Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 3/6/2017
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Hearing On Funding Infrastructure
Mar 8, 2017 | Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development
Location: 192 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
Hearing On National Science Foundation
Mar 9, 2017 | House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Technology
Location: 2318 Rayburn / 10:00 AM. -
Hearing On Use Of Science For Rulemaking
Mar 9, 2017 | Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Man
Location: 342 Dirksen / 10:00 AM. -
(ACC Mentioned) Lawmakers To Weigh Science In Rulemaking Bill
Mar 6, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Arianna Skibell
Lawmakers this week plan to unveil and debate draft legislation that seeks to address the role of science in the rulemaking process. -
(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Industry Off to a Good Start, 4 Stocks to Buy Now
Mar 3, 2017 | Zacks (In Nasdaq)
The global chemical industry got off to a positive start in 2017 with January seeing a rise in chemical production on gains across most regions, according to the latest monthly report from the American Chemistry Council ("ACC"). -
Cardin, Whitehouse Get Key EPW Slots
Mar 6, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Hess
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's full roster, released today, shows Democratic leadership will see a couple of changes in the 115th Congress. -
Administration Plan To Slash EPA's Budget Faces Broad Opposition
Mar 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Trump administration plans to slash EPA's budget by 25 percent overall, including cutting EPA grants to states by 30 percent and zeroing out dozens of popular programs, is drawing broad opposition across the country as program supporters from both parties, state and local officials and some industry groups gear up to preserve funds. -
(ACC mentioned) New Toxic Controls to Emerge in Chemical Sector's March Madness
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
It is March madness in the chemicals arena as chemical makers, trade associations, lawyers and environmentalists scramble to shape how the EPA exercises new oversight over chemicals in commerce. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Aims To Speed Chemical Reviews But Must Address TSCA Mandates
Mar 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA is aiming to speed its process for reviewing new chemicals that has been mired with delays since enactment of the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), but it is having to balance efforts to accelerate the reviews with the need to ensure its process meets the requirements outlined in the law, says EPA's acting toxics chief. -
‘Crippling’ Cuts to EPA May Affect Chemical Oversight, Some Say
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The pressure EPA staff likely feel as they face stark potential cuts to the agency's budget can't help but make it harder for them to soldier through comments to be submitted for up to 17 chemical dockets over the next few weeks, attorneys, trade association officials and others told Bloomberg BNA in recent interviews. -
Chemical Sector Details Hurdles With EPA New Substance Review Process
Mar 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Chemical companies are facing hurdles in their assumptions about what changes they will have to make to requests for EPA to review new substances under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as the updated version of the law is creating questions about what information companies must submit and is causing delays in review. -
TSCA Chemical Inventory Outdated, Industry Says
Mar 6, 2017 | Environmental Leader
By Jessica Lyons Hardcastle
More than 85,000 chemicals fall under Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) regulations — but the EPA has no idea how many of those chemicals are actually in use, Chemical & Engineering News reports. -
US Agencies Request Clearance For Crumb Rubber Studies
Mar 6, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Two US agencies are requesting clearance to complete information collection activities to support their investigation of crumb rubber infill. -
Dow's Bid to Derail Toxics Class Action Deflated
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
New evidence that some class members had minimal exposure to hazardous gases released from a Dow Chemical facility won't derail a class action against the company, a Louisiana Court or Appeals ruled March 1 (Guidry v. Dow Chem. Co., 2017 BL 65354, La. Ct. App., 4th Cir., No. 2016-CA-0757, 3/1/17). -
Woman Waited Too Long to File Lead Paint Suit
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
A 28-year old woman waited too long to sue her childhood landlords for lead paint exposure, a New York appeals court ruled (Vasilatos v. Dzamba, 2017 BL 64644, N.Y. App. Div., 523286, 3/2/17). -
Unilever Rises Above The Regs On Chemicals Transparency
Mar 6, 2017 | GreenBiz
By Anya Khalamayzer
Half of all consumer products contain fragrance. More than 3,000 chemicals add fragrance to consumer goods worldwide -
EU Agency Calls for Input on Proposed Phaseout of Seven Chemicals
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Chemicals Agency is calling for comments through June 2 on the proposed phaseout of seven hazardous substances from use in the European Union. -
Fast Growth Coming for Northeast Shale Gas Pipelines
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
A surge in pipeline capacity for natural gas in the U.S. Northeast this year and next is expected to boost profits for producers and help hold down prices for Midwest and East Coast buyers. -
Court Grants EPA Bid To Delay Deadline For Nsps Suit's Argument Format
Mar 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
A federal appellate court has granted EPA's motion to extend by two weeks the deadline for parties in litigation challenging the agency's greenhouse gas rule for new and modified power plants to file proposed formats for oral argument -- delaying the next action in the case until potentially after President Donald Trump signs an executive order targeting the related existing power plant rule. -
EPA Withdraws Request For Emissions Data From Industry
Mar 6, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has withdrawn its request that oil and gas owners and operators provide additional information on existing equipment and methane emissions, reversing a policy that was enacted under the Obama administration. -
Occidental's Massive Petrochemical Plant Comes Online In Texas
Mar 4, 2017 | Houston Chronicle
By Jordan Blum
The first of several petrochemical plants coming online this year became operational last week when Houston-based Occidental Petroleum opened its new facility near Corpus Christi. -
Opposition To Fracking In Maryland Is Anti-Science
Mar 6, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Thomas Wheatley
For Maryland state Sen. Robert Zirkin (D-Baltimore County), the dangers of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) are so patently obvious that the question itself is pointless to discuss. “This is not one of those issues that lends itself to that debate,” said Zirkin at an anti-fracking rally in Annapolis on Tuesday. “This is a public health issue, pure and simple.” -
(ACC Mentioned) Inhofe Offers Senate CRA Resolution To Overturn EPA's RMP Rule
Mar 6, 2017 | Inside EPA
Backed by the chemical industry, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has introduced a Congressional Review Act (CRA) disapproval resolution to repeal the controversial Obama-era revisions to the agency's facility safety program, a companion to one introduced in the House last month. -
New GPS Technology Will Help Keep Trains From Crashing. Why Is It Taking So Long To Arrive?
Mar 6, 2017 | The Sacramento Bee
By Tony Bizjack
Nine years ago, Union Pacific Railroad supervisor Ricky Durrant was called to a ghastly scene in Southern California. -
Keeping The Nation’s Economy On Track Begins In Texas
Mar 5, 2017 | MySanAntonio
By Hector L. Rivero
Not many Americans know it, but just about everything they need to get their day started begins in Texas. Our cleaning and hygiene needs, the food that goes on the breakfast table, and the energy that powers homes and cars are all made possible by Texas manufacturers. -
Southern California Air Plan Calls for End to Trading Program
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
Southern California air quality officials decided March 3 to phase out a cap-and-trade program covering 276 stationary sources of nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides as soon as practical. -
White House Proposes Steep Budget Cut To Leading Climate Science Agency
Mar 3, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Steven Mufson, Jason Samenow and Brady Dennis
The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
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Hearing On Funding Infrastructure
Mar 8, 2017 | Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development
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Hearing On National Science Foundation
Mar 9, 2017 | House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Technology
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Hearing On Use Of Science For Rulemaking
Mar 9, 2017 | Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Man
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(ACC Mentioned) Lawmakers To Weigh Science In Rulemaking Bill
Mar 6, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Arianna Skibell
Lawmakers this week plan to unveil and debate draft legislation that seeks to address the role of science in the rulemaking process.
Top Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.), who have a history of bipartisan regulatory reform efforts, will question former government officials and scientists about whether the measure would enhance accountability and transparency.
At issue is not whether lawmakers and agencies should take science into account at all — but rather which science, to what extent and in what manner. The language of the bill has not been made public.
Andrew Rosenberg, a scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists and former administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, will testify before the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management, which Lankford and Heitkamp lead.
Rosenberg has cautioned against measures that he says could create more roadblocks or empower industry's role and is expected to urge senators to leave the practice of science to the scientists.
"Improving the use of science in making policy is worth doing," he wrote in a blog post.
"However, legislation that creates new procedural roadblocks, pre-empts scientific expertise, or amplifies the already powerful voice of industry at the expense of other voices will not help achieve this goal," he said.
Susan Dudley, who oversaw executive branch regulations as the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs administrator under President George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009, said that when considering how to improve science in developing rules, it's important to clarify which aspects of the decision are matters of science and which of policy.
"Greater transparency in the underlying studies and factors considered in making decisions is also important for more accountable policies," she wrote in a working paper.
Rosenberg said that while transparency can be good, often data is confidential or proprietary. Measures that require all data to be made public could practically prevent agencies like U.S. EPA from taking any action.
Dudley also said it's important that lawmakers understand science as a positive discipline that can inform, but not decide, policy. She said the executive branch needs to recognize that risk assessment necessarily involves assumptions and judgements, not just pure scientific inputs.
She encouraged agencies to increase the robustness of regulatory science by institutionalizing reforms and said rules should be designed to facilitate natural experimentation and learning.
Nancy Beck, senior director of regulatory science policy at the American Chemistry Council and a former OIRA official, will also testify at the hearing. Beck has argued for the importance of having clear criteria and giving more weight to data that are most relevant.
The debate on science in rulemaking was heightened when a 2001 spending bill rider directed the Office of Management and Budget to issue governmentwide guidelines that "provide policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information."
Opponents of the Information Quality Act, also known as the Data Quality Act, argued it merely provided grounds for special interest groups to sue agencies claiming research did not meet federal requirements under the act.
In 2002, the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a lawsuit to stop EPA from issuing its report on climate change impacts, arguing the data did not meet IQA standards. The case was later dismissed.
And in 2007, OMB withdrew its plan to standardize guidelines that federal agencies use to assess risks to human health, safety and the environment. The agency based its decision in large part on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences (E&E News PM, Sept. 19, 2007).
Under President Trump, however, lawmakers could dust off the IQA to attack environmental rules and challenge EPA global warming models (Greenwire, Nov. 3, 2016).
Senate leaders have made clear that regulatory reform is a top priority this Congress. And while Republicans are likely to praise Lankford for his efforts, Heitkamp could receive push back from her caucus, the bulk of whose members see reform as a ploy for stagnation and obstruction of the administrative state (Greenwire, Feb. 21).
Schedule: The hearing is Thursday, March 9, at 10 a.m. in 342 Dirksen.
Witnesses: Susan Dudley, director of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University; Andrew Rosenberg, director of Center for Science and Democracy with Union of Concerned Scientists; and Nancy Beck, senior director of regulatory science policy at the American Chemistry Council.
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/stories/1060050970/search?keyword=%22American+Chemistry+Council%22
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Industry Off to a Good Start, 4 Stocks to Buy Now
Mar 3, 2017 | Zacks (In Nasdaq)
The global chemical industry got off to a positive start in 2017 with January seeing a rise in chemical production on gains across most regions, according to the latest monthly report from the American Chemistry Council ("ACC").
Encouraging January Readings
The Washington, DC-based chemical industry trade group said that the Global Chemical Production Regional Index ("CPRI") rose 0.6% in January on a monthly comparison basis. The Global CPRI, which is measured using a three-month moving average, measures chemical production volumes for 33 major nations, sub-regions and regions. It is comparable to the Federal Reserve Board ("FRB") production indices.
Gains in production were witnessed across North America (up 0.4%), Western Europe (up 1.2%), Central & Eastern Europe (up 1.7%) and Asia-Pacific (up 0.6%) in January. The results were also positive on a product basis for the reported month. On a year over year comparison basis, strongest growth was witnessed in coatings (up 6.8%). Synthetic rubber saw a 3.4% rise while both plastic resins and inorganic chemicals racked up 2.7% gains.
The ACC also note that the Global CPRI went up 3.3% year over year on a three-month moving average basis. Capacity utilization for the global chemical industry moved up 0.4 percentage points to 79.2% in January.
Chemical Industry Looking Up
The chemical industry - which had long been out of favor - is finally getting its groove back. Despite a spate of headwinds, the highly cyclical industry put up a decent performance in 2016, helped by continued strength across automotive and housing markets - two major end-use markets for chemicals.The automotive sector continues its healthy run. In particular, U.S. light vehicles market continued to show strength in 2016, supported by an improving job market, rising personal income, low fuel prices and attractive financing options, and the momentum is expected to continue this year.
A recovery across housing and commercial construction markets has been another tailwind for the chemical industry. The underlying demand trends in the housing space remain strong, supported by an improving employment levels, affordable interest/mortgage rates and a rise in income levels. This augurs well for chemical demand in this key market.
Notwithstanding a slew of headwinds including concerns over China's economy, Eurozone's tepid recovery and weak demand in the energy space, the chemical industry's recovery momentum is expected to continue this year, supported by continued strength in the light vehicles market, positive trends in the construction space and significant shale-linked capital investment.
In particular, the U.S. chemical industry is set for solid growth this year and the next. The outlook for the American chemical industry paints an encouraging picture. The ACC sees national chemical production to rise 3.6% in 2017, further accelerating to a 4.8% growth in 2018. The trade group also expects basic chemicals production to expand 4.2% in 2017 on the back of advances in manufacturing and exports.
Moreover, the shale gas bounty is expected to drive investment on plants and equipment in the U.S. Chemical makers are ratcheting up investment on shale gas-linked projects to take advantage of ample natural gas supplies.
Per the ACC, over 275 new chemical projects have been announced by chemical makers (worth more than $170 billion) since 2010, nearly half of which already complete or under construction. Such investments are expected to boost capacity and export over the next several years.
The Zacks categorized ' Chemicals-Diversified ' industry has also outperformed the broader market over the past year. The industry has gained around 22.4% over this period, higher than S&P 500's corresponding return of 19.1%.Chemical Stocks to Scoop Up Now
The chemical industry's upturn is expected to continue in 2017 on continued momentum across major end-markets. Amid such a backdrop, it would be a prudent idea to invest in chemical stocks with compelling growth prospects if you are looking to reap solid returns from your portfolio this year.
We highlight the following stocks with Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy) that are good options for investment right now. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
Univar Inc. UNVR
Illinois-based Univar carries a Zacks Rank #1 and has long-term expected earnings per share (EPS) growth rate of roughly 9.4%. The company delivered average positive earnings surprise of 18.7% over the trailing four quarters. It has expected earnings growth of 34.3% for the current year. The stock has also gained 98% over the last one year, outperforming the Chemicals-Diversified industry's gain of 24.4% over the same period.Albemarle Corporation ALB
Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, Albemarle sports a Zacks Rank #2 and has a long-term expected EPS growth rate of roughly 12%. The company delivered positive earnings surprise in each of the trailing four quarters with an average beat of 14.3%. The stock has returned 75.7% over the last year, outperforming the Chemicals-Diversified industry's gain of 24.4% over the same period. The company also has an expected earnings growth of 15.9% for the current year.Celanese Corporation CE
Our next pick in the space is Texas-based Celanese, armed with a Zacks Rank #2. The company has surpassed expectations over the last four quarters with an average positive surprise of around 6.8%. Its long-term projected EPS growth rate is 8.8%. The stock has gained 40.9% over the last year, outperforming the Chemicals-Diversified industry, which has gained 24.4% over the same period.The Chemours Company CC
Delaware-based Chemours is another attractive choice with a Zacks Rank #2. The company has expected earnings growth of 137.8% for the current year. It delivered average positive earnings surprise of 151.6% over the trailing four quarters. Chemours has a long-term expected EPS growth rate of roughly 15.5%. The stock has also gained a staggering 489.5% over the last year, outperforming the Chemicals-Diversified industry, which has gained 24.4% over the same period.
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/chemical-industry-off-to-a-good-start-4-stocks-to-buy-now-cm756231 -
Cardin, Whitehouse Get Key EPW Slots
Mar 6, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Hess
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's full roster, released today, shows Democratic leadership will see a couple of changes in the 115th Congress.
Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, who is next in line for the top Democratic spot on the panel after ranking member Tom Carper of Delaware, will lead the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
Infrastructure looks to be a relevant topic this year, with President Trump pushing for major spending. Subcommittee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) has set it as a priority.
Former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who retired this year as the panel's ranking member, previously held the top spot on the Transportation and Infrastructure panel.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a climate hawk, will replace Carper as ranking member of the Clean Air and Nuclear Safety panel.
Two freshman members of the Senate will take over Democratic leadership of the remaining subcommittees. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois will serve as ranking member of the Fisheries, Water and Wildlife Subcommittee. And Sen. Kamala Harris of California sits atop the Superfund, Waste Management and Regulatory Oversight Subcommittee.
Republicans announced their subcommittee leaders and lineup three weeks ago (Greenwire, Feb. 9). The Democrats' roster includes the following, with the ranking member listed at the top of each section:
Transportation and Infrastructure
· Cardin
· Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont
· Whitehouse
· Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon
· Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York
· Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts
· Duckworth
· Harris
Clean Air and Nuclear Safety
· Whitehouse
· Cardin
· Sanders
· Merkley
· Gillibrand
· Markey
· Duckworth
Fisheries, Water and Wildlife
· Duckworth
· Cardin
· Whitehouse
· Merkley
· Gillibrand
· Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey
· Markey
Superfund, Waste Management and Regulatory Oversight
· Harris
· Sanders
· Booker
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/03/03/stories/1060050942
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Administration Plan To Slash EPA's Budget Faces Broad Opposition
Mar 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Trump administration plans to slash EPA's budget by 25 percent overall, including cutting EPA grants to states by 30 percent and zeroing out dozens of popular programs, is drawing broad opposition across the country as program supporters from both parties, state and local officials and some industry groups gear up to preserve funds.
According to leaked details of the proposed budget, the White House Office of Management & Budget is recommending complete elimination of funding for some programs, including for some congressionally authorized programs, as well as programs that are popular with lawmakers and industry groups.
They include brownfield projects; Diesel Emissions Reduction Act funding; Energy Star grants; “geographical programs” for Lake Champlain, Long Island Sound, San Francisco Bay and South Florida; and Global Change Research.
State officials have already raised concerns that the plan signals that OMB may renege on commitments by Administrator Scott Pruitt to preserve state grants as he works to return much of the responsibility for implementing environmental programs to states.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), for example, warned in a statement that administration plans to cut funds for EPA's Great Lakes Initiative by 97 percent would undercut cleanups and other environmental programs in the region.
“This initiative has been critical to cleaning up our Great Lakes and waterways, restoring fish and wildlife habitats, and fighting invasive species,” she said in a statement. “Our Great Lakes are part of our DNA and an important driver of our economy in Michigan and I call on President Trump to reverse course on these harmful decisions.”
Even before details of the budget plan leaked, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from Chesapeake Bay states wrote to President Donald Trump urging him to fund EPA's Bay cleanup program at its current level of $73 million in FY18, though the administration plan would cut the program's funds by 93 percent.
“Through [EPA's] Chesapeake Bay Program, the Chesapeake Bay's health is improving significantly. . . . We must ensure that this important work continues and that federal funds continue to be available to support this effort,” the lawmakers said in their Feb. 23 letter.
Among those signing the letter were Reps. Robert Wittman (R-VA), Bobby Scott (D-VA), Andy Harris (R-MD), John Sarbanes (D-MD), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Scott Taylor (R-VA), John Faso (R-NY), Barbara Comstock (R-VA) and others.
While EPA has not detailed where the cuts would fall on individual programs, an incomplete list prepared by The Oregonian shows a broad range of agency programs and accounts that would be hit.
The list shows that EPA's Office of Research & Development (ORD), which is slated for a 42 percent cut, would get hit especially hard.
ORD's Air, Climate and Energy research program is slated to drop 50 percent from its FY16 appropriated level of $92 million to $46 million, the Sustainable and Healthy Communities research program is proposed to drop 46 percent from its FY16 level of $140 million to $76 million, the Safe and Sustainable Water Resources research program would fall 35 percent from $107 million in FY16 to $70 million and its Chemical Safety and Sustainability research program would drop 30 percent from $89 million to $62 million.
The significant cut to the chemical research program could prove particularly problematic in light of EPA's efforts to implement the new Toxic Substances Control Act that President Barack Obama enacted last summer. The law directs EPA to craft within two years of its June 2016 implementation a strategy for using non-animal testing in its decision-making. EPA's National Center for Computational Toxicology, a key element in developing that plan, is housed within the Chemical Safety and Sustainability research program.
ORD leaders were clearly concerned about the future of their programs when they met with the Trump transition team in January.
Presentation slides from the meeting show ORD leaders making an argument for EPA's need for its research and scientific office. "EPA's research provides science that is mandated by several environmental laws," the slides state, pointing to language in the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act and TSCA.
The list also shows a complete eliminationof the San Francisco Bay cleanup project, the 97 percent cut to the Great Lakes restoration program, and 93 percent cuts to the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound cleanup projects. Cuts to these restoration programs include the largest on the list, both in terms of percentage and total dollars. The 97 percent cut to the Great Lakes restoration program, for instance, would drop that program from $300 million in FY16 approved funding to a proposed $10 million.
The 93 percent cut to the Chesapeake Bay cleanup would drop funding from $73 million in FY16 to $5 million, while the Puget Sound cleanup would fall from $28 million to $2 million.
Surprisingly, many of the programs included on the list are programs that Congress authorized and directed EPA to conduct, such as the Great Lakes restoration program, the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program, and its Toxics Release Inventory (TRI).
The list includes a 94 percent cut to “endocrine disruptors,” down from a $7.5 million budget in FY16 to $445,000. The list proposes a 23 percent cut to the TRI program, from $13.9 million to 10.7 million.
Also surprising are cuts to state grant programs, many of them popular with state officials, regulators and the public.
The list also shows significant cuts ranging from 31 percent to 29 percent of a series of other grants programs, among them the drinking water grant program, proposed to fall from $102 million in FY16 to $71 million; the nonpoint source pollution grant program, proposed to drop from $165 million in FY16 to $115 million; water pollution control grants, with a proposed cut from $230 million to $161 million; and air quality grants, with a suggested cut from $228 million to $159 million.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/administration-plan-slash-epas-budget-faces-broad-opposition
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(ACC mentioned) New Toxic Controls to Emerge in Chemical Sector's March Madness
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
It is March madness in the chemicals arena as chemical makers, trade associations, lawyers and environmentalists scramble to shape how the EPA exercises new oversight over chemicals in commerce.
The continued availability of some commercial products, consumer confidence in chemical safety, and public health impacts hang in the balance as the Environmental Protection Agency shapes its review and control of chemicals, attorneys and environmental groups told Bloomberg BNA.
A wide swath of businesses and associations, along with environmental health groups, are preparing comments on 17 topics to help update the agency's new mandate to more comprehensively identify and manage the risks posed by chemicals used by businesses and consumers.
EPA's response to the comments will shape the implementation of a law passed last June that would overhaul what environmentalists have bemoaned as a lax national approach to tens of thousands of toxics in commerce and the environment.
The law may also tamp down a patchwork of state chemical labeling, disclosure rules and controls, which industry representatives said are difficult for national firms to comply with and may wrongly ban needed chemicals.
Given that chemical oversight before the new law passed has been limited, many companies and trade associations are for the first time grappling with a potentially confusing set of new government requirements and rules.
Docking Views and Data
Thirteen of the 17 dockets the EPA has opened seek comments on proposed rules and risk reviews mandated by the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act (LCSA), which overhauled the Toxic Substances Control Act. Another three dockets address proposed rules authorized by the amended law to restrict uses of three solvents.
“It's not typical for an agency to be involved in this many rulemakings for the same statute at the same time. It's an extraordinary burden on industry and EPA,” said Heidi McAuliffe, vice president for government affairs with the American Coatings Association, which is preparing comments for up to seven dockets.
“Every single one of those dockets addresses actions that will have a significant impact on our manufacturing processes,” McAuliffe said.
Four law firms contacted by Bloomberg BNA say they are able to file the comments they are preparing without hiring additional staff or contractors. Others say other aspects of TSCA's implementation has prompted them to seek new hires. Lynn Bergeson, managing partner of Bergeson & Campbell PC in Washington, said that the firm may hire additional staff to address the backlog of hundreds of new chemical applications, called “premanufacture notices,” pending at the EPA.
The EPA's implementation efforts are “the biggest thing to hit U.S. chemical regulations since the TSCA inventory was established” in the late 1970s, Irene Hantman, an attorney with Verdant Law PLLC told Bloomberg BNA. An existing or new potential client calls nearly every day to learn more and decide whether it too wants Verdant's help submitting comments, Hantman said.
Building Out Framework Rules
Three of the 17 dockets, known as the “framework rules,” address chemicals in commerce. These three rules would determine how the EPA would:
• divide the current U.S. chemical inventory of more than 85,000 molecules into two categories: chemicals in commerce and chemicals that used to be;
• sort through the commercially active chemicals to identify ones which should have their potential risks assessed and which present such low risks that they can be set aside for now; and
• assess chemical risks, a process that could lead to labeling, use restrictions or other controls that could affect their commercial viability or availability.
Another 10 dockets address the scope of EPA risk reviews for those chemicals. The agency is seeking comment on the populations, health and environmental concerns, chemical uses and other issues the agency's reviews should take into account. The new law does not mandate new risk guidance or standards so the agency appears to be relying on existing approaches. The chemicals up for comment include asbestos, one pigment, seven solvents and a cluster of three related flame retardants.Retailers too are focusing on the framework rules because many of them make, distribute and sell house brands of chemical-intensive consumer products, said Peter Hsiao, an attorney with Morrison & Foerster LLP's Los Angeles office. Hsiao heads his office's Environment and Energy Group and its Green Products and Chemicals team.
Retailers—like other companies that purchase chemicals to make goods—want to make sure they will have access to needed chemicals, yet they also want to assure their customers the chemicals in their products are safe, he said.
Risk Reviews
Three dockets are open for comments about proposed restrictions on the use of three solvents—trichloroethylene, methylene chloride and n-methylpyrrolidone—based on risk assessments the agency completed prior to the new law's passage. These proposed rules are the agency's first attempt to use Section 6 of TSCA to restrict or ban a chemical in commerce since a pivotal legal decision in 1991, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned the agency's 1989 effort to ban most uses of asbestos (Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA, 947 F.2d 1201, 33 ERC 1961 (5th Cir. 1991)). That case was widely perceived to undercut EPA's nonpesticide chemical authorities.
The 17th docket addresses three new, generically named chemicals. The agency is proposing “significant new use rules” that would require companies making, or processors working with, any of the three chemicals to notify the EPA before they make or use the chemicals in a new way. All three chemicals entered commerce in 2015, before the most recent amendments.
Subpoenas to Get Data?
McAuliffe said the American Coatings Association plans to ask the EPA to clarify how it will separate high or low priority compounds for risk reviews, among other issues.
The agency's proposed prioritization rule appears to allow a chemical to remain indefinitely in limbo while the agency seeks more toxicity, exposure or other data without making a decision on whether it is a high or low priority, she said. Companies aren't comfortable with a chemical staying indefinitely in the pre-prioritization phase, McAuliffe said.
The association's members also want to know which tools and authorities the EPA will use to secure data during the pre-prioritization stage, she said.
The amended statute authorizes the EPA to obtain data through orders, consent agreements and rules. Members would like to know whether the agency plans to issue data collection rules, authorized by Section 8 of TSCA, or inspections and subpoenas authorized under Section 11, McAuliffe said.
Hantman said processors—companies that mix chemicals into products such as paints, waxes, glues, and cleaners without causing chemical reactions—need to focus on the inventory rule which will separate commercially active from dormant compounds.
“They must make sure all the chemicals that make up their raw materials are on the active inventory,” she said. Companies that make or use a chemical that would end up on the inactive inventory, would have to notify the EPA and get the chemical activated before they could work with the chemical.
The challenge, Hantman said, is that many processors haven't paid much attention to their responsibilities under that proposed rule, because they don't routinely focus on chemical regulations.
Scoping 10 Risk Evaluations
Environmental health, public health, labor and other organizations also are actively developing strategies to influence the EPA's implementation of the amended chemicals law, in part by urging the agency to protect vulnerable groups such as children, the elderly and workers.
“We're trying to cover as many dockets as we can,” Liz Hitchcock, legislative director for the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition told Bloomberg BNA. The coalition consists of about 450 organizations and businesses across the country.
Hitchcock said she is a “traffic cop” helping to coordinate a nationwide effort to urge strict new public health and environmental protections. Environmental health organizations also want the EPA to consider impacts chemicals have throughout their life cycle, including once they are disposed, Hitchcock said. They are urging the EPA to carefully weigh health and environmental concerns for vulnerable and exposed populations, Hitchcock wrote in a recent blog.
The Adhesive and Sealant Council—which also represents processors—is encouraging its members to submit comments and working with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) to submit joint comments, Mark Collatz, director of regulatory affairs for the adhesive council told Bloomberg BNA.
None of the risk evaluation dockets address impending rules, but it is “absolutely important” for processors to let the EPA know whether or not their product contains any of the 10 chemicals, he said.
Data Dump
The EPA has published “Preliminary Information on Manufacturing, Processing, Distribution, Use, and Disposal” documents for each of the 10 chemicals with information it collected from databases, web searches and other sources. The EPA names companies that make—and products that contain—the chemicals based on the agency's preliminary searches.
It's a big data dump in which EPA is saying “here's everything we found,” Collatz said.
Some companies may not make the listed product any more or may make it using a different formulation that no longer contains one of the 10 chemicals the agency is analyzing, he said. The council is urging its members to let the EPA know that, he said.
Conversely, if a company makes a formulation that contains one or more of the 10 chemicals, that company also should report the information to the agency even if the amount of the chemical is very small, Collatz said.
If companies don't tell the EPA and the agency finds out the product contains the chemical, that could lead to increased scrutiny and perhaps a new use regulation, he said. Companies may have to go through some kind of evaluation, and that EPA evaluation could lead to strict new manufacturing or use controls, Collatz said.
Compiling use information is not easy, because companies often purchase chemical mixtures that perform some type of function in a final product. Paint and coatings manufacturers may not know what chemicals are in those mixtures because that's another company's proprietary information, McAuliffe said.
The Big Picture
“The number of open dockets shows EPA's substantial effort to stay on schedule while soliciting stakeholder participation and comment. ACC is committed to the effective implementation of the LCSA, and we are working hard to develop and offer industry comments for these dockets,” the council said.
Charles Franklin, an attorney working in the Washington office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, said: “I do not recall an equivalent clustering of framework rulemaking proposals during the past 25 years, including the periods after passage of the 1992 Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act and the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA)” that governs pesticides.
“The post-FQPA period is probably the closest analogy but, even then, the actions were more spread out—and EPA had significantly more staff and resources to meet its obligations,” Franklin told Bloomberg BNA by email.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=106574781&vname=dennotallissues&fn=106574781&jd=106574781
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Aims To Speed Chemical Reviews But Must Address TSCA Mandates
Mar 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
EPA is aiming to speed its process for reviewing new chemicals that has been mired with delays since enactment of the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), but it is having to balance efforts to accelerate the reviews with the need to ensure its process meets the requirements outlined in the law, says EPA's acting toxics chief.
“I will tell you that as part of the process [of determining] how we can have a new chemicals program that meets everybody's expectations, we're looking at all aspects of it,” acting agency Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OSCPP) Assistant Administrator Wendy Cleland-Hamnett told the recent GlobalChem conference.
“We're working with the Office of the General Counsel on it, we're looking at policy, we're looking at process,” she said, as well as looking at “education and outreach” to companies that submit chemicals for EPA's review under the new substances program, also known as the pre-manufacture notice (PMN) program.
“Everything's on the table for review right now,” she said, stressing that the agency wants to try and speed the review process but is mindful of its need to ensure it complies with the new TSCA.
At the Feb. 22-24 GlobalChem conference in Washington, D.C., multiple industry officials faulted the slow pace of the PMN program. It has been largely been stalled since President Barack Obama signed into law last June the TSCA update known as the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. The new chemical review program was the most immediately affected by the reform law, because the agency already had a number of PMNs in the queue for which it opted to reset the clock, and it typically receives about 1,000 new PMNs each year.
Mike Walls, vice president of of regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), asked Cleland-Hamnett, “Part of the concern about delays in implementation revolves around the legal interpretation of exactly what the Lautenberg act requires. Does this require, in your view, sa re-look about what EPA staff is interpreting as a reasonable interpretation?”
Cleland-Hamnett replied that she and her staff are considering all possible options to improve the situation, but that the agency as of her Feb. 23 remarks to GlobalChem had yet to make any conclusion.
“Obviously we don't know where we're going to come out on any of this. But I don't think we've ruled anything out,” she said. “In evaluating all of these things we are very conscious of the need to meet the requirements of the law, so we still need to be able to make the affirmative determinations that the law requires us to make.”
Cleland-Hamnett added, “So that's the bottom line: whatever changes in process or policy we decide to implement the bedrock is that we need to be able to make those affirmative findings.”
PMNA Applications
One issue with speedily processing PMN applications per the requirements of the new TSCA is a need for more staff, Cleland-Hamnett said. The law gives EPA the ability to charge fees to help support a larger toxics staff, but she reminded the audience that EPA has yet to release a draft version of the fees rule.
“Part of the problem is the we don't have new staff and we have a lot of new work,” she said, adding that some staff had been shifted from work in the existing chemicals part of the toxics office to assist PMN program staff. But these staff are being returned to their usual posts as EPA is beginning its work on the first 10 risk evaluations of existing chemicals, she said -- a list that includes asbestos and other substances.
EPA in a Federal Register notice slated for publication March 6 says that its deadline “to receive input and information to assist the Agency in its efforts to establish the scope of risk evaluations under development for the ten chemicals substances,” is March 15, and re-opens the docket that had closed on March 1.
At the GlobalChem conference, industry speakers faulted the problems with the PMN program, one of the few aspects of TSCA that stakeholders pushing for reforms in previous years generally saw as less of a concern. By contrast, stakeholders saw problems with provisions in the original law intended to provide EPA authority to require data on, and regulate, existing chemicals -- those already on the market when the original TSCA was enacted in 1976.
But the overhaul of TSCA included changes to section 5 of TSCA, which governs how EPA reviews new chemicals before they enter the market through the PMN program.
Before enactment of TSCA reform, EPA had 90 days to review PMN submissions, wherein it could “drop” from further review a chemical considered unlikely to be problematic, request additional information from the submitter, or bar or place restrictions on those chemicals that it considered of concern.
Changes to TSCA section 5, however, require that EPA publish an affirmative finding for each PMN rather than simply dropping those low-risk applications from review. EPA now must publicly make affirmative findings on new substances' safety prior to their commercial use; to address not only the conditions of use outlined in the PMN but also those that are "reasonably" foreseeable; and to ensure protection of susceptible subpopulations.
TSCA Mandates
Additionally, the revised law includes a first-time mandate that EPA flag chemicals where "insufficient information" hinders its ability to determine risk, and issue a section 5(e) order for those chemicals to develop new information, which has resulted in greater use of section 5(e) orders, at least so far in the agency’s implementation.
Cal Dooley, president and CEO of ACC, noted industry's concerns with the status of the PMN program in his plenary remarks at GlobalChem Feb. 23. “We're also very concerned with . . . section 5 and new provisions of TSCA,” he said. “We didn't expect that EPA would adopt a policy that they would need so much data for . . . even anticipated or potential uses, which has resulted in section 5 turning into a logjam. During this time, EPA has completed only 33 of these. This is stunning when you look at this from past practices, when EPA has historically done 1,000 of these per year. And we've got 33 in six months.” --
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-aims-speed-chemical-reviews-must-address-tsca-mandates
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‘Crippling’ Cuts to EPA May Affect Chemical Oversight, Some Say
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The pressure EPA staff likely feel as they face stark potential cuts to the agency's budget can't help but make it harder for them to soldier through comments to be submitted for up to 17 chemical dockets over the next few weeks, attorneys, trade association officials and others told Bloomberg BNA in recent interviews.
“I'm concerned all this rulemaking activity may be more than the agency can effectively deal with under the circumstances,” Heidi McAuliffe, vice president for government affairs at the American Coatings Association Inc., told Bloomberg BNA March 1.
She referred to pressures including the 25 percent budget and 20 percent staffing cut that the Office of Management and Budget is reported to have recommended the Environmental Protection Agency make in its fiscal year 2018 budget request.
McAuliffe also referred to uncertainty about how some of President Trump's executive orders on regulations will be implemented. On Jan. 30, for example, the president signed an executive order telling agencies that for each rulemaking they propose they must identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed.
The agency meanwhile has work to do and faces three proposed rules governing how it would oversee chemicals in commerce, in response to mandates in Toxic Substances Control Act amendments of 2016. It also will have to plow through comments on 10 chemical risk assessments and four other rules are underway.
Herbert Estreicher, a partner with Keller and Heckman LLP in Washington, described the workload and turmoil facing the EPA as “indeed trying times.”
Liz Hitchcock, legislative director for the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition, agreed the months ahead will be tough on the EPA, but she remains optimistic about the agency's ability to fulfill TSCA's new requirements.
“I have been impressed by the amount of work and thoughtfulness of the work that EPA staff have been doing as they implement the law,” Hitchcock said. They have met tough deadlines with thoughtful proposals, she said.
Lawsuits Could Follow Deep Cuts
Two former assistant EPA administrators for chemical safety and pollution prevention at the EPA were circumspect in their reactions to news about the proposed cuts.
There's a long process ahead before Congress decides what EPA's budget and staffing levels will be, Jim Aidala, who served under President Bill Clinton and now is a senior government affairs consultant with Bergeson & Campbell PC, and Jim Jones, who departed from the EPA in January told Bloomberg BNA.
It's not unusual for the White House to propose cuts to programs it anticipates Congress will restore, Aidala said.
There are also a lot of practical challenges that would arise if the EPA was forced to cut staff 20 percent, he said. Staff attrition is normally in the 7 percent to 9 percent range, Aidala said.
Buyouts and reductions in force, or RIFs, would not normally get the agency to a 20 percent target, he said. That would suggest a fairly large buyout program, which will cost money in the short run, Aidala said.
RIFs are quite difficult to implement because there are many rules that apply to what job titles can be reduced and in what order, he said.
Further, staffing reductions of 20 percent mean, essentially, that the agency would be under a hiring freeze, Aidala said.
That puts the agency in a tough spot when it comes to making sure it has scientific expertise available to address cutting-edge issues, such as whether chemicals are contributing to neurotoxicity and immune toxicity, Aidala said.
Jones rejected some arguments that the EPA could cut money and staff from its air and water offices and direct those resources to the chemicals and pesticide offices.
Every part of the agency would have to cut some resources, he said.
“A 20 percent reduction in staff will be crippling,” Jones said.
The EPA's activities respond to statutory mandates in most cases, Jones said. If the agency's staff is cut so much it cannot achieve its statutory mandates, interested parties will seek recourse, for example, they could sue the agency for failing to comply with legislative mandates, he said.
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Chemical Sector Details Hurdles With EPA New Substance Review Process
Mar 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Chemical companies are facing hurdles in their assumptions about what changes they will have to make to requests for EPA to review new substances under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as the updated version of the law is creating questions about what information companies must submit and is causing delays in review.
Marcia Levinson, a regulatory affairs specialist at Covestro, at the recent GlobalChem conference detailed her company's experience with submitting a chemical for review under EPA's pre-manufacture notice (PMN) program since the revised law was enacted on June 22. Covestro submitted to the agency a PMN for a polymer dispersed in water ahead of June 22 but is still negotiating with EPA on its review.
“We are not yet to distribution,” she said. “Needless to say, business is not pleased,” she told the event in Washington, D.C., echoing industry's concerns with the PMN process.
The polymer is one of 336 PMNs that were under consideration of EPA's old 90-day process for reviewing new chemicals when the TSCA update came into effect. The agency's acting toxics chief told GlobalChem that EPA is trying to speed new chemical reviews but must ensure they comply with the new TSCA, known as the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act.
At the conference, Levinson said she believed that the general perception was the EPA's new chemical program was working well before the TSCA overhaul.
“We thought really the only change that was going to happen was that EPA would have to demonstrate and document this dropping process, and not changing the evaluation process,” she said.
“Well, it turned out that assumption was incorrect, because those chemicals which were under evaluation when Lautenberg was passed, who were indicated to be dropped, suddenly became being assessed for having the potential for having unreasonable risk,” Levinson said. “We're now seeing many more regulated chemicals coming out of the system than what we saw prior to Lautenberg.”
She noted that Covestro's experience with the lengthy delay in processing the PMN for its polymer is not unique. Levinson pointed to data from EPA's website showing that some 63.7 percent of PMNs were dropped from review between 2006-2016, while since June 22, just 9.1 percent are considered unlikely to present unreasonable risk to human health or the environment. Similarly, in the decade before the Lautenberg Act's passage, just 8.5 percent of PMNs underwent standard review, compared to 44.4 percent since its enactment.
“Definitely this will have an effect on our innovative spirit,” Levinson said, noting that while EPA is reviewing a PMN, the chemical under review cannot go to market.
Review Delays
The process is taking longer than it did before reform in part because more chemicals that go through EPA's 90-day review process have been flagged as needing to be restricted in some way. Many of these chemicals then undergo the 60-day consent order process. The chemicals cannot go to market until that consent order is signed.
“Now, before Lautenberg, EPA would use a consent order if the concern was based on the information provided in the PMN application,” Levinson explained, adding that “if [EPA's] concern is based on issues not included in the PMN but for foreseeable uses then that was” addressed by use of what was called a “non 5e SNUR.”
EPA used non TSCA section 5(e) Significant New Use Rules (SNURs) to control risks that agency staff deemed could occur in uses outside of the original submitter's manufacturing and use plans in the PMN application. In such cases, EPA used to issue a SNUR on other uses of the chemical beyond those outlined in the PMN, requiring companies seeking to take the chemical to market for different uses than the original PMN to notify EPA before doing so.
Levinson described the non section 5(e) SNUR's effect as “a means for that chemical to go to market and then constraints were placed on alternate uses, not the uses that the manufacturer wanted to do.”
Another speaker, attorney Jamie Conrad, at a GlobalChem panel for small businesses on Feb. 23, described the non section 5(e) SNUR as “EPA didn't find anything wrong with your proposed use of a chemical, but others might use it in a way of concern.” Conrad said that without explanation, EPA's new chemicals staff has said since the Lautenberg Act's passage that “they can't do those anymore.”
With EPA now “not using non-5e SNURs for all new chemicals going forward, we now have a conundrum that consent orders are being written for new chemicals and only for foreseeable uses, the manufacturer must enter into a consent order for something they did not even foresee in their PMN application and they must wait during that period of time while that consent order is being written so that they can go to market,” Levinson said.
Regulated Chemicals
Levinson noted that besides delays in production, customers are less interested in purchasing regulated chemicals. “The perception is that a regulated chemical is much more hazardous than a non-regulated chemical. Why? . . . [People think], 'If this unregulated chemical was as hazardous, EPA would have regulated that too.' Therefore we've got a discrepancy in terms of the perception of the impact of this regulation,” she said.
A second burden of regulated chemicals is the associated paperwork requirements that pass through the supply chain, Levinson said. “It's not merely the uses of the consent order of the SNUR, it's the record keeping requirements,” she said, adding that record keeping requirements are the easiest for companies to fall afoul of, and the easiest for enforcement officers to find and prosecute.
“All of these issues become nice and easy to trace if you have an enforcement issue. What is the simplest thing you want to avoid? It's any sort of a niche where you may have an enforcement issue. That's why it's hard to get customers to go towards these new chemicals,” she said.
Several attendees at the meeting raised concerns about this disincentive to produce new chemicals, which can have better safety or efficiency or greenhouse gas profiles compared to older, existing chemicals.
Levinson urged EPA officials at the meeting to consider several recommendations she said would improve the new chemicals program situation. “Please go back to non-5e SNURs. Please. It'll save time going to market, that's really one of the most important things to us.”
Additionally, she said, doing so would give companies “more certainty in terms of our materials. We know that if most of our materials will be regulated, at least it cuts down on the time line. We recognize that this can only be used for a chemical’s foreseeable uses, but that's really a step in the right direction.”
She also encouraged steps to expedite the consent order process, such as providing the submitter the draft version of the order, so that the company could take steps to address EPA's concerns without waiting to get the final letter. She urged EPA to provide engineering reports when completed, rather than waiting for the submitter to request it.
Levinson also urged EPA reviewers to ask submitters whether a foreseeable use of concern is feasible, saying that industry would be able to provide that information to the agency. -
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/chemical-sector-details-hurdles-epa-new-substance-review-process
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TSCA Chemical Inventory Outdated, Industry Says
Mar 6, 2017 | Environmental Leader
By Jessica Lyons Hardcastle
More than 85,000 chemicals fall under Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) regulations — but the EPA has no idea how many of those chemicals are actually in use, Chemical & Engineering News reports.
The amendments made to the TSCA last year require the agency to designate each of the chemicals on the TSCA inventory as either in “active” or “inactive” use by June 19. By the same deadline, the EPA must also finalize the scope of its risk evaluations for 10 high-priority chemicals that the agency selected for review late last year.
But as the agency struggles to implement the new provisions under the amended TSCA, its lack of knowledge about chemicals in commerce is becoming increasingly apparent, C&EN reports.
At a public meeting on Feb. 14 about the 10 substances selected for risk evaluation, attendees told the agency that some of the 10 chemicals are no longer produced in the US or are not being used for certain purposes.
For example, Paul DeLeo, associate vice president of environmental safety at the industry group American Cleaning Institute, told the EPA that 1,4-dioxane is no longer used as an ingredient in consumer products.
Richard Morford, chief executive officer and general counsel of ENVIRO Tech International, the largest provider of solvents based on n-propyl bromide (NPB) in the US, said the EPA is using outdated information on NPB, also known as 1-bromopropane. The agency says the substance is used as an alternative to trichloroethylene for spotting and stain removal in dry cleaning.
Dry cleaners haven’t used NPB for spotting in years, Morford said. “The use of NPB in dry cleaning is virtually dead,” he told the EPA. Instead, the industry uses less hazardous spotting agents, including soy-based cleaners, glycol ethers, acetone and blends of these substances.
Chemical manufacturers have also told the EPA that the TSCA amendments have created a backlog of chemicals awaiting EPA approval, which is hurting business.
https://www.environmentalleader.com/2017/03/tsca-chemical-inventory-outdated-industry-says/
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US Agencies Request Clearance For Crumb Rubber Studies
Mar 6, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Two US agencies are requesting clearance to complete information collection activities to support their investigation of crumb rubber infill.
The US EPA and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) are seeking to gather data for two studies on crumb rubber used in synthetic turf fields. Their work comes amid concerns over the potentially hazardous substances contained in the recycled tyre material.
The requested information collection would support the second and third elements of the investigation: to characterise the human exposure potential to collect biological specimens from participants.
The first activity – determining the chemical composition and uses of synthetic turf fields with crumb rubber infill – was completed last year. The findings appeared in a December 2016 progress report.
Meanwhile, several states are continuing their own investigations.
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) will convene its synthetic turf advisory panel on 10 March. The agenda features discussion on the following study initiatives:
· chemical identification for field study;
· exposure pathway studies;
· bioaccessibility studies; and
· a multi-phase field study.
And Massachusetts' Toxics Use Reduction Institute (Turi) has added consideration of infill materials to its alternatives assessment of sport field surfaces.
The US's ongoing research continues even as Echa has determined that the health risk from recycled crumb rubber in the EU is very low.
The findings echo those from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). This said in December that adverse health effects from the use of recycled rubber granules are "negligible".
The US synthetic turf industry has called on the federal agencies to quickly publish their findings, "in order to provide answers and eliminate uncertainty for parents and policy makers."
https://chemicalwatch.com/54009/us-agencies-request-clearance-for-crumb-rubber-studies
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Dow's Bid to Derail Toxics Class Action Deflated
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
New evidence that some class members had minimal exposure to hazardous gases released from a Dow Chemical facility won't derail a class action against the company, a Louisiana Court or Appeals ruled March 1 (Guidry v. Dow Chem. Co., 2017 BL 65354, La. Ct. App., 4th Cir., No. 2016-CA-0757, 3/1/17).
Dow's air modeling expert testified that some Louisiana residents had little or no exposure to fumes from the spill, but that evidence called at most for a redefinition of the class, not decertification of the entire case, the court said.
The ruling came in long-running litigation over a 2009 tank failure at a Taft, La., plant operated by Dow subsidiary Union Carbide Corp. An earlier appeal in the case also factored into the unanimous decision by the Louisiana Court of Appeal, Fourth Circuit.
The plaintiffs contend the toxic ethyl acrylate vapors caused them headaches, dizziness, burning eyes and other injuries.
Dow argued the post-certification testimony of its air dispersion expert defeated many class action requirements in Louisiana, such as that all class members have common interests in the litigation.
But the testimony didn't alter the foundation of a causation expert's opinion for plaintiff Sheila Guidry, and there was no “material change in the facts or circumstances,” the court said.
Other points raised by Dow were resolved in an earlier appeal after class certification was granted, the court said.
Judge Rosemary Ledet wrote the opinon, joined by judges Terri F. Love and Edwin A. Lombard.
Representation of the plaintiffs included the law offices of Gregory P. DiLeo, the Barniard Law Firm and Austin & Associates.
Liskow & Lewis, Phelps Dunbar and Bienvenu, Bonnecaze, Foco, Viator, Holinga represented Dow and Union Carbide.
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Woman Waited Too Long to File Lead Paint Suit
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
A 28-year old woman waited too long to sue her childhood landlords for lead paint exposure, a New York appeals court ruled (Vasilatos v. Dzamba, 2017 BL 64644, N.Y. App. Div., 523286, 3/2/17).
The three-year window for filing suit opened when Violet Vasilatos knew or should have known of her injuries, the court said.
Blood tests in the early 1990s showed Vasilatos had elevated lead levels and was diagnosed as “learning disabled,” the court said.
But Vasilatos said she first discovered that she suffered from lead poisoning when an attorney sent a solicitation letter to her mother in 2012, an argument the court rejected.
When applying the “discovery rule” in toxic torts, the time for filing begins on the date “the condition or symptom is discovered or reasonably should have been discovered, not the discovery of the specific cause of the condition or symptom,” the court said.
Judge Michael C. Lynch wrote the opinion, joined by Judges Elizabeth A. Garry, Eugene P. Devine and Robert C. Mulvey.
Athari & Associates in New Hartford, N.Y. represented Vasilatos.
Flink Smith Law, LLC in Albany, N.Y. represented landlords William and Kathleen Dzamba.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=106574786&vname=dennotallissues&fn=106574786&jd=106574786
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Unilever Rises Above The Regs On Chemicals Transparency
Mar 6, 2017 | GreenBiz
By Anya Khalamayzer
Half of all consumer products contain fragrance. More than 3,000 chemicals add fragrance to consumer goods worldwide. Nearly 200 of those chemicals are voluntarily restricted by the fragrance industry. The U.N. has designated a third of fragrance chemicals as dangerous. Seven are possible carcinogens, and 15 have been banned from Europe. None are required to be disclosed to consumers, per U.S. federal regulation.
Starting this year, Unilever is voluntarily disclosing online the fragrance ingredients included in individual products sold in the U.S. and Europe, down to 0.01 percent of the product formulation, along with details of the scent the fragrance ingredients bring to the product. The project is to be completed by 2018.
In Europe, Unilever home and personal care products are already labeled with fragrance allergens in line with stringent European Union regulations. The company is expanding this to its full, multibillion-dollar portfolio of U.S. personal care brands, including Dove, Noxzema, Lever 2000 and NEXXUS haircare.
In Europe, Unilever home and personal care products are already labeled with fragrance allergens in line with stringent European Union regulations. The company is expanding this to its portfolio of U.S. personal care brands.
The disclosure includes a "What’s in Our Products" section on Unilever websites, which provides details about the company’s approach to developing safe products and explanations of ingredient types. Individual product information will be databased using SmartLabel — a kind of online Rosetta Stone for the strange and ominous language of ingredient definitions, sourcing practices, advisories and usage and safe handling instructions — so that consumers can scan the UPC barcode on Unilever labels to look up chemical ingredients and understand their function.
"For the U.S. specifically, we will extend the fragrance ingredient updates to the more than 1,100 Unilever personal care products currently on SmartLabel," Jonathan Atwood, vice president of sustainable business and communications for Unilever North America, told GreenBiz.Rethinking regulation
The new policy goes beyond U.S. regulations on consumer-goods fragrance disclosure, which allows manufacturers to compresses an evolving library of thousands of chemicals into one convenient word: "Fragrance."
"In the U.S., regulations require personal care products to list ingredients on-pack, but fragrance is listed as one ingredient. There is no requirement to label the components of the fragrance," said Atwood. "Unilever is going beyond labeling requirements to provide this additional ingredient information. We believe successful implementation of our fragrance transparency initiative could serve as a model for others. Digital platforms such as SmartLabel enable us to provide more product information than we could fit on the package, and allows us to inform people about the purpose and benefit of ingredients."
Fragrance sensitivity is a growing problem: Fragrance in personal care products is the second most common cause of allergic skin reactions. The vague descriptor is found in 96 percent of shampoos, 91 percent of antiperspirants and 95 percent of shaving products — even those marked as "unscented." According to consumer advocacy group Women's Voices for the Earth (WVE), children have been experiencing increased incidents of allergic contact dermatitis, once a rare skin condition. The organization said that women — the biggest users of perfumed personal care products — are twice as likely to report adverse symptoms from fragrance exposure.
Yet the U.S. currently allows the fragrance industry to self-regulate through the International Fragrance Association (IFRA) and the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM). These organizations are chaired by the very companies that benefit from reduced oversight, an apparent conflict of interest.
The U.S. allows the fragrance industry to self-regulate through the International Fragrance Association and the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials.
According to WVE, which has been keeping tabs on the fragrance industry, most scientific studies on fragrance materials are generated by the trade association’s laboratories and are not published, peer-reviewed or publicly available. Chemicals that IFRA has flagged as dangerous are only voluntarily disclosed and removed from products.
"There is no independent review of laboratory practices, appropriate controls, levels of significance or any of the hallmarks of authoritative science to ensure that the results of these studies have not been manipulated to serve the interests of the manufacturer conducting the testing," stated Alexandra Scranton, director of science and research at WVE.
"In addition, there are significant sins of omission. There is no evidence that the RIFM panel has reviewed the safety of several of the most controversial fragrance ingredients, such as hormone-disrupting phthalates and musks or carcinogens, including styrene and pyridine, in the last 30 to 40 years. What’s more, there are no established safety standards in place for these noted chemicals of concern."
Under U.S. FDA regulations, fragrance chemicals can be listed simply as "fragrance" due to the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, which protects companies from being forced to tell their trade secrets. The WVE believes that the "trade secret" mentality is outdated because innovations in reverse engineering technology have made it possible to replicate the list of ingredients found in a fragrance. But it doesn’t help consumers, scientists and doctors investigating what chemicals the public is being exposed to.Making scents of fragrance disclosure
"[Unilever made] a groundbreaking announcement," said Erin Switalski, WVE’s executive director, in a conversation with GreenBiz. "Unilever is a huge multinational company and the first company that has done this for personal care products. I think this is precedent-setting for the industry and has the potential to unlock fragrance transparency around all sectors. If you can do it for personal care where all these fragrances are used, then you can do it for any industry."
Some companies already have made strides towards fragrance transparency. According to the WVE, in 2015, SC Johnson was the first conventional consumer goods manufacturer to list fragrance chemicals in products present at .09 percent or above of product formulation and promising to only work with fragrance houses that stuck to disclosure regulations. However, SC Johnson’s products, while not containing the carcinogen formaldehyde, were found to include formaldehyde-releasing ingredients. The hormone disruptor Galaxolide was also found in products — as well as in 92 percent of water samples in Lake Michigan, near the company’s headquarters.
Unilever expects its new fragrance policy to waft down to the bottom line. The company’s sustainable living brands have experienced 30 percent more growth than other product lines.
Prior to that, in 2012, Procter & Gamble began disclosing fragrance palettes of chemicals that may appear in its products. In 2013, RB (maker of Lysol and Airwick) disclosed product-specific fragrance allergens in cleaning products. In 2014, Clorox committed to disclosing product-specific fragrance allergens in cleaning and disinfectant products. Unilever is going even further towards fragrance transparency, disclosing chemicals down to 100 parts per million for products that consumers put directly on their bodies.
Switalski believes that disclosure can lead to the reformulation of products to actually make them safer.
"Companies don’t want to be putting out information that demonstrates they have highly toxic chemicals in their products," she said. "For example, in 2012, P&G had a list of 2,300 chemicals that might be used in fragrances, from tampons to laundry detergent. In 2016, they added a list of 140 chemicals that they won’t use in fragrance products. We identified another set of about 37 chemicals that are no longer approved by the company. Presumably, they’ve been reformulated out of products."The sweet smell of success
Unilever expects its new fragrance policy to waft down to the bottom line. The company says its "sustainable living" brands have experienced 30 percent more growth than other product lines.
"We believe transparency is fundamental to running a sustainable business," said Atwood. "We found that many people, particularly in Europe and the United States, want to know more about the ingredients in its home and personal care products, in a way which is easier to access and understand."
Where governments have been lax, Atwood said Unilever has "worked closely with our fragrance suppliers to ensure their support and assistance for our fragrance ingredient disclosure initiative." The fragrance transparency initiative has broad internal support from executive leadership, research and development teams and marketing.
It comes down to customer trust, he said: "We believe this initiative will help our consumers learn more about the products they use every day and continue to build trust for their favorite personal care brands."
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/unilever-rises-above-regs-chemicals-transparency
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EU Agency Calls for Input on Proposed Phaseout of Seven Chemicals
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
The European Chemicals Agency is calling for comments through June 2 on the proposed phaseout of seven hazardous substances from use in the European Union.
Comments should be provided on the uses of the substances, the terms of their phaseout, their supply chains and any socioeconomic consequences of their phaseout.
The chemicals are among 173 substances listed as “substances of very high concern” (SVHCs) under the EU's REACH law (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation and authorization of chemicals).
ECHA also is recommending to the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, that the substances be added to what's known as the REACH authorization list, which presently contains 31 substances. These substances are SVHCs for which sunset dates have been set, after which they can no longer be used in the EU without specific continued-use authorizations.
Four of the seven proposed substances are phenolic benzotriazoles, which have UV light absorption properties and are used in the production of plastics and adhesives.
No REACH registrations have been filed for three of the phenolic benzotriazoles—UV-320, UV-327 and UV-350—while registrations received for the fourth, UV-328, show it is manufactured in, or imported into, the EU in annual volumes of up to 1,000 metric tons, according to ECHA background documents.
Under REACH, companies must register substances they produce or import as a condition of access to the EU market.
The third and final REACH registration deadline, which applies to low-volume substances, falls on May 31, 2018.The other substances proposed for authorization are 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, which has a range of industrial uses; the karanal group of fragrance ingredients; and 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, di-C6-10-alkyl esters; 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, mixed decyl and hexyl and octyl diesters with 0.3% of dihexyl phthalate, which is used as a plasticizer.
According to ECHA, 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone is a high-volume substance registered in annual volumes of up to 100,000 metric tons, while the other two substances are used at low or very low volumes.
The chemicals agency said after it is finalized, its recommendation to include the substances in the authorization list will be passed to the European Commission for a final decision.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=106574773&vname=dennotallissues&fn=106574773&jd=106574773
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Fast Growth Coming for Northeast Shale Gas Pipelines
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
A surge in pipeline capacity for natural gas in the U.S. Northeast this year and next is expected to boost profits for producers and help hold down prices for Midwest and East Coast buyers.
The $13.8 billion infrastructure build-out involves seven large pipeline proposals that will take gas in all directions. Producers in the Marcellus Shale region—primarily in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and eastern Ohio—are eager for the pipelines because they have been hurt by depressed prices in pockets of inadequate pipeline infrastructure, compounded by a nationwide two-year slump in gas prices.
Gas producers in the region are likely to see substantial increases in profitability, said Andrew Weissman, the head of EBW Analytics Group and an attorney who specializes in energy practice at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP in Washington.
Leading producers in the Marcellus include Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., Chesapeake Energy Corp., EQT Corp., Range Resources Corp., Southwestern Energy Co. and Chief Oil & Gas LLC.
Pitfalls in Pipeline Paths
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, with regulatory authority over interstate gas transmission, has approved five of the seven large proposed pipelines for moving gas out of the Appalachian region, which includes the deeper Utica Shale underlying the Marcellus Shale. FERC decisions are not necessarily the last word, however.
“There are all sorts of relatively minor approvals that have to be granted for the pipelines to be completed,” Weissman told Bloomberg BNA, referring to such things as approvals for clearing trees along the routes.
Some landowners have tried to block pipelines to preserve their trees. Environmental activists also have strongly opposed the pipelines. Ample supplies of gas holding down prices can discourage competing wind and solar projects that don't produce the carbon emissions causing climate change. The new pipelines also could spell more trouble for operators of electric power plants that rely on coal and nuclear energy in competitive wholesale power markets.
“We are opposed to all fracking and fracked-gas infrastructure,” said Lee Stewart, an organizer for the group Beyond Extreme Energy. In fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, layers of rock are fractured to allow gas or oil to flow to a well.
Opposition also can come from states, as the backers of the Constitution Pipeline project discovered.
Constitution Pipeline Stalled
The Constitution Pipeline, proposed by four companies including an affiliate of pipeline company Williams Cos. Inc., was approved by FERC in 2014 but blocked in 2016 by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which refused to give it a Clean Water Act Section 401 water quality certification.
The Sierra Club applauded the decision. Roger Downs, conservation director for the environmental group's Atlantic Chapter, said in a statement at the time that FERC pressured states to accept gas infrastructure projects, and that he hoped others would push back. (The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg L.P., parent of Bloomberg BNA.)
The opposition came despite the trend of gas-fired power plants displacing coal-fired power, which is more carbon intensive and contributes more to climate change.
The state's decision “blocks millions of northeastern consumers from accessing lower-cost energy while ultimately slowing the region's capabilities in transitioning from coal and fuel oil to natural gas,” said Constitution Pipeline Co. LLC in announcing its decision to go to court.
The fate of the project awaits a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Constitution Pipeline Co. v. N.Y. Dep't of Envtl. Conservation, 2d Cir., No. 16-1568, 5/16/16).
Market Stability Anticipated
Gas prices are depressed wherever transmission constraints trap the commodity, creating a local glut. At some trading hubs in the Marcellus Shale region, wholesale gas prices in 2016 dipped below $1 per thousand cubic feet while prices were above $3 at Henry Hub, the Gulf Coast trading location most commonly used as a reference.
Richard Porter, a Houston-based senior managing director at FTI Consulting Inc., spoke to Bloomberg BNA about the value of pipeline projects to producers.
“It provides them a surety of market and revenue stability. It provides them with the cash flow they need to fund their exploration programs,” Porter said.
People have been bidding as much on the available pipeline space as on the commodity itself, he said, indicating the transportation costs have at times been as much of a market factor as the value of the gas.
Extra capacity should help stabilize the prices of gas, the cost of moving the gas and the cost of power generated from gas, Porter said.
Rush of FERC Approvals
FERC approved one big Marcellus gas pipeline in January and three more in the first week of February. Any more approvals must await the appointment of at least one more commissioner so that FERC can have a quorum.
The Atlantic Sunrise project received one of the approvals. It will include upgrades to existing lines that can be completed in 2017 and 183 miles of new pipeline set for completion in the middle of 2018. Williams, lead backer of the Constitution Pipeline, operates the Transco system, one of the largest gas pipeline networks in the United States.
TransCanada Corp., operator of the Columbia gas pipeline network, another of the largest gas systems, received approval for the Leach XPress pipeline but must await the appointment of a commissioner for its Mountaineer XPress project.
National Fuel Gas Co. received approval for its Northern Access pipeline to run north through New York.
Biggest of all in the new spate of approvals is Rover Pipeline, an Energy Transfer Partners L.P. project. It would cost $4.2 billion and be capable of moving as much as 3.25 billion cubic feet a day (Bcfd) of gas into the Midwest with connections that also could take the gas east, south and into Canada.
Also waiting in the wings is Nexus, a project backed by pipeline company Spectra Energy Corp. and DTE Energy Co., a Michigan utility. Enbridge Inc. completed its acquisition of Spectra Energy Feb. 27.
Appalachian Gas Supply Soaring
The seven projects, if built, will add up to 11.79 Bcfd of capacity coming on by late 2018. There seems to be no worry that the fast-growing output of the Marcellus and Utica shales can make use of it all.
“The Marcellus is poised for 19.1 Bcfd of production in March, and the Utica is expected to reach 4.2 Bcfd,” said Ken Ditzel, managing director of FTI Consulting's Economic Consulting segment, in an emailed response to questions.
“Together, they'll produce 23.3 Bcfd, or about 30 percent of U.S. production,” Ditzel said.
As tracked by monthly production data, Marcellus output has been increasing at an annual rate of about 6 percent, while Utica production has been growing at a 12 percent annual rate, he said.
“I see no reason for those growth rates not to continue into 2018, at a minimum, as more pipeline capacity comes online and producers continue to increase productivity and lower costs,” Ditzel said.
There are no other U.S. regions where such a big gas infrastructure expansion is coming, Porter said.
Gas Demand Rising Rapidly
Growing demand for natural gas has been driven especially by its use as a generating fuel for electric power. Air emission regulations have combined with low prices to favor gas over other power sources, especially coal.
It has become more economical to replace coal-fired power plants with gas-fired plants rather than rebuilding the coal plants to cope with air regulations, Porter said.
The last two years of low gas prices have been hard on gas producers and competing power sources alike. In 2015, U.S. electricity generation from gas exceeded generation from coal, and in 2016 that advantage for gas increased, after decades of coal dominance in generation.
More gas-fired power plants are being built. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in January the electric power industry planned to increase gas-fired generating capacity by 11,200 megawatts in 2017 and 25,400 megawatts in 2018, resulting in capacity 8 percent higher than at the end of 2016.
Plans to export liquefied natural gas also are expected to be important demand factors. The EIA forecast a surge in LNG export capacity from the Lower 48 states to 9.2 Bcfd by 2021 from the current 1.1 Bcfd. All current U.S. export capacity outside of Alaska is at the Sabine Pass LNG terminal of Cheniere Energy Inc.
Brenda Shaffer, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center, cautioned that it remains to be seen how much of a market will be found for U.S. exports of LNG. It also remains to be seen what form the market will take, in terms of long-term contracts or spot-market trading, she said at a Middle East Institute discussion Feb. 28 in Washington.
‘Turned Upside Down’
The expansion of gas production in Appalachia also has revised the pattern of U.S. gas movement. For decades the flow was northward and eastward from Gulf Coast and Southwest producing areas, but that is changing rapidly.
Over the last five years, the Transco pipeline system operated by Williams has been receiving more gas from Pennsylvania than the Gulf Coast region, said Chris Stockton, a Transco spokesman.
“In a way things have been kind of turned upside down,” Stockton said.
The Atlantic Sunrise project will help take Pennsylvania gas south or northeast by linking to Transco mainlines. One of the customers lined up for gas through Atlantic Sunrise is Southern Co. for power generation in Alabama, Stockton said.
Companies lined up to move gas on Atlantic Sunrise are a mix of gas producers and utilities. The producers include Cabot, Chief, Southwestern, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and the Seneca Resources subsidiary of National Fuel Gas. The MMGS Inc. gas marketing affiliate of Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co. Ltd. is another customer.
Not all pipeline companies disclose customer names. TransCanada would only say its Leach XPress and Mountaineer XPress projects are underpinned by long-term fixed-fee transportation service agreements.
Trump Nominations Needed
The Trump administration's interest in accelerating infrastructure development may be a relatively unimportant part of the near-term picture, given that five of the big Appalachian gas pipeline projects already have FERC permits and the other two are far enough advanced that they may need only a FERC quorum of commissioners to win approval.
In the longer term, beyond 2018, projects might benefit from a Trump administration push for accelerated permitting of gas pipelines and LNG export terminals.
The situation might have been more complicated if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency, Weissman, the EBW Analytics Group leader, said. The Obama administration had been edging toward requiring FERC, in its environmental assessments of projects, to calculate a gas pipeline's indirect contribution to greenhouse gases because it facilitates fossil fuel production and consumption, he said.
Clinton might have gone farther in that direction, but Trump will not, Weissman said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=106574783&vname=dennotallissues&fn=106574783&jd=106574783
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Court Grants EPA Bid To Delay Deadline For Nsps Suit's Argument Format
Mar 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
A federal appellate court has granted EPA's motion to extend by two weeks the deadline for parties in litigation challenging the agency's greenhouse gas rule for new and modified power plants to file proposed formats for oral argument -- delaying the next action in the case until potentially after President Donald Trump signs an executive order targeting the related existing power plant rule.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a one-page order March 3 granted EPA's request to move the deadline to submit oral argument proposals from March 6 to March 20
The Department of Justice (DOJ), on behalf of EPA, filed an unopposed motion March 1, saying the additional time is needed so the parties can reach an agreement on a proposed format. The filing was the agency's first in the case since EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was confirmed.
“The Court has encouraged the parties to prepare and present a unified format for oral argument. EPA has concluded that some additional time is needed in order for the parties to have a sufficient opportunity to confer and develop an appropriate proposal or proposals concerning oral argument,” the DOJ filing said.
The D.C. Circuit is schedule to hear oral arguments in the case, North Dakota, et al. v. EPA, et al., on April 17. The litigation challenges the Obama EPA's power plant new source performance standards (NSPS), which is the legal prerequisite to the existing source rule known as the Clean Power Plan.
Trump is expected to sign next week an executive order targeting the Clean Power Plan, though it is unclear whether that order would also include language on the NSPS.
The Trump administration has not yet given any indications as to how it might proceed with the NSPS litigation or whether it would drop defense of the rule, though it is expected to oppose the rule. It is unclear whether the Trump EPA, in seeking to delay the submission of oral argument proposals, is preparing to change course in the case.
DOJ's motion for an extension was unopposed, with state and power companies that intervened to support the NSPS and environmental intervenors taking “no position.” The environmental groups, however, reserved “the right to file a response.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/court-grants-epa-bid-delay-deadline-nsps-suits-argument-format
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EPA Withdraws Request For Emissions Data From Industry
Mar 6, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has withdrawn its request that oil and gas owners and operators provide additional information on existing equipment and methane emissions, reversing a policy that was enacted under the Obama administration.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the agency would reassess the need for the information being collected through the information collection requests (ICR). He added that the action was being taken after EPA received a letter from nine state attorneys general and the governors of Kentucky and Mississippi, expressing concern over the ICRs.
"By taking this step, EPA is signaling that we take these concerns seriously and are committed to strengthening our partnership with the states," Pruitt said. "Today's action will reduce burdens on businesses while we take a closer look at the need for additional information from this industry."
The withdrawal took immediate effect, meaning the industry is no longer required to respond. EPA added that under the previous administration, it had sent out more than 15,000 letters.
Last November, EPA issued a final ICR designed to obtain information and help the agency determine the best method for reducing methane and other emissions from existing oil and gas infrastructure. The final ICR was developed after the agencyunveiled draft versions in May and August of last year.
The GPA Midstream Association, which had opposed the ICRs, applauded the move.
"GPA, along with other groups, is involved in litigation on the legality of the new source rule on methane emissions from the oil and gas sector and believes that EPA should not take any action on existing sources of methane emissions until the new source rule litigation is resolved," said GPA Midstream Vice President of Government Affairs Matthew Hite. "We are thrilled and very appreciative of EPA withdrawing this costly and burdensome requirement from our members."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he is "pleased that the EPA has responded to our request and withdrawn its burdensome and unlawful information demand to oil and gas producers across the country.
"We applaud Administrator Pruitt for his adherence to the rule of law as he pursues the balance Congress has struck between preserving our environment and allowing our economy to grow."
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/109638-epa-withdraws-request-for-emissions-data-from-industry
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Occidental's Massive Petrochemical Plant Comes Online In Texas
Mar 4, 2017 | Houston Chronicle
By Jordan Blum
The first of several petrochemical plants coming online this year became operational last week when Houston-based Occidental Petroleum opened its new facility near Corpus Christi.
The $1.5 billion ethylene plant in Ingleside is a joint venture between Occidental's OxyChem subsidiary and Mexico-based Mexichem. The facility, called an ethylene cracker, takes ethane from natural gas production and converts it into ethylene, which is the primary building block for most plastics.
The project is the smallest and first of several Texas Gulf Coast ethylene crackers being completed this year. Others under construction include Exxon Mobil plants in Baytown and Mont Belvieu and Chevron Phillips Chemical in Baytown and Old Ocean. The larger Exxon Mobil and Chevron Phillips projects each involve investments of about $6 billion.
Occidental's plant will annually churn out 1.2 billion pounds of ethylene, much of which will be turned into vinyl chloride monomers, which Mexichem will then convert into polyvinyl chloride to make for PVC piping and other products.
The project generated thousands of construction jobs, but only 150 permanent positions at the plant. The facility was built by The Woodlands-based CB&I.
The slew of petrochemical plants in Texas are the result of the cheap and ample shale gas supplies that will serve as the feedstock for the facilities. Much of the plastics created by these projects will be exported to developing nations like China and India, which are growing both in population and wealth and demanding more consumer products.
Occidental, which moved its headquarters from California to Houston three years ago, also said it is relocating its investor relations office from New York to Houston.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Occidental-s-massive-petrochemical-plant-comes-10976995.php
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Opposition To Fracking In Maryland Is Anti-Science
Mar 6, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Thomas Wheatley
For Maryland state Sen. Robert Zirkin (D-Baltimore County), the dangers of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) are so patently obvious that the question itself is pointless to discuss. “This is not one of those issues that lends itself to that debate,” said Zirkin at an anti-fracking rally in Annapolis on Tuesday. “This is a public health issue, pure and simple.”
Zirkin and his supporters are backing a bill aimed at banning fracking in Maryland. They argue that fracking causes groundwater contamination, earthquakes and air pollution.
Zirkin and his supporters are spouting nonsense.
Their first concern — that fracking causes groundwater contamination — was long ago debunked. To be clear: Despite the enormous size of the 70-year-old fracking industry, there has never been a proven case in which fracking chemicals seeped into drinking water. The theory that fracking affects groundwater was first popularized by the anti-fracking documentary Gasland, in which a resident of a fracking community was depicted igniting his tap water. The drinking water’s increased flammability, said the resident, was caused by methane gas leaking into groundwater as a result of fracking. The scene — as well as most of the documentary — has since been has been discredited by the experts as “sensationalism and scare tactics.”
As a rebuttal, anti-fracking activists usually cite the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2016 study of fracking’s potential impact on drinking water, which concluded that “hydraulic fracturing activities” can affect drinking water resources “under some circumstances.”
But the report’s expansive definition of “hydraulic fracturing activities” and its willingness to venture into the absurd virtually guarantee such a conclusion. Per the report’s parameters, if a truck filled with fracking chemicals gets into a wreck, it is considered to be fracking-related. Chemical engineer Robert Rapier put it best: If chemicals used in firefighting were spilled, we would not say firefighting contaminates water.
Importantly, the EPA’s report does not say fracking causes drinking water contamination; it only says it could “under certain circumstances.” What kind of circumstances? Like, for example, when someone “[injects] hydraulic fracturing fluids directly into groundwater resources.”
Second, anti-fracking activists contend that fracking causes earthquakes. This claim is technically true but shamelessly exaggerated. According to the United States Geological Survey, “[f]racking causes extremely small earthquakes, but they are almost always too small to be a safety concern.” As for the few earthquakes that may be felt, they are caused not by the actual fracking procedure but rather the deep-well injection method of disposing of wastewater. Even still, “there is no conclusive example linking injection operations to triggering of major earthquakes,” says the USGS, and there are environmentally safe wastewater disposal alternatives that do not risk triggering earthquakes.
Finally, fracking opponents cite air pollution associated with fracking as sufficient reason to ban fracking entirely. Like the earthquake argument, this argument is wildly inflated, and the research supporting it is questionable at best. Last year, at Oregon State University, the authors of a 2015 study purporting to show pollution from fracking was linked to an increased risk of cancer were forced to retract their findings and conclude instead that fracking’s risk of causing cancer was well below the EPA’s legal threshold. After making the correction, the study found the risk of developing cancer as a result of exposure to fracking-related pollution to be 1 in 25 million — or about 0.000004 percent. Even assuming the mortality rate of cancer is 100 percent, Americans are 143 times more likely to be killed by lightning, 810 times more likely to die from contact with sharp objects and 221,239 times more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident. It is 154 times more likely a foreign refugee admitted by the United States will be a terrorist than it is a person will get cancer from fracking.
Maryland Democrats should stop appeasing environmental cartels and put their constituents first. With thousands of jobs, millions of tax dollars and a brighter future for economically distressed counties in western Maryland on the line, now is not the time for partisan grandstanding.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/all-opinions-are-local/wp/2017/03/03/opposition-to-fracking-in-maryland-is-anti-science/?utm_term=.2342728e509b
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(ACC Mentioned) Inhofe Offers Senate CRA Resolution To Overturn EPA's RMP Rule
Mar 6, 2017 | Inside EPA
Backed by the chemical industry, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has introduced a Congressional Review Act (CRA) disapproval resolution to repeal the controversial Obama-era revisions to the agency's facility safety program, a companion to one introduced in the House last month.
Inhofe introduced S. J. Res 28 on March 2, with four co-sponsors: Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX), environment committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY), homeland security committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), a member of the environment committee that has jurisdiction over the measure.
“This CRA resolution blocks an Obama administration midnight regulation that puts our chemical facilities, surrounding communities and our national security at risk, while doing nothing to actually improve safety,” Inhofe said in a March 2 press statement.
“By requiring chemical facilities to disclose to the public the types and quantities of chemicals stored there and their security vulnerabilities, the EPA is giving a blueprint to those who would like to do us harm. Department of Homeland Security, OSHA, and existing EPA regulations will remain in place to continue ensuring the safety of these facilities, their workers and their communities,” he said.
Like its House companion, introduced Feb. 2 by Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Inhofe's CRA resolution seeks to to scrap EPA's Jan. 13 final rule strengthening its Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility accident prevention rule.
The RMP rule was the result of President Barack Obama's executive order following the 2013 explosion at a fertilizer facility in West, TX, that killed 15 people and injured more than 160 more. The rule sought to strengthen EPA's earlier RMP rule with new requirements for auditing, hazard analysis and disclosure of facility data.
Mullin's resolution, however, is not on the House GOP leadership's list of priority CRA resolutions. It is unclear whether the Senate companion bill will boost the chances of Mullin's bill, H.J. Res. 59, which has 41 co-sponsors.
If the measures fail to clear Congress, an industry attorney told Inside EPA last month that critics of the RMP revisions will shift focus to asking new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to reverse the changes by administrative action.
Under this scenario, industry would argue that EPA has the authority to launch a notice-and-comment rulemaking to undo specific parts of the Obama-era changes that critics say impose the greatest burdens.
Industry officials, as well as state officials like then-Oklahoma Attorney General Pruitt, have criticized the RMP rule as imposing unnecessary new requirements without clear benefit. They have especially faulted as costly and unnecessary new requirements that certain facilities analyze whether safer technologies would improve safety, conduct independent audits, and release data to first responders and the public.
The chemical industry trade group American Chemistry Council applauded Inhofe's resolution in a March 2 statement.
“EPA’s modifications to RMP were finalized during the last days of the Obama Administration despite strong concerns voiced by the regulated community, members of Congress, Attorneys General, the Conference of Mayors and other local officials that the Agency’s changes could undermine the program,” according to ACC's statement.
“Both the House and Senate resolutions would block EPA’s misguided changes and maintain the successful aspects of RMP that existed before EPA approved its new rule.” ACC said.
The group said it hopes that introduction of the Senate resolutions would bolster their efforts to repeal the rule. The group commended the Senate sponsors and urged their colleagues “in the House and the Senate to support quick approval of these resolutions.”
By contrast, environmental justice and community activists have supported the Obama EPA's rule, and last month a coalition of groups sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging the legislature to preserve the RMP.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/inhofe-offers-senate-cra-resolution-overturn-epas-rmp-rule
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New GPS Technology Will Help Keep Trains From Crashing. Why Is It Taking So Long To Arrive?
Mar 6, 2017 | The Sacramento Bee
By Tony Bizjack
Nine years ago, Union Pacific Railroad supervisor Ricky Durrant was called to a ghastly scene in Southern California.
A Metrolink commuter train had run head-on into a freight train, killing 25 people. The UP train had just come out of tunnel. “Our guys said, ‘We saw a flash of white and said, Ahh, sh--” and hit the brakes, two seconds before impact.
Federal investigators concluded the Metrolink engineer had been texting on his cell phone and failed to see a red track light.
The Chatsworth crash sent shock waves through the industry. A month later, Congress passed a law requiring major passenger and freight railroads to install a computer-based crash avoidance system that will take over control of trains and bring them to an emergency stop if the engineer makes an error that could cause a crash.
The system, based on global positioning technology, tracks where trains are, constantly feeding the computers in the locomotive cab with information about how fast the train should be going and what is happening on the tracks ahead.
Nearly a decade later, amid recriminations, that mandate has not yet been met.
Federal officials set an initial 2015 deadline for full rollout of the new navigation system, called Positive Train Control, or commonly PTC. However, industry representatives persuaded officials to extend the deadline to 2018, with the provision that it might be extended again – to 2020.
Critics say the railroads are taking too long and federal officials are letting them get away with it. Railroads counter that PTC is hardly the “plug and play” technology that some critics want to believe. The system is both costly and complicated to design and install, they say.
Durrant, a 46-year UP veteran, now finds himself at the center of UP’s modernization efforts.
As general director of PTC implementation, he heads an Omaha-based team that is teaching 9,800 engineers from Roseville to Chicago to use the new system.
Durrant has a midwestern twang and a laid-back air, but says he was put on the PTC team for a reason. ““I will work my way through barriers even if I have to walk through people,” he said.
UP said it has spent more than $2 billion on PTC since the mandate was issued, and ultimately will invest $3 billion. That includes installing signal stations along 20,000 miles of tracks, wiring computers into 5,600 locomotive cabs, setting up communications offices, and training 40,000 employees.
The safety effects could be notable in Northern California. UP, a freight giant with a major railyard in Roseville, runs 10,000 freight trains a year through the Sacramento region, many of them sharing tracks with Amtrak, Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin service passengers trains.
Its freight trains run through downtown Sacramento as well as rural areas designated high-risk for derailment, including the Dunsmuir site of an infamous chemical spill in 1991, the Feather River Canyon, and Donner Pass.
In November, the Federal Railroad Administration warned railroads publicly they need to step up the pace to meet the 2018 deadline. Recent FRA progress reports suggest that UP is among the railroads that are lagging.
Durrant and other UP officials say that’s not really the case. FRA’s way of presenting the data doesn’t fully capture UP’s progress, they say, because it counts only fully completed tasks.
The FRA database shows that only 111 locomotives of Union Pacific’s 5,656 locomotives are equipped with the new system. UP’s Durrant counters that 3,610 locomotives in effect are PTC-equipped, minus the “black box” crash recorder, which got held up because of a supplier-related problem that has since been resolved. Once those get installed in the coming months, the federal data will reflect that, UP said. Last week, in the Roseville yard, teams of electricians wired PTC circuitry into locomotive cabs.
And while the federal reports say Union Pacific does not have PTC in operation on any of its tracks, that also is not the case, the railroad says. The first PTC-equipped locomotives are running on 12 percent of UP’s tracks, much of that in California, including in the Sacramento area, in “demonstration” or testing mode. That progress will be reflected once the FRA approves the operations safety plan that UP has submitted to the feds, UP says.
Durrant says UP intends to meet the 2018 deadline. That means adding solar panels to power the wayside signals being installed in some rural sections of tracks that are not electrified, and teaching PTC the proper braking levels for smaller, lighter trains. “Right now, our plan is to be done by the end of next year,” he said.
BNSF, the other major freight rail hauler in the West, similarly reports it expects to make the 2018 deadline, as does Amtrak, which operates the Capitol Corridor passenger trains through Sacramento. That includes an unusual amount of interaction among freight and passenger railroads, all of which must design PTC systems that can communicate with each other so each can share tracks.
Visiting the Roseville diesel locomotive yard last month, Durrant described the effort as more than just a numbers game. It’s also culture change, he said. Engineers as a breed are tradition-bound and take pride in handling their machines their way.
But they have generally embraced the idea that they will now have a computer as copilot, even though it will be looking over their shoulder and ready to take train control out of their hands.
“We’ve had very little push back because they can see where this can be a good thing,” he said.
Durrant, an eighth-generation railroader who has worked as a switchman, surveyor, fireman, engineer and train master, calls PTC “the biggest safety change of a generation.”
“I love it,” he said. “As an engineer, it’s like a Garmin (GPS system) on steroids. It’s giving me information I never had before allowing me to know what I need my train to be doing” miles before it has to be done.
Normally, engineers can see little more than a mile or two ahead – if weather and terrain allow that much. In contrast, the PTC screen shows them what’s happening in detail five miles ahead, where the track switches are, where the curves are, whether signals ahead are red or green, and how fast or slow they need to have their train going at every point.
If the engineer heads too quickly into a turn or fails to stop soon enough for a red signal, the PTC monitor in the locomotive cab will flash a warning and give the engineer a 60-second countdown “to get his train under control,” Durrant said. If the engineer fails to do that, PTC will take over and stop the train.
PTC is not a panacea, however. It can’t tell if a track ahead is broken. It also can’t stop a train from hitting a car crossing the tracks or stop trains when a pedestrian walks onto the tracks. Nor can it do anything about a train malfunction, such as the broken axle that caused an oil train to explode in Casselton, N.D. in 2013.
PTC would not have stopped a fiery oil train derailment in Mosier, Oregon last summer – caused by broken bolts – that forced evacuation of residents within a quarter mile of the tracks. (That crash helped persuade the Benicia City Council to say no last year to a Valero Refinery plan to run oil trains daily through Northern California, including downtown Sacramento.)
PTC also would not have prevented a freight train carrying cans of tomato products from derailing south of Elk Grove last month, sending 22 cars into a flooded field next to the Cosumnes River. That incident appears to have been caused by a slumping track on waterlogged ground underneath the train.
The PTC technology should, however, prevent trains from crashing into each other, like they did in Chatsworth, as well as derailing because of excessive speed.
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded PTC would have prevented a 2015 Amtrak crash in Philadelphia that killed eight and injured more than 200. In that incident, the engineer was distracted and allowed his train to go into a curve twice as fast as it should have.
PTC also likely would have averted an incident on the Capitol Corridor line in December near Davis where a passenger train apparently went through a track switch at a high a speed, causing the train to jolt violently, injuring five people.
Metrolink, whose 2008 crash helped prompt the federal PTC mandate, is among the earliest adopters nationally. Officials report they have run trains 70,000 miles with PTC since 2015, and say there have been a handful of times PTC stopped a train because engineers were not slowing the trains appropriately. Those instances led to further training for engineers, Metrolink officials said.
Los Angeles attorney Ronald Goldman, whose firm Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman represented victims in the Metrolink crash as well as others, said he fears the federal government will let railroads delay full implementation a second time, leading to more lives lost from crashes that should have been prevented.
“My (sense) is that the current delay will result in further delay, and each and every member of Congress and the administrative bodies who vote for it will have blood on their hands,” he said.
National Transportation Safety Board officials, who say they have been calling for a PTC-like system for 45 years, this year urged railroads not to apply to federal officials for an extension to 2020.
“Safety delayed is safety denied, and every day without these lifesaving advances holds the possibility of another accident like the ones in Philadelphia and Chatsworth,” the NTSB says on its website.
For its part, the Association of American Railroads, which serves as the voice for the industry, will only say railroads “are on track” to have the system installed by 2018, but officials there declined to say if that means the system will be tested and fully operating by that date.
At Union Pacific, Durrant said his rail company sees the federal mandate as merely a step among many toward improved safety. UP officials are studying whether “cruise control” can be integrated into PTC systems, allowing the train to automatically adjust its speed as it travels.
“We’re in the baby step of the whole product,” he said. “Where we go with it, nobody knows yet.”
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/article136366963.html
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Keeping The Nation’s Economy On Track Begins In Texas
Mar 5, 2017 | MySanAntonio
By Hector L. Rivero
Not many Americans know it, but just about everything they need to get their day started begins in Texas. Our cleaning and hygiene needs, the food that goes on the breakfast table, and the energy that powers homes and cars are all made possible by Texas manufacturers.
For many of these consumer needs, our daily demand across the country is met by the more than 78,000 men and women in the Texas petrochemical industry, which provides the building blocks and fuel that help keep our country thriving. Our industry also helps generate more than $8 billion in payroll, and we’re helping to keep our state’s economy thriving by investing more than $50 billion in expansions and modernizations to existing manufacturing facilities.
A critical part of our operations in Texas is the ability to ship our products where they are needed, especially by freight rail. According to the most recent data available from the Association of American Railroads, the chemical industry in Texas sends and receives nearly 300 million tons of products a year by rail.
With so many of our products shipped by rail, one of our biggest transportation challenges is the fact that over the last decade, we have seen freight rail rates double — more than three times the rate of inflation. Massive consolidation within the rail industry has left just four railroads in control of 90 percent of the rail traffic in the U.S., which has led to soaring freight rail rates.
Unfortunately, outdated government regulations have failed to keep pace with these changes, leaving many rail customers without access to competitive service or an effective way to resolve problems with rates and service.
Thankfully, a solution is on the horizon. The Surface Transportation Board, tasked by Congress to resolve freight rail problems, recently announced regulatory reforms that would open access to more rail-to-rail competition. Called “competitive switching,” this reform would allow rail customers with access to only a single rail carrier to request to move their freight to another major railroad at a nearby interchange for an appropriate fee. It’s a change that has won the support of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and has also been common practice in Canada for more than a century. The railroads have thrived.
The STB is also trying to cut red tape out of its procedures for resolving rate issues in markets lacking competitive transportation options. The current system is a bureaucratic nightmare with rate cases taking an average of 3½ years and more than $5 million to complete. This unacceptable regulatory hurdle is one that many rail customers cannot afford.
That is why the Texas Chemical Council supports the STB’s efforts to adopt free market freight rail reforms such as competitive switching and streamlining the rate review process.
Hector L. Rivero is the president and CEO of Texas Chemical Council. The council represents both large and small businesses ranging from manufacturers, suppliers, contractors and a variety of service companies that are vital to the Texas chemical industry.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/Keeping-the-nation-s-economy-on-track-begins-in-10975956.php
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Southern California Air Plan Calls for End to Trading Program
Mar 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
Southern California air quality officials decided March 3 to phase out a cap-and-trade program covering 276 stationary sources of nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides as soon as practical.
The decision by the South Coast Air Quality Management District governing board will move oil refineries, power plants and other facilities covered by the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market, RECLAIM, to traditional command and control regulations.
The move came as an amendment to the new clean air plan for the Los Angeles and surrounding area that the governing board approved in an 11-2 vote. That plan now heads to the California Air Resources Board for consideration March 23.
If approved by CARB the plan moves on to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for approval.
As proposed, the final draft of the 2016 Air Quality Management Plan only called for considering the phaseout of RECLAIM by 2031.
RECLAIM has come under fire for not achieving air pollution emissions reductions equivalent to direct regulation, a state and federal requirement for market-based measures.
‘Complex’ Program
Launched in 1994, the trading program sets annual emissions caps for major stationary sources of air pollution and allows regulated entities to purchase allowances, or credits, to meet those thresholds.
As approved, the new clean air plan calls for the air district to cut emissions from RECLAIM sources an additional five tons a day as soon as feasible, and no later than 2025. It requires the transition to a direct regulation program requiring best available reasonable control technology level controls as soon as practicable.
Winding down RECLAIM won't be easy, Michael Carroll, an attorney with Latham & Watkins, who represents an industry group, told Bloomberg BNA.
“This is complex,” he said.
The air district will form a working group to come with a plan, he said.
Meeting National Standards
Squeezing another five tons a day of emissions from RECLAIM facilities by 2025 will be challenging, Bill Quinn of the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance told Bloomberg BNA.
“There may not be sufficient credits in the system,” Quinn said.
Phasing out RECLAIM is just one element of the 2016 Air Quality Management Plan. The plan is a blueprint for attaining the national 1979, 1997 and 2008 air quality standards for ground-level ozone and the 2006 and 2012 standards for fine particulates.
RECLAIM facilities will account for only 23 tons a day of the nitrogen oxide emissions by 2019, the air district estimates.
Meeting the ozone standards means curbing ozone forming emissions of nitrogen oxides 45 percent by 2023 and another 55 percent by 2031. Reducing nitrogen oxide emissions by those levels will also help the region achieve the particulate standards, the air district said.
Mobile Sources Key
Major elements of the 16-year plan depend primarily on existing stationary source control programs and earning credits for implementing state climate programs. The plan also counts on current and future state and federal mobile source control measures and the state's program.
Curbing mobile sources of emissions, especially from heavy duty diesel trucks and equipment, is key, the air plan said.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District is part of a coalition of air districts around the country, along with the California Air Resources Board, that has petitioned the federal EPA to adopt a new ultra-low federal emissions standard for heavy duty diesel trucks. The goal is to phase in a federal diesel standard beginning in 2022, of 0.2 gram per brake horsepower hour and strengthening it to 0.02 g/bhp-hr in 2024.
At least two board members are working with members of Congress to persuade EPA to tighten the diesel truck standard.
A major element of the plan relies on the air district's receiving $1 billion a year in yet-to-be-identified sources over 15 years to fund incentives to deploy near-zero and zero-emissions vehicles and equipment.
The Clean Air Act requires air plans have the funds to implement them, Joe Lyou, the governor's appointee to the board, said.
The air district March 3 also approved a draft plan to fund the incentive program. Business and industry groups have pledged to help.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=106574788&vname=dennotallissues&fn=106574788&jd=106574788
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White House Proposes Steep Budget Cut To Leading Climate Science Agency
Mar 3, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Steven Mufson, Jason Samenow and Brady Dennis
The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post.
The proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also eliminate funding for a variety of smaller programs, including external research, coastal management, estuary reserves and “coastal resilience,” which seeks to bolster the ability of coastal areas to withstand major storms and rising seas.
NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from its current funding level.
The Office of Management and Budget also asked the Commerce Department to provide information about how much it would cost to lay off employees, while saying those employees who do remain with the department should get a 1.9 percent pay increase in January 2018. It requested estimates for terminating leases and government “property disposal.”
The OMB outline for the Commerce Department for fiscal 2018 proposed sharp reductions in specific areas within NOAA such as spending on education, grants and research. NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would lose $126 million, or 26 percent, of the funds it has under the current budget. Its satellite data division would lose $513 million, or 22 percent, of its current funding under the proposal.
The National Marine Fisheries Service and National Weather Service would be fortunate by comparison, facing only 5 percent cuts.
The figures are part of the OMB’s “passback” document, a key part of the annual budget process in which the White House instructs agencies to draw up detailed budgets for submission to Congress. The numbers often change during the course of negotiations between the agency and the White House and between lawmakers and the administration later on. The 2018 fiscal year starts Oct. 1.
A spokesperson for the Commerce Department declined to comment. A White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the process was “evolving” and cautioned against specific numbers. The official would not respond to questions about the four-page passback document.
The biggest single cut proposed by the passback document comes from NOAA’s satellite division, known as the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, which includes a key repository of climate and environmental information, the National Centers for Environmental Information. Researchers there were behind a study suggesting that there has been no recent slowdown in the rate of climate change — research that drew the ire of Republicans in Congress.
Another proposed cut would eliminate a $73 million program called Sea Grant, which supports coastal research conducted through 33 university programs across the country. That includes institutions in many swing states that went for President Trump, such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, the University of Florida and North Carolina State University.
The OMB passback said that the administration wanted to “prioritize rebuilding the military” and would seek “savings and efficiencies to keep the Nation on a responsible fiscal path.” It said that its proposed funding cut for the Commerce Department “highlights the tradeoffs and choices inherent in pursuing these goals.”
The OMB also said that the White House would come up with ideas to modernize “outdated infrastructure,” but it said that agencies should not expect increases in their fiscal 2018 discretionary-spending “toplines” as a result.
On Wednesday, after his confirmation, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that drawing up a budget would be a top priority. “One of the first steps,” he said, “will be securing adequate appropriations from the Congress. In a period of budgetary constraint, that will be a major challenge.”
The OMB passback document said that the Commerce Department, like other agencies, should “buy and manage like a business.” It urged the department to explore greater use of privately owned commercial satellites and commercial cloud services while submitting to the OMB a plan to retire or replace “at least one high priority legacy IT system” beginning in 2018.
Many scientists warned that the deep cuts at NOAA could hurt safety as well as academic programs.
Conrad Lautenbacher, a retired vice admiral who was the NOAA administrator under President George W. Bush, said, “I think the cuts are ill timed given the needs of society, economy and the military.” He added, “It will be very hard for NOAA to manage and maintain the kind of services the country requires” with the proposed cuts.
Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator under President Barack Obama, said that 90 percent of the information for weather forecasts comes from satellites. “Cutting NOAA’s satellite budget will compromise NOAA’s mission of keeping Americans safe from extreme weather and providing forecasts that allow businesses and citizens to make smart plans,” she said.
Rick Spinrad, a former chief scientist for NOAA, said: “NOAA’s research and operations, including satellite data management, support critical safety needs. A reduced investment now would virtually guarantee jeopardizing the safety of the American public.”
He said that weather warnings for tornadoes and hurricanes could be compromised and that navigational capacity used to help guide commercial ships and other mariners would suffer, leaving them without the “improved forecasts they need to safely maneuver coastal waters.” It could become harder to warn of tsunamis and forecast weather that will cause power outages.
David Titley, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University who served as NOAA’s chief operating officer in the Obama administration, said that “oddly” the White House budget office, despite the president’s commitment to building infrastructure, would cut NOAA’s budget for ships and satellites. “These cuts will impact good private-sector jobs in the U.S.,” Titley said. “The loss of capability will make America weaker both in space and on the sea — a strange place to be for an administration that campaigned to ‘make America great again.’ ”
Chris Mooney and Abby Phillip contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/03/white-house-proposes-steep-budget-cut-to-leading-climate-science-agency/?utm_term=.ea987b7fb9da
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