the use of dogs to hunt deer on national forests.
Running deer with dogs in the Arkansas national forests has been illegal for at least a decade. Forrest Wood, a former member of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, led a movement to quash the last attempt to restore deer dogging in the Ozark National Forest in 2005.
The U.S. Forest Service banned running deer with dogs in the 360,000-acre Kisatchie National Forest in 2012. The Louisiana Sportsmen Alliance sued the U.S. Forest Service in federal court shortly after it announced the regulation, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban in 2014.
Almost all of the DeSoto National Forest is open to hunting deer with dogs.
“This bill is a pre-emptive strike to prevent them from banning it in Mississippi and to restore it to Louisiana and Arkansas,” Sullivan said.
Arkansas is covered in this instance by Amendment 35 to the Arkansas Constitution, which makes the Game and Fish Commission the sole authority over game and fish management in our state.
Running deer with dogs on Arkansas’ wildlife management areas is illegal. That includes all of the Ozark National Forest, but only includes the Winona, Muddy Creek and Caney Creek wildlife management areas in the Ouachita National Forest, which encompass about onethird of the area.
WMA regulations are not U.S. Forest Service directives, and since deer are considered public resources, the SHARE Act does not subvert the AGFC’s regulatory authority.
On the other hand, if the national forest chief asked to reinstate deer dogging on the Ozark National Forest, would the law restrict the Game and Fish Commission’s power to object or to refuse?
In this context, phrases like “Sportsman’s Heritage” and “expand access to hunting opportunities” cast different lights.
HR 2406 has 37 co-sponsors, but none from Arkansas. It has seen no action since March 1, when it was referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Sect. 1402 could produce a situation tailored for litigation, but the AGFC has demonstrated that it is more than willing to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to protect its interests.
http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2016/jul/03/pending-bill-singles-out-hunting-national-forests/
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Jul 1, 2016 | Progress Queens
By Louis Flores
One week before New York City Hall announced the retirement of New York City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Emily Lloyd, the City was notified by a Manhattan law firm of an intent to sue the City over violations of the Clean Water Act and for retaliation against whistleblowers, Progress Queens has learned.
The law firm, Juris Group, PLLC, represents thirteen clients, who were or who remain employees of the Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, and the clients were the targets of alleged discriminationand retaliation after the employees expressed concerns about the integrity of the handling of water samplesintended for testing and the integrity of log books that tracked testing-related procedures, according to attorney Matthew Goldsmith.*
In a notice faxed to DEP Acting Commissioner Steven Lawitts on 23 June, the law firm informed Federal, State, and City environmental and legal regulators of their clients' intent to sue the City, DEP Commissioner Lloyd, 103 DEP managers, and Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-New York City), alleging existing violations of the Clean Water Act, for "participation in an ongoing agency-wide conspiracy to falsify compliance" with the Clean Water Act, for "violating effluent standards/limitations," and for violating the State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System.
The notice detailed four specific allegations : the fabrication of official water-quality reports prior to Government inspection ; the perpetuation of a policy and practice of retaliation against whistleblower-employees ; the dismantling of an internal DEP office that was tasked with addressing Clean Water Act violations ; and the promotion of employees, who allegedly engaged in retaliation, and other unqualified personnel against protocol.
Advance questions submitted by Progress Queens to the City Hall press office for this report were not answered. A request to arrange an interview with DEP's acting commissioner was similarly not answered.
Mr. Goldsmith generally described some of the alleged violations to include not placing water samples meant for testing into ice after the samples had been taken and not honoring a 24-hour turnaround for transporting the water samples to testing facilities. Other alleged violations were generally described to be more serious, such as a supervisor's instructions to lower the amount of pollutants being reported, amongst still yet other alleged violations that included manipulating log books and sterilization records, Mr. Goldsmith told Progress Queens.
In respect of the discrimination and retaliation against the employee-whistleblowers, who raised concerns about these violations, Mr. Goldsmith said that the employees were referred to mental health treatment, were deprived of overtime, were isolated by their co-workers, and were humiliated, with some eventually facing termination based on false accusations. According to the notice provided to the City and reviewed by Progress Queens, one existing employee was threatened with employment termination as recently as 22 June.
The notice to the City informed the City that Juris Group, the law firm, would produce a report about their own investigation of the allegations, and that report would be publicly posted on the law firm's Web site on or before 13 July.
Prior to the announcement of Commissioner Lloyd's resignation, she was reportedly out of the office on medical leave. During that time, it was unclear who was running DEP. Mr. Goldsmith described frustrated attempts to determine who was in charge, recounting circular and unproductive attempts to use the 3-1-1 system to contact DEP to determine who was acting in Commissioner Lloyd's stead during her absence. (It has been the experience of Progress Queens that 3-1-1 operators will not forward calls of a legal or political nature to public officials, particularly at municipal agencies where the only method of telephone communication is the 3-1-1 service.) Eventually, Mr. Goldsmith was informed that Mr. Lawitts was serving as acting commissioner.
Mr. Lawitts had previously served as acting commissioner after Commissioner Lloyd had stepped down from her first stint as DEP's leader during the Bloomberg administration.
During Mr. Goldsmith's interview with Progress Queens, Mr. Goldsmith said that the allegations his firm's clients were making were described to be similar as those that had been previously made against DEP in 2001. At that time then, DEP was fined and later pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act, according to a report filed by the journalist Celeste Katz for The New York Daily News. As part of that settlement, then U.S. District Court Judge Charles Brieant appointed in 2001 A. Patrick Nucciarone, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney with the District of New Jersey, to serve as a Federal monitor over DEP. During Mr. Nucciarone's term as a Federal monitor, which continued until 2009 under the administration of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R-New York City), Mr. Nucciarone uncovered a pattern of retaliation against DEP employees, whose only concern was compliance with environmental regulations, according to a 2004 report published by The New York Times.
"Most of DEP is run by people, who were punished," Mr. Goldsmith said, referring to information he had gathered, adding that the mechanisms that were reportedly put in place as a result of the 2001 settlement "started to disappear," opening the door to a "reverting back of the culture."
When Commissioner Lloyd had first come into City Government, she was part of an inspiring class of the "best and brightest" that joined the administration of then Mayor David Dinkins (D-New York City), according to a post on the Ethics Aint Pretty blog, which referred to Commissioner Lloyd by the post she held during the Dinkins administration. Later, Commissioner Lloyd would serve in the administration of then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R-New York City) before reappearing during the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations, losing some of her early polish after she became a fixture of the "permanent government" class of officials, who cycle through agency leadership posts across various mayoral administrations, according to the sentiment of the post on Ethics Aint Pretty.
If Juris Group, the law firm, does file the proposed lawsuit, then the Federal prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office for New York's southern district would be expected to review the allegations contained in the complaint. In the past, the U.S. Attorney's Office has joined complex civil lawsuits that impacted important aspects of Government in order to ensure compliance with regulation by, amongst other measures, seeking the appointment of a Federal monitor. If the allegations made in the anticipated complaint turn out to be similar to the DEP violations from 2001, then the chances improve that there may be Federal intervention in the latest legal action against DEP.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment for this report.
http://www.progressqueens.com/news/2016/7/1/notice-of-civil-lawsuit-alleging-clean-water-act-violations-preceeded-resignation-of-dep-commissioner
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(ACC Mentioned) California's Struggle Over The Chemical BPA Continues
Jul 2, 2016 | East Bay Times
By Ramin Skibba
Californians this summer are starting to see a new warning at checkout lines of grocery stores, pharmacies and convenience markets that the products on their shelves may include a dangerous chemical.
But there's one problem: The signs don't tell them which products.
The chemical is bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA. California officials and a committee of experts have concluded that the chemical is a toxic substance harmful to women's reproductive health and should be added to the state's toxic chemical right-to-know law, enacted by voters in 1986 when they passed Proposition 65. While BPA has already been banned in sippy cups and baby bottles, it is used regularly in a variety of products.
The state's new warning reads: "Many food and beverage cans have linings containing bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical known to the State of California to cause harm to the female reproductive system. Jar lids and bottle lids may also contain BPA. You can be exposed to BPA when you consume foods or beverages packaged in these containers."
For people who really do want to avoid BPA, the warnings also include a URL to the state health agency's website (www.P65Warnings.ca.gov/BPA), where smartphone-carrying shoppers can scroll through fact sheets in multiple languages.
But without further digging, there's no way to know it's in everything from water bottles to baked bean cans. The ubiquitous chemical has been used for decades to harden plastics, especially in food and beverage packaging. It's also in some kinds of paper receipts and in epoxy resins used to line food cans and water supply pipes.
The fuzzy warning -- the result of a hard-won exception by the chemical industry-- comes after years of debate between health officials and the industry.
BPA is just the latest addition to Proposition 65, which lists about 800 chemicals. It's also among the largest, and it's the only one to have received an exception that allows generic warnings near cash registers rather than on the products themselves, said Sam Delson, the state health agency's deputy director for legislative affairs.
Like almost all things involving BPA, the exception has proved controversial and could be considered a lobbying coup for the chemical and plastics industry, which previously tried to sue the state over the chemical's listing.
"Prop. 65 has done a remarkably good job of getting toxic chemicals out of products and out of the manufacturing process," said Caroline Cox, research director at the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland. But the exception to the regulation weakens the law, she said.
Over the past decade, BPA became as politicized as genetically modified foods. Numerous studies with conflicting findings over the years turned BPA into a contentious chemical among the public and scientists.
Scientists raised issues about its possible contribution to fetal developmental problems and its effects on babies, further adding to the controversy and raising the stakes. Following Canada's lead, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration eventually banned its use in baby bottles, sippy cups and infant formula packaging.
Federal agencies favor studies that follow standards known as Good Laboratory Practices. These work like a cookbook recipe for how certain experiments should be done, with the goal of producing health studies that aren't biased or incomplete. That's the way industry-funded studies are done. But that means that when the FDA and Environmental Protection Agency rely only on Good Laboratory Practices studies, they're ignoring independent research by university scientists.
So the results have been mixed: Industry-supported studies find minimal health effects of BPA exposure, while most publicly funded research finds significant effects, even at low doses.
The American Chemistry Council has extensively participated in the regulatory process on the federal and state levels. The group spends hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress every year, led by companies that include Dow Chemical, DuPont, Exxon Mobil, Bayer, 3M and Honeywell. Some industry lobbyists focus exclusively on California and the Proposition 65 listings.
The trade group has also tried to influence scientific work. For example, it financially supports the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, which published a much-criticized report assessing the safety of BPA a decade ago. American Chemistry Council-funded scientists seek out studies finding BPA health effects and publish rebuttals to them--if editors don't notice the conflict of interest.
University scientists are not immune to conflicts of interests either. For the sake of their jobs and funding sources, scientists experience pressure to publish frequently -- and it's easier to gain attention publishing findings indicating health risks rather than no implications for public health.
The American Chemistry Council challenged the Proposition 65 listing in court in 2013, forcing the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to delist BPA. But in 2014, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge ruled that the industry's opposition was "misinformed and confused."
The council denied repeated requests for interviews.
On May 11, 2015, the state health agency unanimously approved listing the chemical, citing its toxicity to the female reproductive system. After a one-year grace period, producers and retailers are now having to come into compliance with the law.
While consumers continue to struggle to figure out what products are safe, scientists and regulators continue to evaluate the health effects of BPA and related chemicals.
Scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose announced last week that they have created plastics that remain durable without leaching BPA while decomposing.
Other researchers are studying alternative chemicals, such as Tritan and bisphenol S, which may or may not have similar health effects as BPA.
"We're replacing BPA with chemicals we know little about," said L. Earl Gray, an EPA toxicologist.
WHAT'S BPA?
Bisphenol A, commonly referred to as BPA, was originally developed as an artificial estrogen, mimicking the female sex hormone. The chemical can interfere with the signals hormones carry, disrupting the body's communication networks in reproductive, brain and immune systems.
Based on studies that baby bottles and sippy cups leach synthetic hormones that could affect the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses and infants, the Food and Drug Administration has banned its use in those products.
Scientists have studied extremely high exposure to BPA and found that it can make people more susceptible to birth defects, physical deformities and cancer. Such exposure is much higher than people typically get from BPA in food cans and plastic containers, but some researchers argue that low exposure to the chemical also poses health risks.http://www.eastbaytimes.com/breaking-news/ci_30084471/californias-struggle-over-chemical-bpa-continues
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(ACC Mentioned) With the Nation’s Toughest Ban, S.F. Puts the Smackdown on Styrofoam
Jul 1, 2016 | Takepart (In Yahoo News)
San Francisco residents will soon have to drink their to-go cups of coffee out of something else, because those soft Styrofoam cups will be no more.
On Tuesday the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a ban on the sale of polystyrene foam, popularly known by the trademarked name Styrofoam. Foam packing, cups, and mooring buoys will beprohibited starting Jan. 1, 2017.
“I just passed the toughest anti-Styrofoam law in the country, and we did it unanimously,” Board of Supervisors President London Breed wrote on her Facebook page after the vote. “This is a huge step for our environment and health. San Francisco is on our way to leading the country on environmental policy—again!”
Breed spearheaded the latest ban, extending a 2006 ordinance that ordered prepared-food merchants to stop using all polystyrene containers. Plastic foam products for crafts and insulation will not be affected by the ban.
“The reason why this was passed is that it’s not practically recyclable, causes a unique harm in the environment, and there were better alternatives,” Jack Macy, commercial zero waste senior coordinator for San Francisco’s Department of the Environment, told TakePart.
Polystyrene disintegrates slowly in landfills, taking centuries to break down entirely. There are a few polystyrene recycling centers in San Francisco, such as GreenCitizen and Recology, but they can only make a small dent in the 25 billion polystyrene to-go cups Americans throw away annually.
While there’s been promising research on worms that eat polystyrene, scientists need to study their waste to make sure whatever is processed is safe. Environmentalists are also concerned about polystyrene foam ending up in the water, where the material falls apart and can look like fish eggs to hungry predators.“The main challenge posed by Styrofoam is that it breaks into tiny little pieces, especially outside in the sun when it photodegrades,” Allison Chan, the Clean Bay Campaign manager for the Oakland, California–based organization Save the Bay, told TakePart. “It looks more and more like food and makes them feel full, and really, they’re malnourished and they can die from that condition.”
Critics of the ban said it will hurt supermarkets that use polystyrene trays for meat by not giving them enough time to make a switch to other food-safe packaging. The Board of Supervisors granted grocers a six-month waiver, however, to find eco-friendly packaging for meats and fish.
The American Chemistry Council disagreed with the wording of the ban, which it believes ignores the positives of using the foam and makes an assumption that substituted packing materials will be recycled at a higher rate.
“We share the city’s dual goals to increase the amount of material diverted from landfill disposal and reduce materials that may be inadvertently littered in the environment,” the council wrote in a letter to Breed. “However, we respectfully oppose the ordinance as drafted.”
The council also wrote that the Food and Drug Administration “has approved polystyrene for food contact applications, and the food safety benefits of plastic foodservice packaging, including polystyrene, are undisputed. Its inherent insulation properties maintain food temperatures and help keep food fresh, hot or cold and ready-to-eat.”
The polystyrene ban is part of San Francisco’s comprehensive zero-waste plan. Taxing cigarette purchases to fund cleaning cigarette butts off sidewalks and requiring new buildings to have water-bottle filling stations are some of the city’s other environmental policy initiatives. More than 100 cities, including Seattle, St. Louis, and Miami, have banned polystyrene foam packaging partially or completely.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nation-toughest-ban-f-puts-smackdown-styrofoam-192817449.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Every Last Drop of Shampoo Pours Out of This New Bottle
Jul 3, 2016 | Takepart
By Samantha Cowan
Researchers hope that their technology will cut down on waste.
The squeeze, shake, repeat cycle of trying to get the last stubborn drops of shampoo out of a nearly empty bottle is a shower ritual. But the days of throwing away a plastic container that still has a few ounces of your favorite product could soon be over, thanks to two engineers from Ohio State University.
Bharat Bhushan and Philip Brown declared this week that they had created a plastic surface coating that can repel soapy liquids. The result? A shampoo bottle that can empty entirely, resulting in an extra wash or two. Along with saving consumers precious moments by cutting out the need to violently shake the bottle, the researchers are also hopeful their technology will cut down on waste.
“We throw a lot of shampoo away,” Bhushan, a mechanical engineering professor at OSU, told TakePart. He estimates that about 5 percent of the liquid in each bottle of shampoo gets tossed.
Back in 2012, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed a coating to help burger lovers squeeze out the last drops of ketchup. Creating a soap-repellent coating proved more challenging than creating one that could be used with condiments, Bhushan explained.
Oils and soaps are difficult to extract from their containers because they have low surface tension, meaning the individual molecules spread apart rather than beading together.
To create a soap-repellent bottle, the researchers embedded chemical-coated silica nanoparticles into polypropylene, a type of plastic commonly used to make shampoo bottles. The chemicals repel the soap and the silica particles create a roughness, which allows the soap to come out without leaving behind a trail of residue. The demo video shows how easily shampoo slides off the treated plastic.
Residue in bottles can complicate the recycling process. About 177 million pounds of polypropylene were sold in 2014, and only about 44 percent of it was recycled, according to the American Chemistry Council.Emptying out won’t be a problem for bottles treated with Bhushan and Brown’s technology. To create the soap-resistant material, however, they used fluorosilane. Environmentalists warn that fluoride compounds degrade slowly and can be toxic if ingested by wildlife.
Bhushan acknowledged that the use of fluorosilane could be problematic but said the technology is still environmentally friendly because it would reduce product waste. He and Brown recently applied for a patent and hope to license the soap-repellant coating to larger companies.
“We absolutely expect that shampoo companies will have an interest,” Bhushan said. “The question really is how much time and effort they’re willing to invest in order to make it a manufacturable product.”
http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/07/03/shampoo-bottle
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Jul 1, 2016 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Jennifer McPartland
Today, a prominent group of health care professionals, scientists, and advocates including EDF published a consensus statement highlighting the significant scientific evidence linking impacts on children’s brain development to exposures to certain toxic chemicals.
Beginning in utero, children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of toxic chemicals and exposures occurring early in development can result in lasting, later life outcomes. The TENDR (Targeting Environmental NeuroDevelopmental Risks) Consensus Statement, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, outlines troubling statistics on the high incidences of neurological disorders in children, ranging from ADHD and other behavioral disorders to reduced IQ. Some of the exemplar chemicals featured in the statement include thePBDE flame retardants, phthalates, air pollution, and lead—all harmful chemicals that EDF has blogged about and been working to address through policy improvements, better exposure monitoring tools, and market action.
A number of factors contribute to neurological disorders, but exposure to neurodevelopmental toxicants is preventable. The TENDR statement calls on government, the business community, and health professionals to all redouble efforts to reduce children’s exposures to neurodevelopmental toxicants. We applaud the broad set of individuals and organizations that came together to develop and support the TENDR consensus statement, and hope that it will catalyze actions to protect children from chemicals that adversely impact their brain development.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/?_ga=1.126531149.1919587650.1464619723
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Dangerous Chemicals Hiding In Everyday Products
Jul 1, 2016 | CNN
By Nadia Kounang
It was long believed that you could acquire "better living through chemistry." But that may really not be the case. In a landmark alliance, known as Project TENDR, leaders of various disciplines have come together in a consensus statement to say that many of the chemicals found in everyday products can result in neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and attention-deficit disorders.
"Ten years ago, this consensus wouldn't have been possible, but the research is abundantly clear," said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis and co-chairwoman of Project TENDR.
"At some point, we say we know enough to take preventative action," said Frederica Perera, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University. Perera is also a signatory on the statement.
Last year, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (PDF) stated that "Widespread exposure to toxic environmental chemicals threatens healthy human reproduction." Other medical groups such as the Endocrine Society (PDF), the world's oldest and largest organization devoted to researching hormones, have expressed similar concerns.
But this is the first time that leading scientists, doctors and policy advocates across various disciplines have come together to say that the science on toxic chemicals is clear: They can harm brain development.
Everyday chemicals carry toxic burden
These everyday chemicals, including organophosphates, flame retardants and phthalates, can be found in food, plastics, furniture, food wrap, cookware, cans, carpets, shower curtains, electronics and even shampoo. They are pretty much everywhere around us.
Scientists and researchers are concerned that many of these chemicals may be carcinogenic or wreak havoc with our hormones, our body's regulating system. But the impact of these chemicals may be most severe on the developing brain, Perera said.
Brain development is the "most complete and most rapid during the first nine months, prenatally," she said. During that time, neural connections and pathways are being developed.
"Any interference by a physical stress like a toxic chemical or other stressor can disrupt this natural progression that is so very delicate and complex," explained Perera.
Though the group hopes to come up with regulatory recommendations to reduce this toxic burden, there are some simple things that individuals can do to reduce their exposure.
Chemicals to watch for
Organophosphate pesticides
Organophosphate pesticides (PDF) are a class of neurotoxic chemicals used as warfare agentsin the 1930s. However, today, they account for about half of all pesticide use in the United States. And they can make their way onto crops that we use as food sources. Areas that spray pesticides heavily, such as farms, may find higher rates of exposure.
Children exposed to higher levels of these pesticides have been found to have higher rates of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
You can reduce your exposure to them by eating organic and using alternative pest control methods.
Phthalates
These chemicals soften plastics and help scents and chemicals bind together.
Exposure to phthalates has been associated with lower IQ levels.
They can be found in shampoos, conditioners, body sprays, hair sprays, perfumes, colognes, soap, nail polish, shower curtains, medical tubing, IV bags, vinyl flooring and wall coverings, food packaging and coatings on time-release pharmaceuticals.
You can reduce your exposure to phthalates by using unscented lotions and laundry detergents, microwaving food in glass containers rather than plastic, using cleaning supplies without scents, and avoiding air fresheners and plastics labeled as No. 3, No. 6 and No 7.
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers
These chemicals are used as flame retardants, chemicals that can slow the speed of a flame. They can be found in televisions, computers, insulation and foam products, including children's toys and baby pillows.
Products can shed ethers that can accumulate in dust. Exposure to these ethers have been associated with thyroid issues.
There isn't a directory that lists which products have these ethers, but consumers may still be able to reduce exposure by looking for products that advertise themselves as free of flame retardant. These chemicals were found in a lot of older foams, so replace products such sofas and pillows that have exposed foam. And use a high-efficiency HEPA filter vacuum to clean up dust.
Air pollutants
Air pollution from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil or gas is usually associated with respiratory issues. However, these pollutants can also include nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde and benzene.
Higher exposure to air pollutants has been associated with lower birth weights, preterm deliveries and congenital heart defects. The World Health Organization (PDF) considers exposure to benzene a major public health concern.
Aside from trying to avoid polluted areas, you can make sure to buy furniture and products that advertise themselves as formaldehyde-free. Try to avoid buying furniture made with particleboard, plywood or pressed wood. Many of these products use glues containing formaldehyde.
Lead
Lead is a naturally occurring metal. It was banned from gasoline in the 1970s but can still be found in older homes that used leaded paint. Lead can also make its way into water, because of corrosion from old water pipes. Lead is also used in a variety of products like industrial paints, car batteries and wheel weights.
Lead exposure has been associated with ADHD, lower IQs and developmental delay.
Infants and toddlers are at greatest risk for lead exposure because they frequently put their hands and toys in their mouths after they may be exposed to lead in dust.
Find out if you have lead in your water by reaching out to your local water supplier or even getting an at-home test kit from a home improvement store. If your home was built before 1978, test your paint. If the paint is chipping or peeling, it will need to be stripped or covered. Homeowners may want to consider using a professional who is lead-safe certified to help you. Parents can also talk to your doctor about having your children tested for lead if there is reason for concern.
Mercury
Mercury is a naturally occurring element, but it can also be released into the environment from the burning of coal and oil. Mercury can also be found in some household items such as thermometers, light bulbs and older-model clothes dryers and washing machines. Mercury in the environment can make its way into fish and shellfish. Some fish, such as some kinds of tuna, may have higher concentrations of mercury.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, exposure to mercury in utero may impact memory, attention and cognitive skills.
While you can't completely eliminate mercury from your environment, you can reduce your exposure to mercury by avoiding fish high in mercury. Try to use mercury-free thermometers. When getting rid of household items with mercury, reach out to your state or local household hazardous waste collection center for advice.
Polychlorinated biphenyls
Between 1929 and 1977, thousands of tons ofpolychlorinated biphenyls were used worldwide. Production of the chemical in the U.S. was banned by the EPA in 1977, but they can linger (PDF) in the environment for a long time and make their way into the food chain. These chemicals have been used as coolants and lubricants in electrical equipment because they are good insulators.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, polychlorinated biphenyls are associated with cancer in occupational settings and has been associated with issues with motor skills and short term memory in children.
Much like mercury, they have made their way into our food sources, particularly fish and some meat. To avoid polychlorinated biphenyls in your food, the Environmental Defense Fund suggests, before cooking, removing the parts where toxic chemicals are likely to accumulate, such as the skin, fat and internal organs. When cooking, make sure to drain away fat and avoid drippings.
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States Fight EPA's Denial of New Plant Rule Reconsideration
Jul 4, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Anthony Adragna
Nearly half the states, led by West Virginia, filed a lawsuit in federal appeals court July 1 challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's denial of their petitions to reconsider its carbon dioxide emissions limits for new and modified power plants (West Virginia v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 16-1220, petition filed7/1/16).
The Utility Air Regulatory Group and American Public Power Association filed a separate lawsuit with the same claims July 1. Those petitions, along with a similar challenge from Murray Energy Corp. a day earlier, represent the latest attempt to throw out the EPA's regulatory efforts on power plant emissions through the court system (Util. Air Regulatory Grp. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 16-1221, petition filed 7/1/16).
The challenges, lodged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, are expected to be consolidated with ongoing litigation over the EPA's new source performance standards for new power plants (RIN:2060-AQ91). That litigation is currently on hold to allow lawsuits challenging the agency's denial of petitions for reconsideration to be consolidated (North Dakota v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1381, 6/24/16).
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming joined with West Virginia in challenging the denial of the petitions for reconsideration. They were joined by the Arizona Corporation Commission, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette (R).
Denials Issued in May
On May 6, the EPA denied (81 Fed. Reg. 27,442) five petitions seeking reconsideration of various aspects of the new source performance standards from Utility Air Regulatory Group, American Electric Power, Ameren Corp., the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute and Wisconsin.
The agency, pushing back against a key issue in the litigation, asserted in its denial of those petitions that carbon capture and sequestration technologies—effectively required to comply with the regulation—are both technologically feasible and commercially viable.
Motions to update the briefing schedule in the underlying case over the regulation are due Aug. 4.
The Utility Air Regulatory Group and American Public Power Association are represented by Hunton & Williams LLP in the litigation.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92973173&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92973173&jd=92973173
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States Sue EPA Over Carbon Rule for New Power Plants
Jul 1, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A coalition of conservative states is again suing to stop President Obama’s carbon dioxide rule for newly built power plants.
The 23-state group filed a lawsuit Friday in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
They’re challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision in May to reject their formal requests to reconsider the carbon rule that was made final last year.
The regulation at issue sets specific carbon emissions limits for newly built coal- and gas-fired power plants. It is separate from the Clean Power Plan, a more sweeping and controversial regulation that limits the entire power sector’s emissions and is currently on hold by the Supreme Court.
“Petitioners will show that the final action is in excess of the agency’s statutory authority and otherwise is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law,” the states, led by West Virginia, told the court in their filing.
A similar group of states, along with energy interests and others, previously filed a lawsuit challenging the rule itself.
Last week, the appeals court agreed to delay the briefing schedule in that case so that parties challenging the petitions for reconsideration can file lawsuits and ask to have them combined with that lawsuit.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/286307-states-sue-epa-over-carbon-rule-for-new-power-plants
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Advocates to Sue EPA Over Texas Pollution Exemption
Jul 4, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
Several environmental organizations announced plans July 1 to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for not responding to their petition to overturn a Texas decision exempting large coal-fired power plants from federal air pollution limits during certain times.
The coalition said it filed a notice of intent to sue following a May 2015 petition to the EPA challenging actions by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality authorizing 30 times more particulate matter per hour from power plants during startup, shutdown and maintenance than allowed by the Clean Air Act.
“It is well past time for EPA to take action,” said Charles McPhedran, an attorney with Earthjustice, said in a statement. “EPA knows soot is dangerous, and has the tools to protect Texans from this threat.”
According to the group, Texas weakened the permits of 35 generating units at 19 power plants across the state, authorizing them to increase their total combined pollution by thousands of tons above today's levels.
Group Says Power Industry Requested Changes
“Texas government officials issued sham air pollution control permits at the behest of lobbyists for coal-fired power plants,” Ilan Levin, director of the Texas office of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement. “The result is that many of the nation's dirtiest power plants, which are right here in the Lone Star State, are allowed to spew more deadly fine particle pollution than federal law allows.”
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality from 2011 through 2013 revised air pollution control permits at the direction of the state's electric power industry trade group, the coalition said, citing e-mails and other correspondence obtained through public information laws. The revised permits allow exemptions from federal particulate limits during startup, shutdown and maintenance for more than 1,000 hours a year, the coalition said.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the EPA did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Other members of the coalition are Air Alliance Houston, Environment Texas, Texas Campaign for the Environment, Downwinders at Risk, Neighbors For Neighbors, Public Citizen and the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92973178&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92973178&jd=92973178
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Everyone Declared a Winner in Cracker War
Jul 3, 2016 | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Anya Litvak
Perhaps sports culture is to blame for the regional divide — the one-upmanship — that guided how Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio tried to lure large projects to their borders until Shell decided to build an ethane cracker in Beaver County and everyone was declared a winner, said Dave Spigelmyer, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition.
Before the great reconciliation, it made sense to parade Shell executives onto Heinz Field to meet Troy Polamalu to tout the City of Champions through its Steelers football team.
Now it seems provincial and counterproductive to hail the Pittsburgh region as the ultimate champion in the cracker war.
Everyone’s a winner, said pretty much everyone who talked at the Northeast U.S. & Canada Petrochemical Construction Conference held at the Downtown Marriott last week.
A few hundred economic development officials, lawyers, union leaders and oil and gas industry folks from surrounding states came to the inaugural conference, made instantly popular by a posse of Shell officials who spoke publicly about the ethane plant for the first time since its official announcement last month.
“The competition is pretty much over,” declared Keith Burdette, West Virginia’s secretary of commerce. “We’re not (just) trying to build a facility. We’re trying to build an industry.”
West Virginia is waiting for Brazilian petrochemical firm Braskem and Odebrecht to make a decision on locating a cracker in Parkersburg, while Ohio is expecting word on a possible Belmont County cracker being evaluated by PTT Global Chemical out of Thailand.
The appeal of the region for petrochemical crackers is the ethane, a component of the so-called wet gas abundant in the Marcellus and Utica shales in this part of Appalachia. The plants process or “crack” that ethane into ethylene, which is then made into pellets that form the basis of plastics and other ubiquitously consumed goods. It took the tri-state region more than five years to secure its first cracker, which is estimated to run more than $5 billion.
Meanwhile, Philadelphia — or “the other tri-state area” — is dusting off its refineries and building more chemical plants to capitalize on the natural gas and liquids coming out of Appalachia.
The message of togetherness was strong at the conference, yet no one was allowed to forget that it was — indeed — Western Pennsylvania that got the multinational chemical super giant in its backyard.
Even Ate Visser, a vice president at Shell, said it wouldn’t have happened but for Pennsylvania’s welcome mat, which included potentially more than $1 billion in tax incentives and a way to cap environmental liability for the former Horsehead zinc smelter site where the cracker will rise over the coming years.
That’s in exchange for 6,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent jobs on site, Shell has promised. There are already around 400 people working on the flattened, 1,000-acre site, Mr. Visser said, and that’s with construction still 18 months away.
“Those jobs don’t stop at the state line,” said Jeff Logan, president of the Pennsylvania Chemical Industry Council. “It’s a regional thing.”
He’s magnanimous now, said Jenn Kelin, president of the Ohio Chemistry Technology Council, but the night before she said Mr. Logan had been “needling me incessantly that they got the cracker.”
“To which I say, you have the cracker but we got LeBron,” Ms. Kelin said. The Cleveland Cavaliers last month finally won a championship behind their intrepid basketball star from Akron.
When the chuckles died down, Mr. Logan added softly: “I’ll keep the cracker.”
In the following session, a presenter flashed a map of the region and covered Pittsburgh with the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup, tipped on its side and spilling ethane — Shell’s feedstock for the cracker — all over Western Pennsylvania.
On a separate panel, former Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary and Philadelphia-area attorney Mike Krancer marveled that the rift between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia is dissolving in the state’s bounty of natural gas.
The east-west split in the Keystone state, he said, was as dramatic as the great schism between the Byzantine and Roman Churches in 1054 AD.
“If you unify Pennsylvania, you better watch out,” he said, presumably speaking to Texas. “We’re going to put ‘em in our dust.”
Mr. Krancer shared a panel with Phil Renauldi, who proudly wears the moniker “dirty fossil Phil with a heart of shale,” and represents the Philadelphia branch of the expanded area of cooperation.
The chief executive of Philadelphia Energy Solutions, which runs two oil refineries, Mr. Renauldi said the pipelines that carry natural gas from this region to the refineries in the eastern part of the state are “rivers of flowing wealth.”
When someone in the audience wondered if Philadelphia’s expanding energy hub will steal opportunities from Pittsburgh, Mr. Renauldi offered assurances that Philadelphia isn’t competing with Pittsburgh. It’s complementing it.
“It’s all about the market,” he said. “By all means, the things that are easy to supply from the Ohio Valley should be supplied from the Ohio Valley. If you want to export to Western Europe, we do have an ocean there and you don’t.”
Philadelphia also has excellent rail infrastructure, he continued.
In the audience, a Pittsburgh-based attendee mumbled, “Yeah, but do they have a cracker?”
http://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/policy-powersource/2016/07/03/Let-s-work-together-energy-leaders-say-and-remember-that-Shell-picked-Pennsylvania/stories/201607030084
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The Shale Boom’s New Winner: Propane
Jul 2, 2016 | The Wall Street Journal
By Ryan Dezember and Timothy Puko
The U.S. is exporting record volumes of propane, another way in which the shale boom has made the nation a more dominant force in the global energy trade.
Foreign sales are surging as U.S. producers capitalize on higher prices overseas. That in turn is causing U.S. prices to rise, making Fourth of July barbecues a bit more expensive than cookouts a few months ago.
In a first, U.S. oil-and-gas companies are on track this year to export more propane than the next four largest exporting countries combined—OPEC members Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Nigeria, which have long dominated the trade—according to analytics provider IHS Inc. U.S. exports already account for more than a third of the overall market for waterborne shipments, IHS said.
Propane exports hit an all-time high of 884,000 barrels a day in February, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Platts Analytics, an energy data provider, projects that a new record was set in May, for which government data isn’t yet available. The exports have been enabled by a new network of pipelines, shipping terminals and tankers that doubled capacity from a year ago.
“It’s been a major source of investment and one of the big success stories,” said Ron Logan, a partner at energy investing firm Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors LP.
Propane, a natural-gas liquid, is a byproduct of natural-gas drilling and refining crude oil. After the shale boom made propane more plentiful, exports became a widely sought solution because it is much easier to bottle and ship than other fuels. About half of all U.S. exports wind up in Latin America, while the rest goes to northwest Europe and Asian markets. In 2013, the U.S. overtook Qatar as the world’s top propane shipper.
The dominant U.S. position could benefit further from the expansion of the Panama Canal, which in June completed a $5.4 billion upgrade. That project allows the large ships transporting propane to make faster and cheaper trips to big Asian markets like Japan, China and South Korea.
All this is a welcome development for U.S. oil-and-gas drillers stung by a rout in commodity prices that has led to dozens of bankruptcies. The fuel came up from shale in such overwhelming supply that producers sometimes had to pay customers to take it off their hands.
Now, investors are betting prices will continue to climb. Propane producers and shippers are among the top performing stocks this year.
Shares of Range Resources Corp., an exploration and production company that ships propane that it extracts in Pennsylvania, are up 81% year to date. Pipeline and processing companies Oneok Inc. and DCP Midstream Partners LP have gained 93% and 41%, respectively.
The export capabilities are enabling U.S. producers to capitalize on the premium in overseas propane prices versus the domestic price. The sales are easing a domestic propane glut that had been dragging on prices.
Propane recently fetched premiums to U.S. prices of roughly 20% and 29% in Europe and Japan, respectively, according to the Oil Price Information Service.
Domestic prices have been rising, up 78% from a 14-year low of 29.6 cents a gallon hit in January, according to Platts Analytics. Trading at about 53 cents a gallon at the main U.S. trading hub in Mont Belvieu, Texas, propane prices are still on the cheap side of their historical levels. Yet analysts expect prices to rise further as more propane is sold abroad and to new chemical factories starting up on the Gulf Coast.
The rise in wholesale prices hasn’t hit most consumers yet. Retail propane prices averaged about $2.24 a gallon in New York state in May, the most recent data available, down about 10% from the year before, according to the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority.
The rise in prices will likely be felt by the six million mostly rural U.S. households that heat their homes with large tanks of propane.
The higher prices have caused pain for some companies. Dow Chemical Co. built expensive propane-fed factories that were planned with fuel costs at rock-bottom prices. Other chemical makers, including Ascend Performance Materials Operations LLC, have delayed plans for propane-fed plants, due to rising construction costs and higher raw material costs.
“Propane will be increasing in price faster than all the other hydrocarbons,” said Rusty Braziel, a former propane trader who runs consultant RBN Energy. “From the standpoint of chemical companies, it’s not such good news.”
Some analysts warn that pipeline owners and shippers may have already overbuilt and will have to lower the rates they charge to win business.
Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. called the expanding export infrastructure business “a little like youth basketball, lots of participation trophies but fewer winners.”
Already daily shipping rates have plummeted to as little as $20,000, down from the $120,000 or so it cost last summer, as dozens of new tankers hit the water, the Houston investment bank said.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-shale-booms-new-winner-propane-1467464624?mg=id-wsj
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Mexico, U.S. Form New Energy Business Council
Jul 4, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily Pickrell
A newly formed private sector energy advisory council between Mexico and the U.S. will provide much-needed advice on how multiple players can operate competitively in the energy sphere.
“This kind of input is really important because we are in the process of creating new institutional models,” said Miriam Grunstein, chief energy council at Brilliant Energy Consulting in Mexico City, in a July 1 interview with Bloomberg BNA. “The U.S. has a very dynamic and liquid institutional framework that allows business to be done and that is what we need to learn. You have countless players, from the tiny to the gargantuan—while this is the country of the one dominating actor. The difference might really enrich us.”
The new U.S.-Mexico Energy Business Council, announced June 30, comes two years after law changes opened up Mexico's energy sector to private investment, to exchange information and industry best practices for both oil and gas and electricity.
“This is the first time we have had a group from our respective private sectors, convened by the two governments, come together to discuss energy issues of mutual interests,” said Ken Hyatt, the current acting under secretary for the international trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce, in a June 30 written statement. “The growing importance of energy to economic competitiveness in North America and changes to Mexican energy policy led to the creation of this Council.”
The new council could help the two countries take on challenging yet mutually beneficial regulatory issues, such as the exploration of reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico that span across the border.
“A lot of thought has been given to how you deal with cross-border oil trade, but the trigger has to be the acknowledgement of the discovery of a cross-border reservoir,” George Baker, the editor of Mexico Energy Intelligence, told Bloomberg BNA, noting that a business council could facilitate discussions of how best to move forward with the needed exploration. “It has not happened because they have not have done enough drilling.”
Establishing a bilateral business council has been one of the long-standing goals of the High-Level Economic Dialogue, or HLED, a committee of both Mexican and U.S. senior officials. The HLED was established in 2011 and meets every year to further discuss border and other economic issues between the two countries.
Council Sets Goals
The new council will discuss various ways to better share energy resources, focusing on themes such as the harmonization of hydraulic fracturing regulations, offshore exploration and ways to improve the energy infrastructure across the border.
“These issues are highly technical but timely in terms of how do you keep sustainable development happening between our countries in a way that helps out with jobs and competitiveness,” said Jodi Hanson Bond, vice president for the America's division for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in an exclusive June 29 interview with Bloomberg BNA.
The U.S. representation on the board will be made up of 10 members, representing a range of energy companies, including Halliburton, GE Energy, Emerson, Honeywell Mexico, Hunt Consolidated Energy and Ienova, a division of Sempra Energy.
The first meeting is scheduled to take place in Mexico City in about a month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said.
The council will have its work cut out for it, Baker said, providing a much-needed private industry perspective as the country prepares for its first deepwater offshore auction in December—with the country's national oil company proposing to seek private partners through a new legal process known as “farm outs.”
“The legal concept of the farm-out does not exist in Mexican law,” Baker said. “The legal means by which an oil company can become an interest owner with Pemex has not yet been defined—an issue that the private sector is not likely to ignore.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92973186&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92973186&jd=92973186
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Obama Weighs Big Arctic Decision
Jul 3, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
Activists and industry are lining up for what will likely be the last major battle over Arctic drilling during the Obama administration.
With the Interior Department set to finalize a five-year offshore drilling plan later this year, environmentalists are pushing President Obama to follow through on his recent climate work and prevent new drilling in the Arctic Ocean.
But the oil industry, while limiting its activity in the Arctic now, says it wants the option to explore for drilling sites in the future. Industry officials argue that blocking drilling would hurt the local economy and could curb American energy production down the road.
The stakes are high ecologically, economically and for Obama’s legacy.
Environmentalists say the president has a spotty record on offshore drilling, but argue he can stick the landing by blocking the Arctic on his way out of the White House.
“It’s our hope that, now that companies have left the Arctic and there is a substantial international commitment to addressing emissions coming out of the Paris [climate] agreement, that the president will view stewardship and planning for the Arctic region as part of his legacy,” said Michael LeVine, the Pacific senior counsel at Oceana.
The Obama administration in March proposed an offshore drilling plan for 2017-2022 that would see two drilling lease auctions in the Arctic Ocean. Obama’s decision on drilling this year is especially important because it is the only chance to schedule lease sales for the next half-decade: if he blocks Arctic leases now, his successor cannot revive them before writing a new five-year plan.
That fact alone worries Alaskan drilling interests, who say unilaterally blocking drilling in the American Arctic could drive companies to invest in countries with fewer restrictions.
“The risk of not having it included now is that the investment would go away permanently,” said Rebecca Logan, the general manager for the Alaska Support Industry Alliance.
“It’s pretty challenging for that investment to return.”
Arctic drilling has long been an aspiration of the oil industry.
Companies, looking to tap one of the largest untouched reserves of oil in the world, bought up hundreds of leases in federal waters when the government auctioned them off in the mid-2000s.
Few companies did anything with those leases. Most notably, Royal Dutch Shell attempted to explore for oil in 2012, but when it finally put bit to the earth last year, its well came up dry, and the company cancelled future operations there.
It’s expensive to drill in the Arctic, and with crude oil prices down, companies have little financial incentive to try. Drillers have relinquished more than 600 of their leases in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, according to Oceana research. There are about 70 leases left, and no immediate plans to explore for oil.
Environmentalists have long warned a drilling accident in the Arctic could produce an ecological calamity, but with a five-year drilling plan under consideration now, they have another argument: that drilling there is so expensive — and the return so little in a low-priced crude oil environment — that it’s not worth even auctioning leases again in the first place.
“It does appear that there’s a lot of fear in the industry that sales won’t be scheduled,” LeVine said. “It’s less clear whether those companies expressing those fears would even want to purchase leases if the sales were to be held.”
But oil interests say the light demand won’t last, and that it’s only a matter of time before crude oil prices rebound and companies return to the Arctic.
Logan noted that companies have invested about $7 billion into potential Arctic operations, and, “world-class companies don’t spend money like that without being pretty sure there will be a return at some point.”
“The prices will rebound, and they will come back up, and [companies] are going to have cash again, and they’re going to want to invest again,” said Tom Walsh, the owner of Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska, an oil industry consulting firm. “Alaska is a great place to invest. There’s no doubt in my mind that there will be interest going forward.”
Those competing interests — oil companies, who want to at least stake a claim on future drilling rights in the Arctic, versus environmentalists, who see too many risks to let it move forward — were evident in the drilling plan comments filed with the Interior Department this year.
The fight over Arctic drilling has spilled into Congress, where Alaska members, led by Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), have openly worried Obama will move to block the lease sales this year.
“We are worried that Interior now plans to hit this delete button on both the Beaufort and the Chukchi sales,” Murkowski said at an event sponsored by CQ Roll Call on Wednesday. The plan, in its current form, is “bare minimum effort, and it’s a far cry from the area-wide sales that Alaskans have been asking for.”
She and other Alaskans warn that blocking Arctic drilling will have a major impact on the state’s economy, which is heavily dependent on the practice for tax revenue and employment.
But environmentalists argue the safety and preservation of the Arctic ecosystem should be paramount.
A group of 66 House members, led by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), pushed the Interior Department in May to stand firm on Arctic drilling.
“We urge the administration to once again set the pace in the fight against global climate change by ensuring these vital and unique waters are permanently taken off the table from any future oil and gas development,” the group wrote in a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
If Murkowski’s prediction is right, Obama will leave office with a flourish on Arctic drilling matters.
The Obama administration angered environmentalists when it allowed Shell last year to drill its exploratory well in the Chukchi. But shortly after the company pulled out of the Arctic last fall, the Interior Department cancelled new lease sales there.
Activists say they’ve seen swelling opposition to drilling in the region, starting with protests against Shell and continuing through the nascent movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also opposes Arctic drilling.
Taken together, greens see a chance for Obama to leave his mark on another major environmental issue in the waning months of his presidency.
“We think that he should take this opportunity to not continue down the same course that they’ve been going, to take the step back, take the leases out of the five-year plan and hopefully protect more areas in the Arctic from future leasing,” said Leah Donahey, the senior campaign director at the Alaska Wilderness League.
“I think the president has made an effort to really look at the Arctic and look at protection as a legacy issue.”
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/286332-obama-weighs-big-arctic-decision
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Four More Areas Don't Meet Sulfur Dioxide Air Standards: EPA
Jul 4, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
An additional four areas don't meet the 2010 national sulfur dioxide standards of 75 parts per billion, the Environmental Protection Agency said.
The agency, in a final rule posted online July 1, designated St. Clair County, Mich., Alton Township, Ill., Williamson County, Ill., and an area encompassing both Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties in Maryland as being in nonattainment of the sulfur dioxide standards.
While those states now are required to develop plans outlining how they intend to come into compliance with the standards, a Sierra Club attorney told Bloomberg BNA that environmental advocates are “pretty disappointed” in the EPA's decision to back off of its proposal to designate even more areas as being in nonattainment. The EPA in February proposed to designate Jefferson County and Posey County in Indiana, parts of Desoto Parish in Louisiana, and Franklin County in Missouri as nonattainment areas but did not do so in its final rule. Instead, the EPA gave them designations that don't trigger pollution control requirements.
“We think the modeling, using EPA's own software … showed pretty clearly that there were a number of areas that failed to attain the standards,” Sierra Club attorney Zachary Fabish said July 1. “A nonattainment designation means the air has to be cleaner, by law … absent that designation, there isn't that legal pressure to resolve those problems.”
The sulfur dioxide standards are expected to improve public health protection, particularly for children, the elderly and other groups that are susceptible to health problems associated with exposure to the pollutant. The largest source of sulfur dioxide emissions in the U.S. is the combustion of fossil fuels at power plants, according to the EPA.
The EPA's designations, which also labeled 57 areas as either unclassifiable or unclassifiable/attainment under the 2010 ozone standards, is a final agency action that will be eligible for judicial review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Unclassifiable and unclassifiable/attainment areas designations do not trigger any pollution control requirements.
More Designations on the Way
The July 1 rule marks the second round of designations under the 2010 standards. The EPA in 2013 designated 29 areas in 16 states as being in nonattainment of the standards but deferred its decision on the rest of the country due to inadequate monitoring data.
Final designations are expected in August for parts of Texas and Oklahoma, followed by additional rounds in 2017 and 2020.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=92973180&vname=dennotallissues&fn=92973180&jd=92973180
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Hillary Clinton’s Ambitious Climate Change Plan Avoids Carbon Tax
Jul 2, 2016 | The New York Times
By Coral Davenport
Hillary Clinton, courting young voters and the broader Democratic base, has promised to one-up President Obama on climate change, vowing to produce a third of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources by 2027, three years faster than Mr. Obama, while spending billions of dollars to transform the energy economy.
A half-billion solar panels will be installed by 2020, she has promised, seven times the number today, and $60 billion will go to states and cities to develop more climate-friendly infrastructure, such as public transportation and energy-efficient buildings. She would put the United States on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050. And, she says, she could achieve all that without new legislation from Congress.
But Mrs. Clinton has avoided mention of the one policy that economists widely see as the most effective way to tackle climate change — and one that would need Congress’s assent: putting a price or tax on carbon dioxide emissions.
“It’s possible, theoretically, to do all this without a price on carbon,” said David Victor, the director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California, San Diego. But, he added, “it’s hard to see how.”
“The problem is,” he said, “she knows the politics of this are toxic.”
John Podesta, a former senior counselor to Mr. Obama who is now the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, is an architect of both the Obama and Clinton climate change plans. In crafting them, Mr. Podesta, an ardent environmentalist and a seasoned political operative, sought to take substantive action to reduce emissions without turning to Congress, whereclimate legislation would most likely again be doomed.
“Secretary Clinton believes that meeting the climate challenge is too important to wait for climate deniers in Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation,” Mr. Podesta wrote in an emailed statement.
While Mr. Podesta’s climate plan for Mr. Obama centered on using theClean Air Act to write new regulations to limit emissions from vehicles and power plants, a Clinton administration could return to the same law to issue rules on emissions from other slices of the economy, including the airline industry, oil refineries, gas production wells and cement manufacturers.Continue reading the main storyPresidential Election 2016The latest news and analysis of the candidates and issues shaping the presidential race.Donald Trump’s Star of David Tweet Came From a Fringe Website, a Report SaysJUL 3White House Prohibits Cabinet From Addressing Democratic ConventionJUL 3‘President Hillary Clinton?’ She Wants Progress on Immigration and to Drink With G.O.P.JUL 3Donald Trump and Mike Pence Meet, Spurring Running Mate SpeculationJUL 2Donald Trump Deletes Tweet Showing Hillary Clinton and Star of David ShapeJUL 2
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In that way, Mrs. Clinton could walk a difficult line. Her ambitious climate change goals should appeal to young and progressive voters, particularly supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, who has called for a carbon tax. But by avoiding mention of such a tax, she hopes to avoid Republican attacks on a proposal that would raise gasoline and electricity bills.
“In an ideal world, the negative externalities would have a price on them,” said Scott Hennessey, the vice president of policy at the solar powercompany SolarCity, using an economics term for pollution. “But we know it’s not politically realistic. And we need to be realistic about what we can get.”
Economists have noted that by driving up the cost of fossil fuels, a carbon price is intended to push the market toward cleaner sources of energy, such as wind and solar. In the long run, that could make those energy sources cheap and widespread. But in the short run, it could drive up the cost of filling tanks with gasoline and electricity generated by coal and gas — a nonstarter for many voters.
Veterans of the Obama administration are still smarting from the president’s failed first-term effort to cap carbon emissions and to force carbon-emitting companies to purchase or trade for permits for every ton of carbon dioxide released. That “cap-and-trade” plan died in Congress in 2010, and contributed to Democrats’ loss of the House majority that year.
“A lot of the people who cast those votes in the House ended up paying a big price in the 2010 election,” said David Axelrod, the former senior political adviser on Mr. Obama’s campaigns and in the White House. “If I’m in her campaign, I don’t want to hand a cudgel to the other side.”
Conservative campaign operatives agree that they would immediately pounce on any mention by Mrs. Clinton of a carbon price.
“Hillary Clinton surely knows the political peril of directly telling American families that she wants to tax their gasoline,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group backed by the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch.
Since the political fallout from 2010, Mr. Obama has sought to circumvent Congress on climate change. He used his executive authority to release Clean Air Act regulations on vehicles and power plants, the nation’s two largest sources of carbon pollution.
Under the Paris Agreement, an accord committing nearly 200 countries to lowering carbon emissions, Mr. Obama pledged to reduce the United States’ emissions 25 percent to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, and 80 percent by 2050.
Experts say that under a combination of Mr. Obama’s policies and a handful of new policies that would not require Congressional action, it would be possible to reach the 2025 Paris target, but not the 2050 target. Mrs. Clinton has pledged that her policies would put the nation on a path to meeting that 2050 target.
“The overwhelming view of the people who have looked at this is that there’s no way to get to the 2050 goal, and probably the near-term goal, without a carbon price,” said Jessica Tuchman Mathews, a former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “At the very least, it would be like attempting to climb a very steep mountain with one leg tied behind your back.”
Absent a carbon price, Mrs. Clinton plans to use a mix of new regulations, grant programs and spending on new infrastructure to achieve her targets. She would also spend $30 billion on a plan to help redevelop coal mining communities that are suffering economically in the wake of climate change policies.
But experts say that such a piecemeal approach, while it would feasibly reduce emissions, would probably be less efficient and more expensive than the imposition of a single carbon price. It would also probably reach a point of diminishing returns because the Obama regulations have already affected the two most polluting industries.
“She can continue to put out more rules,” Mr. Victor said. “But the Obama administration showed us the high-water mark for what is possible on climate change with executive authority.”
And Mrs. Clinton would need at least some action by Congress to meet her goals — legislators would need to appropriate the $60 billion she intends to spend on clean infrastructure grants to states, and the $30 billion to help coal communities.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers say she is confident that Congress would appropriate the money because it would be funneled directly to states. Experts are skeptical.
“It’s hard to see how she gets this kind of money from a public budget,” Mr. Victor said.
Among environmental groups and the renewable energy industry, however, there is support for Mrs. Clinton’s proposals, however difficult they might be, compared with those of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, who denies the established science of human-caused climate change.
Even economists are sounding like realists.
“The clearest and most obvious way to reach the climate targets is with a nationwide carbon pricing method, whether a carbon tax or a cap and trade,” said Robert Stavins, the head of the environmental economics program at Harvard University. “But it’s not surprising, given the politics, that Secretary Clinton would not want to explicitly talk about carbon pricing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/us/politics/hillary-clintons-ambitious-climate-change-plan-avoids-carbon-tax.html
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