Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 2/17/17
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(ACC Mentioned) Broad Coalition Presses Congress For Speedy PRIA Renewal
Feb 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
A coalition of industry, environmental and other groups is urging Congress to swiftly approve legislation that would re-authorize for seven years the program allowing EPA to collect industry fees to support timely pesticide reviews just as a House panel... -
EPA Staff Takes Dim View Of Planned Trump Visit To Agency Headquarters
Feb 17, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
President Donald Trump's planned visit to EPA headquarters to sign executive orders (EO) scaling back the agency's climate change and other work is prompting questions about whether the president and Administrator-nominee Scott Pruitt... -
Senate Democrats Vow Strict Oversight Of Pruitt's Tenure As EPA Chief
Feb 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
Senate Democrats are vowing strict oversight of Oklahoma Attorney General (AG) Scott Pruitt (R) after he wins confirmation as the next EPA administrator, warning his time as agency chief is not “going to end well” and drawing parallels with... -
E.P.A. Workers Try to Block Pruitt in Show of Defiance
Feb 16, 2017 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
Employees of the Environmental Protection Agency have been calling their senators to urge them to vote on Friday against the confirmation of Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s contentious nominee to run the agency, a remarkable display of activism and defiance... -
Senate Dems Demand Answers On Trump's 2-For-1 Order
Feb 16, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Arianna Skibell
Democratic senators are speaking out against President Trump's executive order that directs agencies to trash two regulations for every new one and establishes a regulatory budget. -
New Cleaning Institute CEO Faces Shifting Policy Landscape
Feb 17, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Steering the American Cleaning Institute through political and policy changes to extend its focus on safety and sustainability are the central goals for the institute's new president and chief executive officer. -
EPA Aiding Monsanto In Cancer Cover Up?
Feb 16, 2017 | Legal Reader
By Sara E. Teller
A new court filing made on Friday, February 10th, has indicated that The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may be aiding Monsanto in covering up the cancer-causing effects of Roundup. -
D.C. Circuit Ruling Could Determine Trump EPA Options For Revising CPP
Feb 17, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Abby Smith
As a federal appellate court prepares to rule on the legality of EPA's power plant greenhouse gas rule, supporters and critics say that how the court rules -- assuming it upholds the regulation -- could inform or affect the Trump administration's options... -
Trump, Members Huddle on Energy Projects, Regulatory Agencies
Feb 17, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Hannah Hess
President Trump talked about pipeline development and streamlining the permitting process during a private huddle yesterday with some of his first House supporters, according to Rep. Kevin Cramer. -
Opponents Bristle As TransCanada Files In Neb.
Feb 16, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey
TransCanada Corp. requested Nebraska's consent today to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline through the state, one of the most high-profile and difficult pending approvals. -
Colorado Criticizes Study Linking Childhood Leukemia, Drilling
Feb 17, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
The head of Colorado's health department called “misleading” a new study concluding young people and children with leukemia are 4.3 times more likely to live in areas of high-density oil and gas development than those with other cancers. -
Judge Orders Pruitt To Release Emails By Tuesday
Feb 16, 2017 | PoliticoPro -Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
A state judge in Oklahoma today ordered Scott Pruitt to release by Tuesday potentially thousands of emails he exchanged with fossil fuel interests in his job as attorney general, according to the watchdog groups that sued seeking the communications. -
By Investing in Science, Trump Can Strengthen the Economy
Feb 16, 2017 | New York Times
By Michael S. Lubell and Burton Richter
Science and technology have powered America’s economic engine for more than 70 years. But federal support has been getting leaner. -
Dakota Access Owner Says Pipelines Safer Than Rail Yet Owns Rail Hub Connected to Pipeline
Feb 17, 2017 | DeSmog
By Steve Horn
In response to the ongoing battle over the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, the oil industry and the groups it funds have started a new refrain: transporting crude oil through pipelines is safer than by “dangerous” rail. -
Environmentalists, Industry Trade Attacks In Utility MACT Suit
Feb 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
Environmentalists and industry groups are trading attacks over the others' justifications for asking the court to force an EPA reconsideration of remaining issues in litigation over the agency's utility maximum achievable control technology (MACT) air toxics rule. -
Trump Said to Prepare Directives Dismantling Obama Climate Rule
Feb 17, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
President Donald Trump is planning to sign directives aimed at dismantling Obama-era policies governing carbon dioxide and water pollution soon after a new leader is installed at the EPA, according to two people familiar with the strategy. -
Shimkus Eyes Bipartisan Brownfields Push In Lieu Of Overhauling Air Law
Feb 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) says he hopes lawmakers can reach bipartisan compromise on legislation to reform EPA's brownfields redevelopment program similar to the broad consensus he helped achieve on last year's overhaul of federal toxics law... -
EPA Pulls Rule On Particulate Monitoring Requirements
Feb 16, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA has withdrawn a direct final rule related to the monitoring of airborne particulate matter after a utility industry trade group objected. -
July G-20 Summit Seen as Best Hope to Keep U.S. in Climate Pact
Feb 17, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
Senate Democrats and climate advocates are viewing the next G-20 summit of world leaders in July as perhaps their last best hope to persuade President Donald Trump to stay in the Paris climate pact—if Trump can be convinced to hold off that long. -
Don’t Wimp Out on Climate
Feb 16, 2017 | Wall Street Journal
By Kimberley A. Strassel
President Trump will soon turn his attention to another major campaign promise—rolling back the Obama climate agenda—and according to one quoted administration source his executive orders on that topic will “suck the air out of the room.” -
California Punts Vote on 2030 Climate Strategy to June
Feb 17, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
California put off until June a vote on a new climate change plan after environmental justice advocates and some business groups said more public input and analysis is necessary.
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(ACC Mentioned) Broad Coalition Presses Congress For Speedy PRIA Renewal
Feb 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
A coalition of industry, environmental and other groups is urging Congress to swiftly approve legislation that would re-authorize for seven years the program allowing EPA to collect industry fees to support timely pesticide reviews just as a House panel took the first step in advancing the legislation.
The House Agriculture Committee Feb. 16 advanced by voice vote H.R. 1029, which would extend through fiscal year 2023 EPA's Pesticide Registration Improvement Renewal Act (PRIA) authority.
The legislation also seeks to expand the categories of products eligible for review using collected fees and also requires the agency to develop data requirements for companies making efficacy claims for their products.
Groups ranging from the American Chemistry Council, the Consumer Specialty Products Association (CSPA) and the Natural Resources Defense Council are urging Congress to quickly pass the PRIA extension. “PRIA-4 will continue the positive progress that the original PRIA brought to the pesticide registration process, and Congress should move quickly to reauthorize the highly successful pesticide registration program and provide certainty for the regulated community,” the groups say.
But H.R. 953, another bill the committee approved by voice vote that seeks to exempt certain pesticide spraying from Clean Water Act (CWA) permit requirements, drew criticism from environmentalists.
“This legislation is just a giveaway to gigantic pesticide corporations, and deprives the public of its ability to know when pesticides are sprayed directly into rivers and lakes, even our drinking water,” said Brett Hartl at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Given that more than 1,000 U.S. waterways are already designated as impaired from pesticide pollution, it’s lunacy to forbid the EPA to use the Clean Water Act to address this serious threat to public health.”
First enacted in 2004, PRIA allows EPA to collect industry fees to support its Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act pesticide registration process, and in return, EPA agrees to deadlines for registration decisions. Some fees are put aside for farmworker protection programs, which has garnered support for the program from advocates.
The House bill would increase annual fees from $27.8 million to $31 million, and set deadlines for the agency to develop a rule and guidance on data requirements for consumer products claiming efficacy against a variety of pests including bed bugs, flying insects and pests controlled by pet collars.
A CSPA fact sheet says the bill would allow EPA to continue to provide predictable timelines for more than 200 categories of FIFRA-registered products. The bill also would set aside $500,000 for EPA to meet deadlines for new efficacy guidelines for certain products, such as those targeting bed bugs, which will inform industry testing.
Although EPA and industry officials have praised PRIA for bringing increased funding and improved efficiency to the pesticide registration process, maintaining the program has faced hurdles in Congress. The most recent re- authorization, in 2012, was slow to pass Congress, prompting warnings from EPA officials that failing to renew PRIA would slow significantly pesticide registration decisions.
“Reauthorizing PRIA is extremely important for our farmers because it means certainty for an industry that already is forced to deal with many unknowns,” Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL) who introduced the bill Feb. 14 says in a statement. “Before PRIA, pesticide registration could take anywhere from two to eight years. We must reauthorize it to ensure transparency and consistency within the pesticide registration process. This legislation is bipartisan and it provides benefits to agriculture stakeholders that are critical to our economy.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/broad-coalition-presses-congress-speedy-pria-renewal
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EPA Staff Takes Dim View Of Planned Trump Visit To Agency Headquarters
Feb 17, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves
President Donald Trump's planned visit to EPA headquarters to sign executive orders (EO) scaling back the agency's climate change and other work is prompting questions about whether the president and Administrator-nominee Scott Pruitt might seek to require staff to attend, further deflating staffers' low morale.
One former EPA official asks, “Can Trump order EPA staff to be in the room?” The source says that career staff have been largely paralyzed by the Trump transition and beachhead teams, which imposed a communications freeze on headquarters officials, criticized agency scientists and hobbled work across program offices.
One Trump administration source told InsideEPA/climate Feb. 14 that the planned visit -- which will come after Pruitt is confirmed by the Senate -- is aimed at sending a message that Pruitt is ready to get to work on core clean air, water and waste issues, rather than climate change. The message could “suck the air out” of the room.
The Senate is expected to have enough votes to confirm Pruitt, with a final vote occuring as soon as Feb. 17. In that scenario, Trump's visit to the agency could occur the following week, the source says.
The source would not share the content or number of EOs to be signed, but they are expected to dramatically scale back the agency's climate change work and could revoke former President Barack Obama's Climate Action Plan and direct the agency to begin revoking the Clean Power Plan greenhouse gas rule and the Clean Water Act jurisdiction rule.
The former EPA official says agency staff would prefer not to attend what may be a command performance with the new administrator and the new president because neither have signaled support for the agency's mission.
Also, this source notes that the beachhead team is successfully scaring agency employees into keeping quiet by holding closed-door meetings with small numbers of staff and giving them orders -- such as to begin removing climate-related information from the agency's website.
The team is reportedly not putting many orders in writing, so they cannot be sought later under the Freedom of Information Act, the source says. Also, the meetings are intentionally small so administration officials can identify staff if information is leaked.
The source says this practice is having an extremely chilling effect on the agency's workforce, as did a transition team request in the waning days of the Obama administration for a list of names of every employee that could post to an EPA social media account.
Trump campaigned on a platform of getting rid of EPA entirely, or “leaving a little bit of it.” Pruitt has made a career of suing the agency over myriad regulations during his tenure as Oklahoma attorney general. And former EPA transition leader Myron Ebell advocates deep agency budget cuts and radical staff reductions from 15,000 to 5,000.
More than 450 former EPA employees signed a Feb. 6 letter to the Senate objecting to Pruitt, including some politically appointed regional administrators along with career scientists, attorneys, analysts and others.
Also, about 30 Region 5 staffers joined a Feb. 6 anti-Pruitt protest during their lunch hour, according to a Chicago Tonight report. EPA protestors included chemist Wayne Whipple, who said, “Please, keep us doing what we're doing. Let us do what we do.”
EPA spokesman Doug Ericksen sought to downplay the Chicago protest, telling Reuters that “employees have a right to take action on their private time.” But top EPA career officials have also cautioned the agency to remember they must comply with Hatch Act ethical requirements that largely prohibit them from engaging in political activity as part of their work, according to a Feb. 3 email to all staff obtained by Inside EPA.
The Reuters article notes that Trump has also vowed to cut oil, gas and coal rules, though he says he can do so without compromising air and water quality.
Intentional Provocation
But EPA employees are worried that the bedrock air and water protections are under dire threat, and that Trump and Pruitt will impose dramatic budget and staff cuts.
The administration is said to be considering shuttering the agency's independent enforcement office and shuttling enforcement duties into the program offices -- a move that has already faced some pushback.
Some EPA staff are considering how to “slow-walk” Trump's orders, though one agency lawyer says that most employees will comply with them, short of catastrophic actions. “Unless there's an abject abandoning of EPA's role in the world, we'll do what we're told to do,” Region 5 attorney Nicole Cantello told the New York Times Feb. 11.
But a Trump visit to EPA headquarters to target agency authority and limit the scope of its work would be viewed as an intentional provocation by many agency staffers.
The former EPA official compares it to Trump's visit to CIA headquarters Jan. 21, noting news reports that Trump brought supporters to the meeting to sit alongside agency employees to cheer during his speech.
However, unlike the planned EPA visit, the CIA event was seen as somewhat of an olive branch, after Trump harshly criticized the intelligence community for investigating potential Russian hacking in the election and his potential ties to the country.
“There is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump,” Trump said that day, according to the Washington Post. That report also noted the event was the first in what aides said would be a series of visits by Trump to federal agencies. Much of his remarks complained about media coverage of the size of his inaugural crowd the prior day.
The CIA visit was on a Saturday and staff was not required to attend. Many did not, though CBS News reported that Trump brought his own cheering crowd to the speech.
Government officials pushed back against the perception that the CIA workforce was cheering for Trump, and said the first three rows were made up of campaign supporters, though that charge was later denied by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who said there were no “Trump or White House folks” in the first rows. But then Spicer's account was called inaccurate by a source who helped plan the CIA visit, according to CBS.
A 'Real Nice Touch'
In response to a question from Inside EPA on whether employees could be required to attend a Trump meeting, an agency spokesperson says, “While EPA would welcome a visit by President Trump, there is not a visit scheduled at this time. The President’s schedule is managed by the White House."
The former EPA official argues that federal workers have integrity and are required to take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and that EPA career staff will be unlikely to voluntarily attend or applaud Trump or Pruitt.
One industry lawyer says sarcastically that the planned visit is a “real nice touch. Staff will love this.”
Sierra Club issued a statement in response to the planned EOs, saying, “Undermining the international leadership the U.S. has shown on climate action would be an enormous mistake of historic consequence. If Trump does follow through it would mean he is declaring open season on our air, water and climate while further destabilizing our role in the world.”
Meanwhile, Acting EPA Administrator Catherine McCabe flagged “challenges” ahead of Pruitt's expected confirmation in a Feb. 13 video message to staff, where she discussed Trump's hiring freeze and a separate EO imposing a government-wide requirement that two regulations be withdrawn for every new one that is issued.
“The freeze on hiring is already creating some challenges to our ability to get the agency's work done,” McCabe said in the message, adding that the freeze has raised many questions that she is still trying to answer.
The former EPA official adds that little work appears to be getting done or at least is not getting communicated to the public.
EPA headquarters has not posted a press release to its website since Jan. 19, which is also the same date that the agency's Facebook page and numerous Twitter feeds were last updated. The agency's 10 regions have been sending press releases, mostly regarding relatively minor matters.
However, the agency did issue its draft annual greenhouse gas inventory Feb. 14, with plans to issue a final version by April. That report is required to be issued by statute. A notice about the report's availability was published in the Federal Register, but EPA did not publish a press release about it.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-staff-takes-dim-view-planned-trump-visit-agency-headquarters
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Senate Democrats Vow Strict Oversight Of Pruitt's Tenure As EPA Chief
Feb 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
Senate Democrats are vowing strict oversight of Oklahoma Attorney General (AG) Scott Pruitt (R) after he wins confirmation as the next EPA administrator, warning his time as agency chief is not “going to end well” and drawing parallels with Reagan-era EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch Buford, who was forced to resign in disgrace.
At a Feb. 16 press conference at the Capitol, several Democrats on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW) vowed to drag out ongoing floor debate over Pruitt's nomination for as long as they could, up to 30 hours. Yet Pruitt is all but assured to win confirmation because no Republican except Sen. Susan Collins (ME) plans to vote against him, and the nominee also has the support of two moderate Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Heidi Heitkamp (ND).
The Senate voted 54-46 on Feb. 16 to limit debate on Pruitt's nomination, teeing up a final confirmation vote around 1 p.m. Feb. 17. Collins voted to limit debate but will vote against confirmation. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will miss the final vote because he is traveling to an overseas conference. However, the final vote is not expected to include any other changes from the procedural tally.
The planned vote would occur just before senators leave for a week-long President's Day recess. Any delay would have prevented Pruitt from beginning work for another week and would have given environmentalists more time to try to persuade more Republican senators to oppose the nomination.
As a result, once Pruitt is confirmed, Democratic senators are planning multiple unspecified steps regarding litigation, ethics disclosure, and press inquiries that can “open things up quite a lot” to lawmakers' scrutiny, according to EPW member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). He said Pruitt's record challenging EPA regulations is a massive conflict of interest for an administrator, adding his tenure leading the agency would not “end well.”
Citing the Democrats' strategy of a multi-pronged oversight approach to Pruitt as EPA chief, Whitehouse noted that the Feb. 13 resignation of President Donald Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn occurred not because of bipartisan hearings in Congress, but “the work of a lot of people.”
The EPW members also reiterated their call to delay consideration of Pruitt's nomination until further developments in an ongoing Oklahoma state court case in which the American Civil Liberties Union and other open records supporters are seeking emails related to Pruitt's tenure as the Sooner State's AG.
Delay Request
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), ranking member on EPW, said Democrats had requested a delay on Pruitt's vote until Feb. 27, but that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had declined the request at least twice.
The state court is holding an expedited hearing Feb. 16, where it will consider a request to force disclosure of thousands of Pruitt emails, and Carper suggested that the content of those messages could help highlight Democrats' concerns about the nominee -- including his litigation over a slew of Obama-era EPA regulations, as well as his connections to various industries, such as the oil and gas sector.
Whitehouse charged that Republicans had a “fixation” with forcing release of emails from former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and from former Obama EPA Administrators Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy. But for Pruitt, “all they do is look at the ceiling tiles,” he said.
Whitehouse noted that Pruitt as AG has pursued extensive litigation against EPA regulations designed to protect air and water quality and to address climate change, and doubted Pruitt would defend them once confirmed. He said that Pruitt wants to turn EPA from an environmental “watchdog” into a “lapdog” for industry.
The senator said that Pruitt has a conflict of interest because of his record opposing EPA and press reports about his ties to industry. For example, in 2011 the nominee largely adopted -- with minor changes -- an oil and gas company-crafted letter to EPA opposing methane limits on the sector, but signed it under his own name.
“Conflicts of interest end in scandal, they end in litigation, they end in prosecution, and given where Mr. Pruitt is, I don't see any way that his tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency ends well,” Whitehouse said. “I believe that our Republican friends will rue the day that they had this nomination rammed through the Senate on the very day that the emails were being litigated in Oklahoma in order to get ahead of any counter-pressure.”
Gorsuch Parallels
The senator also drew parallels with Buford, the Reagan-era EPA administrator who resigned in disgrace after allegations that the agency mishandled its Superfund program. Her son, appellate Judge Neil Gorsuch, is Trump's nominee to be the next Supreme Court justice.
A former EPA official who served under Buford has warned about the tensions when political appointees seek to undermine the agency's mission. Lauren Stiller Rikleen, a lawyer in EPA Region 1 during her tenure and now a workforce consultant, writes in the Atlantic Group publication Quartz that Buford's “22-month stint as head of the EPA provides a painful history lesson about what happens when you put someone in charge of a federal agency who fiercely opposes its mission and disrespects the professionals who work there.”
At the press event, Carper also noted the controversy over Buford and said that similar to Congress' strict oversight at the time, Pruitt's emails and other actions will be “closely monitored” by Democrats.
“In my gut, I feel that these emails, the nature of these emails and the entities with whom they were sent and received will help us understand the truth,” he said. After learning the truth, senators “won't make a mistake” in voting on Pruitt's nomination.
Due to the imminent vote, however, “that opportunity is going to be denied to us.”
Carper also suggested that the emails could harm GOP senators who might otherwise vote against Pruitt if they knew what was in the messages. Carper said he fears that several GOP colleagues are being put in a “very bad position and asked to vote for a nominee that they otherwise may not support.”
In addition to Carper and Whitehouse, Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth (IL), Ed Markey (MA) and Jeff Merkley (OR) all spoke in opposition to Pruitt and vowed to delay a final floor vote for as long as they could.
But barring any last-minute surprises, the nominee appears set for confirmation by the end of the week.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/senate-democrats-vow-strict-oversight-pruitts-tenure-epa-chief
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E.P.A. Workers Try to Block Pruitt in Show of Defiance
Feb 16, 2017 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
Employees of the Environmental Protection Agency have been calling their senators to urge them to vote on Friday against the confirmation of Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s contentious nominee to run the agency, a remarkable display of activism and defiance that presages turbulent times ahead for the E.P.A.
Many of the scientists, environmental lawyers and policy experts who work in E.P.A. offices around the country say the calls are a last resort for workers who fear a nominee selected to run an agency he has made a career out of fighting — by a president who has vowed to “get rid of” it.
“Mr. Pruitt’s background speaks for itself, and it comes on top of what the president wants to do to E.P.A.,” said John O’Grady, a biochemist at the agency since the first Bush administration and president of the union representing the E.P.A.’s 15,000 employees nationwide.
Nicole Cantello, an E.P.A. lawyer who heads the union in the Chicago area, said: “It seems like Trump and Pruitt want a complete reversal of what E.P.A. has done. I don’t know if there’s any other agency that’s been so reviled. So it’s in our interests to do this.”
The union has sent emails and posted Facebook and Twitter messages urging members to make the calls.
“It is rare,” said James A. Thurber, the director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. “I can’t think of any other time when people in the bureaucracy have done this.”
The campaign is not likely to succeed. Before Friday’s vote, two Democratic senators, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, announced that they would vote for Mr. Pruitt’s confirmation, and only one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, has said she will oppose him.
But because Civil Service rules make it difficult to fire federal workers, the show of defiance indicates that Mr. Pruitt will face strong internal opposition to many of his promised efforts to curtail E.P.A. activities and influence.
“What it means is that it’s going to be a blood bath when Pruitt gets in there,” said Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican former governor of New Jersey and the E.P.A. administrator during the first term of President George W. Bush.
Ms. Whitman predicted a standoff between career employees and their politically appointed bosses, noting that Mr. Pruitt would be blocked by legal Civil Service protections from immediately firing longtime employees, but would probably be able to retaliate in other ways, such as shifting them to different jobs.
The showdown could embolden the White House and Congress to change federal Civil Service laws.
“The Civil Service is supposed to be a class of experts implementing policy, regardless of politics,” said Myron Ebell, a fellow at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, who led Mr. Trump’s environmental transition team. “If they have now become a special interest group pleading their own agenda, then it is probably time to look at reforming the Civil Service laws.”
The revolt has also angered supporters of Mr. Pruitt.
“There clearly has been an organized effort to demonize Pruitt, and I think that’s unfair and unfortunate,” said Jeffrey Holmstead, a senior E.P.A. official in the George W. Bush administration who has been mentioned as a possible deputy to Mr. Pruitt. “I don’t remember, in my time, anything like this. But I think that anyone Trump nominated would be targeted.”
“We know that he’ll dismantle Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule, but he’s not going to go in there and start firing people,” said Mr. Holmstead, referring to Obama regulations on climate change and water pollution.
Mr. Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, has sued the E.P.A. at least 14 times, often in concert with the nation’s largest fossil fuel companies, to block major environmental regulations. He has questioned human-caused global warming and is a key architect of the national legal effort to dismantle former President Barack Obama’s climate change policies.
He has harshly criticized the role of the federal agency, saying much of its authority should be dissolved and left to the states. Mr. Pruitt’s legal views on environmental protection broadly, and the role of the E.P.A. specifically, appear to line up with Mr. Trump’s campaign claim that “Environmental Protection, what they do is a disgrace.”
Within days of Mr. Pruitt’s swearing-in, Mr. Trump is expected to sign one or more executive orders aimed at undoing Mr. Obama’s climate change regulations, and possibly to begin dismantling some E.P.A. offices and programs, people familiar with the White House’s plans said.
While it will be impossible to undo most major rules or programs that quickly, the presidential signatures would authorize Mr. Pruitt to cut existing environmental regulations — and, eventually, the jobs of many of the people who enforce them.
Ms. Cantello said most of her career at the E.P.A. had been focused on water protection, particularly on cleaning pollution in the Great Lakes. “I’m afraid all the work I’ve done will be abandoned,” she said.
Ms. Cantello and other longtime agency employees said that while they sometimes chafed under the administration of George W. Bush, who sought to loosen some environmental rules, they did not openly rebel against it — nor, they said, did they fear that Mr. Bush and his appointees wanted to eliminate the agency.
“I’ve been here for 30 years, and I’ve never called my senator about a nominee before,” said an E.P.A. employee in North Carolina who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of losing her job.
The calls to senators come on top of an anti-Pruitt protest last week by Chicago E.P.A. employees, and agency workers say that if Mr. Pruitt is confirmed, they intend to amplify their resistance to him, taking their case to the American public.
“At this point, it’s just, ‘call your senator,’” Mr. O’Grady, the union president, said. “We plan on more demonstrations, more rallies. I think you will see the employees’ union reaching out to N.G.O.s and having alliances with them,” he added, referring to nongovernmental organizations. “We’re looking at working with P.R. firms.”
he White House and E.P.A. did not respond to emailed questions about the employees’ campaign.
The E.P.A. emerged as a Republican political target during the Obama administration, after Mr. Obama turned to the agency to muscle through an environmental agenda that could not get through Congress.
While Mr. Trump campaigned on slashing Obama-era rules on climate change and waterways, his efforts might also be thwarted by Congress. But the E.P.A. is likely to be at the center of his antiregulatory agenda.
Experts say it is not surprising that liberal and environmental groups like the Sierra Club have campaigned against Mr. Pruitt. Over 700 former E.P.A. employees have signed a letter to senators opposing his confirmation.
The Center for Media and Democracy, a left-leaning group, successfully sued the Oklahoma attorney general’s office to release about 3,000 of Mr. Pruitt’s emails, which they say could reveal more about his ties to fossil fuel companies. An Oklahoma judge ruled Thursday that the emails must be released but gave the attorney general’s office until Tuesday to comply, long enough to avoid roiling the confirmation vote unless Democrats can persuade Senate Republicans to hold off.
But former E.P.A. officials said the open rebellion by current employees was extraordinary, especially considering that their resistance could backfire once Mr. Pruitt arrives on the job.
“E.P.A. staff are pretty careful. They’re risk-averse,” said Judith Enck, who left the agency last month. “If people are saying and doing things like this, it’s because they’re really concerned.”
Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said on Wednesday that his office had received dozens of calls from people both opposing and supporting Mr. Pruitt’s nomination, including E.P.A. employees, and that he had not yet decided whether to vote for him. “I do have concerns about the Great Lakes,” he said.
Mr. O’Grady said that he expected the calls to continue through Friday’s vote. “I pray they don’t dismantle the E.P.A.,” he said. “It’s going to be like Humpty Dumpty — very difficult to put back together again.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/us/politics/scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency.html?_r=0
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Senate Dems Demand Answers On Trump's 2-For-1 Order
Feb 16, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Arianna Skibell
Democratic senators are speaking out against President Trump's executive order that directs agencies to trash two regulations for every new one and establishes a regulatory budget.
Environment and Public Works ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.), along with eight others, sent a letter yesterday to the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mark Sandy, expressing concern and demanding answers.
"We are concerned that the President, in issuing this order, is ignoring the benefits for public health, safety and otherwise, that regulations put forward by agencies can bring to society as a whole," they wrote.
The letter was signed by Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Gary Peters of Michigan, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
"Further, the order may cause undue burdens on government employees who are required to issue and review regulations as well as industry, consumers, and others who are subject to them."
The Jan. 30 executive order directs the OMB chief to oversee agency implementation of the plan.
The order also directs the heads of all agencies to incur zero regulatory costs for fiscal 2017, unless the OMB director says otherwise. Moving forward, agency leaders must offset any rule costs by eliminating old rules.
The senators said they understand that the federal regulatory process can be "cumbersome" and that some regulations impose additional costs and requirements on businesses. But they said the idea that all rules are a "detriment" to the economy is false.
"If agencies are hamstrung by a top-down restrictive policy that imposes requirements to identify offsets before promulgating rules, these agencies may not be able to efficiently and effectively carry out the will of Congress," they said.
"Without certainty in the rulemaking process, industry, consumers, and federal employees stand to lose significant time, money, and essential protections borne out by a common-sense regulatory policy."
The senators demanded OMB respond to a number of questions by March 1. They asked how the administration plans to account for the benefits rules provide the public.
"Will the administration commit to taking action to ensure this order does not undermine public health and safety?" they asked.
The lawmakers questioned whether the executive order would apply to rules that are statutorily mandated and referenced a portion of the order that states "nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency."
The Natural Resources Defense Council sued Trump over the order and associated guidance, saying they are unconstitutional. The group also argued that agencies cannot comply with the order without taking arbitrary action or breaking the laws under which they operate (Greenwire, Feb. 8).
The senators questioned how the administration will ensure agencies follow the rulemaking guidelines laid out in the Administrative Procedure Act and other executive orders that inform the process.
"Given that agencies have limited resources, shrinking budgets, and are currently subject to a 'hiring freeze,' how does the administration plan to ensure that they have the resources necessary to implement this order?" they questioned.
Senators also noted that a number of significant bipartisan bills protect health and the environment. They questioned how rulemaking will proceed for measures such as the Toxic Substances Control Act.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/02/16/stories/1060050201
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New Cleaning Institute CEO Faces Shifting Policy Landscape
Feb 17, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Steering the American Cleaning Institute through political and policy changes to extend its focus on safety and sustainability are the central goals for the institute's new president and chief executive officer.
“We've got a lot of moving parts with the new administration coming into play,” said Melissa Hockstad, who joined the institute in January. She took over for Ernie Rosenberg who led it for 16 years.
Hockstad recently sat down with Bloomberg BNA to discuss her goals as she oversees advocacy, science and research, communications, sustainability and many other of the institute's activities.
“We're trying to make sure we've got the right relationships in place as well as building new relationships where we haven't had them in the past,” she said.
The raft of new faces arrives on a shifting regulatory and policy landscape for chemicals in light of last year's passage of the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, which overhauled the nation's primary commercial chemicals law, the Toxic Substances Control Act.
“Successful implementation of the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act remains a top priority for us,” Hockstad said.
“What's really important to us is making sure that the administration can implement the law in an orderly fashion in a way that promotes innovation and also protects confidential business information,” she said. Other priorities include conducting research designed to prove the efficacy and safety of sanitizers and disinfectants, and working on laundry packet safety for kids.
Broad Membership
Founded in 1926 as the Association of American Soap and Glycerine Producers, the institute now represents a wide range of companies making household, industrial and institutional products along with chemical manufacturers and distributors.
BASF Corp., Cargill, Inc. the Colgate-Palmolive Co., Procter & Gamble, L'Oreal USA, Inc., Seventh Generation, Inc. and Unilever are just a fraction of the institute's 167 members.
The broad portfolio of products institute members make mean the institute works with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, Hockstad said.
ACI's legislative staff are crafting responses to three rules the EPA proposed to implement the amended chemicals law, she said. The rules would establish the fundamental processes through which the EPA would update the inventory of chemicals active in U.S. commerce, vet those chemicals to determine which may be high or low priorities for further evaluation, and describe how the agency would conduct risk evaluations.
Innovation, Sustainability
Delays that the EPA's new chemicals program has experienced since June 22, 2016, when the TSCA amendments became law, are a particular concern, Hockstad said.
Prior to the new law, the EPA's new chemicals program routinely received more than 1,000 premanufacture notices annually. Companies must submit those notices before making or importing a new chemical.
The agency typically allowed between 500 to 1,000 new chemicals to enter commerce each year.
As of Jan. 10—the EPA's most recent update—the agency had allowed only 46 new chemicals and microorganisms to enter commerce since TSCA was amended.
“These delays are making the reviews unpredictable, untimely [and] unnecessarily restrictive without enhancing public safety or reducing environmental risk,” Hockstad said.
Institute members want to develop new, sustainable cleaning products, she said.
The institute also plans to release a report this summer highlighting members’ diverse strategies to become more sustainable, Hockstad said.
For the first time, the institute will have metrics tracking members’ efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, waste and other environmental impacts, she said.
$10 Million Research Effort
Another priority, Hockstad said, is the institute's multiyear research program for disinfectants. The tiered program, which could cost up to $10 million, was developed in consultation with the Food and Drug Administration.
The research will generate efficacy and safety data that the FDA sought through three rulemakings that began in 2013. The data will address sanitizers and disinfectants used by consumers and health care professionals.
The disinfectant market is large: for surface disinfectants it is expected to reach $542.5 million by 2020 up from $312.7 million in 2015, according to projections MarketsandMarkets, a research firm, released in October 2015.
Ashland Specialty Ingredients, BASF, the Colgate-Palmolive Co., Ecolab Inc., GOJO Industries, Inc., Henkel Consumer Goods Inc., and Lonza Inc. are among the two dozen companies involved with the research program, Paul DeLeo, associate vice president for environmental safety at the institute, told Bloomberg BNA.
The efficacy and safety of six active ingredients is being examined through a tiered testing program, DeLeo said. The active ingredients are:
• benzalkonium chloride,
• benzethonium chloride,
• chloroxylenol, ethanol,
• isopropyl alcohol and
• povidone iodine.
The tests are designed to provide a foundation of scientific data that shows the antiseptics can continue to be classified as “generally recognized as safe and effective” for diverse uses ranging from over the counter hand rubs to surgical scrubs, he said.
Laundry Packets, Children
The institute also is working with members and through public awareness campaigns to prevent children from being poisoned by accidentally swallowing laundry packets.
By the end of last year, more than 99 percent of liquid laundry packets shipped to retailers complied with a 2015 ASTM International standard intended to reduce these poisonings, Brian Sansoni, an institute vice president told Bloomberg BNA.
Companies meet the standard by making laundry packets that can withstand the squeezing pressure of a child; include a soluble film containing a bitter substance; and use a film that delays release of liquid contents so the bittering substance can take effect and repel the child.
The packages also have safety icons on warning labels to advise proper use and storage instructions and are intentionally designed to be opaque so the packets aren't visible to children.
In addition to helping develop the standards and help encourage their implementation, the institute has developed a multi-year outreach campaign targeting parents and caregivers on keeping laundry packets out of sight and out of reach of children, Sansoni said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=105762255&vname=dennotallissues&fn=105762255&jd=105762255
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EPA Aiding Monsanto In Cancer Cover Up?
Feb 16, 2017 | Legal Reader
By Sara E. Teller
A new court filing made on Friday, February 10th, has indicated that The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may be aiding Monsanto in covering up the cancer-causing effects of Roundup. Included in the filing is correspondence dated March 4, 2013, from a 30-year EPA veteran accusing scientist EPA Jess Rowland of playing “conniving games with the science” to favor herbicide manufacturers. Rowland was responsible for assessing the risk of cancer associated with glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, and was a noted author in a report finding that the herbicide was not likely to cause cancer. This argument is directly challenged by a statement made by the late EPA toxicologist Marion Copley, who said, “It is essentially certain that glyphosate causes cancer.” Copley went on to accuse Rowland of intimidating his staff into changing reports related to the glyphosate findings and aiding Monsato’s attempts to brush the matter under the rug. However, Copley left the EPA in 2012 when she became terminally ill with breast cancer and passed away in January 2014 at the age of 66.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) also declared glyphosate to be a carcinogen in March 2015. Monsanto responded to this claim by attempting to start a campaign aimed at discrediting the IARC. Monsanto maintains in a recent filing there is no evidence that Roundup is “unreasonably dangerous”, stating further that there is insufficient evidence linking glyphosate to cancer, period.
All plaintiffs in the case are suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma or have lost a loved one to the cancer. They’ve stated that Roundup has contaminated their drinking water, and the same chemical that is responsible for killing weeds also kills healthy bacteria in the gut, leading to a slew of digestive issues. The plaintiffs take issue with the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) being closely tied to Rowland and allege he is aiding in its efforts to disguise the carcinogenic effects of the chemical. Rowland was deputy division director of the OPP up until last year. He was also a chair on the EPA’s Cancer Assessment Review Committee (CARC).
Attorneys for the plaintiffs are hoping to be able to unveil additional documents discrediting Rowland’s assessments. While Monsanto turned some of these over in the course of discovery, the company asked for them to be kept confidential. The plaintiffs are also seeking to depose Rowland, their attorneys stating, “The Plaintiffs have a pressing need for Mr. Rowland’s testimony to confirm his relationship with Monsanto”. However, the request has been denied by both Monsanto and the EPA. It seems the attorneys have attempted to adequately lay out their case, but their requests have been challenged every step of the way. On Monday, Monsanto attorneys even asked for Judge Vince Chhabria to block the plaintiffs from including copies of the documents obtained in discovery as exhibits, so as to keep them hidden from the public, indicating that exposing these documents would stir up unfair prejudice. The judge agreed.
While the EPA stated it would finalize its glyphosate assessments regarding the safety of the chemical use in 2015, the date keeps getting pushed back. The agency is now indicating the findings will be completed by the end of 2017. Only time will tell.
http://www.legalreader.com/16473-2/
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D.C. Circuit Ruling Could Determine Trump EPA Options For Revising CPP
Feb 17, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Abby Smith
As a federal appellate court prepares to rule on the legality of EPA's power plant greenhouse gas rule, supporters and critics say that how the court rules -- assuming it upholds the regulation -- could inform or affect the Trump administration's options for undoing or weakening the measure in a new rulemaking.
“No matter what the Trump administration would like to do in the way of a new rulemaking, it would be useful to have the court's decision” on the existing rule, the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) David Doniger said during a Feb. 14 meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit could issue a ruling in the case, West Virginia, et al. v. EPA, et al., at any time given that the panel heard oral arguments Sept. 27, observers say.
Supporters and critics of the Obama EPA's rule, known as the Clean Power Plan (CPP), note that the D.C. Circuit's opinion would likely have a major impact on the Trump EPA's path forward, assuming it upholds the rule and is issued before the agency completes a new rulemaking to alter the current regulation.
NRDC's Doniger, for example, said that a ruling would mean that the court would have spoken on several issues that could be central to any future regulation of power plants' GHGs and to any new EPA rulemaking process. “I think some of the positions . . . taken by opponents will be rejected, and that will narrow the scope of what the new administrator can do. He will not have the full range of options open to him,” Doniger said.
But Allison Wood, an attorney for Hunton & Williams representing the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG) in the CPP litigation, also said the timing of the D.C. Circuit's ruling could matter for certain issues.
For example, if the ruling comes before the Trump EPA takes final action on a new rulemaking, its decision on the question of whether EPA can regulate “beyond the fenceline” of the power plant -- a key issue in the case -- could inform any potential CPP replacement.
Wood also said the court could render many issues moot by agreeing with rule opponents that EPA cannot regulate power plants' GHG emissions under section 111 when it already regulates their mercury emissions under section 112.
However, rule supporters and other observers say that claim found weak support among the D.C. Circuit judges. Doniger said he hopes the D.C. Circuit ruling puts that argument “to rest.”
Another possibility that Wood hinted at is an effort to revise an agency determination regarding whether its 2009 GHG endangerment finding applies to power plants, a move that could scrap GHG rules for the sector.
The window in which the D.C. Circuit could issue an opinion before the Trump EPA launches a new rulemaking is shrinking. According to an administration source, President Donald Trump plans to visit EPA headquarters to conduct a ceremonial swearing in of Administrator-nominee Scott Pruitt, and to sign executive orders aimed at scaling back the agency's climate work.
That visit could occur next week, depending on when the Senate confirms Pruitt. A final vote could occur as soon as Feb. 17, though the timing is uncertain.
The planned orders are expected to dramatically scale back the agency's climate work, and could revoke former President Barack Obama's Climate Action Plan. Another order could direct EPA to revisit certain aspects of the CPP and begin the process of rolling back the rule and related standards for new power plants.
New Rulemaking
It is far from clear what the D.C. Circuit would do in the event that EPA begins a new rule on power plant GHGs before a ruling is issued. Doniger and Wood did not discuss that possibility during the recent NARUC event.
Doniger said he anticipates the Trump administration will take action on the CPP, and he suggested that perhaps the closest parallel could be an executive order Trump signed Feb. 3 directing the Labor and Treasury departments to reconsider certain financial sector regulations. The administration could do “something like that” in terms of the CPP, Doniger said, though he suggested it is awaiting Pruitt's confirmation before doing so.
Similarly, Wood said, “There is a tremendous amount of support behind reversing this rule and reexamining it. Of course, that needs to be done properly, but the impetus is there.”
Wood and Doniger agreed that EPA must undertake a new notice-and-comment rulemaking to “undo” the CPP, though it is unclear whether officials intend to issue a new, more limited, regulation governing power plants' GHGs.
However, Doniger emphasized that a new rulemaking would “take time,” noting EPA must issue a proposal and a new legal and technical justification, and take public comment on those items, before issuing a final rule. “It may not be the 1,500 pages that it was the first time, but it's not going to be some 25-page, slap-dash something or other,” he said.
Doniger added that the Trump EPA faces certain litigation from environmental groups, states and others over any attempt to weaken the CPP.
“NRDC and the other environmental organizations [and] the states who have been on the side of EPA, undoubtedly we will be pressing vigorously for sticking with the [current] legal and technical positions or very closely critiquing and analyzing the new ones that might be taken. And there will be litigation at the end,” Doniger said.
He also suggested that even if the Trump EPA pursues a rule using only building block 1 -- the “inside the fence” approach that requires only coal-plant heat rate improvements -- many of the same issues in the current litigation “are going to come forward.” He added that utilities may find themselves hamstrung by such a rule, suggesting it would not be as flexible as the current CPP.
“To do air pollution control on the basis that these plants operate as islands and don't interact is old school and very different from the way you all regulate them for every other purpose,” Doniger told the state utility regulators.
But Wood suggested critics might accept a block 1 rule. “Certainly . . . the parties challenging the Clean Power Plan never thought that that portion, building block 1, was inappropriate,” she said, adding that “in terms of looking at inside the fenceline, at the source, building block 1 would work.”
Endangerment Finding
Wood and Doniger disagreed on whether EPA's 2009 GHG endangerment finding -- and the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA -- requires the agency to regulate power plants' GHG, potentially previewing a battle over another Trump EPA option to rescind the rules.
Wood argued that the finding solely relates to GHGs from motor vehicles, which are regulated under air act section 202. “So in terms of the endangerment finding and its relationship to the Clean Power Plan, they're unrelated in that the Clean Power Plan arises under section 111(d), and the endangerment finding occurred under section 202,” she said.
But Doniger argued the finding included two parts, an endangerment finding that applies to all GHGs “irrespective of where they came from,” and a contribution finding that was specific to vehicles. In the CPP, he said EPA made several findings, including that it need not issue a new contribution finding and that if they had to make one, they did in the companion rule for new power plants.
This issue is playing out in litigation over the GHG standards for new power plants, the legal prerequisite for the CPP. Critics like Wood say EPA's explanation on that issue is insufficient and that the agency must conduct a new endangerment finding to regulate power plants' GHGs.
It is not clear what steps EPA would have to take to formally adopt Wood's argument -- thus negating the legal requirement to issue GHG rules for the sector. However, it is possible it must take some administrative step to reverse the Obama EPA's final determination that the endangerment finding applies to the power sector.
At the NARUC event, Doniger insisted that the 2009 finding and the subsequent contribution finding mandates the regulation of power plants' GHGs.
“So, if you don't want to be required to do something, you have to unwind the endangerment finding, and the endangerment finding is based on a pyramid of peer review,” Doniger said. Calling it a “mountain of evidence,” he added “it is dreaming” for Trump administration advisers to think the finding could be reversed.
Several Trump advisers, including former EPA transition team head Myron Ebell, have urged the administration to target the endangerment finding. Pruitt, during his confirmation hearing, called the finding “the law of the land” and said “there is nothing that I know that would cause a review at this point,” though he did not definitively rule out a review.
Several observers have told Inside EPA that revoking the endangerment finding carries significant legal risks, in part because doing so would involve undoing a lengthy administrative record and multiple scientific analyses point to the dangers of climate change.
“You'd have to come up with a mountain of contrary evidence that is equally compelling or more compelling,” Doniger said. “You'd have to find fatal flaws. It ain't going to happen.”
Doniger added that the D.C. Circuit “had no trouble upholding the original endangerment finding” in a challenge from Pruitt and other state attorneys general and industry groups. “I don't think any panel of this court of appeals or of the Supreme Court would uphold a reversal.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/dc-circuit-ruling-could-determine-trump-epa-options-revising-cpp
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Trump, Members Huddle on Energy Projects, Regulatory Agencies
Feb 17, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Hannah Hess
President Trump talked about pipeline development and streamlining the permitting process during a private huddle yesterday with some of his first House supporters, according to Rep. Kevin Cramer.
The North Dakota Republican, among about a dozen GOP lawmakers invited to the White House, told reporters that the group discussed the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines and "going forward what that could mean for job creation."
"First of all, I asked him why it took two days to get the Dakota Access memo out," Cramer joked, on the executive order aimed at restarting the project (Greenwire, Jan. 24).
Cramer said Trump also talked about efforts to restore full Export-Import Bank operations and asked the congressmen to volunteer names of people he could nominate to give the five-member board a full quorum. That topic also came up last week during a meeting with a group of 10 senators (E&E News PM, Feb. 9).
The meeting was "very substantive," Cramer said, and included discussion of trade and health care policy, though not the border adjustment tax.
Trump did not reveal any plans on environmental policy for U.S. EPA, according to Cramer, "other than expressing frustration that all three of the natural resources secretaries wouldn't get confirmed this week" (see related story).
Cramer said he and House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) talked with Trump about the Army Corps of Engineers, the role of regulatory agencies and the need to streamline the permitting process, Cramer said.
Also at the meeting were Vice President Mike Pence and Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), Tom Marino (R-Pa.), Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), Billy Long (R-Mo.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.).
Asked what the attendees agreed to do for Trump, Cramer laughed and said, "We're a cult."
Cramer then said it was a "reward for those of us that were with him early and steadfast in their support" to get to present their thoughts to Trump. "At the same time, I think he looks to us as having his back, as well," he added.
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/02/17/stories/1060050221
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Opponents Bristle As TransCanada Files In Neb.
Feb 16, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey
TransCanada Corp. requested Nebraska's consent today to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline through the state, one of the most high-profile and difficult pending approvals.
Within weeks of submitting a permit request from the State Department, TransCanada is asking the Nebraska Public Service Commission to approve its proposed route there.
The commission now has 210 days to either approve or deny the application, with the burden on TransCanada to show the proposed route would "serve the public interest."
Nebraska regulators noted in a release that the state's Major Oil Pipeline Siting Act also provides an additional five months for the commission to decide for "just cause."
TransCanada is eagerly advancing the 1,179-mile project, which would link Canadian oil sands to refiners and export terminals along the Gulf Coast, given President Trump's blessing in the form of an executive memo.
Former President Obama rejected the project in 2015, citing concerns about emissions and a changing climate, and bowing to environmental opposition.
Under Trump, KXL is all but guaranteed to move forward quickly. The memo directs the new secretary of State to decide within 60 days whether the project is in the nation's best interest.
Nebraska has been a well-known battleground for TransCanada, one that's generated legal action from farmers and ranchers.
Jane Kleeb, head of Bold Alliance and a well-known opponent of KXL, said she's happy to see the company "actually following the law and our state constitution for the first time in the seven-year battle over Keystone XL."
Kleeb is referring to an alternative permitting process TransCanada used in the past. Still, Kleeb said the pipeline will always be too much risk with no reward for the state given the Bakken crude will be exported.
"Bold continues to stand with farmers and ranchers to protect property rights from being infringed upon by a pipeline for their private gain," she said in a statement.
Kleeb said the pipeline permit application process in Nebraska can take eight months to a year, including public hearings, an official intervenor process where landowners and others are represented by attorneys, and testimony from experts and others in a quasi-judicial setting.
Kleeb vowed to fight TransCanada's use of eminent domain from holdout landowners, and said the company cannot apply to use eminent domain authority until September under state law.
"The collective of Nebraska landowners who held out against selling their land to TransCanada remains strong — many are still in court suing TransCanada for the money they have already spent on attorneys and court costs battling eminent domain for over six years," she said.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/02/16/stories/1060050202
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Colorado Criticizes Study Linking Childhood Leukemia, Drilling
Feb 17, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
The head of Colorado's health department called “misleading” a new study concluding young people and children with leukemia are 4.3 times more likely to live in areas of high-density oil and gas development than those with other cancers.
Dr. Larry Wolk, chief medical officer and executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said the study conducted by the Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz in Aurora, Colo., failed to establish a connection between oil and gas operations and childhood leukemia due to many limitations in the research.
Industry groups also sharply criticized the study as an attempt to undermine energy development. The group that conducted the study had released a previous report based on data not matching those of state regulators, according to the Colorado Petroleum Council, a division of the American Petroleum Institute.
Rural Focus
The study focused on rural areas and towns in 57 Colorado counties and excluded urban areas with more than 50,000 people. The researchers used information from the Colorado Oil and Gas Information System to build a geocoded dataset with coordinates of all oil and gas wells in rural Colorado and determined dates for when each well was active.
Data for the study was obtained from the Colorado Central Cancer Registry and the Colorado Oil and Gas Information System, part of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the chief regulator of drilling activity in Colorado.
More than 378,000 Coloradans and 15 million Americans “currently live within one mile of at least one oil and gas well, and petroleum development continues to expand into residential areas,” said the study's lead investigator, Lisa McKenzie, assistant research professor at the school of public health.
The researchers said the study was limited in part by the low occurrence of leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in rural Colorado, the lack of specific age at cancer diagnosis, and the fact that all study participants had been diagnosed with cancer. The study found no association between non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and high-density oil and gas development.
‘Deliberate Misuse of Data’
“This is a deliberate misuse of data by someone with a political agenda, and we need to stick with the facts,” Tracee Bentley, executive director of the Colorado Petroleum Council, said in a Feb. 15 statement. “We are disappointed to see someone purposely trying to mislead the public and skew the facts.” She called the study “an attempt to undermine energy development and jobs in Colorado.”
Wolk said in a statement that the department supports studies that evaluate the potential impact of environmental contaminants on public health, and “certainly, benzene exposure has been proven to increase risk of certain types of cancers, including leukemia.” But the study had many limitations, he said, including failure to account for exposure to other substances the could contribute to cancer and the limited number of cancer cases studied.
Wolk said the department's analysis of air quality data in high oil and gas areas of Colorado indicates benzene exposures are within EPA's generally acceptable cancer risk range and are similar to those of Denver. The department's research spans the last six years and encompasses more than 10,000 individual samples, he said. Exposure to benzene is “among the reasons oil and gas emissions regulations were strengthened in 2014,” Wolk said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=105762253&vname=dennotallissues&fn=105762253&jd=105762253
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Judge Orders Pruitt To Release Emails By Tuesday
Feb 16, 2017 | PoliticoPro -Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
A state judge in Oklahoma today ordered Scott Pruitt to release by Tuesday potentially thousands of emails he exchanged with fossil fuel interests in his job as attorney general, according to the watchdog groups that sued seeking the communications.
That deadline will come after the vote in the Senate on Friday that is expected to confirm Pruitt as the next EPA administrator.
The lawsuit was brought last week by the Center for Media and Democracy, a left-leaning group that has several outstanding records requests before Pruitt’s office dating back to January 2015. They argued Pruitt was slow-walking the releases and improperly withholding emails to and from oil, gas and coal companies and conservative organizations. Pruitt’s office says it is answering requests in the order in which they are received.
The order from Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons of the District Court in Oklahoma County does not necessarily mean all 2,600 emails sought by the CMD will be released, as Pruitt’s office can still withhold certain documents that are subject to exemptions in the state’s records law.
Pruitt’s office released more than 400 documents to CMD last Friday, after the lawsuit was filed.
Senate Democrats have latched on to the court case in a last-ditch attempt to delay Friday afternoon’s expected vote.
“Sometime — a week from now, maybe days from now — my fear is that a number of members, especially on the other side, will have been put in a very bad position and asked to vote for a nominee that they otherwise may not have supported had they known,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said on Thursday.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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By Investing in Science, Trump Can Strengthen the Economy
Feb 16, 2017 | New York Times
By Michael S. Lubell and Burton Richter
Science and technology have powered America’s economic engine for more than 70 years. But federal support has been getting leaner. The nation is spending about 60 percent of what it did 30 years ago on federal research and development as measured against the total economy. In other words, this spending is becoming a smaller percentage of the gross domestic product.
That’s a big problem, because many of our global competitors in Europe and Asia have been ramping up their research spending with a goal of knocking us off our scientific and economic pedestal.
Now President Trump is in the position to do something about it.
During his campaign, he hammered away at the historically slow growth of the American economy during the Obama years. He repeatedly pledged to speed up the pace of that trajectory. Increasing investments in long-term scientific research, long a federal responsibility, can help him deliver on his pledge. The nonpartisan Information Technology and Innovation Foundation underscored the importance of such investments when it noted that it ranked the United States only 10th on its global innovation index largely because of flagging support for long-term research.
The funding pinch is causing us to become more risk averse and forgo wagers on transformational technologies — such as high-capacity multi-electron batteries — that could pay off in a big way if they succeed. It is also allowing our vaunted science and technology infrastructure to decay. The greatly oversubscribed Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, for example, has been waiting almost a decade for a desperately needed second “target station” to meet the needs of materials research so critical to industry.
But before President Trump takes the science plunge, he needs to get the best and most honest advice he can. He should start by appointing his own science adviser, someone he trusts who has the professional stature, respect and breadth of knowledge commensurate with the complexities of the job and holds sensible views on climate change.Continue reading the main story
He also needs to fully staff the Office of Science and Technology Policy, as every president has since Gerald Ford. And he should maintain the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology that has reported directly to every president since George H. W. Bush. Not only do those two offices ensure that a president receives quality analysis and timely professional advice, but they also insulate him from lobbyists.
Once those advisers are in place, there are three big science and technology opportunities President Trump should pursue.
First, make science infrastructure part of a national infrastructure program. Research facilities are as important as roads, bridges and airports. Just as the Eisenhower administration’s Interstate System of highways lifted the economy, creating tens of thousands of jobs in the process, our national laboratories propelled the country to the forefront of discovery, innovation and global competitiveness. So, too, did our public research universities, which are now struggling to maintain educational quality in the face of a precipitous decline in state support, as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences documented in its Lincoln Project report recently.
President Trump prides himself on being a builder of big projects. He has the opportunity to demonstrate that prowess in the science arena. He should support building major research facilities in the United States, such as the International Linear Collider for basic science or the fast spectrum test reactor that could result in less expensive and safer advanced nuclear power systems.
His second big science opportunity lies in his interest in corporate tax reform and repatriating the $2.5 trillion held overseas mostly by high-tech companies. He has proposed a low tax rate of 10 percent on that repatriated money. He should also embrace a mandate that would require corporations to deposit 5 percent of the money they bring back into a nonprofit research endowment, operated as a private-public partnership.
Representative Randy Hultgren, Republican of Illinois, has advocated creating such a quasi-governmental structure — however it is capitalized — to provide essential continuity in research support and backing for long-term applied research both government and industry often shun.
President Trump’s third big opportunity is to make major investments in clean energy research through the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the department’s energy technology programs. Last summer, congressional appropriators in both parties expressed support for the president’s request to double spending on clean energy research, although they noted there was not enough money in the current fiscal year to accommodate the first requested step — a 5 percent increase, or about $400 million.
In his fiscal year 2018 budget request, President Trump should call on Congress to make good on that support from Congress. It would enable him make good on his promise to keep an open mind on climate change — as he indicated he would in a Nov. 22 interview with The New York Times — by pursuing policies that both moderate global warning and strengthen the American economy.
President Trump entered the White House with his commitment to science suspect, but if he makes the right choices, he could leave with an enduring legacy.
Michael S. Lubell is a physics professor at City College of the City University of New York. Burton Richter, an emeritus professor of physical sciences at Stanford, won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/opinion/by-investing-in-science-trump-can-strengthen-the-economy.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&_r=0
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Dakota Access Owner Says Pipelines Safer Than Rail Yet Owns Rail Hub Connected to Pipeline
Feb 17, 2017 | DeSmog
By Steve Horn
In response to the ongoing battle over the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, the oil industry and the groups it funds have started a new refrain: transporting crude oil through pipelines is safer than by “dangerous” rail.
It's a talking point wedded to the incidents over the past several years which have seen mile-long oil trains derail and even explode, beginning with the 2013 Lac-Megantic oil-by-rail disaster in Quebec, which killed 47 people. These trains were carrying oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) from North Dakota's Bakken Shale basin. Bakken crude may be more flammable than other crude oils and is the same oil which would travel through the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), owned by Energy Transfer Partners.
What goes unsaid, however, is that the Dakota Access pipeline actually connects to an oil-by-rail hub, also owned by Energy Transfer Partners, in Patoka, Illinois. Patoka is the end point of this pipeline, where it links to both the rail hub and the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline Project (ETCOP).
“DAPL will provide shippers with access to Midwestern refineries, unit-train rail loading facilities to enable deliveries to East Coast refineries, and the Gulf Coast market through an interconnection in Patoka, Illinois, with ETCOP, which will provide crude oil transportation service from the Midwest to the Sunoco Logistics Partners and Phillips 66 storage terminals located in Nederland, Texas,” Energy Transfer stated in an August 2016 press release (emphasis ours).
“Safest Mode of Transportation”
While Energy Transfer Partners has not hidden the fact that it owns the Patoka oil-by-rail hub, entities the company funds are taking a different tact, presenting inland oil transport options as being either pipeline or oil-by-rail, but not both together.
“The Dakota Access Pipeline has always been committed to providing low-cost energy as safety [sic] as possible,” Standing Rock Fact Checker, a project funded by Energy Transfer Partners in reaction to protests unfolding near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, wrote in a blog post. “Pipelines are already the safest means of transporting crude oil — 5 times safer than rail, 13 times safer than shipping, and 530 safer than trucking — and the Dakota Access Pipeline will be no exception.”
This comparison also is made openly on the pipeline's own website, Dakota Access Pipeline Facts.
“Numerous studies have shown that pipelines are safer than shipping oil by trucks or rail,” reads the website. “DAPL will replace 100- to 120-car trains that carry crude oil every day from North Dakota — greatly reducing the risk of train accidents and spills.”
Another group funded by Energy Transfer Partners, the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now, has also used the rail vs. pipeline framework to promote the Dakota Access pipeline.
However, as Reuters has reported, data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) shows pipelines experience more reported crude oil spills than the rail industry.
Argument Repeated to (and by) Government
The pipeline vs. rail schema has also been deployed by Energy Transfer Partners in official government settings. At a South Dakota Public Utilities Commission hearing in October 2015, Energy Transfer Partners' Vice President for Engineering, Joey Mahmoud, delivered his own version of this paradigm.
“Pipelines are, by far, the safest mode of transportation,” Mahmoud said at the time. “In my mind, absolutely, it’s going to remove crude that otherwise would be transported by rail or truck that’s coming out of the Bakken.”
Mahmoud, who did not respond to a request for comment, spoke similarly at a February 15 hearing convened by the U.S.House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Energy.
“Perhaps the most prominent, and ill-founded, of [the misconceptions about] Dakota Access [is that it] represents a threat to the Missouri River and those who rely on it for drinking water,” reads Mahmoud's testimony. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Much of the oil from the Bakken is currently being transported across the Missouri River via truck and rail transportation — modes which, statistically, are far more likely to experience an oil spill than a new, state-of-the-art pipeline.”
The oft-repeated framework by Energy Transfer Partners proved so convincing that the Iowa Utilities Board cited it in March 2016 when it granted the permit needed to build the Dakota Access pipeline across the state.“Simply a Distraction”
Meanwhile, Patoka does not get an either-or, but rather, a reality of both. It will have oil traveling into the small town both from the end of the Dakota Access pipeline and out of town by rail to East Coast refinery markets.
Coincidentally, two pipelines owned by Dakota Access co-owners Enbridge and Phillips 66 have recently exploded, one in Texas and the other in Louisiana, respectively. North American environmental groups have long decried the pipelines vs. rail framework.
“Both oil-by-rail and pipelines are dangerous,” said Annette McMichael, an activist for Illinois People’s Action who helped organize an anti-Dakota Access pipeline event in Patoka in September. “The argument that one is safer than the other is simply a distraction. The last thing families living in and around Patoka need is more pipelines.”
Energy Transfer Partners spokesperson Vicki Granado did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/02/17/dakota-access-pipeline-safer-owns-rail-hub-connected-pipeline
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Environmentalists, Industry Trade Attacks In Utility MACT Suit
Feb 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
Environmentalists and industry groups are trading attacks over the others' justifications for asking the court to force an EPA reconsideration of remaining issues in litigation over the agency's utility maximum achievable control technology (MACT) air toxics rule.
In Feb. 14 briefs filed as intervenors for EPA in ARIPPA, et al. v. EPA, et al., environmentalists and an industry group suing the agency over its refusal to reconsider specific aspects of the utility MACT rule argue that their opponents' arguments have already been heard by the court in earlier litigation, or were raised in public comments and properly denied by EPA.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has not yet scheduled oral argument, but will hear the suit on the same day and before the same panel as a higher-profile challenge to EPA's revised finding that it is “appropriate and necessary” to regulate power plants with a MACT, in Murray Energy Corp., et al. v. EPA, et al.
At issue in the suit are EPA decisions denying petitions to reconsider aspects of its utility MACT.
In 2015, for example, the agency denied a petition for reconsideration filed by environmental groups, including Clean Air Council, Downwinders at Risk, Environmental Integrity Project and Chesapeake Climate Action Network. The groups allege that EPA unreasonably abandoned tough controls required for particulate matter (PM) under the proposed version of the MACT when it issued the final version, but EPA disagreed with the substance of their argument.
In effect, the groups say, EPA removed the need for power plants to install fabric filters to trap PM pollution. The groups say they could not have raised their objections in comment on the proposal because they had no warning that EPA would change its requirements in the final rule.
EPA also rejected petitions for reconsideration from Pennsylvania coal refuse-burning utility ARIPPA and the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG). ARIPPA in the suit says EPA failed to properly account for the unique circumstances of its power plants in the MACT. EPA failed to recognize the distinction between bituminous and anthracite coal refuse, leading the agency to promulgate a hydrogen chloride standard that bituminous coal refuse-fired power plants cannot meet, ARIPPA argues.
UARG, meanwhile, argues that EPA's use of data based on contaminated air sampling resulted in an overestimate of the risks posed by power plants' air toxics.
However, in their Feb. 14 brief, environmentalists say that industry's “objections raised in the petitions were previously raised in comments on the proposed rule, litigated, and resolved by this Court in favor of EPA,” in the 2014 D.C. Circuit ruling in White Stallion Energy Center v. EPA.
UARG in its Feb. 14 brief claims that EPA correctly rejected environmentalists' petition for reconsideration because environmental groups in fact did raise their issues in comments on the proposed version of the MACT rule from EPA. “In both their comments and the Petition, Environmental Petitioners argued fabric filters can achieve greater PM removal than the mix of fabric filter and [electrostatic precipitator] use reflected in the MACT floor” or minimum emissions standard.
Also, the “crux of Environmental Petitioners’
argument is their mistaken belief that the proposed standard (but not the final standard) would require the use of fabric filters at all” power plants. But in fact, the proposal “never required the use of fabric filters,” UARG says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/environmentalists-industry-trade-attacks-utility-mact-suit
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Trump Said to Prepare Directives Dismantling Obama Climate Rule
Feb 17, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
President Donald Trump is planning to sign directives aimed at dismantling Obama-era policies governing carbon dioxide and water pollution soon after a new leader is installed at the EPA, according to two people familiar with the strategy.
The measures will set in motion Trump's campaign promises to rescind both the Clean Power Plan and the “Waters of the U.S.” rule, while signaling the start of a new era at the federal agency that President Barack Obama put on the front lines of his battle against climate change. The directives are set to compel the EPA administrator to take any needed steps to withdraw those regulations, according to the people who described the documents and spoke on condition of anonymity about internal discussions.
Trump's nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, is on track to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate Feb. 17, over the objections of most Democrats who say he is unsuited to lead the same agency he has dedicated his political career to fighting. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has said she will vote against Pruitt's confirmation; Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota have said they will vote for him.
“Trump is the only Republican who repeatedly promised to rein in EPA,” said Steve Milloy, an attorney with the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, who served on the Trump transition team focused on the agency. “That's going to be Scott Pruitt's job—to rein in the EPA.“
Other directives the Trump administration is expected to issue in coming weeks include one to suspend the government's use of a metric known as the “social cost of carbon” until it can be reviewed and recalculated. Another would effectively nullify guidance from Obama's Council on Environmental Quality that climate change should be factored into government agencies’ formal environmental reviews.
Trump already signed legislation Feb. 16 to repeal an Obama-era regulation requiring coal mining companies to clean up streams after they are done with their work.
“In eliminating this rule I am continuing to keep my promise to the American people to get rid of wasteful regulations,” Trump said at a White House signing ceremony.
Environmentalists warned that these reversals would mark a major change in the role the U.S. plays internationally on climate change.
“Undermining the international leadership the U.S. has shown on climate action would be an enormous mistake of historic consequence,” said John Coequyt, global climate policy director for the Sierra Club. “If Trump does follow through, it would mean he is declaring open season on our air, water and climate while further destabilizing our role in the world.“
Clean Power
Both on the campaign trail and in the White House, Trump vowed to rescind the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to cut carbon-dioxide emissions from electricity 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Under Pruitt, Oklahoma joined more than two dozen other states in challenging that EPA rule, arguing that the agency overstepped its regulatory authority by giving states broad carbon-cutting mandates.
As long as the Washington-based Court of Appeals has not ruled on the lawsuit, the Trump administration can ask the panel to put the matter on hold. Once it's on hold, the EPA could begin the process of rescinding the Obama-era rule and—possibly—replacing it with a rule that would have negligible impact. Environmentalists who support the measure have vowed to fight such a move—and use new lawsuits to prod the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.
The other early target is the 2015 Waters of the U.S. rule, which defined waterways subject to pollution regulation. Critics, including more than a dozen states that fought the measure in court, say it unfairly expanded EPA's Clean Water Act jurisdiction to include dry creek beds, prairie wetlands and other territory that they say strays far from the “navigable waters” subject to oversight under the law.
Repealing the rules—much less replacing them—would be a lengthy process that could span years.
United Nations
Conservatives want Pruitt to make deep changes in the structure and approach of the EPA, including by revisiting the agency's 2009 conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public health and environment. Former Trump adviser Myron Ebell also has called for the agency to overhaul the way it uses science to set policy.
It is not clear when—and if—Trump will make good on his frequent campaign promise to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, a 2015 United Nations agreement to curtail greenhouse gas emissions that was adopted by nearly 200 countries.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told senators last month that the U.S. should remain part of the Paris pact to “maintain its seat at the table.” The U.K. government also is pressing Trump to stick with the accord.
Trump has relatively wide latitude to unilaterally withdraw from the Paris deal, because it was treated as an executive agreement, rather than a treaty requiring Senate approval. Under its terms, parties to the deal must wait until November 2019 to submit a notice of withdrawal, but Trump could pull out more quickly by removing the U.S. from the underlying 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, its parent treaty.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=105762258&vname=dennotallissues&fn=105762258&jd=105762258
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Shimkus Eyes Bipartisan Brownfields Push In Lieu Of Overhauling Air Law
Feb 16, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) says he hopes lawmakers can reach bipartisan compromise on legislation to reform EPA's brownfields redevelopment program similar to the broad consensus he helped achieve on last year's overhaul of federal toxics law, in lieu of more sweeping changes to the Clean Air Act that Democrats are refusing to entertain.
At the end of a Feb. 16 House Energy & Commerce Committee environment panel hearing on major environmental laws, Shimkus -- the panel's chairman -- said that the minority's outright opposition to any air law reform means he will look to achieving wide support for revisions to other laws. “I think my colleagues and I, after this, will start focusing down on stuff like brownfields and some other things that we might be able to move on in a more collaborative and comity manner, and maybe we will look at some of the other tough issues too,” he said.
Shimkus suggested that efforts on legislation to reform the brownfields program could be modeled on the steps lawmakers took to reach bipartisan support on overhauling the Toxic Substances Control Act -- a process that took several years but ultimately led to a bill most members of Congress endorsed.
The hearing addressed modernizing environmental laws and “expanding infrastructure and promoting development and manufacturing,” but Democrats quickly vowed there would be no Clean Air Act reform.
After GOP lawmakers again pressed their long-running desire to overhaul the air law to promote industrial development, Democrats on the subcommittee were adamant that they will not reopen the air law now, for fear that “extreme” elements would attempt to damage the statute by weakening various provisions.
Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) said that while Democrats hear extreme ideas coming from the GOP such as eliminating EPA -- for example, a House bill to abolish the agency -- “there is no way we can open up that box” by revising either the air law or the Clean Water Act. “The Republicans have forced us into an absolute determination to block and obstruct all and any efforts to revise these laws,” he said.
Speaking to reporters after the hearing, McNerney said, “I want to be open-minded,” but “I am unable to do that at this point.” Asked by Inside EPA what it would take to shift that position, McNerney said “we would have to see a little less extremism” from Republicans in both the White House and Congress.
'Inoperable' EPA
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), ranking member on the full energy panel, told Inside EPA that what he regards as a Trump administration assault on EPA is key to Democrat's blockade of air law reform.
Pallone also noted that any legislative reforms that are not subject to the Congressional Review Act or special budgetary procedures will have to overcome a 60-vote hurdle in the Senate.
“It seems to me that EPA is suffering more than any other agency” under the Trump administration, in light of early White House actions to freeze hiring and grant funding, force elimination of two regulations for every one promulgated, and others. The Trump administration appears intent on stripping EPA of its climate change programs, and a former Trump transition official has advocated dramatic budget and staffing cuts.
“The Trump administration is determined to make the agency inoperable,” and “it is going to have an impact on every program,” including Clean Air Act regulation and implementation of the newly-reformed TSCA. Consequently, there is no appetite now on the Democratic side for reopening the air law, he said, due to the risk it might undermine air programs.
The Democrats' opposition appears to block the potential for progress of House and Senate bills to overhaul the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) program, and other measures.
Pending legislation would extend the NAAQS review cycle from five to 10 years, delay implementation of EPA's 2015 ozone NAAQS, and introduce technical feasibility as a factor in setting NAAQS. The House version, H.R. 806, is sponsored by subcommittee members Pete Olson (R-TX), Bill Flores (R-TX) and Bob Latta (R-OH), while the Senate bill, S. 263, has the support of at least one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).
Potential Progress
During the hearing Pallone indicated a willingness to make progress in other areas, however. “I do think we can get bipartisan support” on brownfields, he said.
The substance of any brownfields program reform is harder to discern. EPA's brownfields program aims to clean up contaminated land for reuse by providing grant funding and technical assistance to state and local authorities, and was authorized by the 2002 Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfield Revitalization Act.
Lawmakers from both parties at the hearing praised the program, but said it needs updating. Pallone called for reauthorization and increased funding of the brownfields program.
Shimkus said, “Cleaning up these sites and returning them to productive use is great for the economy because brownfields grants can be directly leveraged into jobs, additional redevelopment funds, and into increased residential property values so it offers the kind of community boost we want from good environmental policies.”
However, while the program “seems to be working, there is always room for improvement,” he said.
Water Infrastructure
Democrats at the hearing also announced the reintroduction of measures to boost infrastructure spending under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), following drinking water problems in Flint, MI, and elsewhere.
“At a time when President Trump is touting the importance of infrastructure, I'd hope he and Congressional Republicans would recognize communities around the nation in dire need of dramatic improvements to their drinking water infrastructure” Pallone said in a statement.
The Democrat's bill, H.R. 1068, would update the SDWA to remove “onerous procedural hurdles” and to set deadlines for drinking water standards for substances including lead, perchlorate, perfluorinated compounds, and algal toxins. The bill would also provide grants for replacement of lead service lines in schools and communities, as well as grants to make water systems more resilient to climate change and extreme weather, according to panel Democrats.
Democrats also reintroduced Rep. Paul Tonko's (D-NY) AQUA Act, H.R.1071, to fund drinking water infrastructure improvements. In another statement, Pallone said that the bill easily cleared the House on a voice vote when Democrats controlled the House. “But since Republicans took over, they have avoided the issue. I hope this hearing is a sign that Republicans are ready to join our infrastructure efforts.”
Republicans, however, were in general more interested in measures to overhaul the Clean Air Act and related issues such as streamlining of air permitting, although these would now appear to face a higher bar to passage into law.
GOP witnesses Ross Eisenberg, vice president of energy and resources policy for the National Association of Manufacturers, and Kevin Sunday, director of government affairs for the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, both focused in their testimony on EPA regulations issued under the air law in particular.
Eisenberg said, for example, that “creative” EPA regulations that result in burdens on industry and can be struck down by courts, are the result of EPA trying to adapt outdated air law requirements to current conditions.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/shimkus-eyes-bipartisan-brownfields-push-lieu-overhauling-air-law
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EPA Pulls Rule On Particulate Monitoring Requirements
Feb 16, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA has withdrawn a direct final rule related to the monitoring of airborne particulate matter after a utility industry trade group objected.
The agency published the rule — intended to revise quality assurance requirements — in late November, saying it would be dropped if "adverse comment" was received within the next month.
After the Utility Air Regulatory Group raised concerns that the changes did "not achieve the intended result," EPA withdrew the final rule yesterday, saying in a Federal Register notice that it would address the organization's reservations in a parallel rulemaking already under way.
Direct final rulemaking is a streamlined process for noncontroversial regulations that allows EPA to avoid the standard public comment process, according to its rulemaking procedures manual.
In this case, the only other feedback came from a graduate student who endorsed the revisions on the grounds that they would reduce particulate matter emissions and thus result in cleaner air.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/02/16/stories/1060050208
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July G-20 Summit Seen as Best Hope to Keep U.S. in Climate Pact
Feb 17, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
Senate Democrats and climate advocates are viewing the next G-20 summit of world leaders in July as perhaps their last best hope to persuade President Donald Trump to stay in the Paris climate pact—if Trump can be convinced to hold off that long.
Whether Trump makes good on his campaign vow to withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Agreement is a top issue for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who holds the G-20 presidency this year and will host the July 7-8 summit of leaders from the 20 leading economies in Hamburg, Germany. “I think that the G-20 is the most important climate meeting of the year,” Andrew Light, a former State Department climate negotiator, told Bloomberg BNA.
“It's the only one where we know Trump is going to show up—he has given every indication he will—and where we know climate change will be on the agenda,” said Light, now a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute's global climate program.Getting some of the top leaders among the nearly 200 nations that signed on to the Paris deal to prod Trump to keep the U.S. in the pact isn't the only strategy left, Light said, “but it does seem like the best case” can be made at the talks.
The groundwork for the July summit, which brings together leaders from top economies including Canada, China, India, Japan and the European Union, began this week with a preparatory meeting in Bonn of G-20 foreign ministers. They included U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has struck a more moderate tone than Trump on climate change.
Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO, argues the U.S. should stay at the table in such international negotiations; Trump has labeled climate change a “hoax” and vowed to pull the U.S. out of a deal for fear it will hurt U.S. competitiveness, though he said in December he was keeping “an open mind” about the pact.
Tillerson May Get ‘Earful’
The Paris Agreement isn't likely to be the hot topic for Tillerson's Feb. 15-17 visit in Bonn, which included talks Feb. 16 with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; the U.S. secretary said only that the two “had a productive meeting” with talks on “a range of issues of mutual concern” including Syria and Yemen. But Tillerson, in his first trip overseas as secretary of state, also is to meet with foreign ministers from nations including the U.K. and Saudi Arabia and UN officials, and climate pact supporters hope the U.S. secretary will hear pleas for the U.S. to stay in the Paris deal.
“My sense is that Tillerson is likely to get an earful ... and it will be clear that this is not a small environmental issue, but rather one with foreign-policy implications,” Jennifer Morgan, executive director for Greenpeace International, told Bloomberg BNA. But she added it's “totally unknown” how much weight Trump will give to such comments before rendering a final verdict on the Paris pact.
Greenpeace Germany activists called on German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who is hosting the Bonn ministerial meeting, to work for “clear and unified commitment” to the Paris Agreement.
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), told Bloomberg BNA it doesn't appear Trump has put much thought of late into whether to stay in the climate deal. “You know, there's nothing that they have to do right now” to decide its fate, particularly given other challenges such as getting Trump's Cabinet confirmed, Corker said.“So I think they may take their time before making a decision,” Corker said.
Trump Has ‘Lot of Fish to Fry’
The chairman, who hasn't been an especially outspoken advocate for preserving the Paris deal, said he doubts Trump has had much time to weigh arguments for staying in or getting out of the Paris deal, the first in which developed and developing nations alike agreed to act on rising greenhouse gas emissions linked to increasing temperatures.
“They've got a lot of fish to fry right now,” Corker said, alluding to what many view as a rocky start for Trump's first four weeks in office, from slow progress in getting his Cabinet confirmed to this week's resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the withdrawal of labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder.
The top Democrat on the Foreign Relations panel, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), said there's reason “to be somewhat hopeful” that Tillerson's interactions with other foreign ministers this week will be only the start of international pressure to keep the U.S. in the Paris deal. But he told Bloomberg BNA it's still unclear whether the new administration even has an international climate policy.
“The concern I think many of us have is that we don't have an articulated policy from the Trump administration” on climate change, Cardin said. “Now Mr. Tillerson obviously will have to carry out whatever the policy is. But we're not exactly sure how Mr. Trump makes his policies,” Cardin said.
“And climate change is not without some controversy, as you may have heard,” the Democrat said.
Few Concrete Obligations Under Pact?
Cardin and many Senate Democrats argue that U.S. withdrawal from the deal would signal that the world's second-largest emitter is walking way from helping to solve an issue already impacting some of the poorest developing nations. Withdrawal, they argue, also would upset delicate international relationships needed to pursue common interests on other issues, such as national security and combating terrorism.
Corker, the Foreign Relations panel chairman, continues to maintain the best argument for keeping the U.S. in the climate deal is that it doesn't really require the U.S. to do all that much, either to cut its greenhouse emissions or combat climate change. “There's no obligation that the United States has relative to the Paris Agreement anyway,” Corker said.
But Corker also pointed to comments from several now-confirmed Trump appointees, including Tillerson and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and now Trump's U.S. representative to the United Nations. Both have called for keeping the U.S. at the table in climate negotiations.
The suggestion from those nominees “is it might be important to [the administration] to have a seat at the table” at the UN negotiations to implement the Paris pact, Corker said.
In a departure from the Kyoto Protocol, which set binding targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions but only covered developed nations, the Paris deal was agreed to by developed and developing nations alike. But it is anchored in pledges voluntarily put forth by countries to address climate change.
The climate deal, which entered into force in November 2016, does include some binding elements, including transparency requirements to ensure countries accurately report their emissions and verify whether they are making progress on their pledged actions. But most of the obligations under the Paris Agreement don't begin until 2020.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=105762268&vname=dennotallissues&fn=105762268&jd=105762268
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Feb 16, 2017 | Wall Street Journal
By Kimberley A. Strassel
President Trump will soon turn his attention to another major campaign promise—rolling back the Obama climate agenda—and according to one quoted administration source his executive orders on that topic will “suck the air out of the room.” That’s good, but only if Team Trump finishes the job by casting into that vacuum the Paris climate accord.
That’s no longer a certainty, which ought to alarm anyone who voted for Mr. Trump in hopes of economic change. Candidate Trump correctly noted that the accord gave “foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use,” and he seemed to understand it risked undermining all his other plans. He unequivocally promised to “cancel” the deal, which the international community rushed to put into effect before the election. The Trump transition even went to work on plans to short-circuit the supposed four-year process for getting out.
That was three months ago—or approximately 93 years in Trump time. Word is that some in the White House are now aggressively pushing a wimpier approach. A pro-Paris contingent claims that quick withdrawal would cause too much international uproar. Some say leaving isn’t even necessary because the accord isn’t “binding.”
Then there’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who in his confirmation hearing said: “I think it’s important that the United States maintain its seat at the table on the conversations around how to address threats of climate change, which do require a global response.” Those are not the words of an official intent on bold action, but of a harassed oil CEO who succumbed years ago to the left’s climate protests.
Here’s the terrible risk of the wimpy approach: If the environmental left has learned anything over the past 20 years, it’s that the judicial branch is full of reliable friends. Republicans don’t share the green agenda, and the Democratic administrations that do are hampered by laws and procedures. But judges get things done. Need a snail added to the endangered species list? Want to shut down a dam? File a lawsuit with a friendly court and get immediate, binding results.
Lawsuits are already proving the main tool of the anti-Trump “resistance.” CNN reported that 11 days into his tenure, Mr. Trump had already been named in 42 new federal lawsuits. John Walke, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told NPR that his group will litigate any Trump efforts to roll back environmental regulations. He boasted about green groups’ winning track record at the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which Mr. Obama and Harry Reid packed with liberal judges.
It is certain that among the lawsuits will be one aimed at making the Paris accord enforceable. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell says judges could instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to implement the deal. “If President Trump doesn’t withdraw Obama’s signature, and Congress doesn’t challenge it,” he says, “then the environmentalists stand a good chance of getting a court to rule that our Paris commitments are binding and direct EPA to make it happen.”
Think that’s impossible? Instead, think Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in 2007 cast the deciding vote to declare carbon dioxide a pollutant, and who in September defended his habit of looking for guidance to international law. And consider that a few years back, CEI’s Chris Horner unearthed a legal memo from the New York attorney general’s office that laid out a strategy to get courts to force C0 2 cuts under international treaties.
Even with the Obama administration’s economy-crushing climate program, the U.S. is about 45% short of meeting its Paris obligations. If Mr. Trump rolls back the Obama regulations, the U.S. would fall about 70% short. If Mr. Trump would like to see short work made of his economic agenda, let Paris stand, and let a court decree the proper way to implement it. Bye-bye fracking. Bye-bye offshore drilling. Bye-bye Continental Resources and Keystone.
Paris was the capstone of a unilateral Obama climate agenda that ignored the law, the will of Congress, and the people. Mr. Trump ought to shred it on those grounds alone. There’s also the point that he made a rock-solid campaign pledge to both end the Paris accord and completely defund United Nations climate programs—promises that rallied many blue-collar workers to his cause.
A withdrawal from Paris is a perfect way to reset—overnight—the international climate debate, and to position Mr. Tillerson’s State Department to lead on economic growth and international security. Paris is a distraction from—if not an outright hindrance to—both. If Mr. Trump cares to succeed with the rest of his pro-growth agenda, he needs to follow through: Au revoir, Paris.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-wimp-out-on-climate-1487290672
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California Punts Vote on 2030 Climate Strategy to June
Feb 17, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
California put off until June a vote on a new climate change plan after environmental justice advocates and some business groups said more public input and analysis is necessary.
State air officials had planned to vote in April on the proposed strategy to achieve the state's 2030 goal of cutting carbon emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels.
The decision to postpone the vote on the draft plan , which was announced Feb. 16, comes largely at the request of the agency's environmental justice advisory committee, which wants more detailed analysis of its recommendations for the proposal. Industry groups and others also asked for additional time to consider the proposal and the California Air Resources Board's yet-to-be-completed economic analyses. A health benefits analysis also is still underway.
Released in December, the Draft 2030 Scoping Plan outlines a several paths to meeting the most aggressive emissions reduction goal in the nation, including continuing the state's economy-wide cap-and-trade program beyond 2020 and a cap-and-tax proposal.
CARB will announce new deadlines for comments and workshops at a later date.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=105762260&vname=dennotallissues&fn=105762260&jd=105762260
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