Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 10/27/2016
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(ACC Mentioned) Ballot Bullies: Plastics Lobby Hopes Voters Will Unban Its Bags
Oct 26, 2016 | Capital & Main
By Judith Lewis Mernit
When the tiny, picturesque community of Bisbee, Arizona, decided to ban single-use plastic bags in 2014, leaders in the plastics industry worried Bisbee had sparked a trend. Other Arizona cities—Kingman, Flagstaff, Tempe—were considering similar restrictions; soon, the bag makers feared, the whole state would fall. So they did what corporate lobbyists do in a reliably conservative state: They persuaded legislators and the governor to declare bans like Bisbee’s illegal. -
PODCAST: What the New Chemicals Law Means for You and Me
Oct 27, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
This summer, Congress passed a major overhaul of the law that allows the EPA to regulate toxic chemicals, the Toxic Substances Control Act. The overhaul became law after years of tough political wrangling on Capitol Hill, and it was ultimately hailed as one of the most significant pieces of environmental legislation in a generation. -
Advocates Seek Broad Federal Strategy To Target Lead
Oct 27, 2016 | Inside EPA
A group of environmental and public health advocates is urging a presidential task force that includes EPA and other agencies to take a series of regulatory actions to help stem widespread lead exposure, including designating lead as a “chemical of concern” under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Plans Three Chemical New Use Rules After Industry Objects
Oct 27, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency will propose new use rules for one carbon nanotube and two diisocyanates Oct. 27 after a trade association and law firm objected to the agency previously having issued the rules as direct final regulations. -
WHO Cancer Agency Asked Experts To Withhold Weedkiller Documents
Oct 25, 2016 | Reuters
By Kate Kelland
The World Health Organization's cancer agency - which is facing criticism over how it classifies carcinogens - advised academic experts on one of its review panels not to disclose documents they were asked to release under United States freedom of information laws. -
GOP Accuses EPA Of Misrepresenting Role In Chemical Review
Oct 25, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Marc Heller
The chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee today charged that U.S. EPA has understated its connections to an international agency's finding that a popular weedkiller may cause cancer — a finding he disputes. -
Smith Inquires About Glyphosate Delay:
Oct 26, 2016 | Politico
By Helena Bottemiller Evich
House Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is demanding the EPA explain why it postponed the review by independent scientists of its glyphosate cancer assessment, as well as the role agency staff played in crafting the controversial 2015 International Agency for Research on Cancer report on the chemical. -
Science Committee Chair: EPA Gave Misleading Testimony on Herbicide Study
Oct 25, 2016 | Morning Consult
By Jack Fitzpatrick
House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) on Tuesday accused Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy of giving misleading testimony on an international study on the safety of the widely used herbicide glyphosate. -
House Committee Chair Sees Conspiracy in Glyphosate Delays
Oct 27, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
The Republican leader of the House Science Committee is blaming a conspiracy of environmental activists and EPA staffers for delays in the agency's risk review of glyphosate, the active chemical in Monsanto's Roundup weed killer product line and the world's most widely used pesticide. -
Relevance of Rodent Tumors After Chemical Exposures Debated
Oct 27, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Chemical manufacturers and regulatory agencies are wrestling with questions about whether studies that find liver tumors in chemical-exposed rodents show people may get cancer if exposed to the same chemical. -
Washington Updates Candidates For High Concern List
Oct 27, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By David Stegon
Washington state has updated the chemicals it will consider adding or removing from its Chemicals of High Concern to Children (CHCC) list. -
FDA Soap Ingredient Ban Ignores Upcoming Research, Says ACI
Oct 27, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
The US FDA recent ban on major biocidal substances in consumer wash products undermines ongoing research on their safety and efficacy, the American Cleaning Institute (ACI) has said. -
These Common Chemicals Are Linked to Type-2 Diabetes: Study
Oct 27, 2016 | Time
By Justin Worland
Common household chemicals found in a wide range of products from carpets to cleaning products can alter hormones and contribute to type-2 diabetes—likely costing Europeans billions of dollars annually, according to new research. -
(ACC Mentioned) Louisiana Still Set To Get Billions Worth Of New Production Facilities Despite Oil Downturn, Industry Leaders Say
Oct 26, 2016 | Business Report
By Sam Karlin
Even as the collapse of oil prices has threatened new investment, U.S. petrochemical production is booming, and Louisiana is expected to get billions of dollars worth of new production facilities in the coming years, industry leaders said today at an energy roundtable at LSU. -
(ACC Mentioned) Workforce Development, Stricter Regs And LNG Exports Could Derail Petrochemical Renaissance
Oct 26, 2016 | The Advocate
By Ted Griggs
The U.S. petrochemical industry is in the midst of a multiyear renaissance, thanks to low-cost natural gas produced by massive shale formations, but a handful of issues could put a halt to that, an American Chemistry Council analyst said Wednesday. -
(ACC Mentioned) Business, Labor Criticize Feds As Pipeline Tensions Escalate
Oct 26, 2016 | The Bakken Magazine
By Patrick C. Miller
A coalition of 22 business and labor groups signed a letter calling on the Obama administration to follow the rule of law and the established regulatory process to complete construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline that runs from North Dakota to Illinois. -
Labor Boss Slams ‘Bottom-Feeding’ Unions Opposing Pipeline
Oct 26, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The head of an industrial union is slamming a coalition of unions that oppose an oil pipeline in the Midwest, calling them “bottom-feeding organizations. -
Anadarko Forges New Deal on Use of City Wastewater in Fracking
Oct 27, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
Anadarko Petroleum Corp., has renegotiated the final annual payment it owes the city of Aurora, Colo., as part of a five-year, $9.5-million contract allowing it to use the city's “used” water to frack oil and natural gas wells. -
Coalition Presses Conferees On Building Code Provisions
Oct 27, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss
A coalition of energy efficiency advocates is urging lawmakers working on energy reform legislation to drop a controversial House provision and stick with competing Senate language. -
DOJ Eyes Expanding Management Systems To Bolster Worker Safety
Oct 27, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
A senior Justice Department (DOJ) official says prosecutors are considering expanding their use of environmental management systems (EMS) in enforcement settlements to bolster worker safety, a continuation of the department's policy to address worker safety concerns using the more aggressive authorities provided by federal environmental laws. -
Proposed Settlement In West Virginia Chemical Spill
Oct 26, 2016 | AP (In The new York Times)
A proposed settlement has been reached between Charleston residents and a chemical company accused of not doing enough to safeguard West Virginia's capital city from a spill that polluted the drinking water of thousands of people in 2014. -
POLITICO Pro Q&A: Climate Envoy Jonathan Pershing
Oct 27, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Wolff
Jonathan Pershing, the State Department's Special Envoy for Climate Change, will lead the U.S. delegation to the U.N. climate talks in Marrakech, Morocco, in the first major meeting of nations since last year's Paris conference, where the agreement requiring participants to address climate change was signed.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Ballot Bullies: Plastics Lobby Hopes Voters Will Unban Its Bags
Oct 26, 2016 | Capital & Main
By Judith Lewis Mernit
When the tiny, picturesque community of Bisbee, Arizona, decided to ban single-use plastic bags in 2014, leaders in the plastics industry worried Bisbee had sparked a trend. Other Arizona cities—Kingman, Flagstaff, Tempe—were considering similar restrictions; soon, the bag makers feared, the whole state would fall. So they did what corporate lobbyists do in a reliably conservative state: They persuaded legislators and the governor to declare bans like Bisbee’s illegal.
Next door in deep blue California, where more than 150 local jurisdictions have already banned the bags, defending the market sector of the single-use plastic bag has proved altogether more complicated. Sixty percent of polled Californians say they support a plastic bag ban; rescinding the existing bans would be impossible. So instead the industry put its muscle into holding off a statewide ban.
or a while, it succeeded. Assemblymember Julia Brownley authored a bill in 2010 that would have outlawed single-use carryout bags of any material; it failed in the Senate after the Virginia-based American Chemistry Council worked hard to defeat it. But in 2014, State Senators Alex Padilla, Kevin de León and Ricardo Lara collaborated on a less restrictive law, one that would ban most plastic bags but allow grocery stores to charge 10 cents for each paper replacement. It earned the support of the California Grocers Association, and eventually the United Food and Commercial Workers union. It allows for the continued use of thicker plastic bags that will last for 125 uses or more and directs $2 million in loans to job creation in the recycled and reusable grocery bag industry. In August of that year, the bill made it all the way to the governor’s desk.
So the bag lobby pursued its last available option. Before 2014 was out, the plastics lobby had collected enough signatures to place the plastic-bag ban, Senate Bill 270, on hold and put it to a referendum on the November 8, 2016 ballot.
“Our contention is that it’s a special-interest giveaway to grocers in the state,” says Jon Berrier, spokesman for the American Progressive Bag Alliance, a consortium of mostly out-of-state plastic-bag manufacturers and an offshoot of the American Chemistry Council. “It bans a 100-percent recyclable product produced in America with American labor, that according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accounts for only 0.3 percent of the waste stream.
“The idea that you’re going to reduce waste or litter banning plastic retail bags,” he says, “is simply false. Sacramento special-interest politics threw data and science out the window.”
Berrier is right that plastic bags account for only a small percentage of our garbage. (The vast majority of it is paper, yard trimmings and food.) But single-use plastic retail bags are a singularly pernicious kind of trash. Easily airborne, they float away from conscientious neatnik and litterbug alike, to find their way into mountain streams, storm drain culverts, ocean gyres and, eventually, the gullets of marine animals from cetaceans to sea birds. Sea turtles mistake them for jellyfish and suffer excruciating deaths by starvation; pelicans spear through them and strangle. On a recent paddle down the Los Angeles River, I saw white plastic bags clinging to the trees; my fellow kayakers playfully dubbed them “grocery-bag flowers.”
Plastic bags can be recycled at special, dedicated facilities, but you can’t just toss them into a blue bin. Sent to ordinary processing centers, they clog up sorting screens and have to be cut out with hook knives and saws. They don’t degrade, but disintegrate, turning ocean and freshwater into a diluted chemical soup.
But they are also big business, earning their manufacturers $100 million to $150 million every year in California alone. The short list of generous contributors to the No on 67 campaign contains only one in-state individual or company, Durabag of Tustin, California, which contributed a mere $50,000 early on. The rest of the donors list consists of out-of-state companies whose futures depend on the persistence of their industry: Advance Polybag of Sugar Land, Texas ($946,833); Formosa Plastics of Livingston, New Jersey ($1,148,441); Hilex Plastics of Hartsville, South Carolina ($2,783,739); Superbag of Houston, Texas ($1,238,188).
It has already been money well spent, and not just because a victory in the nation’s bellwether state could set a trend, while a loss could spread bag bans like a virus. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, simply by delaying Padilla’s bill for 18 months, the industry has bagged $15 million in profit.
Steve Maviglio, a spokesperson for the Yes on 67 campaign that supports the ban, says that the plastics lobby’s concern over the predicted job losses rings hollow, considering that almost no single-use plastic bags are made in California. The thicker plastic bags allowed in Padilla’s law will, on the other hand, add to the state’s manufacturing economy, adding several hundred jobs. The plastic industry’s claim of 2,000 jobs lost “is incredible and nonsense,” Maviglio says.
The plastics lobby could, however, win this one—not least because the wording of the referendum on the ballot is confusing. “It’s not intuitive that we need to vote ‘Yes’ for the law to go into effect,” says Diz Swift, a member of the League of Women Voters in Berkeley. “People might say, ‘Oh, no, I don’t want the law vetoed, I want it to go into effect,’ and mistakenly vote ‘No.’” (To be clear, a “No” vote on Proposition 67 will overturn the bag ban; a “Yes” will uphold it.)
Even more confusing is that the plastic bag alliance has put another proposition on the ballot – Proposition 65 – that would direct the 10-cent bag fee toward a special wildlife conservation fund. Berrier says the measure came out of the bag alliance’s research. “Only 25 percent of the people we asked had any idea where that 10 cent bag fee would go,” he says. “A lot of people thought it was going to the environment, or to local government.” When they find out it’s going back to the grocers, he says, “They’re outraged. They want it to go to an environmental purpose.”
To Swift, however, putting Proposition 65 on the ballot above Proposition 67 is a blatant attempt to skew the vote. Only the most sophisticated and well-informed voters will understand what it all means. “The money goes into a fund that sounds really good,” she says. “It’s for drought mitigation, clean drinking water, regional parks, litter removal and habitat restoration. But it requires creating a bureaucracy that doesn’t really help.”
Maviglio is more blunt. “We call 65 the Screw the Grocers Initiative,” he says flatly. “They’re trying to send a message to grocers in other states who would hop aboard a statewide ban.” Single-use bags cost grocers anywhere from six to 16 cents per bag, “and that doesn’t include delivery and stocking,” Maviglio claims. “There’s no windfall there.”
If that’s not persuasive enough, he asks voters to consider the source. Prohibitions against plastic bags have been carried by the most grassroots of efforts—community organizations, moms, local environmental groups. The Arizona ban on plastic-bag bans, he says, comes straight out of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a think tank that assists corporations in state lawmaking, with an emphasis on preempting local control.
“The plastics industry has no regard for the environment,” Maviglio says. “It would be hypocritical of them to put something on the ballot to help wildlife.”
To be fair, Berrier doesn’t argue that helping wildlife is the point: The goal of Prop 65, he says, is only to highlight where the bag-fee money goes after grocers collect it.
“The language is very plain and simple,” he insists, “and it will have its intended effect.”
http://capitalandmain.com/ballot-bullies-plastics-lobby-hopes-voters-will-unban-its-bags-1026
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PODCAST: What the New Chemicals Law Means for You and Me
Oct 27, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
This summer, Congress passed a major overhaul of the law that allows the EPA to regulate toxic chemicals, the Toxic Substances Control Act. The overhaul became law after years of tough political wrangling on Capitol Hill, and it was ultimately hailed as one of the most significant pieces of environmental legislation in a generation.
So, what does this all mean for you and me?
On the latest episode of our podcast, Parts Per Billion, we find out how this new law will affect the average consumer by talking to an attorney with an environmental activist group and a consumer products industry leader. They have differing opinions on how the law's overhaul will affect the chemicals industry and whether it was even necessary in the first place.
To listen to the latest episode, click here: http://www.soundcloud.com/partsperbillion/tsca.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=99541324&vname=dennotallissues&fn=99541324&jd=99541324
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Advocates Seek Broad Federal Strategy To Target Lead
Oct 27, 2016 | Inside EPA
A group of environmental and public health advocates is urging a presidential task force that includes EPA and other agencies to take a series of regulatory actions to help stem widespread lead exposure, including designating lead as a “chemical of concern” under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
In a recent letter to the President's Task Force on Environmental Health and Safety Risks to Children, the advocates call for the creation of “a comprehensive federal strategy -- including concrete, meaningful action steps with clear deadlines -- to end lead exposure from all pathways so that another generation of children does not face unacceptable harm from this toxic chemical.”
The groups include Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, and other local health and environmental groups and councils across several states.
Their letter notes in particular the known effects of lead exposure in children, saying that the problem goes beyond the well-publicized crisis in Flint, MI. “Children with elevated blood lead levels live across the country,” the groups note, adding that lead exposure “is disproportionately greater (in amount and frequency) among children in communities of color and low-income communities -- a fact that poses a serious justice concern.”
Though the groups make recommendations for several agencies involved in the Presidential task force, the groups ask EPA specifically to take actions related to lead in drinking water, air, soil, and lead resulting from its “manufacture, processing, distribution, use and disposal.”
In order to better protect the public from lead in drinking water, the group says in its letter that EPA should ensure its revised Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) -- due out in early 2017 -- do “as much as possible to remove the sources of lead in our water and protect public health” and improve oversight and enforcement of the rule, in part by closing “sampling loopholes that result in underreporting of water lead levels.”
The letter says EPA should require utilities to replace the entirety of lead service lines and ban partial lead service line replacements, which EPA's National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) has recommended.
The agency should also “significantly lower” the threshold of lead in drinking water exposure that is considered “actionable” from its current 15 parts per billion (ppb) to 5 ppb, for all drinking water, the groups say.
Advocates also highlight new EPA authority under the revised TSCA to argue that the agency “has new authority and a new mandate to protect human health from toxic chemical substances, including lead.”
EPA should, under TSCA, “move forward to promptly use that authority to ban or significantly reduce the ongoing manufacturing, processing, distribution, use and disposal of lead in this country, including the importation of products containing lead and the domestic production of products containing lead intended for export.”
As such, the group writes, EPA should move forward with a rulemaking under TSCA to ban lead wheel weights -- an effort the agency began in 2009 but has since abandoned. It should also: update its standards for what constitutes “lead-based paint”; adopt and use health-based action level standards for what constitutes lead hazard in odor dust; commit to ensuring that the risk evaluation process includes a review of health impacts, and prioritize lead as a “Work Plan” chemical “for immediate risk evaluation and action under the amended TSCA.”
The letter also includes a slew of recommendations for the agency in improving efforts to protect citizens from lead exposure in air and soil, including setting national emission standards for battery recyclers, or “lead smelters,” phasing out leaded aviation fuel, strengthening its lead ambient air quality standards as recommended by EPA's Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee, and updating its standard for lead in residential soil.
http://insideepa.com/news-briefs/advocates-seek-broad-federal-strategy-target-lead
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Plans Three Chemical New Use Rules After Industry Objects
Oct 27, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The Environmental Protection Agency will propose new use rules for one carbon nanotube and two diisocyanates Oct. 27 after a trade association and law firm objected to the agency previously having issued the rules as direct final regulations.
Interested parties have until Nov. 28 to file comments on the proposed rules (RIN:2070-AB27).
The agency already has allowed all three chemicals to enter commerce. The original manufacturers, each of whom claimed its identity to be confidential business information, planned to make and use the chemicals in ways the agency concluded would not pose unreasonable health or environmental risks, the agency concluded after reviewing premanufacturing notices and possibly other information the companies submitted.
The proposed new use rules would give the agency 90 days to look at other manufacturing or uses of the chemicals so it could determine whether those would pose unreasonable risks.
The premanufacture notice, or PMN, numbers, generic identities and general purpose of the three chemicals are:
• P-15-0276, functionalized carbon nanotubes, which will be used as a thin film for electronic applications;
• P-15-0378, diisocyanato hexane, homopolymer, alkanoic acid-polyalkylene glycol ether with substituted alkane (3:1) reaction products-blocked, which will be used to help adhesives set and provide a coating for layers of wood; and
• P-15-0559, modified diphenylmethane diisocyanate perpolymer with polyol, which will be used to make flexible foam.
On May 16, the EPA issued direct final rules for all three chemicals, but it withdrew those rules July 14 after the American Chemistry Council and its Diisocyanates Panel and Aliphatic Diisocyanates Panel submitted separate notices to the EPA saying they planned to object to the diisocyanates rules. Under the EPA's direct final rules process, the trade association was not required to state its objections, and it did not.
James Votaw, partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP in Washington, D.C., objected to the EPA's description of what would constitute a new use of the carbon nanotubes and the rule's disposal requirements for this particular type of nanotube.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=99541308&vname=dennotallissues&fn=99541308&jd=99541308
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WHO Cancer Agency Asked Experts To Withhold Weedkiller Documents
Oct 25, 2016 | Reuters
By Kate Kelland
The World Health Organization's cancer agency - which is facing criticism over how it classifies carcinogens - advised academic experts on one of its review panels not to disclose documents they were asked to release under United States freedom of information laws.
In a letter and an email seen by Reuters, officials from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cautioned scientists who worked on a review in 2015 of the weedkiller glyphosate against releasing requested material.
The review, published in March 2015, concluded glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic", putting IARC at odds with regulators around the world. Critics say they want the documents to find out more about how IARC reached its conclusion.
"IARC is the sole owner of such materials," IARC told the experts. "IARC requests you and your institute not to release any (such) documents".
Asked about its actions, the agency told Reuters on Tuesday it was seeking to protect its work from external interference and defending its panels' freedom to debate evidence openly and critically.
In recent years IARC, a semi-autonomous unit of the WHO based in Lyon, France, has caused controversy over whether such things as coffee, mobile phones, red and processed meat, and chemicals like glyphosate cause cancer.
Its critics, including in industry, say the way IARC evaluates whether substances might be carcinogenic can cause unnecessary health scares. IARC assesses the risk of a substance being carcinogenic without taking account of typical human exposure to it.
Glyphosate is a key ingredient of the herbicide Roundup, sold by Monsanto. According to data published by IARC, glyphosate was registered in over 130 countries as of 2010 and is one of the most heavily used weedkillers in the world.
Pressure has been growing on the experts who worked on IARC's glyphosate review in part because other regulators, including in the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, say the weedkiller is unlikely to pose a cancer risk to humans.
The conflicting scientific assessments have delayed a decision on whether glyphosate should be relicensed for sale in Europe, and prompted senior U.S. lawmakers to question whether IARC should receive funding from U.S. taxpayers.
IARC defends its methods as scientifically sound and says its monographs - the name it gives to its classifications of carcinogens - are "widely respected for their scientific rigor, standardized and transparent process and ... freedom from conflicts of interest".
IARC's advice to experts not to release documents came in April after IARC said it learned that members of the scientific panel that reviewed glyphosate in 2015 had been issued with legal requests for information relating to their work.
Multiple subsequent freedom of information requests by the U.S. conservative advocacy group the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) have since been turned down by agencies and universities citing IARC's reasoning that it owns the documents.
David Schnare, General Counsel of E&E Legal, told Reuters his group is now pursuing a legal challenge over whether the documents belong to IARC, or are the property of the U.S. federal and state institutions where the panel experts work.
He said E&E wants access to the documents and emails because it wants to know more about the way IARC reviews the scientific evidence, and about its relationship with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"PRIVATE EMAILS"
An email dated April 1 was addressed to six members of the working group for monograph 112, which considered glyphosate, including experts at universities in Texas and Mississippi as well as scientists attached to the EPA.
Signed and sent by Kathryn (Kate) Guyton, the IARC staffer responsible for the glyphosate review, the email said IARC "does not encourage participants to retain working drafts or documents after the monograph has been published".
Monsanto's vice president of strategy, Scott Partridge, told Reuters he considered IARC's actions "ridiculous".
"The public deserves a process that is guided by sound science, not IARC's secret agendas," he said.
Responding to Reuters' questions about the letter and email, IARC said it had been previously informed by experts on the panel who "had been approached by interested parties, including lawyers representing Monsanto ... and asked to release private emails as well as draft scientific documents".
It said that as international agencies, both IARC and the WHO "have policies to protect their work, and the contributions of their expert Working Groups, from external interference".
In a statement to Reuters, IARC said the letter and email were sanctioned by the agency's director, Chris Wild. It added: "IARC staff did not instruct anyone not to comply with records requests made under national or local law."
It said it is vital that scientists in its working groups "are able to openly and critically debate the scientific evidence".
"IARC considers any measures that would discourage scientists from participating in Monographs or would detract from open scientific debate to be contrary to the best interests of international public health," it added.
Ivan Rusyn, one of the recipients of the IARC's April letter and email and a professor at Texas A&M University who worked on the glyphosate review, said he was glad to have IARC's advice regarding whether documents should be released.
"I don't see anything inappropriate here," he told Reuters. "It's very appropriate for IARC to advise its working group members as to what the procedures are."
http://www.reuters.com/article/health-cancer-iarc-idUSL1N1CV1C1
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GOP Accuses EPA Of Misrepresenting Role In Chemical Review
Oct 25, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Marc Heller
The chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee today charged that U.S. EPA has understated its connections to an international agency's finding that a popular weedkiller may cause cancer — a finding he disputes.
Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said in a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy that agency emails he obtained show EPA officials were involved in the International Agency for Research on Cancer review, which found in 2015 that the weedkiller glyphosate probably causes the disease in humans.
EPA hasn't endorsed that position, and European and international agencies have declared the pesticide safe. But Smith said inconsistent information from EPA about its connections to IARC raises doubts about whether the agency will give glyphosate a fair review based on "sound science."
Specifically, Smith said, McCarthy's testimony at a June 22 committee hearing that no one at EPA was involved in the question of glyphosate's cancer risk contradicts the emails, which show Matthew Martin of EPA's National Center for Computational Toxicology participated in IARC discussions on the chemical.
At various times in the hearing, Smith said, McCarthy seemed to say no one at EPA was involved, that Martin was involved or that Martin was involved in discussions of glyphosate but not about its potential for cancer.
The administrator's changing testimony, Smith said, "calls into question your judgment and leadership on this matter."
He added, "It appears you had been provided with deliberately misleading information to prepare for your testimony before the committee, which suggests an attempt by EPA staff to provide untruthful and misleading responses to Congress."
Smith said the committee has determined that EPA officials contributed to IARC's cancer finding, contrary to agency officials' statements to Congress.
Smith asked EPA to make Martin available for an interview. The chairman also asked for Peter Egeghy, with EPA Office of Research and Development, and Jim Jones, assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
Smith, in addition, asked for a more full review at EPA of agency scientists' role in the IARC review.
Glyphosate, commonly referred to by the Monsanto Co. brand name Roundup, is the most commonly used herbicide on farms, and Monsanto has also designed corn genetically modified to resist it.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/10/25/stories/1060044797
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Smith Inquires About Glyphosate Delay:
Oct 26, 2016 | Politico
By Helena Bottemiller Evich
House Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is demanding the EPA explain why it postponed the review by independent scientists of its glyphosate cancer assessment, as well as the role agency staff played in crafting the controversial 2015 International Agency for Research on Cancer report on the chemical. In a letter Tuesday to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, Smith argued that EPA staff were more involved in the IARC assessment, which found the herbicide to be "probably carcinogenic," than she had admitted during a June 22 hearing.
The apparently contradictory statements by McCarthy and her staff in subsequent correspondence, along with the questionable delay of the review for undisclosed reasons, “cast doubt on the agency's ability to complete an objective review based on the science that has already been well documented on the carcinogenicity of glyphosate," Smith wrote.
As a result, the chairman gave the EPA until Nov. 1 to schedule interviews in front of committee staff for two agency scientists — Matthew Martin and Peter Egeghy, both scientists with the EPA's Office of Research and Development — and Jim Jones, the associate administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Jones is under fire for what Smith claims is a close relationship with Kenneth Portier, one of the scientists on the IARC committee who has been outspoken in his support for those findings, and the brother of a member of EPA's review panel for glyphosate.
REUTERS: IARC ASKED EXPERTS TO WITHHOLD DOCS: While we’re here, Reuters reported Tuesday that the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, known as IARC, has cautioned scientists who worked on its controversial review of the common weedkiller not to release documents related to the review. That report is here.
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-agriculture/2016/10/un-expert-suggests-junk-food-a-human-rights-issue-217063
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Science Committee Chair: EPA Gave Misleading Testimony on Herbicide Study
Oct 25, 2016 | Morning Consult
By Jack Fitzpatrick
House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) on Tuesday accused Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy of giving misleading testimony on an international study on the safety of the widely used herbicide glyphosate.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer released a report in March 2015 saying glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic.” Other international organizations, including the United Nations and World Health Organization, have published reports that conflict with IARC’s findings. In September, the EPA published a paper that said glyphosate is probably not carcinogenic and scheduled a Scientific Advisory Panel meeting for Oct. 18-21. Then, a few days ahead of the meeting, the agency postponed it for later this year.
McCarthy told the committee in June that no EPA employees worked on the IARC report. But the Science Committee released two documents that appear to contradict that claim. One is a series of emails on the glyphosate study that includes one epa.gov employee email address. The other lists several EPA employees as the authors of chapters on glyphosate.
“In light of these contradictions, recent actions taken by EPA to further delay the Science Advisory Panel review for glyphosate do not instill confidence that EPA will fairly assess glyphosate based on sound science,” Smith wrote in the letter to McCarthy.
Glyphosate is a herbicide used in Monsanto’s “Roundup” weed killer.
https://morningconsult.com/alert/science-committee-chair-epa-gave-misleading-testimony-herbicide-study/
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House Committee Chair Sees Conspiracy in Glyphosate Delays
Oct 27, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
The Republican leader of the House Science Committee is blaming a conspiracy of environmental activists and EPA staffers for delays in the agency's risk review of glyphosate, the active chemical in Monsanto's Roundup weed killer product line and the world's most widely used pesticide.
“There are activists working both inside and outside the agency to derail this process,” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the committee's chairman, wrote in an Oct. 25 letter to the Environmental Protection Agency. Smith is concerned that EPA will determine that glyphosate is unsafe despite evidence to the contrary.
Smith also asked EPA administrator Gina McCarthy for more information on her agency's involvement in a disputed 2015 report of glyphosate by the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization. Smith's committee has been investigating the EPA's glyphosate review since the spring, when the agency rescinded a report it had inadvertently posted online that found glyphosate likely does not cause cancer, contradicting the WHO's earlier findings.
EPA spokesman Nick Conger told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail the agency “will review and respond to Chairman's Smith's letter.”
Unreasonable Delay?
Smith and other lawmakers have criticized the EPA for delays in making a final determination on the safety of glyphosate. Because the weed killer is often used in tandem with widely planted biotech crops, any restrictions the EPA places on its use could have seismic economic impacts on the agriculture industry.
The latest delay came earlier this month when the EPA postponed a meeting of independent scientists it was assembling to review all of the agency's work on glyphosate, including the EPA's Cancer Assessment Review Committee report that it inadvertently posted online. Conger said one of the scientists had to back out and that the agency did not have enough time to find a replacement with similar expertise, but declined to name the scientist, citing privacy reasons.
The delay, in effect, all but guarantees that a decision on glyphosate will not be made before the end of President Barack Obama's term. The scientific meeting had been scheduled to take place last week but, thus far, the agency has not rescheduled it.
When the EPA began its safety review of glyphosate in 2009, it set a schedule to make a decision by 2015. The agency is now almost three years behind the interim deadlines it had set in 2009.
This type of delay is far from unusual. Reviews of other high-profile pesticides such as atrazine, chlorpyrifos and imidacloprid, to name a few, are also years behind schedule, as the agency labors to ensure its scientific assessments are both comprehensive and accurate.
‘Good Faith.’
Smith, however, is questioning whether the delays for glyphosate are due to the voluminous workload or to other ideologically motivated factors.
In his letter to McCarthy, he pointed to personal connections between an anti-pesticide activist and a top EPA official, as well as to indications that EPA staffers were more involved in the WHO review than originally thought. A spokeswoman with the WHO's cancer research agency declined to comment for this story.
“The recent developments ... only serve to further sustain the notion that EPA is not acting in good faith,” Smith wrote.
Smith's committee has aggressively investigated other government scientists whose work on climate change clashes with his own skeptical views, going as far as to issue subpoenas forcing them to relinquish their data.
The committee has not yet taken this step in the glyphosate matter. But Smith did renew a request he made earlier this year and asked EPA to make available Jim Jones, the EPA's top chemicals regulator, and two other agency staffers for private, transcribed interviews with committee staffers.
“The chairman is hopeful that EPA will provide these individuals voluntarily, so is not considering use of compulsory process at this time,” committee spokeswoman Kristina Baum told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=99541311&vname=dennotallissues&fn=99541311&jd=99541311
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Relevance of Rodent Tumors After Chemical Exposures Debated
Oct 27, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Chemical manufacturers and regulatory agencies are wrestling with questions about whether studies that find liver tumors in chemical-exposed rodents show people may get cancer if exposed to the same chemical.
The questions affect chemical manufacturers, because toxicity studies of chemicals commonly find they cause liver tumors in rats and mice. Regulators may later rely on those studies to make chemical safety decisions and risk assessments.
For example, the Environmental Protection Agency held a meeting Oct. 26 to discuss the relevance of rat tumors to a fuel additive it's assessing called ethyl tertiary butyl ether, or ETBE. The agency's drafttoxicological review of ETBE says “there is suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential for ETBE” based on liver tumors in male rats that inhaled high doses of the fuel additive for two years.
U.S. manufacturers supplied 25 percent of the global market for ETBE in 2012, Keith Salazar, a biologist working for EPA's Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS program, said during the agency's meeting. The EPA's chemical office has withheld specific U.S. production levels, because only two facilities in the country have made ETBE so releasing production volumes would provide market intelligence.
General Relevance Topic of Toxicology Forum
Traditional cancer studies show cellular changes that could lead to cancer in thousands of rat liver cells and hundreds of mouse liver cells after two years, David Malarkey, a pathologist working at the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, said Oct. 24. He spoke during a program the Toxicology Forum organized to bring toxicologists and pharmacologists along with academic and corporate researchers together to discuss the human relevance of rodent tumors.
Yet despite the frequency with which these liver tumors occur in rodents, human liver tumors are rare in Canada, Europe and the U.S., said audience participants at the forum's program. “Why aren't we seeing a lot more [human] tumors?” an audience member asked.
In the U.S. the primary reasons people get liver cancer include excessive alcohol consumption and viruses such as hepatitis B virus or hepatitis C, according to information from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control.
Rodent tumors are nevertheless relevant, said scientists representing U.S., Canadian and European regulatory and science agencies at the Toxicology Forum meeting.
The Food and Drug Administration generally considers a molecule “guilty until proven innocent,” said Abigail Jacobs, associate director of pharmacology and toxicology at FDA.
“We generally consider things are relevant until someone persuades us that they aren't, and it generally takes a lot of work to persuade us,” she said.
How Much Data is Enough?
Vincent Cogliano, director of EPA's IRIS program, also spoke at the Toxicology Forum.
“Rodent liver tumors can be the strongest signal in animals—sometimes the only signal—of human cancer at a different site,” he said.
While rodents may incur liver tumors following chemical and other exposures, those tumors appear elsewhere in the human body, he said, describing conclusions the International Agency for Research on Cancer reached following a review of scientific studies of known human carcinogens.
Cogliano previously directed the international agency's cancer review program that developed “monographs” identifying environmental and lifestyle exposures that may increase the risk of human cancer.
One forum audience participant cried out, “How much is enough?”
Must companies conduct millions of dollars or research to prove that liver tumor contracted by a rat or mouse is irrelevant to people?” he asked.
Forum scientists spent the next two days discussing research that could help distinguish when rodent liver tumors may signal that people could get cancer and when they don't.
Specific Relevance Topic at IRIS Meeting
Participants in EPA's science meeting discussed both research and policy decisions.
Jim Bus, a toxicologist at the consulting firm Exponent Inc., said there is no human relevance to the particular rat liver tumors that the EPA used as the basis of its conclusion on the suggestive carcinogenicity of ETBE.
Bus based his conclusion on multiple lines of evidence including that the liver tumors occur only at a dose that was so high—5,000 parts per million—that it overwhelmed the rats ability to clear, detoxify or otherwise protect itself. He compared the situation to a ship that got a hole so large in its bow that the ship's pump could no longer remove the water and the craft sank.
The concentration of ETBE used in the primary study the agency used exceeded any dose that would be acceptable under current EPA guidelines or those issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Bus said.
Lower doses, even one that exposed the rats to 1,500 ppm, did not cause any changes that would indicate carcinogenic potential, Bus said.
Occupational exposures, estimated to be about 0.1 ppm in Japanese studies where ETBE is used, show that people are exposed to vastly lower concentrations even when they work in situations where exposure could occur, Bus said.
A cancer descriptor of ‘not likely to be carcinogenic in humans’ is Justified for ETBE, Bus said.
Kathryn Guyton, a scientist at IARC, and Ivan Rusyn, a professor and toxicologist from Texas A&M University, each said the EPA cannot simply ignore the liver tumors.
“I don't think you can argue the dose was too high—throw it out,” Rusyn said.
A problem the agency faces, however, is that it has scant “mechanistic” or detailed biological data to determine whether the biological changes that occurred in the rats were relevant to human cancers, he said.
The EPA's Science Advisory Board is convening an expert panel to peer review, or critique, the scientific basis of the agency's draft ETBE assessment on a yet-to-be-determined date. A Federal Register notice to be published Oct. 27 requests nominations of experts to serve on that panel.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=99541323&vname=dennotallissues&fn=99541323&jd=99541323
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Washington Updates Candidates For High Concern List
Oct 27, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By David Stegon
18 substances up for listing; parabens no longer candidates for removal
Washington state has updated the chemicals it will consider adding or removing from its Chemicals of High Concern to Children (CHCC) list.
Washington's Children's Safe Products Act (CSPA) requires manufacturers of covered children’s products to report the presence of CHCCs in them.
And as of its 25 October stakeholder workshop, Washington's Department of Ecology said it was considering 18 substances for listing and two for delisting.
Since the initial draft, the department has expanded the substances under discussion for the CHCC list. New candidates are:several additional flame retardants: TBPP, TDBPP, TNBP and EHDPP; andthe bisphenols BPF and BPS (alternatives to current CHCC-listed chemical BPA).
It is, however, no longer considering listing the phthalates DEMP, DNPP or DIOP, nor the flame retardants BTBPE or dechlorane plus.
It is also no longer considering delisting six parabens. Kara Steward, CSPA rule lead, said the stakeholder request “did not provide sufficiently robust arguments”.
Only two substances – phthalic anhydride and molybdenum – remain candidates for such.
Although the department has named a number of substances as not currently being considered, it says they could still end up on the final list, if additional evidence comes forward.
“We do expect some stakeholders to submit additional data for us to reconsider the current status,” said Ms Steward.
Washington began the list evaluation in August. A bill passed by the state legislature, earlier this year, required the state to consider adding six flame retardants.
The department said it is using this statutory update to accept feedback on other substances that could be added or delisted.
It has also proposed several changes to its chemical reporting Regulation, in part to stay consistent with other states around the country, it says.
The CHCC list was last updated in 2013.
According to staff at its recent workshop, the department is attempting to complete the final list on an accelerated schedule. So the department is drawing from existing information developed under US EPA hazard assessments, IRIS, California's Proposition 65 and REACH, among many others, to make the evaluations.
The state is accepting comments on the updated draft until 5 November. It plans to release this with any revisions in December, and discuss the results during a January webinar.
The department aims to hold another comment period before finalising the rule in March.
As noted at the stakeholder workshop, manufacturers would have until January 2019 to provide reports on newly added substances.
The Department of Ecology said that it will not be considering modifying its reporting procedures to require product-specific reporting, as has been adopted under Vermont’s similar reporting rule.
But it said it may consider this in the coming years.
https://chemicalwatch.com/50560/washington-updates-candidates-for-high-concern-list
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FDA Soap Ingredient Ban Ignores Upcoming Research, Says ACI
Oct 27, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
The US FDA recent ban on major biocidal substances in consumer wash products undermines ongoing research on their safety and efficacy, the American Cleaning Institute (ACI) has said.
The administration issued a final rule, last month, banning the 19 substances because manufacturers “haven’t shown that [they] are any more effective than plain soap and water in preventing illnesses and the spread of certain infections”.
An ACI statement criticises the agency for using “highly charged” language in its announcement of the ban. It ignores existing and upcoming research being prepared by industry, the trade body says, and could cause negative consumer perception of biocidal hygiene products.
According to the statement, antibacterial soap and ingredient manufacturers have submitted data supporting the safety and efficacy of their products over the past 40 years.
Along the way, the FDA “moved the regulatory goalposts” in requiring that ingredients kill germs as well as reduce infectious disease, says the ACI.
For more detail on this story go to CW+BiocidesHub.
https://chemicalwatch.com/50561/fda-soap-ingredient-ban-ignores-upcoming-research-says-aci
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These Common Chemicals Are Linked to Type-2 Diabetes: Study
Oct 27, 2016 | Time
By Justin Worland
And that's just one of the ways household chemicals may be harming human health
Common household chemicals found in a wide range of products from carpets to cleaning products can alter hormones and contribute to type-2 diabetes—likely costing Europeans billions of dollars annually, according to new research.
Scientists behind the study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, looked at data from seniors in the Swedish city of Uppsala on how exposure to chemicals known to disrupt the endocrine system, like phthalates, PCBs, pesticides and perfluoroalkyls, contributes to obesity and diabetes. Researchers used those findings to study the effects of chemical exposure on Europeans more broadly.
A 25% reduction in exposure to the chemicals studied would result in a 13% drop in cases of diabetes among seniors, according to the research. That would mean 150,000 fewer cases of diabetes and a savings of nearly $5 billion dollars annually.
The study, led by New York University researcher Leonardo Trasande, joins a growing list of research demonstrating the devastating effects of chemicals humans are exposed to on a daily basis. Endocrine disruptingchemicals are found in a wide array of everyday products including furniture, receipts and canned food, to name a few, and can disrupt many different bodily functions.
Another paper published by Trasande last week suggests that household chemicals lead to $340 billion annually in treatment and lost productivity in the U.S. That figure is more than $100 billion lower in Europe, in large part to a different regulatory scheme, but significant problems remain.
http://time.com/4546786/diabetes-obesity-causes-chemicals/
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Oct 26, 2016 | Business Report
By Sam Karlin
Even as the collapse of oil prices has threatened new investment, U.S. petrochemical production is booming, and Louisiana is expected to get billions of dollars worth of new production facilities in the coming years, industry leaders said today at an energy roundtable at LSU.
The LSU Center for Energy Studies’ Energy Summit: Managing Through Energy Challenges is a day-long event that offers those in the energy sector an overview of the industry’s current landscape.
Martha Moore, senior director of economics and policy analysis at the American Chemistry Council, detailed how shale production has transformed the petrochemical industry as well as the risks and challenges of the sector.
Chemical and plastics investment, which has permeated Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states, is heavily tied to oil prices. As the price of oil has dropped rapidly, the petrochemical industry’s costs have shrunk. The U.S. now is at or near the bottom of the list in costs for energy production.
Moore said she is currently tracking 277 new or ongoing projects for petrochemical production facilities that are worth $168 billion. Louisiana is expected to receive around $46 billion worth of such projects, many of which will go to Geismar and Plaquemine.
Because of shale production, the U.S. capacity for new production of chemicals like ethylene and polyethylene, a resin used in milk jugs, is among the highest in the world. And many of the new companies—around 61%—investing in America are foreign owned or have foreign partners.
“There are companies coming here to the U.S. that I have never even heard of before,” said Moore, who analyzes policy decisions and energy trends. “This is a global story.”
State Sen. Sharon Hewitt, R-Slidell, attended the conference and said she was encouraged by the positive message.
“We have the resources, and we have the know-how,” Hewitt said. “We just need to make sure we have the right policies in place.”
Around 70% of new investment is expected to go to Gulf Coast states, including Louisiana. Chemicals that make vinyl, menthol, fertilizers and the chemistry involved in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, are some of the products eyed by manufacturers in the U.S.
https://www.businessreport.com/article/louisiana-still-set-get-billions-worth-new-production-facilities-despite-oil-downturn-industry-leaders-say-lsu-summit
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Oct 26, 2016 | The Advocate
By Ted Griggs
The U.S. petrochemical industry is in the midst of a multiyear renaissance, thanks to low-cost natural gas produced by massive shale formations, but a handful of issues could put a halt to that, an American Chemistry Council analyst said Wednesday.
"It's a wonderful story to tell, and I love telling the story. But there are some things that keep us awake at night," said Martha Moore, senior director for economics and policy analysis for the American Chemistry Council.
Workforce development issues, such as a shortage of skilled construction workers and welders, could hamper building plants, Moore said. Since 2010, 277 new petrochemical plants or expansion projects valued at $168 billion have been announced.
Moore was one of the speakers at the LSU Center for Energy Studies' Energy Summit 2016. Roughly 100 people attended her session. Other talks covered the impact of national politics on the energy industry, challenges in building new pipelines and issues related to developing power plants.
Moore said some of the other issues that could delay or block the petrochemical megaprojects include:
• Shortages of key equipment. "Everybody is building these plants. A world-scale ethylene cracker, I read, requires 315 miles of piping," Moore said. "There's a lot of demand for specialized equipment and piping — all of these things — and there have been anecdotal reports of shortages."
• Market access and trade exposure. A huge percentage of the country's natural gas production, a major feedstock for the petrochemical industry, is targeted for export, she said. The U.S. petrochemical industry has the second-lowest costs in the world, mainly because of the price advantage natural gas offers.
• More stringent regulations on fracking, the process which makes shale production possible, and pipeline transportation of ethane and natural gas.
• Transportation and logistics. There is a lot of congestion in the Houston Ship Channel, she said. If the Port of Houston isn't functioning properly, rail shipments may be diverted to Dallas or Charlotte with shippers from trains to trucks, which have load limits and are also limited by driver shortages.
All of those "sub-optimal choices" would increase costs and reduce the chemical industry's competitive advantage, Moore said.
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/business/article_1bcd6e66-9bb9-11e6-a104-1708c4aef846.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Business, Labor Criticize Feds As Pipeline Tensions Escalate
Oct 26, 2016 | The Bakken Magazine
By Patrick C. Miller
A coalition of 22 business and labor groups signed a letter calling on the Obama administration to follow the rule of law and the established regulatory process to complete construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline that runs from North Dakota to Illinois.
Sent last Thursday, the letter was addressed to Eric Fanning, secretary of the U.S. Army; Sally Jewel, secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior; and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, U.S. Department of Justice.
“We write to express our deep concerns over recent actions that took place in North Dakota to effectively ignore the rule of law in an attempt to halt infrastructure development,” the letter said.
The coalition’s letter added, “This North Dakota project has complied with the procedures laid out in law, engaged in more than two years of federal review and has received the necessary federal approvals. Additionally, the project has been fully approved by all four states it traverses. The federal approvals required for the project were upheld by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a 58- page opinion.”
The letter went on to criticize the Obama administration for having the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, the Department of Justice and Department of Interior intervene in the project to halt construction at the point where the pipeline’s route crosses the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The administration said it needed to reconsider previous decisions under various federal laws after the tribe said the pipeline threatened its drinking water and cultural sites.
“The previous decisions now being ‘reconsidered’ were properly considered and made through a fair and thorough process on which the company and others are entitled to rely,” the letter said. “In our ‘nation of laws,’ when an established legal process is complete, it is just that—complete.”
In another development related to the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile-long pipeline that will carry about a half million barrels per day of Bakken crude from western North Dakota to a terminal in Patoka, Illinois, Dakota Access LLC—a subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners—on Tuesday warned that “lawless behavior will not be tolerated” from protestors trespassing on the company’s private land. The statement urged protestors to vacate the land immediately or face removal by law enforcement and prosecution “to the fullest extent of the law.”
During a news conference on Wednesday, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said law enforcement is engaging in ongoing efforts to establish and dialogue with the protestors in hopes of a peaceful resolution to the standoff. He said the protesters were asked to move off of private property, remove their barricade from State Highway 1806 and stop blocking other country roads in the construction area in Morton County.
Kirchmeier said that several states in the region recently sent resources to assist North Dakota in the standoff with Dakota Access Pipeline protesters. He declined to elaborate on the number of law enforcement officers present, the types of resources that have been provided or a timetable for ending the confrontation.
Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney told reporters, “We have the resources, we have the manpower to end this right now. We have the ability. What we did again today was to go down and reach out to the camps and say, ‘Listen, there is a very common-sense way to deal with this. We can deal with this in the courts. We can deal with this at the federal government level.’”
However, Laney said the response from the protesters was that they would not move and intended to make a stand.
“The last thing we want to do is do it forcefully,” Kirchmeier said. “We want to give them every opportunity to do this lawful, but right now, laws are being violated.”
The letter to Obama administration officials was signed by the following organizations: American Chemistry Council; American Forest & Paper Association; American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers; American Gas Association; American Highway Users Alliance; American Iron and Steel Institute; Association of Energy Service Companies; American Petroleum Institute; American Road and Transportation Builders Association; Association of Oil Pipe Lines; Consumer Energy Alliance; Edison Electric Institute; Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance; GPA Midstream Association; Independent Petroleum Association of America; Industrial Energy Consumers of America; Institute for 21st Century Energy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Interstate Natural Gas Association of America; National Association of Manufacturers; Natural Gas Supply Association; Portland Cement Association; and The Association of Union Constructors.
http://thebakken.com/articles/1718/business-labor-criticize-feds-as-pipeline-tensions-escalate
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Labor Boss Slams ‘Bottom-Feeding’ Unions Opposing Pipeline
Oct 26, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The head of an industrial union is slamming a coalition of unions that oppose an oil pipeline in the Midwest, calling them “bottom-feeding organizations.”
A Wednesday letter from Terry O’Sullivan to the members of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) is the latest to highlight a wide rift between industrial unions that support the Dakota Access pipeline and five unions opposing the project.
To LIUNA and its allies, the opposing groups are turning their backs on them in a move that could end up eliminating good-paying union jobs.
“The facts are on our side, yet in the past month, we have witnessed vocal opposition from groups, including some self-righteous unions, who know little about the project and have no job equity in it,” O’Sullivan wrote to his members.
“These unions have sided with THUGS against trade unionists. They are a group of bottom-feeding organizations that are once again trying to destroy our members’ jobs,” he said.
The letter comes in response to a September missive in opposition to the project from the Communications Workers of America, National Nurses United, Amalgamated Transit Union, American Postal Workers Union and Service Employees International Union, all of whom O’Sullivan names specifically in his letter.
They are at odds with LIUNA, the International Union of Operating Engineers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the United Association, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the AFL-CIO.
Those unions have asked President Obama to grant the final easement that Energy Transfer Partners needs to build its oil pipeline under Lake Oahe in North Dakota, and they have blamed the delay for lost work and various threats to workers.
O’Sullivan urged LIUNA members to “reciprocate” the actions of the anti-pipeline unions.
“Brothers and sisters, for every ACTION there is a REACTION, and we should find every opportunity to reciprocate their total disrespect and disregard for the health, safety, and livelihoods of our members,” he wrote.
“Not only have these unions joined in a common cause with the self-interested opportunists vilifying hard-working tradesmen and tradeswomen, they are knowingly repeating the lies and misinformation driving opposition to this project.”
The Dakota Access pipeline has become a flashpoint in the energy world as environmentalists and American Indian groups wage a high-profile campaign against the project.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/302968-labor-boss-slams-bottom-feeding-unions-opposing-pipeline
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Anadarko Forges New Deal on Use of City Wastewater in Fracking
Oct 27, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
Anadarko Petroleum Corp., has renegotiated the final annual payment it owes the city of Aurora, Colo., as part of a five-year, $9.5-million contract allowing it to use the city's “used” water to frack oil and natural gas wells.
Facing tepid revenues due to low energy commodity prices, Anadarko reached an agreement with Aurora Water, the city's supplier of water, sewer and stormwater services, to spread payments for the $2,025,915 it owes throughout 2016, 2017 and 2018 instead of in full this year per the original contract.
The Houston-based producer, one of the most active drillers in Colorado's productive Denver-Julesburg Basin, reported $2.2 million in losses last year in the slumping natural gas and oil market, Robin Olsen, spokeswoman for the company in Denver, told Bloomberg BNA Oct. 25.
Company to Buy Water
Anadarko entered into an agreement with Aurora in 2012 to purchase water pumped into the South Platte River after being treated at the city's Robert W. Hite Treatment Facility.
The agreement allowed Anadarko to purchase the water for five years at a rate of 1,500 acre-feet a year, Lisa Darling, South Platte program manager for Aurora Water, told Bloomberg BNA Oct. 25. The company uses the water for hydraulic fracturing and other drilling activities.
Fracking involves the high-pressure injection of large amounts of water, sand and chemicals into tight shale formations deep underground to stimulate the production of natural gas and oil trapped there.
The city council's water policy committee tentatively approved the renegotiated agreement Oct. 13, Darling said. The full council will consider it in late November or early December, she added.
“Anadarko has recently undergone significant economic set-backs, due to the steeply declining price of oil. As a result, drill rigs have been laid down and oil production in Weld County has virtually ceased,” city documents said.
The company will buy water at the rate of 500 acre-feet a year under the new arrangement. Included with the deal was a contract incentive providing Aurora with 150 shares of Anadarko's rights to the Lupton Meadows Ditch Co., a value of about $1.4 million in water rights. Aurora will obtain ownership of the ditch, Darling said.
‘Good for Both Parties.’
“Our partnership with the City of Aurora is very similar to the work we've done with our service providers to improve efficiencies, and our cost structure during a challenging commodity price environment,” Olsen said in a statement.
“The agreement we've reached works well for both parties, as it provides Aurora with additional value that can be used at the city's discretion, including stabilizing residential water bills, and it enables us to have the flexibility around volume, location and timing of delivery that best aligns with our operational needs,” she said.
Agreements between cities and oil and gas producers operating in the DJ Basin such as Anadarko and Noble Energy use water that could be used for other beneficial purposes such as farms, recreation, fish and other aquatic wildlife, Rob Harris, senior staff attorney with Western Resource Advocates, an environmental group in Boulder, told Bloomberg BNA Oct. 26.
‘Deep Pockets.’
“Oil and gas has very deep pockets,” he said, adding that he has seen estimates that Anadarko paid four times the market rate for the used water it agreed to purchase from Aurora. “There are bigger issues for the public to consider, like whether or not fracking is the best use of water in a dry region and in a dry time. Downstream junior water-rights holders, such as a farmer in Brighton or Weld counties, may not get what they need to water their crops.”
Olsen said aggregate use of water by the oil and gas industry represents a minuscule amount—about 0.1 percent—of total water use in Colorado. “They like to pick on our industry, but it's such a small number when you put it into the context of other water users, such as agriculture and mining.”
Harris said the 0.1 percent figure might be correct, but such a number is “not useful.” It's the equivalent of annual use by Lakewood, one of Denver's larger suburbs, he said. “It implies it's a de minimis amount, which is not correct.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=99541319&vname=dennotallissues&fn=99541319&jd=99541319
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Coalition Presses Conferees On Building Code Provisions
Oct 27, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss
A coalition of energy efficiency advocates is urging lawmakers working on energy reform legislation to drop a controversial House provision and stick with competing Senate language.
In a letter to leaders of a House-Senate conference committee working on a compromise, the Alliance to Save Energy and other groups want members to support building code provisions in S. 2012.
The Senate bill takes its cue from a comprehensive efficiency package pushed for years by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and mirrored in House companion legislation authored by Reps. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).
"Key stakeholders — including energy efficiency advocates, businesses, and trade associations, along with representatives of the homebuilding industry — negotiated this language," wrote the groups.
"This stakeholder engagement process was robust, and many accommodations and concessions that endure today in the Senate provisions were made to address concerns of the homebuilding industry," they said. "We are very concerned that weakening these provisions would unravel this hard-fought compromise and severely jeopardize the opportunity to enact meaningful energy legislation this year."
Today's missive appears to be in response to a previous letter sent to conferees last month by a competing coalition that favors the building code language in the House bill, H.R. 8.
That provision, authored by Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), would impose procedural requirements on the Department of Energy for setting building efficiency codes.
These include a requirement that any codes proposed by DOE have a "simple payback" period of 10 years or less. In today's letter, the signatories say the requirement fails to account for an assortment of factors.
"Congress should not dictate, in statute, what is cost-effective and what is not, especially without a thoughtful stakeholder-engagement process," they wrote.
The new letter also denounces the House provision "because it would impede DOE from providing the key analytical and technical support that is critical to the model code development process and the adoption of codes by state and local governments."
The White House raised similar concerns over the Blackburn-Schrader language in a statement of administration policy that threatened a veto of the House bill.
It said the provision "would stifle the nation's move toward energy efficiency by severely hampering [DOE's] ability to provide technical support for building code development and State implementation."No middle ground
Today's letter says there's "no possibility of an acceptable middle ground between the House and Senate provisions."
Alliance to Save Energy President Kateri Callahan said the House language "would jeopardize efficiency code development across the country by removing the federal government from the process" and would set up "a severely flawed cost-benefit analysis that is rather transparently designed to prohibit the federal government from participating."
"The only people it would benefit are home builders who would be able to cut corners in construction and pass along hidden costs to home buyers, who in most cases right from the start would have a monthly net gain from the money they save in utility bills versus a minuscule incremental cost in their mortgage," said Callahan in a statement.
A spokesman for House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) declined to comment on the letter. It's the latest skirmish in the first formal energy conference in more than a decade.
Both chambers' bills generally address energy infrastructure and efficiency and would impose a deadline on DOE to issue final decisions on natural gas export applications (E&E Daily, April 26).
However, both bills also address a handful of additional controversies that are problematic on the opposite sides of the Capitol.
The Senate bill, for instance, would permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund, an idea opposed by House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), who wants to see additional reforms to the program.
Ahead of conference talks, the House added provisions to its bill that have drawn White House veto threats or "serious concern," including drought relief legislation, a sportsmen's package and its version of the "America Competes Act."
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who is also leading the conference, said last month that she was confident the process would yield a final product the president could sign but acknowledged that some of the thornier issues may not be resolvable (E&E Daily, Sept. 23).
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/10/26/stories/1060044870
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DOJ Eyes Expanding Management Systems To Bolster Worker Safety
Oct 27, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
A senior Justice Department (DOJ) official says prosecutors are considering expanding their use of environmental management systems (EMS) in enforcement settlements to bolster worker safety, a continuation of the department's policy to address worker safety concerns using the more aggressive authorities provided by federal environmental laws.
Assistant Attorney General John Cruden told an Oct. 26 American Bar Association Environmental and Workplace Safety Criminal Enforcement Conference that DOJ is evaluating how to bolster the use of EMS in settlements to better protect workers, and suggested that the existence of those programs may be weighed as mitigating factors in prosecutions.
While DOJ frequently requires companies to develop EMS -- internal processes and practices that allow organizations to reduce their environmental impacts and increase efficiencies -- as a condition to address their environmental non-compliance, Cruden says DOJ will now start examining whether they could also include provisions to protect workers, such as employee training, performance evaluations and mechanisms for employees to report problems at facilities.
“We’re examining companies to see if they have policies in place to prevent worker safety issues,” Cruden told the conference. “If we see a company, from a civil or criminal perspective, we’re examining do they have [an EMS] in place?” he said in prepared remarks, adding, “Are they following it, or do they have nothing. It’s good to have something.”
He also said DOJ is currently determining what standards it should follow in evaluating companies’ EMS programs, and determining what worker safety provisions it should require in companies' EMS programs as part of enforcement resolutions, either as a condition of probation or a consent decree.
“When an EMS is required to ensure organization-wide environmental compliance, the EMS usually ensures added safety and health protections for the workers who are in direct contact with these potentially dangerous materials,” he said, adding that a key part of any EMS is employee awareness about environmental compliance.
“Ensuring employee awareness can involve training, performance evaluations and specific communication mechanisms for employees to report compliance issues, such as hotlines. Any efforts that increase employee awareness also impact worker safety,” he noted.
The top prosecutor’s remarks expand on a December 2015 memo from Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, where DOJ announced plans to increase its use of criminal and civil enforcement authorities in environmental statutes -- which can result in significantly higher penalties -- in cases where violations of the two regimes occur in tandem.
In a joint statement last year, DOJ and the Labor Department said violations of worker safety provisions in labor law are generally considered only misdemeanors, but environmental crimes are often categorized as felonies, with harsher penalties including prison terms and larger fines. DOJ has taken similar steps to bolster enforcement of civil violations.
Although DOJ had adopted similar approaches on a case-by-case basis, the new policy -- enforced jointly with U.S. attorneys -- institutionalized the approach. And DOJ has already begun utilizing the approach in enforcement actions. Earlier this month, DOJ imposed steep Clean Air Act penalties against a Texas petrochemical facility in a case that began with an OSHA investigation of a fatal accident.
Environmental Enforcement
While Cruden’s comments underscore DOJ’s focus on using stronger environmental enforcement authorities in worker safety cases, others, including Chemical Safety Board (CSB) Chairwoman Vanessa Allen Sutherland, told the conference that increased criminal enforcement has off-setting consequences for obtaining information used to prevent future accidents.
Given CSB’s non-regulatory, fact-finding role, Sutherland said its investigators often assure witnesses their statements will not be used against them. But she said that increasingly, prosecutors may see CSB investigative information as a resource and seek to subpoena that data to build cases or impeach witnesses.
“The irony is as we see more and more civil and criminal enforcement, it actually erodes our mission,” Sutherland said. “Because our mission is to get all the information so that similar accidents are prevented in the future.”
Mark Farley, of the firm Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, agreed that DOJ’s worker enforcement initiative complicates the CSB’s mission of collecting data to prevent future accidents. Specifically, he noted that increased enforcement, combined with a prior Yates memo on targeting individual employees instead of just companies, will delay CSB in obtaining information after accidents.
“As soon as [companies] start pulling in individual counsel then the information flow to CSB is going to stop,” Farley told the conference. “You won’t allow [a client] to sit for that interview until you know what their exposure is.” He added, “That leads to a huge time delay.”
But Farley also suggested that aspects of CSB’s recent investigative work also complements DOJ’s worker safety initiative. In recent investigation reports, CSB has focused on facilities’ safety culture -- whether companies have policies and procedures to prevent accidents and worker injuries, and the extent the policies are followed.
Farley noted that CSB’s emphasis on safety culture corresponds with DOJ’s recent focus on whether companies implemented EMS policies before and after accidents and injuries. “What is driving this focus on major accidents and leading toward the increasing criminalization of these accidents is that CSB is speaking a language that prosecutors really understand,” Farley said.
In emphasizing DOJ’s increased use of EMS in enforcement deals to protect workers, Cruden cited provisions in DOJ’s landmark settlement following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill that killed 11 workers. “[T]his environmental disaster is not generally thought of as also being a worker endangerment case, but it is,” he said.
The November 2012 criminal resolution required that more than half of penalties paid were dedicated to environmental restoration in the Gulf of Mexico, and also required new worker safety protections at BP facilities. BP was required to conduct safety and EMS audits of its platforms and rigs, and a obtain process safety and risk management monitor to oversee maintenance, Cruden said. EMS and worker safety provisions were also included in a subsequent civil agreement.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/doj-eyes-expanding-management-systems-bolster-worker-safety
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Proposed Settlement In West Virginia Chemical Spill
Oct 26, 2016 | AP (In The new York Times)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -- A proposed settlement has been reached between Charleston residents and a chemical company accused of not doing enough to safeguard West Virginia's capital city from a spill that polluted the drinking water of thousands of people in 2014.
According to court officials, attorneys for Eastman Chemical and Charleston-area residents and businesses proposed the settlement. Eastman is producer of a coal-cleaning agent that spilled.
It is subject to approval by U.S. District Judge John Copenhaver. Its terms are sealed. The settlement would apply in the class-action suit to about 225,000 people and more than 7,000 businesses whose tap water was contaminated and who were advised for days not to use it.
Eastman Chemical did not reply to requests for comment Wednesday.
Anthony Majestro, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said it would apply to all state and federal court claims and will be unsealed after trial or settlement of class-action claims against West Virginia American Water. Those settlement talks were continuing Wednesday, he said.
Copenhaver postponed the trial against the water company to Friday. It had been set to begin Thursday.
The chemical leaked from a storage tank of Freedom Industries into the Elk River in January 2014, about 1.5 miles upstream from the water system's intake, preventing the capital and nearby areas from using tap water for days. Businesses temporarily shut, hundreds went to emergency rooms complaining of nausea and rashes, and authorities later adopted more stringent inspections of aboveground storage tanks. Days after the spill, Freedom filed for bankruptcy.
Copenhaver certified the class-action suit a year ago for the plaintiffs, saying they were mostly residents whose water supply was interrupted, employees who lost wages during business closures and others impacted in varying ways by the disaster.
The suit alleged the water company was unprepared for the spill and that Eastman Chemical didn't advise Freedom of the dangers of the coal-cleaning agent.
Laura Martin, a spokeswoman for West Virginia American Water, said the water company only began lifting a do-not-use order on tap water between four and nine days after the spill once tests showed the chemical had flushed from the water supply. The company's multiple systems provide water to about 560,000 people in West Virginia. The system for greater Charleston was the only one affected. She said the claims against the company are "without merit."
Eastman produced the coal-cleaning chemical that leaked from the Freedom Industries tank. The suit claims the company didn't test the corrosive chemical MCHM properly or warn about possible effects on human health or tanks used to store it.
In court filings, Eastman said it wasn't negligent, didn't violate environmental laws and complied with federal guidelines for testing the chemical it sold to Freedom Industries.
In late September, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board released a draft report on the spill, saying it found no documentation of inspections by Freedom Industries that would have identified corrosion in its leaky aboveground tank. It also said Freedom lacked leak detection or prevention systems.
West Virginia lawmakers have imposed new inspection and containment requirements on above-ground storage tanks.
In February, Former Freedom Industries officials Gary Southern and Dennis Farrell were sentenced to a month in federal prison on pollution charges. Four others received probation.
On Monday Copenhaver ordered a separate trial for claims against them.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/10/26/us/ap-us-chemical-spill.html?mtrref=query.nytimes.com&gwh=72DA82C674C842B37B813A91C9692A05&gwt=pay
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POLITICO Pro Q&A: Climate Envoy Jonathan Pershing
Oct 27, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Wolff
Jonathan Pershing, the State Department's Special Envoy for Climate Change, will lead the U.S. delegation to the U.N. climate talks in Marrakech, Morocco, in the first major meeting of nations since last year's Paris conference, where the agreement requiring participants to address climate change was signed.
Though the Marrakech conference, known officially as the 22nd Conference of Parties, or COP 22, won't deliver the type of deal reached last December, countries will dig deep into issues that are critical for implementing the Paris deal, such as transparency, creating carbon markets, financing for low-carbon projects and climate change adaptation.
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Pershing recently attended pre-meeting discussions in Marrakech, where he said the "spirit of Paris" was still propelling nations toward finding agreement on the issues. He expects the main meeting in Marrakech, which will also feature the first Meeting of the Parties of the Paris Agreement (CMA) will have its share of disagreements, but the structure for climate action has been built. He sat down with POLITICO on Friday.
The following has been edited for clarity and length.
This COP is pretty different from the Paris meeting. What do you expect to come out of it?
Paris was a huge outcome, an achievement that has taken us years to create, but it wasn't entirely finished — there was some detailed work of negotiation on some of the transparency elements that are now being finalized that will take some time to move forward. This is a shift from a negotiating session to an implementation agenda.
The Moroccans have pushed hard on pretty hard on a series of quite high level panels, action-oriented items. An agenda called the Action Agenda, in fact, will bring together people on a series of issues on different days. We've got an energy day, they've got an adaptation day, they've got an agriculture day, they've got a day on cities, one on finance.
We're hearing that number of African heads of state will be coming to talk explicitly about the dynamics of adapation in Africa, [and there's] a community of people coming to talk explicitly about how you move private investment. [Energy] Secretary [Ernest] Moniz is going to be there, he's going to be focused on the progreess made on Mission Innovation, which is this whole agenda around expanding the R&D agenda for clean energy. There's this discussion called the Clean Energy Ministerial which he'll also be involved with. A series of practical, tangible projects and programs moving forward on the energy side. Across the board there's this whole series of things to get you away from a singular text into a much more complicated and diverse set of activities on reductions.
What are the U.S. priorities, and where will you focus your attention?
In a couple of areas. The first one is there are some negotiations still under way. The second is the objective was to elevate this discussion. In many cases, for countries looking to implement their commitments, it requires their own governments to implement these complicated structures. For the first time, in this meeting we'll have people who are not traditional negotiators leading delegations, people who are looking to bring to the table their expertise in these sectors.
So, for example, we've had very few energy ministers [at past COPs], but partly because Secretary Moniz is coming this time, and partly because it's this new kind of agenda, I anticipate a number of energy ministers coming, and the Moroccans have tried to elevate that part of the agenda. There's actually an agriculture day, though I'm not sure if [Agriculture] Secretary [Tom] Vilsack is going to make it, I'm sure one of the senior people from USDA will be there.
What are some of those negotiations that you're still trying to hash out?
None are to be really completed — this is more of a process that will take a little while. There are a number of things the agreement called for finishing at the first meeting of the parties, the CMA 1. We thought the CMA 1 would not be until 2020, so really this is moving forward much, much more quickly. So a lot of what we're trying to do is meet the political urgency that's attached by accelerating those negotiations. We're hoping we can conclude them in 2018. So, really push it forward several years.
They include work on the details of transparency. They include work on the details of the market structure for emissions trading, what they call market mechanisms. They include work on the 2018 dialogue, which is the first round of the assessment of progress, called the facilitative dialogue, progress on the individual nations' contributions, what they call the national determined contributions for these targets.
In Paris, the U.S., EU and China all managed to march together, and there was a lot of groundwork done to make that happen. But regarding the issue of transparency, China has never been excited about having other people verify. Do you have any concerns about having this remain cordial and keeping everyong pulling together on transparency?
I just came back from what is an annual event a few weeks before the COP called the Pre-COP. Usually it involves 50 or 60 countries, so not the entire community, but a pretty representative example. The sense that I have is there's a remarkably positive tone coming out from that session. In some ways it's being articulated by some people as the "spirit of Paris," and we actually reached agreement. People have moved into a phase of, "I've got this deal, I may not like all these pieces, I'm probably going to argue about those, but I'm also going to implement them. And I may need some help implementing. I may need some cooperation. I may need to talk to you about my implementation, because you may be doing it in a way that I could learn from, some things that might work in your case." It was a remarkably constructive frame.
With respect to the details on transparency, which for us is one of the most critical parts of Paris. I'm not hearing a lot of dissent.
Some countries have market-based structure in place, so they may have as sense of what they want. The U.S. has some local ones, but we don't have a national structure. What role do you the U.S. playing in that discussion?
So it falls into several boxes. The first one is we'd like to make sure that any market structures that are used have environmental integrity. It is not of value to the larger system to allow or to enable or to encourage programs that don't meet environmentally rigorous tests. The second is that we do have a host of our states that are actively engaged here, we'd like the make sure they're not excluded from the process. We're not interested in having a singular set of rules. There's no one answer to this question. But there are answers that are consistent with good practice. Which is to say, I can imagine a structure where the EU continues its program, California continues its program, and China continues its program. Fundamentally different programs, they could all work, all be credible.
On the 2018 dialogue, some countries appear to be pushing for a return to the bifurcated view of things [a formal split between developing and developed countries], another is that perhaps 2018 is too soon to start it. What are you hoping to achieve and what countries do you hope to bring along in your negotiation?
There's a lot of different pieces to that, let's try to break it out a little bit. One [concern is when we are] going to be finished with the CMA rule process. Originally we thought it would be a four- to five-year process, we've tried to accelerate it now to meet the political urgency the countries have demonstrated by this rapid entry into force to move it to 2018. I think there's going to be a consensus on doing that. I think that'll emerge.
The second question you've asked, will there be a push for a resplitting, a kind of backing up to where we were. I think the answer is there will be some. But I think there is an increasing level of consensus that the splitting should occur on the targets the countries set, not on the transparency they're reporting the actions.
But there will clearly be differentiation at the action levels. Say you're China, and your target is a combination of things, like [carbon] intensity. ... Your intensity target will require you to have details on your GDP as well as emissions. You don't need a GDP number, you need an emissions number. Here's the difference of reporting, and it's not a split between developed and developing, it's a function of how your target is set. That flexibility is in the agreement and we strongly support it.
The other is transparency, and there aren't many ways to report GDP that are credible, so as long as you can do that, that meets the task that we've got. Will there be pushback? Of course there will be. People will always be looking for how it fits their own circumstances ... but I think we were increasingly able to get common ground on the need for this transparency.
The U.S. presidential election will occur during the second day of the conference. How do you think negotiations — the tone and attitude — will change depending on who wins?
I think it's going to be significant. I'm struck by the fact that very few citizens could name any candidate in another country's election and almost every delegate I talk to can name all of our primary candidates, not only our final candidates. The sense that I have is they've taken quite different positions, and they would therefore be a very substantial change in how the process would deal with the outcome.
At the same time, from the US perspective, we're going to continue through the end of our term. we're still the party in power, the president has a view of what we're trying to do with this agreement, and that won't change. ... I think the global community, at least at the pre-COP, is aware of this. [A Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump] debate happened while I was at the pre-COP, and everyone was watching it intently, even though it was three in the morning.
Trump has made his position clear on international agreements and climate in particular. Do the parties just get up and go home if he's the winner?
No. And here's my own view about the distinction in how you might draw this: A great deal of what's going on in the world right now is very much entrenched. ...The rest of the world, whether or not our head of state chooses to believe it, is facing climate change problems. Those risks will drive adaptive behavior. We're doing it also. He may not call it climate change, but Miami is going to have a problem. He may not call it climate change, but the forest fires in the West are going to be a problem. He may not call it climate change, but it turns out the drought affecting part of the Southwest, that's a problem. Those things are here and around the world in aggressive fashion, he's going to have deal with it, she's going to have to deal with it, the international community is dealing with it. So either way, there's going to be continued activity.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2016/10/poltico-pro-q-a-climate-envoy-jonathan-pershing-135038
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