Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 12/20/2016
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Energy Department Cybersecurity Leader and CIO Departs
Dec 19, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Steve Norton
Department of Energy CIO Michael Johnson has left the agency after nearly two years leading its cybersecurity efforts according to an internal email. -
Heat, Grease Repellents May Harm Immune Function, Agency Says
Dec 20, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Two heat-, oil- and water-repellent chemicals may harm immune function in people, according to the National Toxicology Program. -
The Dangers in Your Dog’s Canned Food
Dec 19, 2016 | TIME Magazine
By Justin Worland
For years, scientists have sounded the alarm about the potential health risks of Bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine-disrupting chemical that has been linked to reproductive problems and other issues in humans. -
Companies Agree to Pay N.Y. Village for Water Contamination
Dec 20, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
A New York village whose water was contaminated with perfluorooctane acid (PFOA) could receive $850,000 from Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp. and Honeywell International Inc. under a proposed agreement that will be considered at a special meeting of the Village Board Dec. 28. -
EU Lagging on Chemical Safety, Environment Ministers Warn
Dec 20, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Union is falling behind on measures to safeguard human health and the environment against risks posed by chemicals, potentially jeopardizing a series of goals that the bloc set itself for 2020, EU environment ministers warned Dec. 19. -
U.K. Seeks to Ban Plastic Microbeads in Cosmetics Next Year
Dec 20, 2016 | Bloomberg
By Jessica Shankleman
The U.K. will become the latest country to outlaw plastic microbeads used in face wash and toothpaste next year over concerns they harm marine life and enter the food chain. -
Will the State Divide over Clean Power Last?
Dec 19, 2016 | E&E Power Plays
By Emily Holden
Climate advocates hope states and businesses will step up as Republicans in Washington reverse work to erase greenhouse gas emissions reductions. -
Climate: NRDC Vows Suits over ESPS Rollback Plans
Dec 19, 2016 | Inside EPA
David Doniger, a top climate policy staffer with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), is detailing how the group plans to fight calls by states and others for the Trump administration to roll back EPA's power plant greenhouse gas rule -- as you might expect, the strategy includes a lot of lawsuits. -
Revised Deadline for CRA Repeal Votes Excludes Oil & Gas Methane Rule
Dec 19, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridge DiCosmo
Congressional Research Service (CRS) staffers have issued a new projected date of June 13 after which Obama administration regulations would be vulnerable to repeal under Congressional Review Act (CRA) votes, which would appear to exclude from the CRA's... -
ND Senator Calls for Remaining Dakota Access Protesters to Leave
Dec 19, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) is pushing tribal officials to help vacate a protest camp set up for those demonstrating against the Dakota Access pipeline. -
Obama Expected to Ban Offshore Drilling in Some Federal Waters
Dec 19, 2016 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
President Obama is expected to announce as soon as Tuesday that he will use his executive authority to permanently ban new offshore drilling in parts of federally owned waters off the Atlantic coast and in the Arctic Ocean, according to people familiar with the decision. -
California Sues Feds to Block Offshore Fracking
Dec 20, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joyce E. Cutler
The Interior Department violated federal law in improperly finding that little environmental impact would occur in offshore fracking, California said in a Dec. 19 lawsuit (California v. Dep't of Interior, C.D. Cal., No. 2:16-cv-09352, filed 12/19/16). -
Resolute Targeting Strong Growth in 2017 from Permian's Delaware
Dec 19, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Onshore independent Resolute Energy Corp. expects to more than double its 2017 production year/year, lifted by solid results in the Permian Basin's Delaware formation. -
Tests Fail to Come Up with Chemical in Corpus Christi Water
Dec 20, 2016 | AP (In The Washington Post)
The head of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality says he’s “absolutely” certain a chemical leak occurred to contaminate Corpus Christi’s public water supply although 115 tests have failed to show if an asphalt emulsifying agent made it from an industrial mixing tank to the water supply. -
Railroads, Regulators Clash over Braking System for Trains Carrying Flammable Liquids
Dec 19, 2016 | Washington Post
By Ashley Halsey
Just past noon on a Friday in June, a Union Pacific freight train carrying oil jumped the tracks in a small town in Oregon, not far from a school filled with children, and exploded in flames that burned for 14 hours. -
Ozone Standards Arguments Delayed Until April 19: Court
Dec 20, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
Oral arguments over the Environmental Protection Agency's 2015 ozone standards are now scheduled to be heard on April 19, according to a court filing (Murray Energy Corp. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1385, 12/19/16). -
Scott Pruitt a Needed Change for the EPA
Dec 19, 2016 | The Hill - Contributors Blog
By Nan Hayworth
President Obama once reminded us that “elections have consequences.” He might have added that sometimes those consequences fulfill the aims of the electorate — a point that critics like Gov. Christine Todd Whitman would be well to contemplate. -
Mattis: Trump Cabinet's Lone Green Hope?
Dec 19, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Wolff
Defense secretary nominee James Mattis may turn out to be the greenest person in Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
Industry and Association News
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Chemical Management News
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Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
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Energy Department Cybersecurity Leader and CIO Departs
Dec 19, 2016 | Wall Street Journal
By Steve Norton
Department of Energy CIO Michael Johnson has left the agency after nearly two years leading its cybersecurity efforts according to an internal email.
Mr. Johnson, a presidential appointee, joined the agency as CIO in March 2015, a spokesperson said Monday. His position was set to end on Jan. 20, 2017.
He’s replaced in the interim by Robbie Green, principal deputy CIO for enterprise information resources management, a role he’s held since February. Mr. Green joined the agency’s office of the CIO in 2009, according to the email.
FedScoop first reported the move.
Mr. Johnson oversaw the Energy Department’s cybersecurity efforts, including the development of an enterprise-wide automated cyber information sharing and advanced threat analytics capability. He also was a senior agency official for privacy, records management, spectrum management, information sharing and safeguarding, which included the Energy Department’s coordination of national security systems. He was the department’s representative to the White House National Security Cyber Response Group and other councils.
Mr. Johnson joined the Energy Department after a stint as assistant director for intelligence programs and national security systems in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Prior to that, he was chief scientist within the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
President-elect Donald Trump last week chose twice presidential hopeful and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to lead the Energy Department. Mr. Perry faced ridicule in 2011 after forgetting, during a presidential debate, that the Energy Department was one of three federal agencies he promised to eliminate were he elected president. The Energy Department safeguards the country’s nuclear arsenal and directs federal research on energy technologies.
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/12/19/energy-department-cybersecurity-leader-and-cio-departs/
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Heat, Grease Repellents May Harm Immune Function, Agency Says
Dec 20, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Two heat-, oil- and water-repellent chemicals may harm immune function in people, according to the National Toxicology Program.
The conclusions may spur states and the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the concentrations of the chemicals they allow in water, David Andrews, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 19.
Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA; CAS No. 335-67-1) ) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS; CAS No. 1763-23-1) are “presumed to be immune hazards to humans,” the toxicology program said in a final monograph released Dec. 16. The conclusion is based on extensive evidence from laboratory animal studies and some evidence from studies in which vaccines were less effective in protecting people with higher concentrations of the chemicals in their bodies than were the vaccines administered to people with lower concentrations of the perfluorinated chemicals.
Environmentally Relevant Concentrations
The immune suppression found in human studies occurred at environmentally relevant concentrations, meaning the immune function was decreased at concentrations of the chemicals found in the general U.S. population, the toxicology program said.
3M, which formerly made PFOS, phased out its production in 2002. As of the end of 2015, DuPont, the last U.S. manufacturer of PFOA, and seven companies, which used the chemical to make fluoropolymers, had phased out their production, use and emissions of that chemical, according to the toxicology program's monograph.
Both perfluorinated chemicals, however, are widely distributed in the environment as a result of extensive use over the last 50 years in commercial and industrial applications. Due to their chemical stability, the compounds were used in food packaging, lubricants, water- and heat-resistant coatings and aqueous fire-fighting foams. Their stability, however, also contributed to their persistence in the environment and people and wildlife, the toxicology program said.
“Although emissions have been dramatically reduced in the United States and Western Europe, it is not clear if global production has changed as there has been a shift in production and use of long-chain perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) including PFOA and PFOS to emerging economies in continental Asia,” the toxicology program said.
The persistence and presence of both PFOA and PFOS in drinking water contaminants along with the detectable levels in the U.S. population mean both chemicals remain a public health concern, the toxicology program said.
The Environmental Working Group, which has long focused on PFOA, reports its presence in 94 public water systems in 27 states. Research the working group and the Environmental Protection Agency undertook more than 10 years ago led DuPont to agree in 2005 to pay $16.5 million to resolve charges that it violated two environmental statutes by withholding from regulators information about PFOA (In re DuPont, EPA, TSCA-HQ-2004-0016,12/14/05).
A representative for the Chemours Co., which has taken over DuPont's fluoropolymers business, could not be reached Dec. 19 for comment about the National Toxicology Program's monograph.
Substitute Chemicals Should Be Examined
Andrews said the toxicology program's conclusions provide validation for the concerns scientists have been raising for years.
The conclusion should spur states, such as Vermont, which has set a drinking water health advisory level for PFOA of 20 parts per trillion (ppt) and the Environmental Protection Agency, which set a health advisory level of 70 ppt, to reduce those standards significantly, Andrews said.
The EPA also should review the many chemicals that have been developed as substitutes for PFOA and PFOS, he said.
Most of these chemicals are variations of PFOA and PFOS with fewer carbon and fluorine atoms yet may raise similar concerns, Andrews said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=102271304&vname=dennotallissues&fn=102271304&jd=102271304
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The Dangers in Your Dog’s Canned Food
Dec 19, 2016 | TIME Magazine
By Justin Worland
For years, scientists have sounded the alarm about the potential health risks of Bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine-disrupting chemical that has been linked to reproductive problems and other issues in humans. BPA is found in household and consumer products including canned goods, water bottles and receipts.
Now, new research suggests that the chemical can also threaten the health of dogs and other pets.
Authors of the study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, took 14 dogs who were all used to eating food stored in a bag, then fed them canned food. When the dogs ate canned food—even a brand represented as BPA-free—for just two weeks, their blood levels of BPA increased.
When dogs were fed canned food, their BPA levels nearly tripled compared to their concentrations at the start of the study. The presence of BPA in dogs was associated with changes to their gut microbiome and metabolism, the researchers found.
The study authors add that the research may have implications beyond the health of pets. “Dogs, who share our internal and external environments with us, are likely excellent indicators of potential human health concerns to BPA and other environmental chemicals,” the study authors write.
http://time.com/4606906/bpa-canned-food-dogs/
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Companies Agree to Pay N.Y. Village for Water Contamination
Dec 20, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
A New York village whose water was contaminated with perfluorooctane acid (PFOA) could receive $850,000 from Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp. and Honeywell International Inc. under a proposed agreement that will be considered at a special meeting of the Village Board Dec. 28.
Saint-Gobain and Honeywell, the current and former owners of manufacturing plants in Hoosick Falls, a village northeast of Albany, are named as potentially responsible parties for the PFOA contamination under the state Superfund program.
“This proposed settlement agreement is intended to reimburse the Village for the costs it has incurred and does not affect our ongoing obligations to conduct the environmental investigations and necessary remediation or to pay for running the Village's water treatment system,” Victoria Streitfeld, a spokeswoman for Honeywell, told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail.
The money would be used to reimburse the village for water monitoring and analysis, flushing water lines and associated repairs, and losses incurred by the village from reduced water and sewer usage. It would also be used to reimburse the village for engineering, legal and public relations consulting fees, according to a Dec. 16 announcement from the village.
“We recognize that the Village of Hoosick Falls has incurred unbudgeted expenses over the past two years to address elevated PFOA levels,” said Dina Pokedoff, a Saint-Gobain spokeswoman. “Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, together with Honeywell, has agreed to compensate the Village for these costs as outlined in the proposed settlement agreement.”
David A. Engel, an attorney with the Albany firm Nolan & Heller LLP, which represents a number of local residents, told Bloomberg BNA the village ought to release the agreement and supporting documents “well in advance” of the meeting.
Michele Baker, a Hoosick Falls resident who is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against Saint-Gobain and Honeywell, told Bloomberg BNA that she couldn't say if she supported the agreement because “we don't know what's in there.” She said the village needed greater transparency in its deliberations over the agreement.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=102271300&vname=dennotallissues&fn=102271300&jd=102271300
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EU Lagging on Chemical Safety, Environment Ministers Warn
Dec 20, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Union is falling behind on measures to safeguard human health and the environment against risks posed by chemicals, potentially jeopardizing a series of goals that the bloc set itself for 2020, EU environment ministers warned Dec. 19.
In particular, the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has missed deadlines for taking measures on nanomaterials, endocrine disruptors, the combination effects of chemicals and harmful substances contained in products, the ministers said in a communique issued after a meeting in Brussels.
The commission should report on progress on these issues by June 30, 2017, the ministers’ communique said.
Ministers also criticized the commission for a slowdown in the listing of hazardous substances in Annex XIV of the EU's REACH law (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation and authorization of chemicals). The annex contains chemicals to be phased out from use in the EU because of their hazards.
Slow progress was putting “at risk” a nonbinding goal of listing in the Annex by 2020 “all relevant” chemicals that are judged under REACH to be “substances of very high concern,” the ministers said.
Seventh Environmental Action Program
The various chemicals goals are contained in the EU seventh environmental action program (7EAP), an overarching framework agreed to in 2013 that guides the bloc's environmental policy through 2020.
According to the 7EAP, the commission should have taken “horizontal measures” by 2015 on the four areas of nanomaterials, endocrine disruptors, the combination effects of chemicals and substances in products. The 7EAP specified that measures in these areas should underpin an EU “strategy for a non-toxic environment” to be published in 2018.
The environment ministers’ communique said the commission should “accelerate” measures in the four areas “to enable the relevant conclusions to feed into the future non-toxic environment strategy.”
The 2018 strategy should set out “the EU's chemicals policy for the decade beyond 2020,” and would be the EU's contribution to relevant parts of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the ministers said.
Vibeke Pasternak Jørgensen, Denmark's deputy permanent representative to the EU, said during the ministers’ meeting there was an “urgent need” for the 2018 strategy also in the context of the United Nations Environment Program's Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM), which has a goal of achieving the sound management of chemicals by 2020, and of the EU's own circular economy plans, under which hazardous chemicals should be phased out of products where possible to facilitate the recycling and reuse of materials.
Commission on Defensive
In response to the ministers’ criticisms, the EU's top environment official, environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella, told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 19 that “I don't think we should sacrifice ambition for speed” on chemicals.
A vote on criteria to identify endocrine disruptors in pesticides might take place Dec. 21 at a regulatory committee meeting, Vella said. Under the EU law on authorization of pesticides (Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009), endocrine disruptors should in most cases not be granted approval in the EU.
Vella's spokesman, Enrico Brivio, told Bloomberg BNA that the criteria would be “discussed and possibly voted on” Dec. 21.
On nanomaterials, the commission has promised but not yet published a proposed revision of the REACH annexes to set out requirements for the submission by companies that file REACH registration dossiers of relevant information on nanosubstances.
The commission said in a statement to Bloomberg BNA Dec. 19 that the proposal to revise the REACH annexes on nanosubstances “is expected to be adopted in the first semester of 2017.”
Concerns Over Data
On the combination effects of chemicals, the commission said it was “working to address knowledge gaps.”
The commission is required to deliver by June 1, 2017, a five-year review of REACH, which could lead to proposals for revisions of the law. One of the issues in the review is whether REACH is adequate to manage the risks of the combination effects of chemicals.
Ministers said Dec. 19 that the review of REACH should, among other aims, seek to improve the quality of data that chemicals companies provide to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), to better deal with issues such as the combination effects of chemicals.
ECHA has said on a number of occasions that the content of REACH registration dossiers submitted by companies should be improved, with dossiers often lacking clear data on matters such as substance identity or safe-use practices.
German environment minister Barbara Hendricks said that although REACH has broadly been successful, “not everything is rosy” and a “solid and reliable databank” is needed for the EU's future work on managing risks from chemicals.
Tatiana Santos, senior policy officer on chemicals with advocacy group the European Environmental Bureau, told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 19 that the ministers had delivered a “wake-up call to the commission” to take into account issues such as the combination effects of chemicals as part of the review of REACH.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=102271286&vname=dennotallissues&fn=102271286&jd=102271286
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U.K. Seeks to Ban Plastic Microbeads in Cosmetics Next Year
Dec 20, 2016 | Bloomberg
By Jessica Shankleman
The U.K. will become the latest country to outlaw plastic microbeads used in face wash and toothpaste next year over concerns they harm marine life and enter the food chain.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published a consultationTuesday proposing to ban the beads in cosmetics and personal-care products by October 2017. The move builds on voluntary commitments made by companies including Proctor & Gamble Co. and Johnson & Johnson.
One shower alone can send as many as 100,000 beads down the drain and they end up in the sea as they are too small to be filtered out in sewage treatment, according to Defra. “Adding tiny pieces of plastic to products like face washes and body scrubs is incredibly damaging to our sea life -– they can swallow them, but cannot digest them,” Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom said in a statement.
Several U.S. states have passed bans and last month Canada said it was planning to outlaw commercial products containing microbeads in 2018.
“The U.K. has always been a leader in environmental protection and we take our responsibility to marine life -– not only in our own seas, but around the world –- very seriously,” said Leadsom.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/u-k-seeks-to-ban-plastic-microbeads-in-cosmetics-next-year
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Will the State Divide over Clean Power Last?
Dec 19, 2016 | E&E Power Plays
By Emily Holden
Climate advocates hope states and businesses will step up as Republicans in Washington reverse work to erase greenhouse gas emissions reductions. But a new analysis by the Brookings Institution demonstrates just how far apart the states are on decarbonizing.
President-elect Donald Trump carried 22 of the 23 states with the highest per-capita carbon emissions, while Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won 16 of the 19 lowest-emitting states.
The United States' overall trajectory toward lower-carbon power, however, will continue as long as natural gas is cheap and renewable power costs decline. That could change how states align politically over the issue, suggests author Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy director.
Muro notes that some Trump states have among the fastest declining emissions, including Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Indiana, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. He adds that some red states are seeing strong renewable growth, which could help to turn the tide on climate politics.
"In short, although voting behavior in these transitioning Trump states still reflects their high emissions per capita, those emissions are declining fast, with possible implications for future politics," Muro argues. "The nation's carbon divide, in sum, might be more transitory than some of its other divides."
In Arizona today and tomorrow, electric regulators will consider how much customers with rooftop solar should pay for their use of the grid. Edison Electric Institute senior vice president Phil Moeller will testify. See the full agenda here.
In case you missed it:
· Twenty-four state attorneys general challenging the Clean Power Plan laid out their strategy for Trump to kill it (E&E News PM, Dec. 15).
· Meet President-elect Donald Trump's energy and environment Cabinet: a crusader against climate rules, a former governor who's pledged to ax the agency he's been picked to lead and an up-and-coming freshman Montana congressman (Greenwire, Dec. 15).
· Advocates think a GOP-led Energy Department could boost the nuclear industry (Energywire, Dec. 15).
· Donald Trump promised to save coal on the campaign trail, but he's inviting the competition into the White House (Climatewire, Dec. 15).
· Medical professionals urged Trump to support the Clean Power Plan (E&E News PM, Dec. 16).
· E&E reporter Robin Bravender has a Q&A with EPA Chief Gina McCarthy on Guinness, swearing and Hill showdowns (Greenwire, Dec. 16).
· Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) proposed a $25-per-ton carbon tax as part of a wider budget plan aimed at patching an education funding gap (Climatewire, Dec. 14).
http://www.eenews.net/interactive/clean_power_plan/column_posts/1060047384
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Climate: NRDC Vows Suits over ESPS Rollback Plans
Dec 19, 2016 | Inside EPA
David Doniger, a top climate policy staffer with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), is detailing how the group plans to fight calls by states and others for the Trump administration to roll back EPA's power plant greenhouse gas rule -- as you might expect, the strategy includes a lot of lawsuits.
In a just-issued blog post, Doniger promises that environmentalists and others will sue to block the administration from taking any of the four steps that states recently urged Trump to take to roll back the rule, known as the existing source performance standards (ESPS) or Clean Power Plan.
For example: “If Trump issues an executive order that purports to declare the Clean Power Plan unlawful, NRDC and its partners will go to court right away, and we will win,” Doniger says.
If the new administration issues a rule to withdraw the regulation, he notes that “courts look with extra care at agency reversals of prior legal interpretations and factual findings.”
Similarly, if federal officials seek to craft a settlement to eliminate the rule, “As intervenors in the Clean Power Plan cases, NRDC and our state, industry, and other environmental partners will vigorously oppose any improper and collusive settlements,” he writes.
And: “Given the mountain of peer-reviewed science and the overwhelming strength of the scientific consensus on the causes of climate change, the magnitude of the danger, and the urgency of action, there is not a chance that the courts would sustain reversal of the endangerment finding,” the scientific finding that underpins EPA's climate rules.
Doniger was responding to the Dec. 15 letter from a group of attorneys general and environmental regulators from 24 states laying out a four-part strategy for the incoming administration and GOP leaders in Congress to withdraw the ESPS and ensure that “similar or more extreme proposals never again take shape.”
For example, it urged Trump to issue an executive order rescinding President Barack Obama's 2013 memorandum that directed EPA to issue the rule and instructing the agency to “take no further action to enforce or implement the rule.” It then urged the Trump EPA to launch a rulemaking to formally rescind the regulation.
Third, the state officials urged that the incoming administration review all pending litigation related to the rule to “determine whether it may be appropriate to seek to stay or resolve those cases.” And finally, the state officials urge Congress to “consider adopting legislation to address the issues giving rise to the rule.” Such a longer-term response would “ensure that similar or more extreme unlawful steps are not attempted by a future EPA.”
NRDC's Doniger says such efforts will not be easy. “Scrapping the Clean Power Plan and killing off the Clean Air Act will not be as easy as some may think,” he writes. “The rule of law constrains what the incoming administration can do and how they can do it. The rules of politics constrain what even the most ardent climate-deniers can do in Congress. And the rules of the marketplace will keep power companies moving toward clean energy while Washington fiddles with policy.”
Beyond the lawsuits that Doniger promises to bring, he also notes other difficulties the Trump administration will face. For example, Scott Pruitt, who Trump plans to nominate to lead EPA, may not be able to participate in litigation over the rule because “federal ethical rules place limits on switching sides in litigation he initiated against the agency,” he argues.
Similarly, he notes that state opponents of the rule appear to be urging the Trump administration to settle pending litigation in a way that ensures the rule will be eliminated -- a move at odds with many of the states' long-time opposition to “sue-and-settle” litigation that environmentalists filed. That approach also goes beyond any court settlement environmentalists ever won from the Obama administration.
“In cases where EPA has failed to meet statutory timetables, environmental organizations can sometimes get a settlement agreement that resets deadlines for the agency to act. But the EPA will not -- and should not -- commit to how that rulemaking will come out,” he writes.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/climate-nrdc-vows-suits-over-esps-rollback-plans
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Revised Deadline for CRA Repeal Votes Excludes Oil & Gas Methane Rule
Dec 19, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Bridge DiCosmo
Congressional Research Service (CRS) staffers have issued a new projected date of June 13 after which Obama administration regulations would be vulnerable to repeal under Congressional Review Act (CRA) votes, which would appear to exclude from the CRA's reach EPA's final rule cutting methane from new oil and gas sector sources.
Under the CRA, Congress has a brief period during a new administration during which it can disapprove rules issued toward the end of the previous administration by a majority vote in both the House and Senate. Such disapproval resolutions must be signed by the president, meaning the law is most likely to be used during a transition to a new administration with a different view of the rule in question.
A Dec. 15 CRS “insight” says the law could affect regulations that were issued as far back as June 13, a date moved from earlier analysis suggesting the date would be June 2, and previously, May 30.
“The estimated start of the reset period for all rules was determined by counting back from the projected sine die adjournment in the respective chambers -- 60 days of session in the Senate and 60 legislative days in the House -- then taking the earlier of the two dates,” the “insight” says.
The law resets the deadline for Congress to take action on a disapproval resolution if the rule was approved within 60 legislative days of the end of a congressional session.
The CRS document acknowledges that it previously estimated that a sine die adjournment of Dec. 16 would result in a CRA reset date in the House of June 2. Since that earlier estimate, the House decided to hold periodic pro forma sessions until Jan. 3, the day that the 115th Congress begins.
“If the House follows the schedule announced for these pro forma sessions, it appears that the CRA reset date in the House corresponding to this adjournment date will be June 13, 2016,” CRS says, but that estimate would change if the House deviates from its expected schedule.
The agency's June 3 new source performance standards (NSPS) rule for cutting methane emissions from the oil and gas sector that President-elect Donald Trump has already pledged to “abandon” was expected to become a target of the CRA. That is particularly the case because scrapping the NSPS would negate a statutory obligation under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act to issue rules for existing sources of methane in the sector, an effort on which EPA is currently gathering data.
Despite the rule's apparent avoiding of a CRA threat, several states and industry groups are challenging it in appellate court, and the Trump administration could seek to rescind the rule administratively.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/revised-deadline-cra-repeal-votes-excludes-oil-gas-methane-rule
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ND Senator Calls for Remaining Dakota Access Protesters to Leave
Dec 19, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) is pushing tribal officials to help vacate a protest camp set up for those demonstrating against the Dakota Access pipeline.
A group of about 10,000 protesters established two campsites near the pipeline’s proposed route near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation south of Bismarck this fall. They urged federal officials to deny the project, which the tribe says threatens their drinking water and historic land.
Protesters — who have experienced sub-zero temperatures and blizzard conditions so far this month — are winterizing the camp so it can survive the severe weather, Reuters reports. Some protesters have fallen sick and were forced to evacuate to an emergency shelter area.
“We must all follow the rule of law for the safety of everyone and to protect everyone’s rights,” Hoeven said in his statement.
“As fellow North Dakotans — both native and non-native — we need to work together to restore our long-standing good relationship.”
The Army Corps of Engineers this month announced it would not issue an easement for construction of the project. Standing Rock Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault and others then urged protesters to leave the camps, warning about the potential for severe winter weather.
As of this weekend, however, about 1,000 protesters remain at the camp in Cannon Ball, N.D., Reuters reports.
Most, according to the report, are Native Americans concerned about tribal sovereignty issued raised during the campaign against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Some worry the pipeline’s backers will continue building the project if they leave.
Hoeven met with Archambault on Monday, and in a statement said tribal leadership should “work with other state leaders to get people to leave the illegal campsite on Army Corps of Engineers land.”
He reiterated his call to build the $3.8 billion, 1,170-mile Dakota Access project, which the Obama administration rejected last month, and he said the government should “provide federal law enforcement personnel and resources to work with our state and local law enforcement professionals to ensure that any future protests are peaceful and within the law.”
A PR firm retained by the tribe didn’t return a request for comment Monday on Archambault’s meeting with Hoeven.
http://www.thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/311093-nd-senator-calls-for-remaining-dakota-access-protesters-to-leave
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Obama Expected to Ban Offshore Drilling in Some Federal Waters
Dec 19, 2016 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
President Obama is expected to announce as soon as Tuesday that he will use his executive authority to permanently ban new offshore drilling in parts of federally owned waters off the Atlantic coast and in the Arctic Ocean, according to people familiar with the decision.
Mr. Obama, who is searching for ways to bolster his environmental legacy in the last days of his administration, is expected to use a provision in the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to ban the drilling, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because plans for the announcement were not yet final.
The 1953 law, which governs how the executive branch uses and leases federal waters for offshore energy exploration, includes a provision that allows presidents to put those waters off-limits to oil and gas drilling. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton used the law to protect sections of the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, but those protections came with time limits, usually one to two decades.
It is possible that Mr. Obama could use the law to try to permanently protect far wider areas from drilling, said people familiar with his plans, but they stressed that his plans were not yet final.
The use of his executive authority would come as President-elect Donald J. Trump speaks of aiming to undo much of Mr. Obama’s environmental legacy, particularly Environmental Protection Agency rules to combat climate change and Interior Department rules to slow or more heavily regulate drilling, mining and hydraulic fracturing on public lands.
Mr. Trump could easily roll back executive orders and a handful of new environmental regulations, but some protections will be far more difficult to undo.
Environmental advocates have urged Mr. Obama to use the existing authority of the 1953 offshore drilling law to create new environmental protections in federal waters, saying that it would come with the weight and authority of law, rather than an easily reversible executive action.
Under that law, every president puts forth periodic five-year plans laying out how the waters of the nation’s outer continental shelf may be leased for drilling or protected. Mr. Obama’s most recent five-year plan put the entire Atlantic and portions of the Arctic coast off-limits to drilling. But Mr. Trump could easily open them up in his five-year plan.
Using a separate provision of the law to block drilling for far longer would be subject to lawsuits.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/us/obama-expected-to-ban-offshore-drilling-in-some-federal-waters.html?_r=0
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California Sues Feds to Block Offshore Fracking
Dec 20, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joyce E. Cutler
The Interior Department violated federal law in improperly finding that little environmental impact would occur in offshore fracking, California said in a Dec. 19 lawsuit (California v. Dep't of Interior, C.D. Cal., No. 2:16-cv-09352, filed 12/19/16).
A court must halt the Interior Department's environmental assessment approving advanced well stimulation treatments on 22 platforms off of the California coast, the lawsuit said. The federal agency violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements in its “finding of no significant impact.”
“Defendants also violated NEPA by relying on unfounded assumptions rather than taking a ‘hard look’ at the potential environmental impacts, defining the Final Programmatic [Environmental Assessment's] statement of purpose and need in unreasonably narrow terms, and failing to consider all reasonable alternatives to the Proposed Action,” California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) and the California Coastal Commission said in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
“The U.S. Department of Interior's inadequate environmental assessment would open the door to practices like fracking that may pose a threat to the health and well-being of California communities,” Harris, who last month was elected to the Senate, said in a statement.
An Interior Department representative could not be reached for comment.
Injunction to Halt Actions
The state alleges violations of the Coastal Zone Management Act by failing to determine whether the well stimulation is consistent with California's coastal zone management program policies.
The activities would occur on 43 active Southern California leases from Santa Barbara to Orange County.
The state seeks an injunction requiring the Interior Department vacate and set aside approval and prohibit further offshore well stimulation treatments on the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf “unless and until Defendants comply with applicable law.”
The lawsuit joins one that the Environmental Defense Center filed in November alleging the Interior Department failed to assess threats to endangered species while evaluating the impact of continued hydraulic fracturing at oil and gas platforms off of the California coast (Envtl. Def. Ctr. v. Bureau of Ocean Energy Mgt., C.D. Cal., No. 2:16-08418, 11/11/16).
At issue is a programmatic environmental assessment the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement issued in May. The assessment found fracking and acidizing activities from the offshore platforms posed “no significant impact.” The assessment, which followed an earlier Environmental Defense Center lawsuit, applied to hydraulic fracturing, in which a mixture of water, sand and chemicals are injected into a well at extremely high pressures, and acidizing, which involves injecting acid into a well to stimulate oil or gas production.
Comments Interior received during the assessment demonstrate “there are substantial questions, if not certainties, as to whether the proposed action may have significant environmental impacts,” the Coastal Commission and AG's lawsuit said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=102271310&vname=dennotallissues&fn=102271310&jd=102271310
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Resolute Targeting Strong Growth in 2017 from Permian's Delaware
Dec 19, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Onshore independent Resolute Energy Corp. expects to more than double its 2017 production year/year, lifted by solid results in the Permian Basin's Delaware formation.
Annual production is forecast to be 8.7-10.2 million boe, about 85% higher at the mid-point of guidance for 2016, the Denver-based operator said. Capital spending is set at $210-240 million, with 84% focused on Permian development, specifically Wolfcamp wells within the Delaware sub-basin of West Texas. Another 9% of spending is to be directed for maintenance and development tests in the Aneth field in Utah's Paradox Basin.
Resolute's 2017 exit rate is forecast to be more than 30,000 boe/d, 82% weighted to oil and liquids, with more than 24,000 boe/d from the Permian.
"Resolute's 2017 operating plan focuses on following our successful 2016 performance in the Delaware Basin with a two rig drilling program spudding 22 gross wells," said CEO Nicholas J. Sutton.
One rig is running today in the Delaware with a second scheduled to be raised in mid-January, he said. Resolute plans to drill 20.8 net wells in the Permian during 2017, "all mid- and long-length Wolfcamp laterals." Plans are to drill 18 gross Wolfcamp A laterals and four gross Wolfcamp B laterals.
"We expect that the 2017 drilling program will be more than 65% funded internally, with the balance funded through borrowings under our revolving credit facility," Sutton said. "The 2017 program will accomplish a number of important initiatives for the company. We will further delineate our development inventory as we drill wells across our acreage block, conduct multiple spacing tests and complete wells in multiple landing zones in the Wolfcamp A as well as in the Wolfcamp B.
"The success of this program will help confirm the more than 300 Wolfcamp A and B development locations we believe exist in our Mustang and Appaloosa project areas. We expect that substantially all of our acreage will be held by production by the end of 2017."
COO Richard F. Betz, who is taking over as CEO on Jan. 1, hinted that acquisitions could be in the works. Resolute, he said, plans to remain "intensely focused on delivering the same superior level of execution and cost control demonstrated in 2016, we will also look for opportunities to expand our position in the core of the Delaware Basin through targeted acquisitions."
Capital expenditures in the Aneth field are set at $18 million, with $12 million for maintenance, including carbon dioxide purchases of 28 MMcf/d. Another $6 million would be used to derisk development.
Total lease operating expenses (LOE) next year are set at $90-105 million, which at the mid-point is a 51% increase from 2016, reflecting more wells and "substantially higher production levels," management said. "However, on a per-unit basis, mid-point LOE is expected to be $10.32/boe in 2017 compared to $12.59 in 2016, as we add production from wells drilled in our two rig drilling program in Reeves County."
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/108789-resolute-targeting-strong-growth-in-2017-from-permians-delaware
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Tests Fail to Come Up with Chemical in Corpus Christi Water
Dec 20, 2016 | AP (In The Washington Post)
The head of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality says he’s “absolutely” certain a chemical leak occurred to contaminate Corpus Christi’s public water supply although 115 tests have failed to show if an asphalt emulsifying agent made it from an industrial mixing tank to the water supply.
Richard Hyde tells the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (http://bit.ly/2i3wL0K ) that state and federal authorities are looking for the duration, quantity and where the leaked chemical went.
City officials imposed a water ban last Wednesday and lifted it four days later after a rush for bottled water and business and school closings. They later learned the mixing tank held the asphalt chemical.
Hyde says 12 people have complained of symptoms consistent with exposure to the chemical but water samples from those areas show no trace of it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/tests-fail-to-come-up-with-chemical-in-corpus-christi-water/2016/12/20/50c18336-c67b-11e6-acda-59924caa2450_story.html?utm_term=.2ee7a85b2141
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Railroads, Regulators Clash over Braking System for Trains Carrying Flammable Liquids
Dec 19, 2016 | Washington Post
By Ashley Halsey
Just past noon on a Friday in June, a Union Pacific freight train carrying oil jumped the tracks in a small town in Oregon, not far from a school filled with children, and exploded in flames that burned for 14 hours.
Bad tracks were cited as the cause, but federal regulators said a better braking system on the train — based on newer technology — would have contained the disaster. The railroad industry newsletter said the notion that the brake system would have made a difference was “horse manure.”
It was another skirmish in a battle over safety standards that often pits federal regulators against an industry. And while such fights are not uncommon, federal officials say this is one that keeps them awake at nights because of the high stakes — what if the next oil train crash happens in a major metropolitan area?
Regulators have mandated a new electronically controlled braking system that would prevent — or lessen the severity of — crashes like the one in Oregon. The railroad industry calls the requirement a classic example of regulatory overreach. Lawmakers responded to the industry complaints by requiring a pair of new studies that could delay the regulation set to take effect in 2021.
One congressional requirement, for example, stipulates that a train be wrecked to see how many of its cars derail and leak their flammable contents.
“It was deliberate and intentional by the railroad industry to try to make this study as expensive as possible,” said John Risch, who spent 30 years as a BNSF Railway engineer before becoming a rail union lobbyist in Washington. “It’s completely unreasonable. You wouldn’t see that in maritime, you wouldn’t see that in aviation; they do this stuff computer-simulated, without causing this chaotic crash that’s going to cost all kinds of money.”
The railroad industry counters that the new regulation would force it to spend billions of dollars on a braking system that research has not conclusively proven to be more effective than what they are already using.
With the Trump administration taking office in January amid promises to roll back regulations, the railroads hope Congress will hear their concerns.
Included in a post-election message to the Senate from Edward R. Hamberger, president of the Association of American Railroads, was a plea for “stopping unfounded regulatory efforts.”Major-city worries
There have been 19 derailments of trains loaded with flammable liquid — oil or ethanol — in the past six years. Those wrecks have caused 3,272 evacuations, spilled almost 2.8 million gallons and cost an estimated $45 million. A remarkable percentage of those derailments happened in small towns — Plevna, Mont. (population 162), Tiskilwa, Ill. (829), Arcadia, Ohio (590), and Alma, Wis. (781).
Federal officials are increasingly concerned that one of the long trains rolling out of the Bakken oil fields, underlying parts of Montana, North Dakota, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, will explode in a major city. Oil trains snake through cities such as Seattle, Chicago and Philadelphia on their way to coastal refineries. Chicago officials deemed the risk serious enough that the city did a detailed evaluation of the impact should a train explode in various neighborhoods.
Railroads say they have taken every prudent step possible to prevent disasters such as the Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, explosion in 2013 that killed 47 townspeople. They say it is expensive overkill to require electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) braking systems on trains carrying explosive cargo.
The railroads estimate it would cost more than $3 billion to install electronic breaking on the required number of engines and cars, and to educate workers to use them.
The Federal Railroad Administration says it would cost a still-hefty fraction of that: $493 million.
From that simple difference — albeit almost $2.6 billion — the divergence of opinion and calculations between FRA and the railroads spirals rapidly out of control.
The FRA estimates 2,500 locomotives would need to be equipped at a cost of $49,000 each. The railroads say 20,000 locomotives — 83 percent of those they operate — would need ECP, at a cost of $88,000 each. The FRA says 60,000 tank cars need the electronic brakes; the railroads say it is 133,000.
How many railroad workers would need training? The FRA says more than 51,000, the railroads, 78,000.
Even more emphatic is the difference in opinions.
“These are not grain trains, these are hazmat trains,” FRA Administrator Sarah E. Feinberg said. “We specifically require the better braking systems on these trains because in the event of an incident, fewer cars will derail and fewer cars will puncture, which means you’re less likely to have a fire that will endanger lives.
“The science is there, the data is there,” Feinberg said. “Their argument is, despite that data, [they] don’t want to spend the money on it.”
Risch, the former BNSF engineer who has operated trains with ECP brakes, calls them “the foundation of safety in the future of the railroad industry. When a train crew overlooks something, ECP brakes can save the day.”
The railroads disagree.
“ECP braking technology will not result in fewer accidents, does not provide significant safety benefits and, after 15 years of limited rail use, has yet to meet service reliability standards,” said Justin E. Jacobs, a spokesman for Union Pacific, the country’s largest railroad.
At BNSF, the second-largest, spokesman Mike Trevino has a similar view. “The contention has been that electronic brakes are better, safer, more efficient,” he said. “The challenge is that railroads have been unable to prove that out, to demonstrate that there are those benefits.”
Ed Greenberg, spokesman for the American Association of Railroads, a trade group, said, “The ECP brake signaling system has been found to break down more often, while not providing significant safety benefits.”
Conventional brake systems on freight trains use air pressure that moves from one car to the next — from the engine to the last car — to engage the brakes and slow the train. On a train of 100 or more cars — and many oil trains are that length or longer — it takes 7 to 8 seconds until the last car’s brakes begin to engage. The cars farther back keep pushing against those in front of them as they await the signal to brake. If tank cars have less than a full load of liquid, the sloshing as the train slows adds to their momentum.
With ECP braking, the brakes begin to engage on every car almost the instant the engineer presses a button.
“Trains are like giant Slinkies,” said a railroad analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he works in the industry. “When you have that back of the train running into the front of the train, they can actually push cars out, cause a derailment and cause a hell of a mess.”
When the brakes are applied electronically to each car at the same time, he said, that takes “the energy out of the train quicker, so when a train does derail there is less energy that has to be absorbed by crushing tank cars.”
That push from the rear in the Mosier, Ore., wreck may explain why a coupler pierced through another tank car, causing the leak that sparked the fire, he said.
Before the federal mandate last year to require electronically triggered brakes, some railroads were moving in that direction anyway.
When Norfolk Southern put the first ECP-equipped train into service nine years ago, it said in a statement that “ECP brakes have the potential to reduce stopping distances by 60 percent.”
When freight giant BNSF followed suit six months later, one of its customers applauded, saying, “The use of ECP brakes will provide potential for improved safety.”
But once the rule — developed by the FRA and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — was issued 18 months ago, the railroads were less agreeable to the expensive investment.
They already were under pressure to fulfill another federal mandate that followed a California railroad disaster. In 2008, a head-on collision between a freight train and a commuter train in Chatsworth, a Los Angeles suburb, killed 25 people and injured 135. Congress ordered that trains be equipped with an automatic braking system that would have prevented the crash.
Railroads said they had already pumped $6.5 billion into that automatic system last year, when they begged Congress to extend a looming deadline until 2018. The lawmakers came to the rescue, just as they did for the industry again last year on the issue of ECP brakes.
Three key congressional leaders are among the top 10 recipients of campaign contributions from the railroad industry, which has spent upward of $60 million on campaign contributions since 1990. According to federal data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) has received $566,479, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has received $449,615, and John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, has received $353,885 from the railroads.
Congress appended the requirement for the pair of ECP tests to the mammoth five-year transportation bill. One version of the bill would have entrusted the testing to a committee made up primarily of the railroads, but others involved in the talks insisted that the work be done by contractors free of conflicts of interest.
“The original study was going to be tainted by the industry, and the House [transportation] committee fixed up the bill to make it more fair,” Risch recalled.
The first report requested by Congress came from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last month. The GAO questioned federal estimates of the cost benefits of ECP brakes. The report also said that limited data shared by railroads with the FRA “hampered its efforts to estimate . . . their potential benefits.”
A second round of testing that Congress asked for — including full-scale experiments to see how tank cars derail and get punctured — is underway by the Transportation Research Board at the National Academy of Sciences.
In the midst of all that testing, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded in two studies that ECP brakes allow trains to stop in significantly less distance and effectively relieve the energy caused when tank cars crash into one another.
In Mosier, (population 433), they say the wind blows at 30 mph from March to October, but on Friday, June 3, the wind took a holiday. The train carrying Bakken crude from North Dakota to a refinery in Tacoma, Wash., derailed and exploded at lunchtime. No one was killed or injured, but schools and some residents were evacuated.
Fire Chief Jim Appleton told KGW television that on a typical windy day, the school and the town would have been at risk.
“I have a high degree of confidence that the school building would have been at a minimum affected, if not completely incinerated,” he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/railroads-regulators-clash-over-braking-system-for-trains-carrying-flammable-liquids/2016/12/19/68071650-9ad4-11e6-b3c9-f662adaa0048_story.html?utm_term=.43e5ec1bd1ec
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Ozone Standards Arguments Delayed Until April 19: Court
Dec 20, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
Oral arguments over the Environmental Protection Agency's 2015 ozone standards are now scheduled to be heard on April 19, according to a court filing (Murray Energy Corp. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1385, 12/19/16).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit originally scheduled arguments over the 70 parts per billion standards for Feb. 16. However, the court, in an order posted to the docket Dec. 19, announced a change in schedule.
The decision to reschedule arguments was made “on the court's own motion” and a review of the docket shows that none of the industry organizations, states and environmental advocates that are challenging the standards submitted a formal request to change the argument date. One of the parties challenging the standards is Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R), whom President-elect Donald Trump intends to nominate to serve as EPA administrator.
The industry and state petitioners, including Oklahoma, argued in briefs to the court that the 70 ppb standards are illegally unacheivable and should be vacated. Environmental and health advocates that are challenging the rule argued the EPA's standards are not adequately protective under the Clean Air Act.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=102271305&vname=dennotallissues&fn=102271305&jd=102271305
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Scott Pruitt a Needed Change for the EPA
Dec 19, 2016 | The Hill - Contributors Blog
By Nan Hayworth
President Obama once reminded us that “elections have consequences.” He might have added that sometimes those consequences fulfill the aims of the electorate — a point that critics like Gov. Christine Todd Whitman would be well to contemplate.
In her precipitate condemnation of President-elect Trump’s selection of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Gov. Whitman opines ruefully that Mr. Pruitt “obviously doesn’t care much for the agency or any of the regulations it has promulgated.”
This claim can be faulted for being overly broad, but in one sense it expresses precisely what he’s charged with doing — changing the way the EPA pursues its mission. The voting public have made quite clear that they feel the EPA has significantly and consistently overreached, and thereby failed.
That’s not to say that there’s no role for the EPA, and, indeed, when Gov. Whitman accuses Attorney General Pruitt of being “disdainful of the agency,” she’s ignoring the fact that he has unequivocally asserted its necessity to protecting clean air and water.
What he objects to is Obama's EPA repeatedly overstepping its constitutional boundaries, disrespecting the states and promulgating regulations that are excessive, costly, job-killing, and not conducive to improving the environment.
When Scott Pruitt established a federalism unit in Oklahoma, it was in service to assuring the public’s investme
Similarly, Gov. Whitman’s concern that Mr. Pruitt rejects, “the science behind what the agency does,” is yet another piece of fake news. He has not only acknowledged that our climate is changing; he has said that human activity is a factor.
Even better, Scott Pruitt takes a more scientifically sound approach than his critics do, insisting that data be heeded objectively and that reasoned debate—not orthodoxy—inform our policies. He knows, as I do from my background as a physician, that science is never “settled’ — it requires constant study and re-evaluation of existing conclusions.
Gov. Whitman and her fellow “Pruitt skeptics” should be reassured by the many examples of the attorney general’s respect for the environment. Pruitt negotiated a historic water rights settlement with his state’s Indian tribes that preserved the ecosystems of scenic lakes and rivers for generations to come.
He also commissioned a fresh study of phosphorus load data for an agreement between Arkansas and Oklahoma to reduce pollution in the Illinois River. In addition, he's represented Oklahomans in numerous actions against industrial polluters and in utility rate cases.
Pruitt is accomplished, dedicated, and committed to achieving the balance that the Obama EPA failed to strike between environmental protection and economic prosperity. He’s clearly equipped to manage the agency’s personnel and protocols to deliver maximum effectiveness — melding an evidence-based scientific approach with respect for the public cost of imposition.
Gov. Whitman, the Bush-era predecessor to Attorney General Pruitt at the EPA, deserves credit for her service to the country. Regrettably, Whitman was out of sync with her party and most of the country in the last election, supporting Hillary Clinton.
Now that the people have spoken, the president-elect and his EPA nominee deserve the opportunity to prove they can assure the kind of stewardship of our air, land, water, and wildlife intended by the Republican administration that brought the EPA into existence.
The pair especially deserve that consideration from Republicans who aspire to lift unnecessary burdens that have crippled our economy and harmed our competitiveness. Those burdens have made it hard for most Americans to tap into personal resources that facilitate market investment in clean energy and conservation — a major component of truly enhancing environmental protection.
Gov. Whitman, and others who have leapt to unnecessarily histrionic conclusions, should take heart in the real-world evidence — Scott Pruitt gives every indication that we can be confident in his intentions and his abilities to make the EPA better and stronger.
Nan Hayworth, M.D., is a former U.S. Representative for New York's 19th Congressional District.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/311084-scott-pruitt-a-needed-change-for-the-epa
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Mattis: Trump Cabinet's Lone Green Hope?
Dec 19, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Wolff
Defense secretary nominee James Mattis may turn out to be the greenest person in Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
In an incoming administration loaded with high-ranking fossil-fuel promoters and climate-change skeptics, Mattis stands out as one of the military’s most vocal advocates for weaning the armed services off traditional energy — including his George W. Bush-era plea for researchers to "unleash us from the tether of fuel." The retired Marine Corps general has also joined other military planners in identifying the potential upheaval around the world from climate change as one of the biggest security threats facing the U.S. in the coming decades.
Mattis has not said whether he would continue that agenda as the Pentagon’s top civilian leader — especially given the president-elect’s own dismissal of man-made climate change as a Chinese-inspired “hoax.” But people who have followed Mattis’ career say he can be counted on to speak his mind, both inside the administration and to the Republican lawmakers planning to dismantle President Barack Obama's clean-energy agenda.
"I don’t think Congress is going to get in the way of someone as respected as Jim Mattis [trying] to help move America to back away from fossil fuels," said Paul Eaton, a former Army general who served in Iraq and serves on the board of advisers of the liberal group VoteVets. For greens, Mattis may be a rare ray of hope that the coming administration won't completely walk away from clean-energy initiatives.
"The military has led the way on the transition to clean energy, not just because it is a solution to the national security threat that is the climate crisis, but because clean energy helps solve mission-related problems for our armed forces," said John Coequyt, the Sierra Club's director of federal and international climate campaigns. "Our military makes decisions based on what it takes to succeed, so as clean energy has gotten more affordable and more accessible, we aren't worried that there will be any regression."
On the other hand, Trump certainly didn't pick Mattis for his views on climate change, which the president-elect has downplayed as a potential security threat. "The biggest risk to the world, to me — I know President Obama thought it was climate change — to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s — that is climate change," Trump told The Washington Post editorial board in March.
Trump's team and Mattis did not respond to requests for comment.
Mattis' support for shifting away from fossil fuels was crystallized in Iraq, where he commanded the 1st Marine Division during the 2003 invasion. His forces regularly outran their fuel supplies, slowing their advance. During the subsequent occupation, moving fuel tankers around the country to U.S. forward operating bases was one of the military’s most dangerous tasks.
In 2005, as commander of Marine Corps Combat Development Command, he instructed Navy researchers to find ways to improve the efficiency of military vehicles and otherwise reduce the strain that energy put on supply lines. His "tether" plea, found in the 2006 Future Fuels assessment, soon showed up in energy-related research reports and presentations throughout the military.
Obama embraced that goal as well, leading to initiatives such as the Experimental Forward Operating Base, in which Marines tested technologies like solar blankets to power their batteries, as well as a biofuels initiative to develop renewable fuels for aircraft and ships.
In 2010, when Mattis was commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, he signed off on the Joint Operating Environment, which lists climate change as one of the security threats the military expected to confront over the next 25 years.
"From economic trends to climate change and vulnerability to cyber attack, we outline those trends that remind us we must stay alert to what is changing in the world if we intend to create a military as relevant and capable as we possess today," Mattis wrote in his foreword.
But Republicans have scorned the Pentagon’s Obama-era green policies, including a 2012 commitment by the Defense Department that it will generate 25 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025.
“When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda, we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies like ISIS,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) said in a statement earlier this year, as he pushed to block a directive requiring the Defense Department to consider the impacts of climate change in its decision-making.
For the military, though, green-energy initiatives have focused less on addressing climate change itself than on improving its ability to wage war.
"That sort of stuff gets tethered in with the climate portfolio, but the DOD, the uniform military, has usually been pretty good about separating out the reasons why you do things," said Andrew Holland, a senior fellow for energy and climate at the nonprofit American Security Project.
Jim Morin, a member of the Truman National Security Project, predicted that Mattis would continue to focus on reducing the armed forces' dependency on fuels and energy sources that constrain it.
"It’s nice that it overlapped with Obama administration’s goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but everything that was done was done for reasons like supporting the warfighter and enabling victory on the battlefield," said Morin, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I think Jim Mattis will be protective of those efforts and want to see that continue."
Conservatives who oppose government support for renewable fuels don't typically stand in the way of operational improvements for the military, but they have fought against efforts they perceive as driven by a green political agenda. Those include a biofuel procurement plan for the Navy and Obama’s 25-percent renewable energy requirement.
Republicans have sought to use the National Defense Authorization Act to block pieces of this agenda. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) tried to block the Navy's biofuel program in 2012, and Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) has tried to stop a 2013 executive order requiring federal agencies to prepare for climate change and a 2015 order requiring agencies to plan for sustainability.
Those executive orders are a waste of time and taxpayer money, Fleming said in a statement, saying they "put our country at more risk as the president would rather focus on 'going green' than on real, credible threats."
Conservatives say their complaint is about White House environmental policies compromising the military’s mission. That means Mattis may face less resistance if he chooses to pursue green-energy policies for military reasons alone.
"If President Obama leaves office and they’re singing the same tune, that’s fine," said Nick Loris, an energy and environment economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "It’s not the use of renewables that’s the problem here, it’s the mandate from the Pentagon."
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2016/12/green-leaning-mattis-could-lead-to-tension-with-trump-republicans-139890
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