Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 12/13/2016
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(ACC Mentioned) Holiday Recycling: Don't Let It Go to Waste
Dec 13, 2016 | KSBY
The holiday season is already taking a toll on landfills and recycling centers. -
(ACC Mentioned) Encouraging Recycling This Holiday Season
Dec 12, 2016 | WTHR
If you have gifts piling up this holiday season, you'll probably have a lot of trash after they're opened. -
Trump Has Picked the Most Conservative EPA Leader Since 1981. This One Will Face Much Less Resistance.
Dec 13, 2016 | Washington Post
By Patrick J. Egan and Megan Mullin
In tapping Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to be the head of Environmental Protection Agency, President-elect Donald Trump has selected the most conservative nominee for this post in a generation. -
Report: Trumps Taps Rick Perry for Energy Secretary
Dec 13, 2016 | Roll Call
By Aryn Braun
After a last-minute meeting on Monday, President-elect Donald Trump has chosen former Texas Gov. and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry for Energy secretary, CBS News reported Tuesday. -
(ACC Blog) Growing Pains in Implementing the New TSCA: Section 5 and Its Critical Role in Innovation
Dec 12, 2016 | American Chemistry Matters
By Karyn Schmidt
On December 14, 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will host a public stakeholder discussion on the implementation of section 5 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
(ACC Mentioned) Will the New EPA Head Halt Attempts to Ban Asbestos?
Dec 13, 2016 | Mesothelioma
By Gary Cohn
Retired Assistant U.S. Surgeon General Richard Lemen has devoted his life to documenting the dangers of asbestos and bringing about an end to asbestos-related diseases, so he was understandably elated by two recent events. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Nominates 29 for Scientific Advisory Panel
Dec 12, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Gabriel Dunsmith
U.S. EPA has nominated 29 people — including toxicologists, health researchers, and oil and pharmaceutical executives — to its Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals, a panel created by the overhauled Toxic Substances Control Act. -
Proposed EPA Solvent Rule Spurs Disputes on Science, Law
Dec 13, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Disputes about the adequacy of Environmental Protection Agency risk assessments have begun following the agency's release of a proposed rule to ban two uses of a solvent. -
Toxics: Diving Deeper into EPA's TSCA High-Priority List
Dec 12, 2016 | Inside EPA
How does EPA's first list of 10 high-priority chemicals it will assess under its new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) authority measure up to industry's expectations? -
(ACC Mentioned) From Asbestos to Pesticides to Pork
Dec 13, 2016 | Fair Warning
By Myron Levin and Paul Feldman
The Fall of Icarus is the Greek myth about a youth who gets a pair of wax-and-feather wings but soars too close to the sun–melting the wings and casting him into the sea. -
EPA Sets Compliance Dates for Formaldehyde Emissions Rule
Dec 13, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has set compliance deadlines for its final rule governing formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products. -
EPA Issues Final National Formaldehyde Standard
Dec 12, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Glenn Hess
The Environmental Protection Agency today published final standards limiting emissions of formaldehyde from products containing composite wood, such as hardwood plywood, medium-density fiberboard, and particleboard. -
California SCP Releases Full Alternatives Analysis Guide Draft
Dec 13, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
California’s Safer Consumer Products (SCP) programme has issued a full draft of its alternatives analysis (AA) guidance. -
Some Good News in Washington, But Much More Work to Do on Lead
Dec 12, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Jack Pratt
You may have missed it, but early Saturday morning there was some good news in Washington. After a long delay, Congress finally passed funding to help address the public health disaster in Flint, Michigan. This is good news, but much work remains to be done, in Flint and around the country. -
Bill Gates Will Lead New $1 Billion Clean Energy Fund
Dec 12, 2016 | CNN
By Selena Larson
Bill Gates is leading a $1 billion investment fund in clean energy. -
Fitch: Demise of Clean Power Plan Could Affect Projects' Credit
Dec 12, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Rod Kuckro
The 2017 outlook is stable for North American energy infrastructure, Fitch Ratings said Friday, although it warned that the potential demise of U.S. EPA's flagship Clean Power Plan "could create some interesting ripples for the sector in the coming months." -
NatGas Production from Big Seven Plays to Increase in January, EIA Says
Dec 12, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
Natural gas production from the nation's seven largest unconventional plays, which has been on a downward trend for more than a year, is expected to increase in January, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). -
East Coast Businesses Push Obama on Atlantic Drilling
Dec 12, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A group of businesses on the East Coast is asking President Obama to permanently ban drilling the Atlantic Ocean before he leaves office next month. -
Justice Department Urges Import Duties on Fracking Material
Dec 13, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Flood
The Justice Department urged an appeals court Dec. 12 to reimpose import tariffs on a type of chemical used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking (Schlumberger Tech. Corp. v. United States, No. 15-2076, 12/12/16). -
White House, Canada Outline Game Plan for Protecting Power Grid
Dec 12, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Esther Whieldon
The White House and Canadian government today released two reports on how they would work together to protect their respective electric grids from physical and cyber attacks. -
Senate Gives Final Approval to Crude-by-Rail Bill
Dec 13, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
Senators took the final step late Dec. 9 to strengthen emergency response efforts for oil train transport and other emergency response incidents. -
Air: EPA Seeks to Ease Air Toxics Rule for Phosphoric Acid Manufacturing
Dec 12, 2016 | Inside EPA
EPA is proposing to ease air toxics compliance requirements for the handful of phosphoric acid manufacturing and phosphate fertilizer production facilities, keeping the rule's emissions limits unchanged but extending compliance deadlines in response to petitions... -
House GOP Chairmen Seek White House Climate Spending Report
Dec 12, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Hess
The White House owes Congress a detailed report on climate spending before President Obama leaves office, according to key Republicans on the House Appropriations and Energy and Commerce committees. -
Greens May Seek to Bar Pruitt from EPA Suits He Fought
Dec 12, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
Critics of designated EPA administrator nominee Scott Pruitt are considering turning his history of legal attacks on the agency into a weapon against him, in a long-shot bid to limit the damage he can do to President Barack Obama's climate regulations. -
Climate Change: Speaking Truth to Power
Dec 13, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Doug Domenech
Last week there was an event in the nation’s capital where a merry band of warriors gathered to bring a dose of sanity to the too often hyperbolic discussion of climate change.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Holiday Recycling: Don't Let It Go to Waste
Dec 13, 2016 | KSBY
The holiday season is already taking a toll on landfills and recycling centers.
Between now and New Year's Day, Americans will generate an additional one million tons of waste each week.
As the gifts pile up under the tree, the debate over where to put used wrapping paper, in the garbage or recycling, rages on.
Many cities are now accepting folded, but not crumpled, wrapping paper as recyclable.
Others say all those inks, lacquers and metallics actually gum-up the gears at recycling plants.
The best advice is to check with local sanitation officials.
The San Luis Obispo County Integrated Waste Management Authority says wrapping paper can be recycled, as long as it is not metallic, all bows and ribbons have been removed, and it does not include tissue paper.
Meanwhile, a new concentration this year is on recycling plastics.
"Think about how you can encourage recycling when your guests come over. Put out extra recycling bins in entertaining rooms, things like that, get your guests thinking about recycling as well," said Allyson Wilson, American Chemistry Council.
http://www.ksby.com/story/34033042/holiday-recycling-dont-let-it-go-to-waste
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(ACC Mentioned) Encouraging Recycling This Holiday Season
Dec 12, 2016 | WTHR
If you have gifts piling up this holiday season, you'll probably have a lot of trash after they're opened.
Landfills and recycling centers are extremely busy this time of year. Between now and New Year's, Americans will generate an additional 1 million tons of waste each week.
And there's the age-old debate of where to put the wrapping paper: the garbage or recycling bin. Although many cities accept folded, not crumpled wrapping paper as recyclable, many others say those inks, lacquers and metallics actually gum-up the gears at recycling plants.
We checked with a couple of recycling companies here in Indy and they do accept wrapping paper.
"Think about how you can encourage recycling when your guests come over," suggested Allyson Wilson with the American Chemistry Council. "Put out extra recycling bins in entertaining rooms. Things like that get your guests thinking about recycling as well."
That means this year's trash could be next year's gift.
http://www.wthr.com/article/encouraging-recycling-this-holiday-season
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Dec 13, 2016 | Washington Post
By Patrick J. Egan and Megan Mullin
In tapping Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to be the head of Environmental Protection Agency, President-elect Donald Trump has selected the most conservative nominee for this post in a generation. Pruitt is an outspoken critic of the EPA who led legal challenges against some of agency’s recent initiatives, including efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and to define which streams and wetlands are subject to federal regulation.
The last time the EPA was led by such a deep skeptic of its core mission was under Ronald Reagan’s first EPA administrator, Anne Gorsuch (later Anne Burford). Like Pruitt, Gorsuch was a Western state officeholder committed to easing enforcement of environmental laws. Under her leadership, the agency’s budget was cut by 22 percent and the number of cases filed against polluters declined. Gorsuch didn’t survive long, though. Riddled with controversy and embroiled in an interbranch standoff, her reign at the EPA lasted less than two years. She resigned in 1983 after Congress cited her for contempt in a bipartisan vote.
By all appearances, Pruitt is just as eager as Gorsuch was to reduce the EPA’s regulatory efforts. But it is unlikely he will suffer a similar fate because of a crucial change since the 1980s. The strong consensus on environmental protection that once existed between Democrats and Republicans has yielded to the inexorable tide of partisan polarization.
Recent decades have seen a growing divide between Democratic and Republican voters on the environment as with so many other issues. But polarization on the environment has been more dramatic than for any other issue, as we show in work to be published next year in the Annual Review of Political Science.
In 1988, Democrats and Republicans surveyed by the American National Election Studies (ANES) were nearly equally supportive of federal spending on “improving and protecting the environment.” Partisan differences in environmental spending at that time were smaller even than differences on relatively uncontroversial issues like Social Security and schools.
But over the next 20 years, the environment became the most polarized issue in these data. By 2012 this gap between Democrats and Republicans on the environment dwarfed partisan divides over spending on issues like poverty, child care, and defense. In 2012 56 percent of Democrats favored increasing environmental spending; only 6 percent wanted a spending cut. (All others said they were fine with the budgetary status quo.) But among Republicans, 34 percent wanted cuts and only 21 percent wanted increased spending.
The partisan divide on the environment has grown among political elites as well, as political scientists have documented using roll call votes in Congress as scored by the environmental advocacy group League of Conservation Voters(LCV). Taking 1983 — the year of Gorsuch’s resignation — as an example, Democratic senators earned an average LCV score of 65 (out of 100); Republican senators averaged a 31. This was of course a substantial gap. But in 2015, Democratic senators earned an average score of 92 while Republicans averaged just 5 — about as big a chasm between the two parties as possible.
When Congress charged Gorsuch for contempt, it was both an assertion of authority in overseeing the executive branch and a pushback against Reagan’s efforts to weaken environmental enforcement. Now, in a period of unified Republican control of Congress and the presidency, an interbranch standoff is unlikely. And with dwindling support from Republican voters for the environment, it’s hard to imagine GOP officeholders joining a backlash against Pruitt, no matter how boldly he acts to weaken environmental protection.
Patrick J. Egan is an Associate Professor of Politics and Public Policy at NYU.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/13/trump-has-picked-the-most-conservative-epa-leader-since-1981-this-one-will-face-much-less-resistance/?utm_term=.0d11f4e90bb6
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Report: Trumps Taps Rick Perry for Energy Secretary
Dec 13, 2016 | Roll Call
By Aryn Braun
After a last-minute meeting on Monday, President-elect Donald Trump has chosen former Texas Gov. and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry for Energy secretary, CBS News reported Tuesday.
Perry would take over a department that he famously advocated scrapping.
During his first run for the GOP nomination, in a 2011 debate, Perry attempted to list the three agencies he had plans to do away with. After naming the departments of Commerce and Education, he couldn't remember the third.
Further along in the debate, a light bulb went off. “It was the Department of Energy that I was reaching for before,” Perry said.
Perry sits on the board of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, a subsidiary of which is responsible for building the Dakota Access pipeline.
Trump has expressed his support for the controversial pipeline, despite months-long protests and a recent Obama administration decision halting construction.
Perry announced a second run for the Republican nomination in June of 2015, only to drop out of the race by September. At first, the former governor was critical of Trump, calling the reality TV star’s campaign a “cancer on conservatism.”
He eventually endorsed Trump after initially throwing his support to fellow Texan Sen. Ted Cruz.
“He is not a perfect man," Perry told CNN in May as it became clear that Trump would win the nomination. “But what I do believe is that he loves this country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them.”
“He wasn’t my first choice, wasn’t my second choice, but he is the people’s choice,” Perry added.
Perry also spoke on the first night of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in July.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/report-trumps-taps-rick-perry-for-energy-secretary
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(ACC Blog) Growing Pains in Implementing the New TSCA: Section 5 and Its Critical Role in Innovation
Dec 12, 2016 | American Chemistry Matters
By Karyn Schmidt
On December 14, 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will host a public stakeholder discussion on the implementation of section 5 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The section was revised by the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress in mid-2016. At issue in the stakeholder meeting will be how well EPA’s implementation effort comports with congressional intent. For many stakeholders, particularly chemical manufacturers and their customers, the impact of EPA’s interpretation of the statutory provisions on innovation is a key concern.
We’re now several months into the implementation effort. EPA has acted expeditiously and conscientiously, making progress on many fronts. EPA is clearly making serious efforts to meet its statutorily mandated deadlines; the release of the first ten work plan chemicals to move to risk evaluation was even ahead of schedule.
EPA’s section 5 implementation effort is a marked contrast to progress in other areas. Some 350 pre-manufacturing notices (PMNs), the mechanism by which EPA reviews new chemicals, were pending as of the date the amendments were enacted. Since that time, some 200 new PMNs have been filed with the Agency. In a program that has regularly reviewed about 1,000 PMNs a year, EPA’s pace of review has dropped off dramatically. Since the date of enactment, only 27 PMNs (each finding that a substance is “not likely to pose an unreasonable risk”) have been posted. Interim recommendations for 172 others are posted on EPA’s website, but progress toward a final decision has been extremely slow.
Part of the delay can be attributed to the fact that Congress directed EPA to “show its work” on PMN decisions. In an amendment meant to increase public transparency and enhance public confidence, Congress instructed EPA to document the reasons for all its decisions. But Congress also cautioned the Agency that the change should not delay or impede reviews and entry of chemicals to market.
A substantial part of the delay is attributable to EPA’s interpretation of the section 5 changes, an interpretation that is having measurable impacts on innovation. EPA has expanded its review of new chemicals well beyond the uses designated by the PMN submitter, and in some cases has focused on uses (and in some cases manufacturing processes) that are remote or speculative, well beyond those reasonably anticipated from the conditions of use described in the PMN.
Delay is also caused by EPA’s refusal to apply its so-called “non-section 5(e) significant new use rule (SNUR)” authority — authority that was not changed by Congress. In 1995, EPA adopted non-section 5(e) SNURs (a SNUR that does not also include a consent order impacting the PMN submitter’s use) as an efficient regulatory control to address cases where deviations from the uses described in a PMN might pose an unreasonable risk. Non-section 5(e) SNURs can be issued more quickly than 5(e) orders, and they’re effective – they address new uses outside the PMN by requiring advance notice to the Agency through a Significant New Use Notification. Now, however, EPA seems poised to issue section 5(e) consent orders in the vast majority of PMN cases. The refusal to issue non-5(e) SNURs and instead issue orders means the Agency is opting to return to the status quo before 1995, when it admitted it was issuing unnecessary orders. And this change has created a significant burden for both the Agency and PMN submitters, covering the drafting, negotiation and adoption of orders. The public, and the marketplace, are burdened by the delays as well, as innovative technologies are kept from the market for extended periods. Some of the PMNs awaiting a decision by EPA date back to 2015 – well beyond the basic 90-day review period required by the statute.
Importantly, Congress didn’t change its expectation for how long EPA would take to conduct reviews under the new statute. Because chemicals are building blocks for everything else, delays bringing new chemistries to market work just like construction delays – the lag time to get approval affects everything down the value chain. A delay doesn’t just hurt the PMN submitting company; it hurts all the companies in the supply chain – and the consumer. The ability to create and offer new product formulations helps U.S. businesses compete and win globally, and the predictability, timeliness, and efficiency of the new chemical review program under Section 5 is the critical first step to making this happen.
Some have suggested that industry’s concerns about the impact of section 5 decision-making to date amount to playing the “innovation card” in an attempt to short-change necessary health and environmental reviews. That concern does not stand up to scrutiny. The chemical industry has been fully engaged with EPA on the implementation of the TSCA amendments. We want this new law to meet its objectives and deadlines, and we’ve made this clear, among other things, with our substantial efforts to address questions raised by EPA in PMN reviews. When we invoke the importance of American innovation, we do so proudly, and seriously. Right now, innovation is stuck, because completion of new chemical reviews has ground to a halt.
EPA has an important opportunity on December 14 to explain to all stakeholders the practical and legal logic behind its section 5 implementation efforts, and particularly how its implementation effort stacks up against Congress’ clear direction. And hopefully, the experience of the section 5 program over the last 6 months will be seen simply as a “growing pain,” and not a permanent condition.
https://blog.americanchemistry.com/2016/12/growing-pains-in-implementing-the-new-tsca-section-5-and-its-critical-role-in-innovation/
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(ACC Mentioned) Will the New EPA Head Halt Attempts to Ban Asbestos?
Dec 13, 2016 | Mesothelioma
By Gary Cohn
Retired Assistant U.S. Surgeon General Richard Lemen has devoted his life to documenting the dangers of asbestos and bringing about an end to asbestos-related diseases, so he was understandably elated by two recent events.
The first was the passage of a landmark reform safety law, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, which gave the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) new authority to ban dangerous chemicals. The second was EPA’s decision late last month to name asbestos as one of 10 high-priority chemicals to be evaluated under the new law, a development which could eventually lead to asbestos being banned in the United States.
“It’s a fantastic step forward to get asbestos listed by the EPA,” Lemen told Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance. He continued, “Time will tell what direction the new Trump administration will take. If it goes the way Congress intended this reform act to work, we will be on the road to a ban of asbestos in the United States. I’m cautiously optimistic.”
Mesothelioma widow Susan Vento was also encouraged by the EPA’s action. “It’s great,” she said. “It’s a symbol of a much-needed move forward for those of us addressing the issues related to asbestos.” Vento’s husband, longtime congressman Bruce Vento from Minnesota, died of mesothelioma in 2000. Since then, Susan Vento has worked to ensure the rights of asbestos-related disease victims and their families, and to push for a ban on asbestos.
But, Susan Vento added: “Given President-elect Donald Trump’s comments about asbestos and regulation, I am nervous.”
Optimism and Uncertainty
As Susan Vento and Richard Lemen both know, this is a time of both great optimism and great concern for people who have been working for decades to document the dangers of asbestos for people and the environment, and bring about a ban in the United States.
The reason for the optimism is the landmark Lautenberg Act, which gave the EPA new authority to ban dangerous chemicals, and the EPA’s recent decision to name asbestos as one of 10 high-risk chemicals to be first evaluated. The reason for the concern is that -contrary to longstanding scientific evidence, President-Elect Trump has stated that asbestos is “100 percent safe, once applied,” and he has threatened to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is responsible for protecting human health and the environment.
Those concerns were exacerbated last week after Trump selected Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to be the next EPA Administrator. Pruitt is a close ally of the fossil fuel industry and an outspoken climate change skeptic, and he has brought numerous lawsuits challenging federal environmental regulations. Pruitt’s selection, environmentalists and advocates for asbestos-related disease victims said, was a clear indication that Trump is determined to rein in the EPA.
“Over the past five years Pruitt used his position as Oklahoma’s top prosecutor to sue the EPA in a series of attempts to deny Americans the benefits of reducing mercury, arsenic and other toxins from the air we breathe; cutting smog that can cause asthma attacks, and protecting our wetlands and streams,” Rhea Suh, president of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), recently stated.
While it isn’t clear exactly where Pruitt stands on the issue of banning asbestos, advocates for victims of asbestos-related diseases were clearly worried. “I’m outraged that President-elect Trump nominated Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of the oil and gas intensive state of Oklahoma, to head the Environmental Protection Agency,” said Linda Reinstein, president of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO). Pruitt’s disdain for the EPA and lack of public health and environmental knowledge and experience puts Americans in peril.”
Susan Vento agreed. “I am at a loss for words,” she said. “I continue to be concerned that the EPA will not enforce the regulations to protect the health and safety of all Americans. Clean air, clean water, reducing exposure to asbestos and lethal toxins are worth fighting for – we all need to speak up loud, clear and often.”
Trump’s selection of Pruitt to head the EPA came eight days after the agency named asbestos as one of 10 high-risk chemicals to be evaluated under the Lautenberg Act. The Act, which was passed by Congress with widespread bipartisan support in June and signed into law by President Barack Obama, reformed the badly-flawed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976. By virtually all accounts, the 1976 law had long failed to protect the public from dangerous substances and allowed asbestos to remain legal for decades after it was proved to be a carcinogen.
Obstacles Going Forward
While EPA’s decision to name asbestos as a high-risk chemical was a significant step, environmentalists and others say, there are significant potential obstacles going forward. The EPA must first do a risk-evaluation for each of the 10 high-risk chemicals, including asbestos, to determine if each chemical presents an “unreasonable risk to humans and the environment.”
If the EPA determines that a chemical presents an unreasonable risk, the agency must mitigate the risk within two years, through new regulations – or it could move to ban a substance such as asbestos altogether.
“Some of the challenges will be interpreting the safety standard, taking into account both conditions of use and reasonably foreseeable uses, and ensuring there is enough safety data,” said Alex Formuzis of the Environmental Working Group (EWG). “Also, EPA must take alternatives and costs into consideration when crafting a regulation.”
He and other environmentalists have concerns over whether the Trump administration will give EPA the needed time, resources and staffing to complete risk evaluations of asbestos and other high-risk chemicals; whether the agency will write rules to implement the new law; whether EPA will recommend only mild restrictions against asbestos that stop short of a ban and fails to protect the public, and how much influence industry lobbying groups wield in their continuing battle to stop any ban of asbestos.
Last August, for instance, the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, sent a letter to EPA in support of continuing asbestos use. “No one should think the chemical industry won’t try to slow down, if not stop, the eventual ban of asbestos,” Formuzis said.
Bipartisan Support to Ban Dangerous Chemicals
Despite the uncertainty, there are signs that implementing the Lautenberg Act continues to have broad bipartisan support. On Nov. 30, the day after the EPA announced its list of 10 high-risk chemicals, nine U.S. Senators, including 6 Democrats and 3 Republicans, sent a letter to the Trump transition team urging it to ensure continuity in implementing the Lautenberg Act. In a letter to Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, the Senators noted that the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 “failed to provide basic health and safety protections for the American public.”
“Having worked to strengthen and pass the Lautenberg Act in order to help protect children and communities from dangerous chemicals, we are now looking to EPA to vigorously implement the new law,” the letter stated. “This includes moving expeditiously to identify and address chemicals with the greatest potential impact on public health, especially those affecting vulnerable populations expressly required to be protected in the Act, including pregnant women, children, workers and others at-risk communities.”
The letter was signed by Republican Senators James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Mike Crapo of Indiana and Democratic Senators Tom Udall of New Mexico, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Tom Carper of Delaware, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Separately, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) introduced a bill in September which would significantly expedite a ban on asbestos in the United States. The bill, which was co-sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mt.) would prohibit the manufacturing, processing, use, distribution in commerce, and disposal of asbestos within 18 months of the bill’s enactment. The bill, the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act of 2016, is named after Linda Reinstein’s husband, who died of mesothelioma in 2006.
Though the Boxer bill would greatly speed up any ban on asbestos, its passage is highly uncertain and it would have to be re-introduced in the next Congress. Boxer, who has been the strongest advocate for asbestos victims in Congress, is retiring at the end of the year.
An Imminent Canadian Ban on Asbestos?
Scientists and government agencies have warned that any exposure to asbestos carries risks. Though asbestos is now banned in 58 nations, dozens of countries still use, import and export asbestos and asbestos-containing products. In addition to the United States, those countries where asbestos is still legal are primarily developing nations in Asia and Eastern Europe that are desperate for industrial growth and often turn a blind eye to the health and environmental consequences of asbestos exposure.
The most recent developed nation to ban asbestos was New Zealand, which has prohibited importation of all asbestos-containing products as of October 1. Also Canada – whose asbestos interests long led and enabled the thriving worldwide trade in asbestos -- is now on the verge of banning it. Asbestos is the biggest cause of worker death in Canada, and the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has committed to banning it.
“Now, decades later than we should have done, Canada is about to ban asbestos,” said Kathleen Ruff, who has been fighting for years to stop Canada’s asbestos trade. “The lesson to be learned, I think is we need to ensure that public policy is based on independent evidence and serves the public interest and to not allow industry lobby groups to kidnap government policy. Asbestos provides a clear example that the scientific evidence has been clear for decades that it should be banned, but because of the asbestos lobby, it was not banned in the United States or in Canada. The asbestos industry waltzed off with the profits, leaving citizens and government to bear the huge human and economic costs.”
Ruff added that an announcement about a Canadian ban is likely before the current session of Parliament closes on December 20. If Canada bans asbestos this year, as anticipated, it could put additional pressure on the United States to do so. But any U.S. ban, which was first attempted decades ago, will certainty take much longer.
Nearly three decades ago, the administration of former president George H.W. Bush attempted to ban asbestos. In 1989, the EPA issued a final rule banning most asbestos-containing products under the authority of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). But two years later, the EPA ban was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a decision that established a precedent that has made it extremely difficult for EPA to ban any dangerous chemical. The Lautenberg Act passed earlier this year amended TSCA and gave EPA new authority to eventually ban asbestos.
Although asbestos hasn’t been mined in the United States since 2002 and its use has declined significantly, American businesses still legally import, use and sell both raw asbestos and products made with it. Between 2006 and 2014, more than 8.2 million pounds of asbestos were imported to the United States, including raw asbestos, products containing asbestos and hazardous waste, according to an analysis from the Environmental Working Group Action Fund.
Advocates for asbestos-related disease victims around the world stressed that a U.S. ban of asbestos would not only protect American workers and consumers but would also send a clear signal to the rest of the world that asbestos is unsafe.
“The first argument of the international mafia of asbestos merchants is, ‘Look, USA has not banned asbestos – is that not proof that innocuous?’” Marc Hindry of the French National Association of Asbestos Victims (ANDEVA) told Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance. He continued, “The United States is clearly a worldwide leader and a ban in the U.S. would have an immediate impact on big asbestos producer countries like Brazil and big consumer countries like India and Indonesia.”
Laurie Kazan-Allen, Coordinator of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS), agreed. “The lack of a U.S. ban is used by the asbestos industry propagandists as evidence that asbestos can be used safety and that banning asbestos is unnecessary,” she said.
Richard Lemen’s Quest to Ban Asbestos
But perhaps nobody is more qualified to speak about the importance of banning asbestos than Lemen, the retired Assistant U.S. Surgeon General. He’s worked for over 50 years as an epidemiologist and leader in occupational and environmental health. He’s conducted pioneering work on asbestos, carrying out field studies of asbestos workers in the 1970s, helping to write a 1976 report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) that only a ban could assure worker protection against the carcinogenic effects of asbestos and testifying on numerous occasions before Congress on the dangers of asbestos.
He’s also taught graduate courses on environmental and health issues at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and serves as co-chair of the science advisory panel for the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO).
Asked why asbestos hasn’t been banned in the United States despite clear the scientific consensus that it is a carcinogen, Lemen said that “political and industry opposition to a ban is what has stopped it up until this point. The simple answer is that lobbying by the industry that uses asbestos has prohibited that from happening – and they have been very successful with Congress. That’s why I’m so hopeful that with this new revision of TSCA, if allowed to follow through as intended, we might get a ban.”
In October, Lemen received the prestigious Collegium Ramazzini's Irving J. Selikoff Award for his lifetime of working in promoting worker safety and health throughout the world. The award is named after the man who established the relationship between asbestos and lung diseases and is widely credited with the regulation of asbestos. Lemen worked closely with Selikoff on his early efforts to eliminate asbestos-related diseases, and has continued the fight to this day.
“It’s been my life goal to stop asbestos-related diseases, not just in the United States but around the world,” Lemen said.
https://www.mesothelioma.com/blog/authors/gary/will-the-new-epa-head-halt-attempts-to-ban-asbestos.htm
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Nominates 29 for Scientific Advisory Panel
Dec 12, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Gabriel Dunsmith
U.S. EPA has nominated 29 people — including toxicologists, health researchers, and oil and pharmaceutical executives — to its Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals, a panel created by the overhauled Toxic Substances Control Act.
The committee will advise EPA on chemical risks, testing methodologies and pollution prevention measures. It will replace the Chemical Safety Advisory Committee, a holdover from the old TSCA.
EPA says that "approximately" 14 members will sit on the final panel. The agency will accept public comment on the nominees through Jan. 8. It expects to finalize the committee members by Jan. 20, the day of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
All but one of the current Chemical Safety Advisory Committee members were nominated Friday. They are:
· Kenneth Portier, CSAC chairman and vice president of the Statistics & Evaluation Center at the American Cancer Society.
· Holly Davies, senior toxicologist at Washington state's Department of Ecology.
· William Doucette, associate director of the Utah Water Research Laboratory at Utah State University.
· Panos Georgopoulos, professor of environmental and occupational health at Rutgers University.
· Kathleen Gilbert, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Arkansas.
· John Kissel, professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle.
· Jaymie Meliker, exposure science and environmental epidemiology researcher.
· Daniel Schlenk, professor of aquatic ecotoxicology and environmental toxicology at the University of California, Riverside.
· Kristina Thayer, deputy division director of analysis at the National Toxicology Program, run by the National Institutes of Health.
Other nominees:
· Henry Anderson, epidemiologist and adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin.
· Holger Behrsing, principal scientist and study director at the Institute for In Vitro Sciences Inc.
· James Bruckner, toxicologist and professor emeritus at the University of Georgia's pharmacy college.
· Stuart Cagen, senior toxicologist at Shell Oil Co.
· Deborah Cory-Slechta, professor of environmental medicine, pediatrics and public health sciences at the University of Rochester.
· Gary Ginsberg, toxicologist at the Connecticut Department of Public Health.
· Concepcion Jimenez-Gonzalez, manufacturing executive at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline PLC.
· Michael Jayjock, an independent associate for Jayjock Associates LLC, a firm specializing in chemical risks.
· Alan Kaufman, a Toy Industry Association official and former executive at Toys R Us Inc.
· Melanie Marty, former acting deputy director for the science division of California EPA's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
· Craig Rowlands, senior toxicologist with safety consulting company UL LLC.
· Sheela Sathyanarayana, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.
· Val Schaeffer, health scientist at the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
· Kristie Sullivan, vice president for research policy at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
· Leonardo Trasande, associate professor of pediatrics, environmental medicine and population health at New York University's School of Medicine.
· Laura Vandenberg, associate professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
· Chris Waller, executive director of research at Merck & Co., a pharmaceutical company.
· Christine Whittaker, risk evaluation chief at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
· Catherine Willett, director of regulatory toxicology, risk assessment and alternatives at the Humane Society of the United States.
· Tracey Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco.
The Environmental Working Group and the American Chemistry Council did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/12/12/stories/1060047063
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Proposed EPA Solvent Rule Spurs Disputes on Science, Law
Dec 13, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Disputes about the adequacy of Environmental Protection Agency risk assessments have begun following the agency's release of a proposed rule to ban two uses of a solvent.
The proposed rule, released Dec. 7, would ban the use of trichloroethylene (TCE; CAS No. 79‐01‐6) in aerosol degreasers, such as sprays designed to remove grease from electrical motors or metal. The agency estimated about 2,200 commercial facilities use one or more of at least 16 TCE-containing aerosol spray degreasers blended by six different firms.
The proposed rule also would ban TCE's use for spot cleaning by dry cleaners.
The risk assessment upon which the EPA based its rule doesn't meet the legal requirements of the law that amended the Toxic Substances Control Act, W. Caffey Norman, an attorney and partner with Squire Patton Boggs in Washington, D.C., told Bloomberg BNA in a recent interview.
Jim Jones, assistant administrator of chemical safety and pollution prevention at the EPA, told Bloomberg BNA the risk assessment absolutely meets the requirements of the amended chemicals law.
Proposal Marks Two Firsts
The agency's rule (RIN:2070-AK03) marks two firsts.
The proposal is the first rulemaking the EPA has attempted since 1991 using the authorities it has under section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act. In 199,1 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned the agency's 1989 effort to ban most uses of asbestos (Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA, 947 F.2d 1201, 33 ERC 1961 (5th Cir. 1991)). Section 6 of TSCA gives the EPA authority to require labeling for, restrict uses of, ban or take other actions to control the risks of chemicals in commerce.
The TCE rule also is the first regulation the agency has proposed since TSCA was amended in June.
Statutory Authorization, Requirements
The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Pub. L. No. 114-182), which amended TSCA, authorized the agency to proceed with rulemakings that were based on a handful of risk assessments the EPA completed prior to the law's passage. The TCE risk assessment, completed in 2014, is among that handful.
The statutory authorization was necessary, because the narrow scope of the pre-Lautenberg Act risk assessments is not sufficient to meet the scope of the risk evaluations mandated by the law.
While the narrow scope is allowed, the risk assessments must meet the science quality standards established in Section 26 of the Lautenberg Act.
The EPA, for example, is required to use the best available science and a weight-of-evidence approach in all risk assessments including those completed before the Lautenberg Act became law.
Norman, John Bell from the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, and the EPA's Jones disagreed as to whether that TCE risk assessment meets the science mandate in Section 26.
Science Called Inadequate
Bell directs scientific programs for the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, which represents manufacturers, producers, distributors and commercial users of halogenated solvents such as TCE.
“EPA should be embarrassed to propose this rule based on the risk assessment released in June 2014,” Bell said.
Bell quoted Penny Fenner-Crisp, who chaired the peer review committee that evaluated the draft TCE risk assessment.
Fenner-Crisp, a 22-year veteran of the EPA who served as a senior scientist in several agency offices, said: “I believe that the agency acted prematurely in issuing this (screening level) assessment for public comment and in convening a formal scientific expert peer review.”
“This begs for refinement of the assessments, on both the exposure and hazard side of the equation. This is essential for any defensible regulatory actions to be undertaken,” Fenner-Crisp wrote in the peer reviewers comments.
Norman, whose law firm represents the solvents industry alliance, told Bloomberg BNA: “This risk assessment does not meet Section 26 requirements.”
“It does not meet the best available science requirement,” he said.
Norman, whose law firm represents the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, provided Bloomberg BNA with details about the alliance's scientific and other objections.
For example, they said, the agency's risk assessment relied on a California EPA study that may not be representative of U.S. dry cleaning facilities.
The computer exposure model and extent of professional judgment the agency used to estimate short-term, high exposures to TCE show the risk assessment was an initial, first attempt. The EPA should have followed this “screening level assessment: up with a more rigorous data-based analysis,” the alliance and law firm said.
Risk Assessment Defended, Rule Welcomed
Jones, who provided technical assistance crafting the Lautenberg Act including the Section 26 requirements, told Bloomberg BNA, “the science standards in Section 26 have long been the science standards we have followed in this program.”
“The risk assessments that were done before the law passed are going to meet the Section 26 standards to use the best available science,” he said.
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who sponsored the Lautenberg Act, welcomed the agency's proposed rule
“The EPA's proposal to protect the public from a hazardous chemical in common use is exactly why we worked so hard for reform. It has been over a generation since the EPA has been able to do its job to protect the public from dangerous chemicals,” Udall said.
“Millions of Americans—including me—are regular customers at the neighborhood dry cleaner, but, like many chemicals, TCE has been on the market unchecked for many years despite evidence linking it to cancer and other serious health conditions,” Udall said. “Workers, customers and the communities around these businesses deserve to be protected and to be certain that there is an effective watchdog looking out for them. Everyone involved in public health and chemical manufacture has an interest in the success of this process, and I urge all sides to play a productive role moving forward.”
A Portrait of Dry Cleaners
Nora Nealis, executive director of the National Cleaners Association, which represents dry cleaners, raised concerns about the proposed rules impact on thousands of small mom-and-pop businesses around the country.
In an interview with Bloomberg BNA, Nealis cited statics about these companies, operational costs, profit margins and other information to paint a picture of what she says could result from the proposed ban.
Neighborhood dry cleaners typically work 12 hours a day, six days a week, Nealis said. The dry cleaning employee, often the owner or a family member, earns about $35,000 a year, she said.
These companies use TCE to remove spots because it works well and quickly, saving labor and other costs such as heat and utilities to keep the shop open longer to do the same job with less effective substitutes, she said.
Suppose a shop treats just 12 garments a day, and the alternative solvent takes five minutes longer per garment than does TCE, she said.
That adds one hour a day to the spotter's labor, an annual wage increase of $7,875, Nealis said.
That cost is hard to pass on to customers, who may respond by bringing their clothes in less often thereby reducing business, Nealis said.
An additional hour of work also is hard, when someone already works 12 hours a day, she said.
“It makes a difference in their lives,” she said.
Rule Said Not to Be Needed
Norman said the EPA's rule exceeds the agency's authority because it addresses work place and consumer uses of TCE.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is responsible for regulating the work place, while the Consumer Product Safety Commission regulates consumer products, he said.
“TCE already is well regulated,” Norman said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101856902&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101856902&jd=101856902
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Toxics: Diving Deeper into EPA's TSCA High-Priority List
Dec 12, 2016 | Inside EPA
How does EPA's first list of 10 high-priority chemicals it will assess under its new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) authority measure up to industry's expectations?
A recent analysis by Lawrence Culleen and Erika Norman, lawyers at Arnold & Porter, says there were “few surprises” on EPA's list.
One surprise, as Inside EPA's Bridget DiCosmo wrote last week, was EPA's addition of three chemicals -- methylene chloride (MC), n-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) and trichloroethylene (TCE) -- for which the agency is already planning to take TSCA 6(a) risk management actions.
EPA's addition of those three substances to the list will allow the agency to evaluate and potentially issue future rules for chemical uses not currently targeted for restrictions, she wrote.
Culleen and Norman echo Inside EPA's report that the agency may be targeting additional uses of the three chemicals. But they also add that agency officials may, “in view of the impending change of administrations, want to provide some 'insurance' through these particular listings and provide the additional momentum that can be leveraged by nongovernmental organizations who can point to the new statutory deadlines should the pending proposals get stalled (or derailed) along the way.”
They also provide an in-depth look at some of the chemicals that did -- and those that did not -- make the cut.
The analysis says, for example, that while EPA's inclusion of 1,4-dioxane and 1-bromopropane is not surprising because they have a hazard score of 3 and meet the other criteria for listing a chemical as “high-priority” under the new law, MC and NMP were “less likely choices” because they both have low environmental persistence and bio-accumulation scores, and because EPA is already pursuing the TSCA 6(a) rules.
EPA's listing of carbon tetrachloride is also “somewhat curious,” Culleen and Norman say, because major consumer uses in the U.S. have largely ceased, maximum concentration limits have been established for drinking water, and there are workplace regulations governing its use and limiting worker exposures.
Their analysis also lists several chemicals that met many of prioritization factors in the revised law, but did not make the list, including arsenic, cyanide compounds, di-isodecyl phthalate, napthalene, vinyl chloride and phenol, isopropylated phosphate.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/toxics-diving-deeper-epas-tsca-high-priority-list
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(ACC Mentioned) From Asbestos to Pesticides to Pork
Dec 13, 2016 | Fair Warning
By Myron Levin and Paul Feldman
The Fall of Icarus is the Greek myth about a youth who gets a pair of wax-and-feather wings but soars too close to the sun–melting the wings and casting him into the sea.
In the 1990s, a consulting firm called Failure Analysis Associates ran tongue-in-cheek ads aimed at corporate lawyers that retold the myth as a courtroom drama. The arty-looking promos boasted that Failure’s expert testimony in “Icarus vs. Wax Aviation” would put the onus on pilot error, getting the company off the hook.
The formula has turned the firm, now named Exponent, Inc., into a publicly traded giant in litigation defense and regulatory science. It’s a go-to destination for major industries with liability problems–even as it is derided by critics as a hired gun whose findings are for sale.
While not a household name, its cases often are drawn from the headlines, such as the National Football League’s “Deflategate” controversy; the General Motors ignition switch litigation; and most recently, the investigation of battery fires in Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones. Other Exponent clients have included BP, ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical, powerful trade groups such as the American Chemistry Council and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, and government agencies including the Defense Department.
The auto industry in particular has long provided a fortune in fees to the Menlo Park, Calif.-based firm. According to court records, Ford Motor Co. paid Exponent more than $106 million from 1999 through 2011. Toyota ponied up more than $33 million from 2010 through the first nine months of 2013–mostly for helping to challenge claims of sudden unintended acceleration. In testimony this year, Jeffrey Croteau, the director of Exponent’s vehicle practice, said he had been involved in about 500 automotive lawsuits without once concluding that any component of any vehicle was defective.
Opponents say Exponent’s scientists and engineers routinely bend conclusions to the needs of clients, noting that the company in the 1990s supported the tobacco industry in denying the lung cancer risk of secondhand smoke. The firm’s forte, they say, is “doubt science”—muddying the waters by attacking research showing evidence of harm, highlighting or exaggerating scientific uncertainties about health hazards, and calling for more research to delay action. The result, critics say, is a pro-industry imprint on scientific literature.
A FairWarning analysis of technical databases turned up more than 1,850 peer-reviewed articles, letters and book chapters written or co-authored by Exponent scientists and engineers since the start of 2000. Because there is no single, all-inclusive index of technical writings, the count is certain to be low. Many Exponent articles focused on biomedical topics, such as the design of medical devices. Hundreds more were funded by corporations and trade groups seeking to sway regulators and juries by questioning concerns about everything from asbestos and pesticide exposure, to oil and chemical pollution, to consumption of sugary sodas, candy , eggs and red meat.
Full disclosure?
Industry sponsorship of research is typically disclosed in science and engineering journals, but at the end of articles. That’s problematic, critics say, because many people– students, journalists and others–read only the brief summaries, called abstracts, that are available online at no cost. Most never see the full articles with disclosure statements because they usually cost about $35 apiece, an issue previously examined by the Center for Public Integrity.Earlier this year, five Democratic U.S. Senators called on the National Library of Medicine to disclose funding sources or other potential conflicts in all articles in its free online database, PubMed. The senators’ letter stated that PubMed users should be provided “with the basic information necessary to form their own judgments about any research article’s scientific objectivity and impartiality.”
Exponent officials refused FairWarning’s interview requests, but the firm has staunchly defended its scientific credibility. According to its website: “The Exponent name is recognized for its integrity, objectivity, independence, and professionalism…We employ the best and the brightest from the major academic institutions around the world as well as technical specialists from a variety of industries.”
Or as Fiona Mowatt, an Exponent toxicologist, testified in an asbestos case in 2015: “I believe that we aren’t in the business of exonerating the industry; I’m in the business of looking at what the science says.”
Critics counter that this quest for truth leads down predictable paths. In his 2008 book, “Doubt is Their Product,” David Michaels, now assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, criticized Exponent and several of its science-for-hire rivals. “While some might exist,” Michaels wrote, “I have yet to see an Exponent study that does not support the conclusion needed by the corporation or trade association that is paying the bill.”
The drive for repeat business is not the only reason. Clients who fund research often own the data that is generated, and must approve the publication of results, said Roger L. McCarthy, a former Exponent CEO and chairman who retired from the company in 2009, and who agreed to speak with FairWarning.
Bearers of bad news
At times the firm has had to deliver “bad news,” prompting clients to order recalls or take other remedial steps, McCarthy said. He cited a 1996 propane gas explosion in Puerto Rico that killed 33 people. The propane supplier–the now-defunct energy firm Enron–wanted to blame the blast on natural gas. When Failure Analysis explained that it was “absolutely unmistakable that propane caused this explosion,” McCarthy said, Enron “fired us.”Even so, publishing only results that are favorable to clients can tilt the evidence on a given topic.
The risk of bias is not confined to industry-sponsored science. People on the other side–such as plaintiffs lawyers and environmental groups– also fund studies they hope will influence verdicts and policy decisions. However, they have far less financial means to do it.
Said Christopher P. Weis, toxicology liaison for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences: “The idea is that truth rules,” and it ”doesn’t necessarily matter the source if the science is sound.
“Unfortunately, we’re living in this regulatory world where bias is rampant,” Weis said. “You get paid to put forward a cogent argument…It happens on both sides,” but the financial imbalance “is extremely lopsided.”
Exponent’s devotion to clients has backfired on occasion. In October, 2014, a federal judge in Ohio excluded the testimony of one of the firm’s scientists in a class action suit against Whirlpool Corp. The case involved a line of clothes washers that plaintiffs said accumulated residue, leading to mold and foul odors. The Exponent scientist did a study for Whirlpool that concluded there were no problems with its washers. However, the judge ruled that she had excluded results of odor sampling unfavorable to Whirlpool, and booted her from the case.
Still, Exponent’s fortunes hinge on the amount of legal trouble facing its clients–as the company has candidly acknowledged in shareholder reports.
The firm’s 2015 annual report stated, under “Risk Factors,’’ that if legal or regulatory changes “reduce the exposure of manufacturers, owners, service providers and others to liability, the demand for our services may be significantly reduced.”
Exponent has more than $300 million in annual revenues, offices in 20 U.S. cities and five foreign countries. It has about 1,000 employees–more than two thirds with advanced degrees in science, engineering or medical fields. Like other heavyweights in Silicon Valley, it rose from humble beginnings.
It was founded as a partnership by three Stanford professors and two engineers from the Stanford Research Institute over lunch in 1967 at The Oasis, a beer and burger joint in Menlo Park. As the story goes, co-founder Alan S. Tetelman joked that Failure Analysis was an apt name for a California startup because one-third of Californians were failures, and the other two-thirds were in analysis.
Success out of failure
In fact, the name perfectly captured the firm’s original purpose–to investigate the cause of major structural and system failures. In its early years, the firm got lucrative assignments to find the cause of piping leaks at nuclear power plants. It has since been retained by insurers and others to investigate such disasters as the deadly failure in 1981 of skywalks at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Mo.; the 1995 collapse of the bombed Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City; and the destruction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers on 9/11.
In 1978, the company experienced a tragedy of its own when Tetelman, its president, while en route to investigate the crash of a Navy aircraft, perished along with 143 others in a mid-air collision over San Diego.
A few years later, the firm purchased a 147-acre vehicle vehicle test site in Phoenix, cementing its status as the leading defender of auto and off-road vehicle manufacturers. It changed its name to Exponent in 1998. Through hiring and acquisitions, it expanded into the health and environmental fields, including chemical regulation, food safety and medical devices. According to company figures, it is involved in about 6,000 cases a year.
Its growth has been spurred by society’s rising intolerance of risk, according to McCarthy–though other forces also are at work. Beginning with President Reagan in the early 1980s, a series of executive orders and laws required that tough cost-benefit scrutiny be applied prior to adoption of new regulations. That encouraged deep-pocketed opponents to retain experts to poke holes in the evidence supporting such rules. The growing complexity of civil litigation–and the role of judges in screening the reliability of scientific evidence–also put a premium on expensive testing and expert testimony.
And when major industries have sought help in health and environmental battles, Exponent, over and over, has answered the call.
In 2011, when university researchers reported elevated rates of birth defects near coal mines using the controversial technique called mountaintop mining, the National Mining Assn. quickly drafted Exponent scientists to dispute the findings.
According to their critique , the study lacked “the quality or type of data required to support the conclusions made by the authors.”
In western Montana, where residents of small communities are in courttrying to force the cleanup of yard soil contaminated by a former arsenic smelter, Exponent is advising the owner of the smelter site–the ARCO unit of oil giant BP–which is resisting the demands. Arsenic is a carcinogen, and the residents want levels of the toxic metal to be reduced to natural background. An Exponent toxicologist serving as expert witness for ARCO contends that arsenic levels, though well above background, are too low to harm the residents.
Standing up for red meat
Trade groups for beef and pork producers hired Exponent to dispel cancer fears relating to consumption of their products. Although the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified processed meat as carcinogenic to humans, and red meat as “probably” carcinogenic, a series of papers co-authored by Exponent scientists from 2009 to 2014 found no conclusive evidence of causal links. At least one article had a promotional ring. “Lean pork makes important nutritional contributions to the diet,” the report for the National Pork Board said.
With funding from Chevron Corp., Exponent scientists have produced at least two papers (here and here) rejecting claims that pollution from oil production sites in Ecuador may have raised cancer rates.
And after a 2012 study by university and government scientists found what they called “compelling evidence”that the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had damaged coral formations, an Exponent scientist and another consultant for oil giant BP advanced the theory that natural oil seeps could be the cause.
The firm consulted for ExxonMobil for more than two decades after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Exponent scientists also issued expert reports for defense attorney Theodore V. Wells when he defended an oil pollution lawsuit filed against ExxonMobil by the state of New Jersey. Later, as attorney for the National Football League, Wells retained Exponent to produce the “Deflategate’’ research that led to star quarterback Tom Brady being suspended for his alleged role in tampering with footballs in a playoff game.
Other Exponent studies have challenged research on health risks from glyphosate, which has been described as the world’s most widely used herbicide and is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a probable human carcinogen.
A 2012 paper by three Exponent scientists found no dietary risk from glyphosate residues on food crops, and “no solid evidence” that exposure at ”environmentally realistic” levels could cause birth defects or developmental problems for children. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in weed-killers such as Roundup, made by Monsanto, which sponsored the research, along with DowAgroSciences and other producers.
Honeybee deaths
Even as the European Commission was halting use of a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids as a likely culprit in massive honeybee deaths, a 2014 paper by Exponent scientists found “no clear indication” that these or other pesticides “are the root cause of such losses.” The work was sponsored by Bayer Crop Science, a top producer of neonicotinoids, which also funded Exponent to host an expert workshop on bee deaths. Exponent’s written summary of the workshop said neonicotinoids “were judged to be ‘unlikely’ as the sole cause of this reduced survival, although they could possibly be a contributing factor.”
Dow AgroSciences and the trade group CropLife America enlisted Exponent to challenge a pending EPA proposal to bar use of the insecticide chlorpyrifos on food crops. The proposal stems from concern by the agency and farm worker and environmental groups that residues on crops and in rural water supplies could cause neurodevelopmental effects in children, including reduced IQs. In at least five published articles and a series of technical comments to the EPA, Exponent scientists have questioned the rationale for tougher restrictions. “Overall, the available evidence does not establish that low-level exposures…cause adverse birth outcomes or neurodevelopmental problems in humans,” a 2015 paper said.
Or, as senior managing scientist Ellen Chang in April told an EPA scientific advisory panel in quintessential Exponent-speak: “I wouldn’t say that we can absolutely reject a causal conclusion, but … the persisting questions give us insufficient evidence to establish a causal relationship between chlorpyrifos and these neurodevelopmental outcomes.”
Trash talk
Trash-talking erupted when Exponent challenged the 2013 report of a World Health Organization panel on the state of science on endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The report said that certain pesticides, flame retardants and plastics ingredients could affect the hormonal systems of people and wildlife.In response, four Exponent scientists along with several other industry consultants rebuked the WHO report as “one-sided.” It ‘’does not provide a balanced perspective, nor does it accurately reflect the state of the science on endocrine disruption,” said their review–which was funded by the American Chemistry Council, the European Chemical Industry Council and other trade groups.
Two dozen other scientists, including editors of the original WHO report, fired back in a commentary, calling the industry critique ‘’misleading,” and “not particularly erudite.” It was ”not intended to be convincing to the scientific community, but to confuse the scientific data.” In an interview with FairWarning, Thomas Zoeller, a University of Massachusetts biology professor and member of the WHO panel, described the industry response as “a paid advertisement and negative campaigning.”
That drew a parting shot from the industry scientists, who said that “specious accusations that we are merely conducting an industry-funded disinformation campaign only underscores their lack of substantive responses to our critique.”
Court documents show that Exponent has been paid more than $33 million by top automakers to help defend claims by former brake mechanics that they contracted mesothelioma, a deadly asbestos-related cancer, from years of breathing dust generated by changing asbestos brakes.
The fees –paid mostly by Ford from 2001 to 2014–funded a stream of research articles concluding, among other things, that brake mechanics do not suffer increased rates of mesothelioma; that dust levels from brake work were too low to be harmful; and that the type of asbestos used in brakes does not cause mesothelioma.
Are Australians different?
When a study showed elevated disease rates in Australian mechanics, Exponent scientists pounced. In an article titled “Mesothelioma in vehicle mechanics: is the risk different for Australians?” They wrote: “There seem to be several errors in the … data, and in the assumptions used to calculate relative risk.”
In an interview, Christian Hartley, a lawyer for mesothelioma victims, denounced the Exponent research. “All these publications are simply litigation reports dressed up as science–not to answer scientific questions but to help lawyers in the courtroom persuade judges and juries.’’
An Exponent scientist and two co-authors also attacked a 2005 study showing higher rates of mesothelioma in areas of California’s Sierra foothills with naturally occurring asbestos in rocks and soil. In a letter to the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, they said the study had serious limitations that made meaningful conclusions impossible. The letter acknowledged that Exponent had received funding from the top trade group for sand and gravel firms, the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association.
The authors of the study, from the University of California at Davis, acknowledged the need for further research. But they wrote: “Do we really want to perform the ultimate test of whether environmental asbestos is associated with mesothelioma in California and elsewhere in the United States by waiting the very long latency for this untreatable malignancy, and counting the deaths? ”
Health and environmental advocates largely concede that there are uncertainties about health risks from low-level toxic exposures that may never be completely resolved. Whether to delay health measures while waiting for more data–or take action and risk over-regulating– may be more a political or ethical decision than a scientific one.
Scientists who “need more time and study to know more and more and more–they are often not the ones taking the risks,” remarked Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The ones that are taking the exposure are often workers and community members.”
Speaking a different language
In an Exponent report to the EPA in 2012, the firm’s language seemed out of character. The report backed a petition to add n-propyl bromide (nPB), a toxic chemical used in industrial adhesives and in dry cleaning, to a list of hazardous air pollutants requiring the tightest emission controls.
The chemical “is marketed as ‘non-hazardous,’’ Exponent said, yet “there have been a number of case reports of reproductive and neurotoxic effects in exposed workers. Moreover, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) recently concluded that nPB is carcinogenic.” As if written by environmental advocates, it stressed potential risks, not uncertainties.
As it turned out, Exponent’s client was the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance. Members of that group produce chemicals that compete with nPB.
Exponent’s most lucrative and enduring relationship is with the auto industry. In helping the industry fight lawsuits blaming deaths and injuries on flawed vehicle designs, the firm’s engineers over the years have taken some controversial and contrarian positions.
Shoulder belts, along with lap belts, are standard equipment in rear seats of all passenger vehicles for obvious safety reasons–but that wasn’t always the case. In 1992, while helping defend a lawsuit involving a catastrophic injury to a backseat passenger, Failure Analysis engineers published a paper challenging the value of shoulder belts, claiming they appeared to make no “measurable difference” in reducing injuries and deaths.
That same year, the firm helped GM avert the threat of a horrendously costly recall of pickup trucks that, due to a unique fuel system design, were unusually susceptible to catching fire in a crash. Although hundreds of people had survived crashes of the pickups–only to be burned to death in the resulting fires–Failure Analysis produced a report showing lower overall death rates in crashes of the GM trucks than for competing Ford and Dodge models. In fact, the fatality risk of the GM trucks was somewhat higher than that of their full-size rivals.
In November, 1992, GM’s general counsel sent a letter of apologyto the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). “An analysis obviously submitted to the agency in an attempt to clarify our position—may unfortunately have obfuscated it,” the letter said. ”There was absolutely no intention to mislead anyone.”
Successful sleuthing
But about the same time, Failure Analysis’ sleuthing aided GM by exposing deception at NBC News. The network’s “Dateline” show had aired a report on the fire-prone pickups that showed one catching fire when a car struck it on the side. Acting on a tip from a fire fighter who witnessed the test, GM assigned Failure Analysis to investigate. It turned out that the network’s contractor, taking no chances, had rigged the truck with rocket motors to make sure it would catch fire. The scandal triggered a shakeup at NBC News, including the resignation of then president Michael Gartner.Over the years, Exponent has helped defend many hundreds of lawsuits stemming from deaths and catastrophic injuries in rollovers of light trucks– both SUVs and pickups. With Ford’s Bronco II and, later, the Explorer, leading the SUV revolution, the high-riding vehicles were flying off sales lots by the 1990s. But there was a problem: Their high center of gravity and narrow track width made them much less stable than passenger cars, and therefore more prone to flip over in emergency steering maneuvers. Rollover deaths rose above 10,000 per year.
Facing a rising tide of lawsuits, manufacturers and their experts aggressively wielded the nut-behind-the-wheel defense, asserting that the vehicles were well-designed and performed just as intended–and that driver errors were solely to blame for rollovers.
Courtroom results have been mixed, with victories for defendants and plaintiffs, and many claims being settled. But Steve Batzer, a Michigan-based engineer who has squared off against Exponent as a plaintiffs’ expert, said that all cases considered, Exponent has “done an excellent job for the auto industry in diminishing their liability.”
Remarkable and brilliant
In an interview, Alan C. Donelson, a former Exponent scientist involved in vehicle cases from 1989 to 2005, said it was an opportunity to work with “remarkable and brilliant people,” in “a fantastic environment in which to hone one’s skills as an engineer and scientist, and to get a lot of battle time.” The main drawback: “I could never accept a case for a plaintiff,” Donelson said.
The Exponent expert was “not your ivory tower academic who can ponder this and that,” said Donelson, who now has his own consulting business. “It’s a life and death struggle” in which companies “are literally being asked to pay millions of dollars for injuries that result from use of their products…This is a fight, and so the adversarial nature of litigation does indeed give rise to the…experts who can present the best case–and that’s true of both sides. You just find a higher quality on the defense side,” Donelson said, because they have more money.
Exponent has fought for the industry in the regulatory arena as well as the courts. To reduce the toll of rollover deaths, federal regulators long considered setting a minimum stability standard for cars and trucks. Facing powerful industry resistance, NHTSA abandoned the idea in the 1990s, explaining that such a rule could limit consumer choice by eliminating whole classes of vehicles. The agency settled instead on giving consumers information on rollover risks of different models by including a measure called Static Stability Factor, or SSF, in its star rating system.
The SSF focused on design, and not just driver error, as a factor in rollovers, and the industry hated it. In 1989, four Failure Analysis engineers, led by McCarthy, then the firm’s CEO, produced a paper calling the stability factor “highly simplistic” and a poor predictor of rollover risk–which instead is “strongly associated with driver related factors such as driver age, alcohol involvement, and prior speeding convictions.”
In 2000, as the debate continued, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers submitted to NHTSA another Exponent paper disputing the reliability of the SSF. But the agency rejected the arguments, and added the measure to the star rating system. Said a NHTSA document: “We believe that…SSF is very important in describing rollover risk.”
Related to the rollover danger was the prevalence of flimsy vehicle roofs, which could collapse onto the heads and necks of passengers when vehicles tipped over. For decades, the industry had successfully resisted calls to beef up the federal roof strength standard, widely considered weak even when it was adopted in 1971. The industry’s main argument: When a vehicle flips, passengers tumble violently into the roof as it strikes the ground, often suffering severe head and neck injuries whether the roof holds up or not.
In defense of weak roofs
Exponent engineers repeatedly pushed this line, including in a 2008 report to NHTSA. “This research does not support the hypothesis that increasing roof strength will prevent occupant injury or roof deformation,” the paper said. Brian O’Neill, former president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, called the argument “patently nonsense.” Said Batzer, the Michigan engineer: “Nobody who’s outside of the pay of the auto industry holds the opinion that the strength of the roof is inconsequential in rollover crashworthiness.” NHTSA ultimately adopted a tougher roof strength standard for 2012 and later models.
Today rollover death rates for newer SUVs are much lower than for models sold in the 1990s and early 2000s, according to Insurance Institute data. In many cases, the newer models have a lower and wider stance, increasing their stability; electronic stability control; better seatbelts and stronger roofs, and more airbags. Drivers still make mistakes, yet rollover deaths have come down with changes in design.
Exponent recently was enlisted for the defense of lawsuits over defective ignition switches in GM cars. The suits alleged that switch failures cut off power steering, braking and airbags, resulting in injuries and deaths.
Separate from the lawsuits, GM in September 2015 settled a criminal probe of the ignition switch problem, paying $900 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement.
In the agreement, GM admitted that it had “failed to disclose a deadly safety defect to its U.S. regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,” and “falsely represented to consumers that vehicles containing the defect posed no safety concerns.”
But when she testified in March in an ignition switch case in federal court in New York, Exponent engineer Jennifer Yaek seemed unaware or unwilling to concede what GM had already admitted.
When a lawyer questioned Yaek about the defective switches, she rejected the premise. “I am aware that there was a recall,” she said, “not a defect.”
http://www.fairwarning.org/2016/12/exponent/
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EPA Sets Compliance Dates for Formaldehyde Emissions Rule
Dec 13, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has set compliance deadlines for its final rule governing formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products.
The regulation includes formaldehyde emission standards applicable to hardwood plywood, medium-density fibreboard, particleboard – and finished goods containing these products – sold, supplied, manufactured and imported in the US.
Among other requirements, composite wood products must comply with the law's new emissions standards by 12 December 2017. It also lays out compliance timelines for laminated products and for importers.
Although a pre-publication version of the final rule was released over the summer, a compliance schedule was not put in place until the rule appeared in the Federal Register this week. The rule will take effect on 10 February.
In addition to emissions standards, the rule also puts in place provisions related to:
· testing requirements;
· product labelling;
· chain of custody documentation and other record-keeping requirements;
· import certification;
· product inventory sell-through provisions, including a product stockpiling prohibition; and
· a third-party certification programme for hardwood plywood, medium-density fibreboard and particleboard.
The EPA will be hosting several webinars to assist in the rule's implementation.
https://chemicalwatch.com/51614/epa-sets-compliance-dates-for-formaldehyde-emissions-rule
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EPA Issues Final National Formaldehyde Standard
Dec 12, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Glenn Hess
The Environmental Protection Agency today published final standards limiting emissions of formaldehyde from products containing composite wood, such as hardwood plywood, medium-density fiberboard, and particleboard. These products are commonly used to make furniture, cabinets, and flooring.
“EPA has set in place for the whole country the world’s most stringent standard for formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products,” says Jackson Morrill, president of the Composite Panel Association, an industry trade group.
The rule, which added Title VI to the Toxic Substances Control Act, impacts both domestic and imported finished goods. It seeks to reduce exposure to formaldehyde, which can cause eye, nose, and throat irritation. High levels of exposure have been linked to respiratory problems and some types of cancers. Industry experts say the final rule contains no significant changes from a prepublication draft issued in July.
“To be successful, EPA must now develop world-class enforcement practices that ensure these standards are met by all composite wood products sold in this country, whether made here in the U.S. or abroad," Morrill says.
The regulation, which takes effect on Feb. 10, 2017, establishes formaldehyde emissions standards for hardwood plywood of .05 ppm; particleboard, .09 ppm, medium-density fiberboard, .11 ppm, and thin medium-density fiberboard, .13 ppm.
Composite wood manufacturers will have one year to comply with the emissions limits, which are based on similar requirements adopted by California's Air Resources Board in 2008.
The rule also limits emissions from some laminated products, requires communication throughout the supply chain, and sets up a third-party certification program to evaluate compliance with the regulation's standards.
The potential health risks of formaldehyde were highlighted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed thousands of Gulf Coast residents’ homes in 2005. Displaced families forced to live in hastily constructed trailers soon began reporting respiratory problems and eye irritation. Air tests indicated that high levels of formaldehyde fumes had been leaking from the wood in the trailers.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/web/2016/12/EPA-issues-final-national-formaldehyde-standard.html
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California SCP Releases Full Alternatives Analysis Guide Draft
Dec 13, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
California’s Safer Consumer Products (SCP) programme has issued a full draft of its alternatives analysis (AA) guidance.
The Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) says it is intended to help responsible entities navigate the SCP AA process by providing "useful approaches, methods, resources, tools and examples of how to fulfil SCP's regulatory requirements."
The 238-page discussion draft is divided into 11 chapters:
· AA framework;
· product requirements and alternatives;
· relevant factors;
· impact assessments;
· screening of alternatives;
· exposure;
· lifecycle impacts;
· economic impacts;
· information needs in AA;
· selection of alternatives; and
· self-evaluation of AA.
The document builds on a first phase AA guidance, issued in the autumn of 2015. This comprised drafts of the first five chapters. Industry stakeholders raised concern that while these offered robust considerations for completing an AA, they lacked clarity on how a regulated party could ensure compliance with the law.
The agency has said that it would incorporate feedback on the first draft into the holistic draft.
Under the SCP, manufacturers of products designated by the agency as "priority products" must develop an AA. Completed analyses will inform the DTSC's regulatory response to the specified chemicals of concern.
The DTSC has issued a proposed regulation to designate as a priority product children's foam-padded sleeping products containing the flame retardants TDCPP or TCEP. Plans are in the works to similarly designate spray polyurethane foam with unreacted MDI and paint strippers with methylene chloride.
More recently, the agency has solicited input on the following topics for possible prioritisation:
· the potential aquatic impacts of nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs), triclosan and some of their transformation products through their use in cleaning, personal care and clothing products;
· hazardous chemicals used in nail salon products; and
· the exposure potential from the use of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in carpets, rugs, upholstered furniture and their care and treatment products.
The DTSC has scheduled a webinar to present and discuss the SCP draft AA on 10 January.
It will accept comments until 20 January. The agency says that stakeholder input is "important to ensure the utility of the guide".
https://chemicalwatch.com/51617/california-scp-releases-full-alternatives-analysis-guide-draft
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Some Good News in Washington, But Much More Work to Do on Lead
Dec 12, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Jack Pratt
You may have missed it, but early Saturday morning there was some good news in Washington. After a long delay, Congress finally passed funding to help address the public health disaster in Flint, Michigan. This is good news, but much work remains to be done, in Flint and around the country.
Flint’s water problems started more than two years ago, when officials switched the city’s drinking water to a more corrosive source and stopped the corrosion control needed to protect the pipes. The result was serious contamination of Flint's drinking water. Thousands of children were exposed to significant levels of lead, a known toxic compound that can impair brain development and cause lasting damage.
Since then EDF has been working to improve policies federally and around the country to significantly reduce lead exposure from water. We’ve also been working with a large coalition of public interest groups to support efforts to help secure this assistance for the people of Flint.
This past Saturday, at long last, Congress passed legislation that includes funding for Flint to repair and replace their water infrastructure and for health monitoring. Earlier this year EDF hosted representatives of the Flint community at our Washington office during a fly-in to lobby Congress organized by our friends at National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club and other advocates. We heard the stories firsthand that made clear this crisis is not over—that members of that community continue to live with the impact every day. It will take years of work for the people of Flint to get their water system back to normal and deal with the aftermath. But, we are proud to have played even a small part in helping secure this overdue assistance.
While the extent of the Flint water crisis is unparalleled, the threat of lead is by no means unique to Flint. In fact, up to ten million homes across the country get water through lead pipes – called lead service lines – that connect the main drinking water line in the street to our homes. A critical task ahead is ensuring that communities across the country address the threat of lead service lines and work to reduce the risk lead poses to children.
The legislation passed this weekend also included a new grant program for disadvantaged and small communities to reduce lead in drinking water. This provision, similar to one advanced by Sens. Ben Cardin and others, could be a critical foothold to help communities address the threat of lead in drinking water. Congress should make funding this new program a priority in the coming years.
More broadly, any effort to address the nation’s infrastructure should prioritize the removal of lead service lines. What investment could be more important than one that preserves the health of America’s children?
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2016/12/12/some-good-news-in-washington-but-much-more-work-to-do-on-lead/
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Bill Gates Will Lead New $1 Billion Clean Energy Fund
Dec 12, 2016 | CNN
By Selena Larson
Bill Gates is leading a $1 billion investment fund in clean energy.
The Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) founder is joined by some of the world's richest people in supporting a 20-year fund called Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Investors include Amazon(AMZN, Tech30) founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, and Alibaba (BABA, Tech30) Executive Chairman Jack Ma. Gates will serve as the chairman of the fund, which is the venture arm of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group founded last year to accelerate research and investment in clean energy.
The fund will invest in companies and technologies that have "the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least half a gigaton," according to the website. It will specifically target innovations in electricity, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing and architecture.
In a video on the Coalition's website, Gates said funding should be directed at researchers investigating the early stages of problems affecting the climate. He noted that while the government can fund basic research, private investors should back those that are embarking on risky ventures, from startups to large companies.
The fund comes amid concern that Donald Trump's administration will reverse steps taken by President Barack Obama to combat climate change. President-elect Trump has called climate change a "hoax" and recently selected Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a harsh critic of the Environmental Protection Agency, as its administrator.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/12/technology/bill-gates-breakthrough-energy-ventures-fund/
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Fitch: Demise of Clean Power Plan Could Affect Projects' Credit
Dec 12, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Rod Kuckro
The 2017 outlook is stable for North American energy infrastructure, Fitch Ratings said Friday, although it warned that the potential demise of U.S. EPA's flagship Clean Power Plan "could create some interesting ripples for the sector in the coming months."
The outlook covers stand-alone thermal energy, renewable, and oil and natural gas projects whose debt Fitch rates.
The EPA rule to curb carbon emissions from power plants is in the hands of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In its outlook, Fitch said it expects the Trump administration to modify the plan significantly or withdraw it outright. "While this might gut the CPP in its current form, it would not eliminate the EPA's obligation to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants," said Senior Director Gregory Remec.
"Market forces have already retired or accelerated the planned retirement of older and less-efficient coal plants, and renewables experienced strong growth without the benefit of carbon regulation. Some form of carbon emissions regulation is likely eventually, but the timing is uncertain and now less likely for at least the next four years," Fitch said.
The election of Donald Trump to be president will not cause Minnesota's Great River Energy, one of the nation's largest generation and transmission cooperatives, serving 28 distribution co-ops, to reverse its long-term strategy.
The utility — whose energy mix is more than 70 percent coal — has made a number of decisions to reduce coal dependence and invest in clean energy.
"We have our strategy set, we're staying the course, and we intend to be on the right side of history," said board Chairman Mike Thorson, according to clean energy policy group Fresh Energy.
In case you missed it:
· On The Cutting Edge, E&E News reporter Robin Bravender explains how Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R), President-elect Donald Trump's choice to lead EPA, may navigate the endangerment finding and work to unravel the Clean Power Plan (E&ETV, Dec. 9).
· Pruitt built a record of filing politically charged lawsuits against the agency. Almost all those lawsuits failed (Greenwire, Dec. 8).
· Environmentalists are preparing for war against Trump's pick for EPA administrator. "Let the battle begin," said Bill Snape, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity (E&E News PM, Dec. 7).
· An extension of California's economywide cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions is needed to hit the state's ambitious target for cutting greenhouse gas pollution by 2030, said a proposal from the California Air Resources Board (Climatewire, Dec. 5).
· Trump would have to undertake a herculean political effort to reverse his administration's responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and he might not be able to count on Republicans in Congress for help (Climatewire, Dec. 5).
http://www.eenews.net/interactive/clean_power_plan/column_posts/1060047001
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NatGas Production from Big Seven Plays to Increase in January, EIA Says
Dec 12, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
Natural gas production from the nation's seven largest unconventional plays, which has been on a downward trend for more than a year, is expected to increase in January, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Total gas production out of the Bakken, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Marcellus, Niobrara, Permian and Utica plays will be an estimated 47.51 Bcf/d in January, up from an estimated 47.42 Bcf/d this month, EIA said in its latestDrilling Productivity Report (DPR), which was released Monday.
Natural gas production increases are expected in the Haynesville (6.01 Bcf/d in January, compared with 5.99 Bcf/d in December), Marcellus (18.46 Bcf/d, compared with 18.30 Bcf/d) and Permian (7.48 Bcf/d, compared with 7.41 Bcf/d). Output from the Niobrara is expected to increase marginally to 4.30 Bcf/d, and Utica production is expected to be unchanged at 4.21 Bcf/d.
Those increases will outweigh a significant decline in the Eagle Ford (5.45 Bcf/d in January, compared with 5.61 Bcf this month) and a marginal decline in the Bakken (to 1.60 Bcf/d).
Total oil production out of the seven plays will be nearly unchanged in January, increasing just 2,000 b/d to 4.54 million b/d, according to the DPR.
EIA forecast January oil production out of the Permian (2.13 million b/d) and Niobrara (406,000 b/d) to be up slightly compared with December, and oil production out of the Marcellus (37,000 b/d), Haynesville (42,000 b/d) and Utica (46,000 b/d) to be nearly unchanged. Declines are expected in the Bakken (905,000 b/d, compared with 918,000 in December) and Eagle Ford (980,000 b/d, compared with 1.00 million b/d).
EIA released its first DPR in October 2013 but didn't forecast month-to-month production declines until September 2015. Since then, the agency's production forecasts have followed a steady downward trend. The seven regions during 2011-2014 accounted for 92% of domestic oil production growth and all gas production growth.
Drilled but uncompleted (DUC) well counts as of the end of November totaled 4,335 in the four oil-dominant regions -- Permian, Bakken, Eagle Ford and Niobrara -- an increase of 84 from October, EIA said. There also were 884 DUCs in the three gas-dominant regions -- Haynesville, Marcellus and Utica -- a decline of 20.
The productivity of new oil wells in the plays is expected to increase next month. On a rig-weighted average basis, oil production per rig will be 664 b/d, compared to 654 b/d this month, according to the DPR. New-well gas production per rig in the plays will also increase, from 3.17 MMcf/d in December to 3.22 MMcf/d in January, EIA said.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/108708-natgas-production-from-big-seven-plays-to-increase-in-january-eia-says
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East Coast Businesses Push Obama on Atlantic Drilling
Dec 12, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A group of businesses on the East Coast is asking President Obama to permanently ban drilling the Atlantic Ocean before he leaves office next month.
A Monday letter signed by 66 businesses from New Hampshire to Florida says drilling threatens existing economic activity along the Eastern Seaboard, especially tourism or fishing sectors that they warn could be damaged by drilling or oil spills there.
“The potential short-term economic gain drilling would bring to our economy is not worth sacrificing the immense and sustained value our coastal tourism and fishing industries bring to Atlantic Coast states and the entire United States,” the letter said.
The push comes after the Obama administration said it would block drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans in the U.S.’s next five-year offshore drilling plan, which runs through 2022.
A larger group of businesses last year pushed him to reject Atlantic drilling in that plan after the Interior Department originally floated allowing oil development there.
Greens welcomed Obama’s decision to ban drilling in the five-year plan. But they have said he should go even further and permanently remove the oceans from future leasing, a step that could block developers from drilling there long-term.
Under the 2017-2022 plan, the businesses wrote in their letter, “the administration ensured protection of our beaches and tourism industry for the next five years.”
They added, “with the long-term fate of the Atlantic Ocean yet to be decided, we call on you to ensure these vital and spectacular resources are protected for generations to come by permanently protecting the Atlantic Ocean from all future oil and gas development.”
http://www.thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/310057-east-coast-businesses-push-obama-on-atlantic-drilling
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Justice Department Urges Import Duties on Fracking Material
Dec 13, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Flood
The Justice Department urged an appeals court Dec. 12 to reimpose import tariffs on a type of chemical used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking (Schlumberger Tech. Corp. v. United States, No. 15-2076, 12/12/16).
The case concerns the proper import tariffs on bauxite “proppants,” a type of chemical used in fracturing fluid to hold open fissures and allow the extraction of oil or gas.
In recent years, fracking has spurred U.S. hydrocarbon production and reshaped global energy markets.The government argued that the Court of International Trade had erred in re-classifying the merchandise, which removed 4 percent import tariffs on well services provider Schlumberger Technology Corp.'s bauxite proppants.
While the Customs and Border Protection had decided that the proppants were “ceramic wares for laboratory, chemical or other technical uses,” the trade court held that the proppants fall under a tariff provision for “aluminum ores and concentrates,” —a duty-free provision.
Before a three-judge Federal Circuit panel, the Justice Department Trial Attorney Aimee Lee argued that the lower court had erred in ruling that the proppants weren't ceramic wares, in part because it put too much of an emphasis on the fact that the granules vary in size and shape. While they might not be identical, Lee said, the proppants were sieved to meet size specifications. Moreover, she argued, they are chemically transformed through a kiln firing process, a procedure typical for ceramics.
Alexander Schaefer of the Washington, D.C., law firm Crowell & Moring, LLP, arguing for Schlumberger, argued that the proppant was too similar to naturally occurring ore to be removed from the zero percent margin tariff heading.
The Federal Circuit panel has not yet announced when it will issue a ruling.
The expansion of fracking in recent years has opened up vast reserves of previously unreachable hydrocarbons in the U.S. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2015 fracking accounted for half of U.S. crude oil production and two-thirds of U.S. natural gas production.
Critics like the Sierra Club, however, argue that these fuel sources contribute to global warming, and that fracking itself can pollute groundwater and induce seismic instability.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101856933&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101856933&jd=101856933
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White House, Canada Outline Game Plan for Protecting Power Grid
Dec 12, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Esther Whieldon
The White House and Canadian government today released two reports on how they would work together to protect their respective electric grids from physical and cyber attacks.
"The security and resilience of the integrated U.S. and Canadian electric grid is dynamic," said one report that outlined what steps US agencies would take, led by the departments of Energy and Homeland Security. "New threats, hazards, and vulnerabilities emerge even as the two countries work to prevent, protect against, and mitigate their potential consequences and to improve their ability to respond to, and recover from, disruptive incidents.
"Secure and reliable electricity is essential for safe and continued operation of infrastructure owned by businesses, governments, schools, hospitals, and other organizations," it said.
The other report, the Joint United States-Canada Electric Grid Security and Resilience Strategy, can be found here.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Senate Gives Final Approval to Crude-by-Rail Bill
Dec 13, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
Senators took the final step late Dec. 9 to strengthen emergency response efforts for oil train transport and other emergency response incidents.
Lawmakers approved by unanimous consent a motion to concur with House changes to a bill (S. 546) shortly before the Senate adjourned for the year.
The legislation, which Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) reintroduced in February, creates a National Advisory Council subcommittee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to review emergency response training, resources, best practices and hazardous materials rail transport response. The committee also would be tasked with making policy recommendations to Congress on the training and resource needs of first responders.
The bipartisan bill won the support of Democratic co-sponsors Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Chuck Schumer of New York. Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine and GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa also signed on to the proposal.
Heitkamp said earlier this year she was motivated by high-profile oil train derailments, some of which have proven fatal, including a Dec. 30, 2013, derailment near Casselton, N.D.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=101856922&vname=dennotallissues&fn=101856922&jd=101856922
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Air: EPA Seeks to Ease Air Toxics Rule for Phosphoric Acid Manufacturing
Dec 12, 2016 | Inside EPA
EPA is proposing to ease air toxics compliance requirements for the handful of phosphoric acid manufacturing and phosphate fertilizer production facilities, keeping the rule's emissions limits unchanged but extending compliance deadlines in response to petitions for reconsideration from the sector.
In a Dec. 9 Federal Register notice, EPA proposes to revise the compliance date by which affected sources must include emissions from oxidation reactors when determining compliance with the total fluoride [TF] emissions limits for superphosphoric acid process lines, from August 19, 2016, to August 19, 2018.
The change is intended to make it easier for the sector to comply with the agency's risk-and-technology review rule, issued Aug. 19, 2015. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA must conduct such reviews eight years after the issuance of an air toxics rule for a sector, and if it finds “residual” risks or technological improvements to the available control technology, or both, tighten the air toxics rule.
Further, “we are clarifying why we are retaining the requirement to monitor the liquid-to-gas ratio for low energy absorbers. We have determined that liquid-to-gas ratio for low-energy absorbers is the most appropriate option to ensure proper TF control,” EPA says.
The agency is also proposing to revise the compliance date for the monitoring requirements for low-energy absorbers in existing sources from August 19, 2015, to August 19, 2017.
EPA says, “we expect the proposed additional compliance time for oxidation reactors will have an insignificant effect on a phosphoric acid manufacturing plant’s overall emissions.”
The agency will take comment on the proposal for 45 days, until Jan. 23.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/air-epa-seeks-ease-air-toxics-rule-phosphoric-acid-manufacturing
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House GOP Chairmen Seek White House Climate Spending Report
Dec 12, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Hess
The White House owes Congress a detailed report on climate spending before President Obama leaves office, according to key Republicans on the House Appropriations and Energy and Commerce committees.
In a letter Friday to Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan, nine GOP lawmakers requested a report describing federal agency funding, both domestic and international, for climate change programs and projects in fiscal 2016 and 2017.
They pointed to a provision in last year's spending agreement that ordered Obama to submit the report by June 8. It called for a line-by-line comparison of how spending matched up to the White House's budget request, with "citations and linkages where predictable" to the strategic plans that are driving funding within each program, project and activity.
OMB missed the original deadline. The lawmakers say they want the report to be provided to Congress and made publicly available no later than Jan. 13 — a week before Obama leaves office.
"We believe it is important that there be transparency and accountability with regard to the climate change related expenditures across the Federal government, and that Congress and the public should know how much is spent by Federal agencies, and for what purpose," the letter states.
Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) and Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) led the letter. Reps. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who head the spending committee with jurisdiction over the Interior Department and U.S. EPA, added their names.
Other signatories were Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), chairman of the Energy panel's oversight subcommittee; Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power; Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.); Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah); and Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.). The latter three are appropriators.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/12/12/stories/1060047059
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Greens May Seek to Bar Pruitt from EPA Suits He Fought
Dec 12, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
Critics of designated EPA administrator nominee Scott Pruitt are considering turning his history of legal attacks on the agency into a weapon against him, in a long-shot bid to limit the damage he can do to President Barack Obama's climate regulations.
Pruitt, Oklahoma's attorney general, has sued to reverse the Obama administration’s landmark regulations on climate change, water quality and air pollution — all of which he will be in a position to reverse if he is confirmed by the Senate to lead EPA under President-elect Donald Trump. At least seven major rules are the subject of active lawsuits in which Pruitt is participating, typically alongside other red-state AGs, conservative activists and businesses.
For those rules still in court, Pruitt will first have to convince federal judges to send those rules back to EPA so he can rewrite them. Some environmentalists are exploring whether they could convince the judges that he does not deserve that courtesy given his previous participation on the other side of the cases.
It’s an aggressive, long-shot strategy aimed at weakening the Trump administration’s hand in court, but at least one environmental group is exploring whether Pruitt could be barred from participating in the cases because of earlier conflicts of interest. A top official at that group declined to go on the record about it, saying their research into the strategy is still nascent and it is uncertain whether the group will attempt it.
A conflict-based legal strategy is essentially uncharted waters and thus risks failure, said attorneys unconnected with the environmentalists considering the move. Even if it worked, it could burn any potential bridge between the incoming EPA chief and environmental groups for the next four years.
“Someone could file a motion saying he should withdraw from being involved in the case,” said Brian Potts, a lawyer at Perkins Coie who has represented companies in dealings with EPA. “I don’t know who wants to be that aggressive with EPA. I don’t know that environmental groups are going to want to go that far.”
Plus, given that other Trump administration officials at EPA and the Justice Department would step in if Pruitt was excluded from work on the suits, any success would be more symbolic than practical.
Similar courtroom attacks against Pruitt's past liaisons with energy companies also appear to be dead ends.
The New York Times reported in 2014 that Pruitt and other GOP AGs had formed an “unprecedented, secretive alliance” with oil and gas companies to fight EPA regulations. Pruitt defended that union as part of his job to protect Oklahomans’ interests, and experts said that so long as he didn’t sue jointly with any companies, which he has not, and doesn’t hold energy-related stocks, that alliance shouldn’t lead to any legal issues.
Oklahoma ethics officials told POLITICO that state law did not require Pruitt, as attorney general, to disclose any investments he may hold in energy companies. In addition, any potential conflicts would likely have to be disclosed and addressed before his confirmation anyway.
Once Pruitt takes over EPA, environmentalists would have the difficult task of proving beyond a doubt that he is working unlawfully with energy companies to roll back regulations. Some conservative groups made similar accusations of collusion between the Obama EPA and green groups, none of which succeeded in gaining traction in court.
Political appointees have come into administrations before and had to firewall themselves off from litigation they were involved with on behalf of a company, but Pruitt’s prolific litigation on behalf of a state is new territory, according to Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist and ethics specialist at Public Citizen.
“What makes this unprecedented is Pruitt is doing pretty much the same thing, but as an attorney general,” Holman said. “So rather than represent a private interest, he’s arguably representing the public interest. And that makes it unique.”
Some environmentalists have already concluded there is not much point to challenging Pruitt over potential conflicts.
“He’s a policymaker now. So as long as he follows the law when he does policy I think he’s allowed to do that,” said Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, which is involved in the defense of EPA’s power plant carbon rule.
Pruitt should talk to EPA's ethics office, Snape added, but "my guess is that they can find ways, as long as they dot their i’s and cross their t’s, that the agency can move forward with his stated agenda."
Meanwhile, Pruitt’s defenders point out that he is hardly the first environmental official to come to EPA and seek to reverse the trajectory of the previous administration.
“I think there is little risk of recusal because there is no cause for it,” said Scott Segal, an attorney at Bracewell and lobbyist representing several major utilities.
Segal argued that Pruitt’s legal campaign against EPA “differs little from past nominees that have participated in the administrative process by filing comments or acting as clients in litigation.” That demonstrates an “admirable” familiarity with the rules he will now be in charge of, in Segal’s view.
“Even Gina McCarthy participated in litigation against EPA rules when she was a state official,” Segal added, referring to the current administrator. McCarthy participated as a civil servant, however, not as an attorney, meaning the professional and ethical issues presented by an attorney-client relationship don't apply.
Pruitt immediately walled himself off from all of Oklahoma's litigation against EPA upon being nominated, according to a spokesman for his office.
That includes the lawsuits challenging the Clean Power Plan and its sister regulation for new power plants, as well as the landmark Waters of the U.S. rule. Others target the 2015 ozone standard, EPA's fix to the mercury rule addressing the Supreme Court's 2015 decision, oil and gas well methane standards and the so-called “SSM SIP call,” a wonky EPA rule barring states from shielding power plants, refineries and other sources from civil lawsuits over excess pollution during startup, shutdown and malfunction.
Pruitt was also part of an unusual legal attempt to block EPA from even finalizing the CPP that was shot down by the D.C. Circuit, and Pruitt pursued several solo lawsuits against the proposed CPP in western courts that were similarly tossed out.
Pruitt has been part of multi-state coalitions that won major victories against EPA in recent years, including when the Supreme Court in February approved an unprecedented stay on the Clean Power Plan. He also helped secure a court stay of the Waters of the U.S. rule this year. And Oklahoma was also part of the lawsuit against the mercury rule that the Supreme Court ultimately said was based on a flawed finding that it was necessary to regulate, which will impact how agencies calculate potential rules' cost in the future.
In a worst case scenario, courts could compel Pruitt to silo himself off from EPA’s participation in those lawsuits, leaving such work to his deputy and DOJ.
But that would seem to have little practical effect on the Trump administration’s legal decisions, or on Pruitt’s following any new rulemaking or repeal process he might oversee following litigation.
Craig Richardson, president of the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, a conservative nonprofit that has specialized in investigating and suing EPA, said Pruitt’s litigation history actually “helps tremendously.”
“The fact that AG Pruitt has so much experience with the relevant legal issues including EPA's relationship to the states is testament to the agency's overzealousness, its lack of regard for state authority, and its need for serious reform,” he said.
There are a few arguments the Trump administration can rely on to keep Pruitt at the table, attorneys said. While the administrator and other EPA officials weigh in on legal strategy, DOJ attorneys are the ones who appear in court and sign legal briefs, Potts and Segal both noted.
“I bet what they will argue is that Pruitt isn’t representing EPA anymore, the Department of Justice is, and he won’t be acting as a lawyer,” said Potts.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2016/12/greens-may-seek-to-bar-pruitt-from-epa-suits-he-fought-140397
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Climate Change: Speaking Truth to Power
Dec 13, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Doug Domenech
Last week there was an event in the nation’s capital where a merry band of warriors gathered to bring a dose of sanity to the too often hyperbolic discussion of climate change. While the discussion was thoroughly reasonable, the media had a hard time digesting it. Why? Because this contingent dared to counter decades of fake news often reported on climate and energy.
The event, “At the Crossroads: Energy and Climate Summit,” was the third annual meeting sponsored by the Austin-based Texas Public Policy Foundation, and this year co-hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation. It included the voices of U.S. Congressional leaders, climate scientists, think tank scholars, and top industry leaders.
Speakers included Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. James Inhofeof Oklahoma, chairman, U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee. From the House of Representatives there was Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Rep. Pete Olson, chairman, Energy & Power Subcommittee of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, and Rep. Gary Palmer, a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Seven of the world’s top climate scientists also spoke. These included Dr. Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, MIT, Dr. Willie Soon, Astrophysicist, Independent Scientist, Dr. Will Happer, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Princeton University, Dr. Craig Idso, Chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville and a former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Dr. David Legates, University of Delaware, and Dr. Patrick Michaels, Director, Center for the Study of Science at the CATO Institute.
Speaking truth to power, these experts had a common message in response to the age-old questions: Is climate change real? Yes, it has happened in the past and will happen in the future. Is man making an impact on the climate? Perhaps but in very small ways. But the overarching consensus remains the climate change we are experiencing is by no means catastrophic.
Climate models are like political polling. Models are projections based, presumably, on some scientific data. All models are fact checked based on real observed data. When this is done, checking the climate models with observed temperature data, the 102 climate models of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, fail the test of reliability. We all learned of the limits of political polling during the last election cycle.
During his presentation, MIT professor Dr. Richard Lindzen, said, “the only meaningful question would be whether we are seeing anything sufficiently unusual to warrant concern and the answer to this is unambiguously no.” He ended his presentation by quoting Eric Hoffer who said, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. And those who benefit in the racket will defend it with passion.”
Keeping fossil fuels in the ground is a ridiculous construct and even Interior Secretary Sally Jewell says is “naïve.” At the Summit Corbin Robertson of Quintana Resources said, “I'm gonna start out with a confession, I'm guilty. I'm guilty of providing goods and services and clean affordable energy to the world's growing population and now the environmentalists and the media want to convict me for my services to humanity.”
I would say, thank you for your service.
The Honorable Doug Domenech is the Director of the Fueling Freedom Project at TPPF.
http://www.thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/310068-climate-change-speaking-truth-to-power
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