Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 3/8/2017
-
(ACC mentioned) U.S. Recycling Of Plastic Film Grows 3% In 2015
Mar 8, 2017 | Plastics Today
recycling of plastic wraps, bags and other film packaging grew 34 million pounds, or 3%, in 2015 to reach a minimum of nearly 1.2 billion pounds for the year. -
Industry Groups Join Calls To Resist 'Drastic' EPA Budget Cut Proposal
Mar 8, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Amanda Palleschi
A host of industry and professional groups -- including chemical, engine and vehicle manufacturers, truckers, builders, water utilities and radon prevention technicians -- are resisting plans by the Trump administration to slash EPA's budget, warning that the cuts will harm programs they rely on to reduce compliance costs and create jobs. -
EPA Denies TSCA Section 21 Petition on Fluoride Chemicals in Drinking Water; Provides Response to Petition
Mar 7, 2017 | The National Law Review
By Charles M. Auer James V. Aidala Lynn L. Bergeson
On February 27, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced in a Federal Register notice that it was denying a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 21 petition that requested regulatory action under Section 6 to “prohibit the purposeful addition of fluoridation chemicals to U.S. water supplies,” and that it was making available its response to the petition. -
Bill Would Force EPA To Set Limits On Industrial Chemicals
Mar 8, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
New York Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a Senate bill yesterday that would require U.S. EPA to set Safe Drinking Water Act limits on perfluorinated compounds and other chemicals used in firefighting foam and the manufacturing of Teflon cookware, plastics and fabrics. -
Vermont Aadvisory Group Sees Legislative Recommendations Take Shape
Mar 8, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By David Stegon
The Vermont legislature is considering a sweeping chemical regulatory bill, following the recommendations of a 20-person advisory group. -
Target Raises The Bar For Retailers In Driving Harmful Chemicals Out Of Products
Mar 7, 2017 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.
By Mike Schade
In late January Target upped the ante for the entire retailer sector by announcing a new safer chemicals policy along with ambitious goals to increase transparency of chemicals in products, reduce and eliminate harmful chemicals like flame retardants and phthalates, and invest in research into safer alternatives -
House GOP Seeks To Address Confidentiality Issues In EPA Science Bill
Mar 7, 2017 | Inside EPA
Just-unveiled Republican legislation that seeks to make the science EPA uses to justify its rules more transparent includes new language that appears aimed at addressing concerns that earlier versions of the bill would bar EPA from using a host of data, including trade secrets, private medical data and other confidential information, when assessing risks and setting regulatory standards. -
Corporate Sustainability Efforts Yield Millions in Increased Sales, Cost Savings
Mar 7, 2017 | Environmental Leader
By Jessica Lyons Hardcastle
Corporate spending on sustainability and circular economy initiatives is on the rise — and yielding increased sales and cost savings, according to consulting firm Pure Strategies, which says its latest survey found more than 80 percent of companies expect a sustainability budget increase from 2016 to 2017 with a third anticipating double-digit growth. -
(ACC Mentioned) ExxonMobil Bringing It Home, With $20B Targeting Gulf Coast Expansions
Mar 7, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
ExxonMobil Corp., which last week said it would move more global investment to the U.S. onshore, on Monday unveiled a $20 billion plan to expand manufacturing capacity along the Gulf Coast, fueled by domestic natural gas and oil. -
(ACC Mentioned) What’s Driving Exxon’s Big Gulf Coast Investments?
Mar 7, 2017 | Christian Science Monitor
By David Iaconangelo
The oil giant is trumpeting a $20 billion US investment. But shale gas has been leading a boom in US chemical and plastics manufacturing for years, reversing a decades-long drift overseas. -
(ACC Mentioned) ExxonMobil Aims To Take Advantage Of ‘American Energy Revolution’
Mar 7, 2017 | Abiz
Exxon Mobil Corp. is expanding its manufacturing capacity along the U.S. Gulf Coast through planned investments of $20 billion over a 10-year period. -
Exxon's Trump-Friendly Spending Includes 4-Year-Old Projects
Mar 8, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joe Carroll
Exxon Mobil Corp. announced a $20 billion building spree in the heart of the U.S. chemical and refining industry, a program it said would create 45,000 jobs. President Donald Trump quickly tweeted his support, calling the oil producer a “special company.“ -
Alaska Governor Sends Trump A Pipeline/LNG Wish List
Mar 7, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Joe Fisher
Alaska Gov. Bill Walker in early February wrote to President Trump with his wish list for the state's pipeline and liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, asking for environmental regulatory exemptions for the project as well as federal loan guarantees. -
Bloomberg Tanker's U-Turn Shows How Shale Is Changing World Gas Trade
Mar 8, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Naureen Malik
A cargo of chilled natural gas hauled from Louisiana in late December has become a symbol of how global trade is changing for a fuel increasingly seen as a cheap, cleaner-burning option for countries from Latin America to China and India. -
Dakota Access Line Readies for Oil With Court Victory in Hand
Mar 8, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Harris
Energy Transfer Partners LP will soon be filling its controversial Dakota Access pipeline with oil after defeating a Native American tribe's challenge to stall the project on religious grounds (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng'rs, D.D.C., No. 16-cv-1534, 3/7/17). -
Enviro Attorneys Gird For Defense Of Obama Initiatives
Mar 8, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly and Hannah Hess
Environmental attorneys outlined a multi-pronged legal strategy today for defending the Obama administration's climate rules, including the Clean Power Plan. -
Who’s Against Fair Pay And Safe Workplaces?
Mar 7, 2017 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Debbie Berkowitz
Who could be against fair pair and safe workplaces? Well, it turns out Republican senators—with President Trump’s blessing—just voted to side with corporations that steal workers’ wages and cut corners on workplace safety. -
Freight Train Derails, Blocks Orange County Roadway
Mar 7, 2017 | CBS New York
The Orange County Office of Emergency Management says the train hit a hi-lo boom lift operated by a steel company on the tracks, causing the locomotive and several train cars to derail and roar across River Road. The wreckage stopped just shy of the Global Diesel fuel terminal building. -
Environmentalists Accuse EPA Of False Claims Over Utility MACT
Mar 8, 2017 | Inside EPA
Environmentalists in a new legal filing over EPA's utility maximum achievable control technology (MACT) air toxics rule are accusing the agency of making a false claim that its final MACT was as tough as the proposed version, an argument EPA is making to fight claims that the final rule unlawfully weakened emissions controls. -
Oil Exec: Trump Should Keep US In Paris Climate Pact
Mar 8, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The head of oil giant ConocoPhillips said President Trump should keep the United States in the landmark Paris climate change agreement. -
GOP Builds Case For Limiting Environment Reviews In Infrastructure Push
Mar 7, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
House Republicans are beginning a fresh push to limit environmental reviews of infrastructure projects, seeking to build a case that current environmental statutes and their implementation are blocking needed projects as the Trump administration is drafting a plan to make infrastructure a priority. -
E.P.A. Head Stacks Agency With Climate Change Skeptics
Mar 7, 2017 | The New York Times
By Coral Davenport
Days after the Senate confirmed him as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference and was asked about addressing a group that probably wanted to eliminate his agency. -
State Officials Request 'Collaborative Arrangement' On Regs
Mar 8, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
Elected officials from 19 states are calling on U.S. EPA to adopt a more "cooperative" stance in pursuing the goals of two pre-eminent environmental laws. -
Trump Adviser Peter Thiel Questions ‘Group Think’ Of Restricting Carbon Emissions
Mar 7, 2017 | Fuelfix
By James Osborne
Peter Thiel, the technology investor and adviser to President Donald Trump, questioned the global push towards restricting carbon emissions as “group think” while speaking Tuesday at the energy conference CERAWeek by IHS Markit. -
GOP States Urge Pruitt To 'Restore' Federalism In New, Existing EPA Rules
Mar 8, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Abby Smith
A coalition of Republican state officials, led by Texas Attorney General (AG) Ken Paxton, is urging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to “reexamine” the agency's delegation of authority to the states in new and existing rules and “restore” the role that Congress envisioned for states in major environmental statutes.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
-
(ACC mentioned) U.S. Recycling Of Plastic Film Grows 3% In 2015
Mar 8, 2017 | Plastics Today
recycling of plastic wraps, bags and other film packaging grew 34 million pounds, or 3%, in 2015 to reach a minimum of nearly 1.2 billion pounds for the year. This marks the eleventh consecutive year of increases and the highest annual collection of plastic film since the survey began. Plastic film recycling—a category that includes flexible product wraps, bags and commercial stretch film made primarily from polyethylene (PE)—has increased nearly 84% since the first report was issued in 2005.
Released today at the Plastics Recycling Conference, the 2015 National Post-Consumer Plastic Bag & Film Recycling Report also found that film processing in the United States and Canada increased 11% for the year while exports declined by almost 4%.
“We are very pleased that plastic film recycling continues to grow,” says Steve Russell, vice president of the Plastics Division of the American Chemistry Council (ACC). “America’s plastic makers are strong supporters of plastic film recycling, and due to expanding participation in our Wrap Recycling Action Program, or WRAP, we expect to see film recycling continue to rise.”Polymers, packaging and more can be found at UBM America’s newest design and manufacturing trade show and conference March 29-30. The Advanced Design & Manufacturing (ADM) Cleveland venue showcases five zones including packaging and plastics. For more information, visit PLASTEC Cleveland website .
According to the EPA’s 2014 Advancing Sustainable Materials Management report, the plastic film recycling rate is 15%.
A separate report released today found that the post-consumer recycling of non-bottle rigid plastics (rigids) has grown 280% since tracking began in 2007. Rigids recycling generally held strong, but dipped by 45 million pounds, or not quite 4%, to a minimum of 1.24 billion pounds in 2015.
The 2015 National Post-Consumer Non-Bottle Rigid Recycling Report also found that about 67% of the rigid plastics collected were recycled in the United States or Canada, with the remaining exported overseas.
Factors that contributed to the recent leveling include challenging market conditions for commodities in general, increased competition from virgin plastic materials, and weakened demand in Asia. Higher-quality bales (clean, single resin) fared better than mixed materials as they are less costly to reclaim.
“America’s plastics makers are committed to supporting continued long-term gains in plastics recycling through public policy, infrastructure improvements and education,” says Russell. “We believe states’ recycling goals and brand-owners’ commitments to use more recycled plastics are helping to create greater stability and demand in the industry.”
PP and PE total 74% of amount collected
The rigid plastics category includes food containers, caps, lids, tubs, and cups; bulky items such as buckets, carts and lawn furniture; and used commercial scrap such as crates and drums.
As in prior years, polypropylene and high-density polyethylene comprised the two largest resins in this category representing 41% and 33%, respectively, of total rigid plastics collected.
Both the film and rigids reports were based on an annual survey of reclaimers conducted by More Recycling (formerly Moore Recycling Associates, Inc.).
ACC’s Plastics Division tracks recycling collection annually in three categories: film, rigids and bottles. Statistics on plastic bottle recycling were reported previously in the 2015 United States National Postconsumer Plastic Bottle Recycling Report (November 2016).
https://www.plasticstoday.com/packaging/us-recycling-plastic-film-grows-3-2015/170819446056433
-
Industry Groups Join Calls To Resist 'Drastic' EPA Budget Cut Proposal
Mar 8, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Amanda Palleschi
A host of industry and professional groups -- including chemical, engine and vehicle manufacturers, truckers, builders, water utilities and radon prevention technicians -- are resisting plans by the Trump administration to slash EPA's budget, warning that the cuts will harm programs they rely on to reduce compliance costs and create jobs.
Among other things, the industry groups are seeking to preserve funds for replacing high-emitting diesel engines, pesticide registration programs, radon mitigation and state permit programs that protect water quality.
“Obviously it's a pretty drastic proposal,” says one water industry source who formerly worked at EPA.
The source is one of a host of industry officials who are concerned over Trump administration plans to slash EPA's budget in fiscal year 2018.
The Office of Management & Budget's (OMB) initial “pass back” to EPA proposes a 25 percent cut to EPA's overall budget and a 30 percent cut to popular grant programs. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has vowed to fight to preserve his priorities, including water infrastructure, Superfund cleanups and brownfields redevelopment and attainment of air and water quality standards.
And states and other groups are also strongly opposing the initial plans.
While the former EPA official called the proposed cut “pretty serious,” the source doesn't believe they “are going to stick.” Some of the proposed cuts are likely “traditional OMB traffic. . . to take things out which they know Congress will put back in.”
The source also expects Pruitt will back up his promise to maintain robust grant programs to states. “The Administrator is going to push back on the pass back, and we'll see what comes out of that when this game moves to the Hill,” the source says.
Despite the source's optimism, several industry groups are pressing Pruitt and other administration officials to preserve funding for several EPA grant programs when the White House rolls out its initial budget request slated for March 16.
A host of manufacturing, transportation, construction and other groups signed a March 3 letter to Pruitt urging the administrator to fight to preserve funds for the agency's Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) program, which was one of several that OMB reportedly proposed to “zero out” in EPA's FY18 budget.
The program, authorized by Congress with broad bipartisan support, provides funds to manufacturers and municipalities to restore and retrofit diesel engines that are not currently meeting emission standards that opt in to the program. DERA grants serve a variety of stakeholders, including city governments which use them to retrofit school buses.
The program is so popular in Congress that when the Obama administration proposed eliminating the program in several of its budget plans -- at one point citing unspent DERA funds allocated as part of the 2009 stimulus package -- but bipartisan Congresses voted to restore funding for the program each time.
Diesel Engines
The industry groups argue in the letter to Pruitt that the program is worth funding because it is “completely voluntary, merit-based, and cost-effective.” They said it leverages significant matching funds from the private sector and provides significant health and economic benefits, supports state programs and imposes few bureaucratic hurdles.
And they say the program continues to be needed because of the “long-lived nature of diesel engines,” they write.“The program effectively cleans our air and supports domestic employment in innovative industries while also helping businesses invest in new and efficient technologies.”
Groups signing the letter include a host of transportation sector trade associations, Associated General Contractors of America, and manufacturing groups and companies, including Caterpillar, Corning, Cummins, Navistar and Volvo.
Other industry groups are also working to save other air program grants to states from the chopping block. The American Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists (AARST) and the National Radon Proficiency Program (NRPP) raised concerns that the OMB pass back proposes to eliminate two separate EPA grant programs that provide funds to address radon.
“If enacted, it will have a dramatic and negative effect on the entire radon effort to save lives,” Peter Hendrick, the group's executive director, said in a note to radon professionals.
“This zeroed out elimination appears not to be just about the state programs and grants; this zeroing out could eliminate all radon initiatives within the agency.”
And the water industry source says the sector is fighting to preserve grants that EPA provides to states to implement delegated federal permit programs and to limit non-point pollution. The programs are generally supported by the drinking water sector because they preserve water quality, such as in source waters that utilities rely on for their supplies.
Even before the Trump administration's budget plans were leaked, pesticide industry officials have also been arguing for providing EPA with sufficient funds. Steve Caldeira, president and CEO of the Consumer Specialty Products Association, urged policymakers in a Feb. 15 op-ed in The Hill to provide EPA with adequate resources.
Arguing for Congress to reauthorize the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act, which helps fund EPA's pesticide registration program, he writes that although the agency “can be an inconvenient regulator no matter who's in the Oval Office,” policymakers must find “enough resources and will to maintain the many respected programs that lawmakers and presidents from both political parties have worked so hard to devise -- especially when it comes to chemicals.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/industry-groups-join-calls-resist-drastic-epa-budget-cut-proposal
-
Mar 7, 2017 | The National Law Review
By Charles M. Auer James V. Aidala Lynn L. Bergeson
On February 27, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced in a Federal Register notice that it was denying a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 21 petition that requested regulatory action under Section 6 to “prohibit the purposeful addition of fluoridation chemicals to U.S. water supplies,” and that it was making available its response to the petition. 82 Fed. Reg. 11878. The petition was received by EPA on November 23, 2016, and EPA had 90 days in which to respond by either granting or denying the requested action.
EPA’s response was relatively comprehensive as it went through and provided its views on numerous aspects and issues at play including:
EPA’s interpretation of the Section 6 provisions regarding conditions of use which asserts that TSCA requires EPA to comprehensively consider and address all conditions of use for a chemical or category of chemicals when considering and taking action under Section 6(a). This point was first made in EPA’s proposed procedural rule for risk evaluations (82 Fed. Reg. 7562, Jan. 19, 2017) that is currently open for comment.
EPA’s belief that Congress, under the new law, did not intend to empower Section 21 petitioners for regulation under Section 6 to promote chemicals of particular concern and force expeditious action based on risks arising from individual uses of those chemicals (helpfully, in its response, EPA suggests use of a petition under the Administrative Procedure Act to the petitioners for such cases).
The scientific adequacy of the petitioners’ risks claims for the general public from exposure to fluoridation chemicals in drinking water. EPA identified and discussed in some depth the numerous weaknesses it saw in health, exposure, and risk aspects.
The petitioners’ inadequate consideration of the public health benefits of fluoridation of drinking water.
Inadequate support by the petitioners for their belief that action was needed under TSCA rather than under the Safe Drinking Water Act, because of the latter’s purported limitations.
While comment could be offered on many of the points discussed in the decision, we limit our reactions to a few key points. The first is that, given all of the work that is at play under new TSCA, we are frankly surprised that EPA saw the need for such a detailed and comprehensive response to the petitioners. From our perspective, a much shorter and more focused response would have provided an adequate basis for the denial decision.
The second is the way that EPA used its response as a platform to advocate for its interpretation that Section 6 requires that EPA consider all conditions of use in proceeding under that Section. While this point was made in its proposed procedural rule for conducting risk evaluations, that rule was, as indicated, only a proposal and, moreover, it was issued under the prior Administration. This decision, however, because it can be legally challenged by the petitioners, equates to a judicially reviewable act as the petitioners may commence a civil action in federal district court to compel EPA to initiate a rulemaking as requested in the petition. Interesting, too, is the fact that the decision was issued under the new Trump Administration. Given that the response was signed less than a month after the Inauguration, we do not want to over-interpret its significance (perhaps EPA was merely “reiterating” rather than “advocating” its position of record). We also note in passing that it was signed on the same day that the new Administrator was sworn in (February 17).Commentary
EPA’s response in this case is expansive and detailed, not only with respect to what EPA concluded the claimed risks of fluoride to be, but also regarding the considerable detail on what the agency apparently has concluded are required elements to qualify as sufficient to grant a Section 21 petition for TSCA Section 6(a) action in the future. The granularity of the discussion is extraordinary.
That EPA disagreed over the possible risks of fluoride is not the most interesting part of the notice. EPA’s response includes what in essence is the following argument about what is required to make a Section 21 argument that EPA can grant: the petition must include a complete risk evaluation, including an analysis of all conditions of use, showing how the TSCA standard is met, before EPA would grant the petition.
EPA explicitly states, for example, that if a petition showed that a chemical use clearly exceeds the TSCA risk standard, and did not include all the conditions of use, EPA would still deny the petition to initiate action to control the risk. The notice states (at 11880):
EPA recognizes that information on a single condition of use, could, in certain instances, suffice to demonstrate that a chemical substance, as a whole, presents an unreasonable risk. Nonetheless, EPA concludes that such information does not fulfill a petitioner’s burden to justify “a rule under [TSCA Section 6],” under TSCA Section 21, since the information would merely justify a subset of an adequate rule.”
So even if a chemical use is shown to cause great harm, it would not merit EPA granting the petition since it is not a complete risk evaluation as EPA wishes to define it. The notice explains EPA’s rationale for this position, essentially arguing that since EPA must assess “all conditions of use” in any control rule they might promulgate, then any outside petition must include all of the same homework before it can be granted.
This seems to obviate the very purpose of Section 21 petitions for Section 6 action, which in the past has been viewed as one way for the public to identify risks of concern to EPA which, for whatever reason, may not be on EPA’s radar. This asserted view, that only a comprehensive risk evaluation considering all conditions of use will suffice, presents a very high threshold for action -- and seemingly an impossibly high threshold to move EPA to act.
The petitioners in this case may decide to challenge the EPA decision. Activists concerned about the possible risks of fluoride have in the past been persistent and dogged about their cause. In this decision, however, there is potentially more than a disagreement over possible risks of fluoride; there might also be arguments over what is or is not sufficient for Section 21 petitions to be granted, or possibly about EPA’s general interpretation, as elaborated in the denial notice and in the risk evaluation procedural rule, that new TSCA does not provide discretion for EPA to evaluate less than all conditions of use in new actions under Section 6.
http://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-denies-tsca-section-21-petition-fluoride-chemicals-drinking-water-provides
-
Bill Would Force EPA To Set Limits On Industrial Chemicals
Mar 8, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
New York Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a Senate bill yesterday that would require U.S. EPA to set Safe Drinking Water Act limits on perfluorinated compounds and other chemicals used in firefighting foam and the manufacturing of Teflon cookware, plastics and fabrics.
Their legislation, S. 519, calls for standards for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), 1,4-dioxane and perchlorate. PFOA and PFOS have been linked to cancer and birth defects.
"We've seen very clearly how much damage can happen to our local drinking water supplies when toxic chemicals like PFOA, PFOS, 1,4 dioxane, and perchlorate aren't monitored by the EPA," Gillibrand said in a statement.
Rural communities in New Hampshire, New York and Vermont are wrestling with the spread of PFOA in groundwater (Greenwire, May 20, 2016).
PFOA in the Hoosick Falls, N.Y., water supply spurred the state Senate last month to recommend creating a new state regulatory body. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D) response to the contamination has been faulted by environmentalists (Greenwire, Nov. 22, 2016).
Scott Faber, senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group, expressed support for Schumer and Gillibrand's legislation in a statement.
"If President Trump is serious about providing 'crystal clear, clean drinking water' to all Americans, he should leap at the chance to sign this legislation," Faber said. "Congress can and must take action to reduce the public's exposure and it can start by passing this legislation."
Schumer said "we can never be too safe" when it comes to drinking water.
"I will use every ounce of my clout to work with my colleagues in the Senate and make sure this common-sense public health bill to ensure safe drinking water is passed," his statement continued.
PFOA and PFOS were used in firefighting foam by the Air Force for decades. States like New York have had Superfund sites declared at bases where the foam was used (Greenwire, Jan. 31).
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/03/08/stories/1060051106
-
Vermont Aadvisory Group Sees Legislative Recommendations Take Shape
Mar 8, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By David Stegon
The Vermont legislature is considering a sweeping chemical regulatory bill, following the recommendations of a 20-person advisory group.
Made up of representatives from government, industry, academia and nonprofits, the working group submitted a report to the state’s general assembly in mid-January. It called for the state to require better reporting of information on the use of toxic chemicals; improve the community’s “right-to-know” laws; establish legal remedies for citizens to protect themselves; and improve state toxic use reduction laws.
Several of these recommendations are included in the bill (HB 268/S103), which has been introduced in both the House and Senate.
The Vermont legislature passed a law last year to create the working group, after the discovery of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOA) in private drinking water in the Vermont town of Bennington in early 2016. Act 188 authorised its members to develop recommendations to reduce regulatory gaps and other deficiencies that pose risks to Vermonters and the environment from chemicals of concern.
“Legislators are serious about doing something,” said Jon Groveman, policy director for the Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) and a member of the group. “The PFOA release in Bennington really shook up Vermonters and it served as a wake-up call for legislators that risks are still out there.”HB 268/S103
The bill includes a number or provisions to strengthen the state’s regulatory power, including:
· amending requirements under the State Toxics Use Reduction and Hazardous Waste Programme;
· establishing an Interagency Committee on Chemical Management to evaluate chemical inventories in Vermont and identify potential risks from the chemicals;
· establishing a private right of action that allows citizens to bring lawsuits against manufacturers to pay for their medical condition to be monitored if they are exposed to a chemical of concern;
· authorising a mechanism that allows private citizens to bring a lawsuit against regulated persons alleged to be in violation of the law;
· requiring testing of new groundwater sources and potable water supplies for specified chemical parameters; and
· prohibiting the manufacture, sale or distribution in Vermont of dental floss or food contact substances that contain PFOA.
Notably, the legislation includes a requirement for manufacturers to notify the state department of health of the presence of a chemical of high concern in consumer products. This would expand the state’s 2014 Toxic-Free Families Act to products beyond those marketed for children under 12.
Industry groups voiced displeasure, during the rulemaking process, at the requirement to report at the individual product level, as opposed to broad product categories used in states like Washington and Oregon. In the programme’s first month, manufacturers reported more than 1m products.Path forward for legislation
Some in industry have already expressed concerns over the bill. Owen Caine, the Toy Industry Association’s (TIA) director of state affairs, said it would touch every aspect of the economy and pose “huge regulatory burdens” on anyone that does business in the state.
But many in the environmental field have championed the legislation.
Mr Groveman said it is unlikely the bill would pass without some concessions, but he is hopeful that many of the key parts could become law. The biggest obstacle, he said, would be the length of the Vermont legislature’s session, which ends in early May.
“Hopefully, whatever parts of the legislation cannot be passed this year will carry over to new legislation next year,” he said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/54063/vermont-advisory-group-sees-legislative-recommendations-take-shape
-
Target Raises The Bar For Retailers In Driving Harmful Chemicals Out Of Products
Mar 7, 2017 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.
By Mike Schade
In late January Target upped the ante for the entire retailer sector by announcing a new safer chemicals policy along with ambitious goals to increase transparency of chemicals in products, reduce and eliminate harmful chemicals like flame retardants and phthalates, and invest in research into safer alternatives
Target’s new and expanded policy, first reported by Bloomberg News, sets a new high bar for retailers. It will help drive a race to the top among the nation’s retailers to drive a market transformation to safer chemicals and products.
This comes only a few months after our “Who’s Minding the Store?” report card gave Target the second-highest grade among the nation’s eleven largest retailers for its safer chemicals program. In the report card we also revealed Target had made significant improvements to its Sustainable Product Index in 2016. The new policy and goals will clearly improve their score in the next version of our report card, which we plan to update and release later in 2017.
“Our chemical strategy will be one of the most comprehensive in the U.S. retail industry, including all Target-owned and national brand products and operations, not just formulated products. It’s ambitious, but using our size, scale and expertise, we think we’ll be able to make significant progress. And we hope our robust approach will accelerate similar efforts across the industry.” —Jennifer Silberman, chief sustainability officer, TargetImportant Elements of Target’s New Policy
There is a lot to like about Target’s new policy and goals, which build off of the work the company has done with its Sustainable Product Index over the past three+ years.
Here are some of the most notable elements of the policy and goals, which raise the bar for other competing retailers like Amazon who are lagging behind Target when it comes to adopting a public safer chemicals policy.
· Scope of the policy: The policy applies to the company’s “entire value chain, operations and every product” it sells, including both private label and brand name products, and not just formulated products. The goals include a focus on not only “formulated goods” (e.g. cleaning products) but other products like textiles, which are often made with chemicals of concern. The scope of this new commitment surpasses other retailers like Walmart and CVS by publicly committing to address a bigger universe of products.
· Ingredient transparency: Target has set a long-term goal of “full material disclosure for all products and processes across all categories and in [its] operations.” In the near term, the company is focusing its transparency efforts on beauty, baby care, personal care, and household cleaning formulated products, including pushing for transparency of fragrance and other generic ingredients. This comes at a time when big brands like Unilever and P&G have adopted new ingredient transparency initiatives to address the historically black box of fragrance ingredients.
· A science hazard-based approach: Target has embraced a precautionary hazard-based approach to “prioritize substances for restriction in products and processes, with an emphasis on the impact these substances could have on workers, guests, and communities.”
· Timeframes to reduce and eliminate high priority chemicals: The company has set goals with clear timeframes to eliminate harmful chemicals it describes as “unwanted chemicals with the biggest potential health impact, factoring in their prevalence within [its] products.” Target has pledged to:
1. “Improve textile products by removing added Perfluorinated Chemicals (PFC’s) from products by 2022.
2. Improve textile products by removing added flame retardants that are potential carcinogens or pose harm to the guest, workers or communities by 2022.
3. Improve beauty, baby care, personal care and household cleaning product categories by formulating without phthalates, propyl-paraben, butyl-paraben, formaldehyde, formaldehyde-donors, or NPE’s by 2020.”
It is notable that the company has embraced tackling classes of chemicals. Nearly all of these chemicals are on our Hazardous 100+ list and a number are also on with Walmart’s list of High Priority Chemicals.
We are pleased that Target has pledged to expand the list of chemicals over time. For example in textiles, other chemicals and materials of concern ripe for action include phthalates, nonylphenol exthoxylates (NPEs), triclosan and formaldehyde.
· Restricted substance lists (RSLs) and manufacturing restricted substance lists (MRSLs): Target is not only developing restricted substance lists, but also joining Best Buy to develop manufacturing restricted substance lists (MRSL) to drive harmful chemicals out of the manufacture of products, which will benefit workers and communities deeper into the supply chain. In comparison, Walmart has yet to announce an MRSL.
· Investing in research into safer alternatives: The company has committed to invest up to $5 million in “green chemistry innovation” over the next five years, in part to “to develop safe alternatives for chemicals where no viable alternatives currently exist.” In recent years the company has joined Walmart and other companies in supporting research into safer preservatives through the GC3.
· Public reporting on progress: The company will monitor the policy’s implementation and has pledged to report on progress annually, joining Walmart, which announced progress in implementing its policy last summer. The company will also update and set new goals as needed, expanding the product categories and chemicals it addresses.Leading a Race to the Top
We applaud Target for adopting this ambitious new policy and goals.
We hope other large retailers like Amazon, Costco and Walgreens will join Target in adopting a robust safer chemicals policy to meet the rising consumer demand for safer products and radical transparency.
We look forward to working with Target in the years to come as it continues to improve and expand this policy.
http://saferchemicals.org/2017/03/07/target-raises-the-bar-for-retailers-in-driving-harmful-chemicals-out-of-products/
-
House GOP Seeks To Address Confidentiality Issues In EPA Science Bill
Mar 7, 2017 | Inside EPA
Just-unveiled Republican legislation that seeks to make the science EPA uses to justify its rules more transparent includes new language that appears aimed at addressing concerns that earlier versions of the bill would bar EPA from using a host of data, including trade secrets, private medical data and other confidential information, when assessing risks and setting regulatory standards.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, introduced the bill now known as the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017 (HONEST Act) March 6. The bill largely reiterates Smith's Secret Science Reform Act of 2015.
The intent of both bills is to require EPA to use the "best available" reproducible science in developing rules and to make all data underlying its rules publicly available. Such a mandate would be challenging with some of the data that EPA relies on, such as epidemiological data and medical records, confidential business information, or even data with certain copyright protections.
A discussion draft of the new legislation, which has yet to receive a bill number, attempts to address these issues. The new bill now states that if passed, the EPA must only rely on information that is publicly available online “except that any personally identifiable information, trade secrets, or commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential, shall be redacted prior to public availability.”
The new bill further states that such “redacted information … shall be disclosed to a person only after such person signs a written confidentiality agreement with the Administrator, subject to guidance to be developed by the Administrator.”
The new language appears aimed at addressing concerns about earlier versions of the bill's impact on EPA's ability to use confidential information. During a committee hearing on the issue last month, a Democratic witness, Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a former member of Congress, questioned whether the 2015 version of the bill would have prevented EPA from using trade secret-protected toxicology studies to estimate safe levels of the little-studied chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol in drinking water, as it did in the case of the Freedom Industries spill that contaminated drinking water for residents of Charleston, WV for several days in 2014.
Further, some of EPA's risk analyses support regulatory decisions that rely heavily, if not entirely, on confidential business information, such as EPA's reviews of pesticides for registration for legal use in the U.S., or new industrial chemicals before they enter the market.
And the agency has long relied on private medical information to assess the risks of -- and set standards to regulate -- certain air pollutants.
But it is not clear to what extent the new language will address Democrats' concerns.
The committee is scheduled to mark up the new bill March 9, along with related legislation introduced by Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), the committee's vice chairman. Lucas' legislation is also a repeat of a bill from the last session of Congress that seeks to overhaul the makeup of EPA's Science Advisory Board.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/house-gop-seeks-address-confidentiality-issues-epa-science-bill
-
Corporate Sustainability Efforts Yield Millions in Increased Sales, Cost Savings
Mar 7, 2017 | Environmental Leader
By Jessica Lyons Hardcastle
Corporate spending on sustainability and circular economy initiatives is on the rise — and yielding increased sales and cost savings, according to consulting firm Pure Strategies, which says its latest survey found more than 80 percent of companies expect a sustainability budget increase from 2016 to 2017 with a third anticipating double-digit growth.
The survey respondents reported gaining about $800 million from increased sales and $800 million in manufacturing cost savings, with additional earnings in risk reduction, productivity gains, and enhanced growth opportunities adding up to billions in value. Companies that report earning the most from sustainability plan to further increase their budgets, pointing to a key link between sustainability program investment and business benefits.
Pure Strategies’ fielded a survey, through research firm Verdantix, with 153 telephone interviews with sustainability leads in global companies with revenue of at least $250 million in these industries: food and beverage, apparel and footwear, life sciences and medical products, electronics and appliances, home care and cleaning, personal care and cosmetics, and general merchandise. Pure Strategies conducted similar studies in 2015 and 2013.
The new survey found the number of companies using renewable energy is anticipated to nearly double, from 26 percent in 2016 to 46 percent in 2019. Top performing firms in the survey expect to rely on renewable power purchase agreements during that time period. Ikea, for example, is investing more than €2 billion ($2.1 billion) in renewable energy by 2020, the report says.
The survey respondents are also using safer materials, with this area expected to grow from 64 percent of companies with well-advanced programs in 2016 to 79 percent in 2019. The report highlights Walmart and Target as two companies leading this charge.
In January Target posted its new safer chemical strategy and policy that it says will apply across its operations and to every product it sells. The retailer also set a goal to invest up to $5 million in “green chemistry” by 2022 and challenged the industry to follow its example.
Walmart began phasing out hazardous chemicals from its products in 2013. A year ago the company released significant information about its progress toward reducing certain chemicals.
In fact, the no. 1 retailer driving investment in sustainability is Walmart, Pure Strategies says. Survey respondents have consistently identified the world’s largest company as the leading retailer influencing company investment in sustainability.
Walmart, the first retailer to have its emissions-reduction plan certified by the Science Based Targets initiative, is working with suppliers to reduce CO2e emissions from scope 3 sources by 1 billion metric tons between 2015 and 2030. The company has also pledged to invest $250 billion to make domestic manufacturing more cost-effective and sustainable.
These and other environmental management efforts are paying off for the retail giant: Walmart saves $1 billion a year on its improved fleet efficiency alone.
In two previous Pure Strategies’ studies, Walmart was named the top retailer stimulating investment in product sustainability. In the new survey, the company was named the top retailer driving investment in sustainability, receiving twice as many votes as Target, the second most cited retailer.
“This report shows that companies know sustainability is good business,” said Kathleen McLaughlin, senior vice president and chief sustainability officer for Walmart. “Strengthening product supply chains and other systems today will benefit customers, business and society tomorrow.”
Scott O’Connell, director of environmental affairs at Dell, will be offering a four-hour workshop on the circular economy — along with Larry Black of McDonough Innovation Sustainability Collaboration and Tom Carpenter of Waste Management — at the 2017 Environmental Leader Conference in Denver in June.
https://www.environmentalleader.com/2017/03/corporate-sustainability-efforts-yield-millions-increased-sales-cost-savings/
-
(ACC Mentioned) ExxonMobil Bringing It Home, With $20B Targeting Gulf Coast Expansions
Mar 7, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
ExxonMobil Corp., which last week said it would move more global investment to the U.S. onshore, on Monday unveiled a $20 billion plan to expand manufacturing capacity along the Gulf Coast, fueled by domestic natural gas and oil.
CEO Darren Woods announced the "Growing the Gulf" initiative during a keynote address at CERAWeek by IHS Markit in Houston. The Texas and Louisiana projects, at 11 proposed and existing sites, would involve investments over a 10-year period, generating thousands of high-paying jobs and increase economic activity, he said.
"The United States is a leading producer of oil and natural gas, which is incentivizing U.S. manufacturing to invest and grow," Woods said. "We are using new, abundant domestic energy supplies to provide products to the world at a competitive advantage resulting from lower costs and abundant raw materials. In this way, an upstream technology breakthrough has led to a downstream manufacturing renaissance."
The initiative by the Irving, TX-based supermajor follows a push that began in 2013 to expand its petrochemical and refining base along the Gulf Coast. The continued infusion of capital involves new and and expanded refining and petrochemical projects to build manufacturing and export capacity, the CEO said.
Project investments through at least 2022 include "major" chemical, refining, lubricant and liquefied natural gas projects at proposed new and existing facilities.
According to the American Chemistry Council, chemical manufacturing accounted for 14% of overall domestic exports in 2015. Exports of specific chemicals linked to shale gas are projected to reach $123 billion by 2030. Most of ExxonMobil's new chemical capacity investments would target export markets in Asia and elsewhere.
"These projects are export machines, generating products that high-growth nations need to support larger populations with higher standards of living," Woods said. "Those overseas markets are the motivation behind our investments. The supply is here; the demand is there. We want to keep connecting those dots."
The Gulf Coast expansions would provide long-term economic benefits to the region, creating direct employment opportunities and "multiplier effects" of the company's investments, he said.
"Importantly, 'Growing the Gulf' also creates jobs and lasting economic benefits for the communities where they're located. All told, we expect these 11 projects to create over 45,000 jobs. Many of these are high-skilled, high-paying jobs averaging about $100,000 a year. And these jobs will have a multiplier effect, creating many more jobs in the communities that service these new investments."
Of the 45,000-plus jobs created, about 35,000 would be construction (temporary) jobs and 12,000 would be permanent.
ExxonMobil's upstream expertise would be leveraged in U.S. gas markets "to inform investment decisions in our Gulf Coast chemical facilities" and to "position our unconventional gas portfolio to effectively compete for increased domestic power generation and liquefied natural gas exports," Woods said.
During the annual investor day conference in New York City earlier this month, Woods outlined a go-forward strategy that involves directing more funds to U.S. unconventionals, i.e., short-cycle plays where activity may be turned up or down as commodity prices fluctuate.
ExxonMobil, the No. 1 North American natural gas producer, has steadily been building its unconventional oil investments, particularly in the Permian Basin and Bakken Shale. By 2018, domestic onshore drilling is expected to absorb about one-half of the global budget, with output forecast to increase every year on average by 20% through 2020.
ExxonMobil executive Jack Williams, who runs the XTO Energy Inc. exploration subsidiary, said last week the company planned to use its world-scale Gulf Coast refining/petrochemical infrastructure to leverage the natural gas "so we have that full value chain that goes from the acreage position all the way through the market."
Woods last week also pointed to the joint venture reached three years ago with Energy Transfer Partners LP to build out Permian infrastructure, which "additional terminal and pipeline capacity to more efficiently transport barrels produced in the Permian and Ardmore basins to liquid markets in the U.S. Gulf Coast." New Gulf Coast projects under development were expected add another 340,000 b/d of light crude processing capability.
Some of the projects touted by Woods on Monday already are in development, including chemicals, plastics and refining expansions near Houston in Beaumont and in Baton Rouge, LA. ExxonMobil also is adding ethylene lines at its Baytown, TX, refinery and polyethylene lines at the Mont Belvieu, TX, complex.
Last November the company pulled the trigger on another production unit at the Beaumont facility to boost polyethylene capacity by 65%, fueled by unconventional gas. The Beaumont project builds on supply advantages created by the Mont Belvieu expansion, where two similar polyethylene units are being added. Combined, the multi-billion dollar investments would increase the company's U.S. polyethylene production by 40%, or nearly 2 million metric tons/year, making Texas the largest polyethylene supply point for the company.
ExxonMobil also is expanding the Beaumont refinery's crude refining capacity, and last year began constructing a unit to increase domestic supply of ultra-low sulfur gasoline and diesel. As well, a potential Gulf Coast petrochemical facility is being eyed with Saudi Arabia's Saudi Basic Industries Corp., or Sabic. The Corpus Christi area is said to be at the top of the list destination-wise.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/109659-exxonmobil-bringing-it-home-with-20b-targeting-gulf-coast-expansions
-
(ACC Mentioned) What’s Driving Exxon’s Big Gulf Coast Investments?
Mar 7, 2017 | Christian Science Monitor
By David Iaconangelo
The oil giant is trumpeting a $20 billion US investment. But shale gas has been leading a boom in US chemical and plastics manufacturing for years, reversing a decades-long drift overseas.
MARCH 7, 2017 —Exxon Mobil announced plans on Monday to invest $20 billion over the next decade in 11 petrochemical and oil refining plants in Texas and Louisiana, billing the investment as part of a Gulf-Coast manufacturing renaissance that would bring thousands of jobs to the region and fill state coffers with tax revenues.
"Exxon Mobil is building a manufacturing powerhouse along the U.S. Gulf Coast," said Exxon CEO Darren Woods, according to Reuters. "These businesses are leveraging the shale revolution to manufacture cleaner fuels and more energy-efficient plastics."
The White House’s reaction was jubilant, with President Trump issuing a string of Twitter posts that linked the announcement to his “Buy American” agenda.
"This is exactly the kind of investment, economic development and job creation that will help put Americans back to work," he said in a statement released by the White House.
But some observers say that the investments are in large part a continuation of plans dating back to 2013, raising doubts about whether Exxon might have launched a rebranding to curry favor with a media-savvy president. The White House’s congratulatory statement was largely an echo of Exxon’s own release, reported The Wall Street Journal, and a slew of tweets from President Trump claiming credit for the decision came in the hours after he met with former Exxon CEO and current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
But the announcement may also elevate and give political resonance to a mostly overlooked branch of the “shale revolution”: the role of shale gas in powering an under-the-radar boom in US chemical and plastics manufacturing.
“It’s kind of a new world we’re in, right? Because the whole plastics industry moved overseas decades ago, and now we’re seeing bits and spurts, or resurgences, tied totally to shale,” says Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist at Cornell University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in Ithaca, N.Y., in a phone interview with The Christian Science Monitor.
That may be an understatement. According to a 2014 study from University of Michigan researchers, the US chemical industry went from a $9.4 billion trade deficit in 2005 to a $3.4 billion surplus in 2013, a turnaround that came in large part off the strength of ethylene production – a chemical derived from natural gas.
Ethylene is used for a huge range of plastic products, from PVC pipes to diapers to Coca-Cola bottles. And it’s much cheaper than the crude-oil-based feedstock used by many European and Asian plastics companies, meaning the recent glut of shale gas has translated into a price advantage for US chemical and plastics manufacturers. In 2014, American Chemistry Council Cal Dooley cited the abundance of shale gas in calling the United States “the most attractive place in the world to invest in chemical and plastics manufacturing.”
“It’s an astonishing gain in competitiveness,” he said then.
It’s unclear exactly how much of Exxon’s Gulf Coast plans will focus on chemical and plastics production, but the firm says it will ramp up processing of polyethylene – a compound used in film and plastic bags – at its Beaumont, Texas, facilities, and potentially build a new refinery to produce ethane, from which ethylene is derived, according to Reuters. But a similar expansion may be in the works in Appalachian states such as West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, where oil and gas firms have been planning ways to open up processing alongside shale extraction.
That is likely to worry environmentalists, who say the “cracker” plants where ethylene is processed pose pollution hazards to nearby communities, while feeding an “inherently wasteful” plastics industry that clogs landfills and oceans. That’s on top of the dangers environmentalists attribute to the extraction of shale gas itself.
“This cheap and dirty fossil fuel is also proliferating its toxic legacy by facilitating the expansion of petrochemical plants, which are polluting and unsustainably producing materials that often end up in landfills,” wrote Food and Water Watch in a February report.
It comes as industry experts say the US might be on the verge of a second shale gas boom. Since September, oil production has been growing even faster than during the 2011-2015 period, reported Bloomberg in February.
Barry Rabe, a climate policy expert at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy in Ann Arbor, Mich., says it remained unclear whether that growth might continue.
“An ongoing question is, what is the future of shale or offshore development here?” he tells the Monitor. “With the slight increase now in oil and gas prices, does that really trigger an increase in production?”
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2017/0307/What-s-driving-Exxon-s-big-Gulf-Coast-investments-video
-
(ACC Mentioned) ExxonMobil Aims To Take Advantage Of ‘American Energy Revolution’
Mar 7, 2017 | Abiz
Exxon Mobil Corp. is expanding its manufacturing capacity along the U.S. Gulf Coast through planned investments of $20 billion over a 10-year period.
The company says in a March 6 press release it plans to take advantage of the “American energy revolution.”
The projects, at 11 proposed and existing sites, are expected to generate thousands of high-paying jobs and $20 billion in increased economic activity in Texas and Louisiana, Darren Woods, chairman and chief executive officer, says in the release.
“The United States is a leading producer of oil and natural gas, which is incentivizing U.S. manufacturing to invest and grow,” Woods says. “We are using new, abundant domestic energy supplies to provide products to the world at a competitive advantage resulting from lower costs and abundant raw materials. In this way, an upstream technology breakthrough has led to a downstream manufacturing renaissance.”
The company says it’s strategically investing in new refining and chemical-manufacturing projects in the U.S. Gulf Coast region to expand its manufacturing and export capacity. Its Growing the Gulf expansion program consists of chemical, refining, lubricant and liquefied natural gas projects at proposed new and existing facilities along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. Investments began in 2013 and are expected to continue through at least 2022.
Woods said that ExxonMobil’s Gulf expansion projects are expected to provide long-term economic benefits to the region, noting the creation of direct employment opportunities and the multiplier effects of the company’s investments.
“Importantly, Growing the Gulf also creates jobs and lasting economic benefits for the communities where they’re located,” Woods said. “All told, we expect these 11 projects to create over 45,000 jobs. Many of these are high-skilled, high-paying jobs averaging about $100,000 a year. And these jobs will have a multiplier effect, creating many more jobs in the communities that service these new investments.”
According to the American Chemistry Council, chemical manufacturing is one of America’s top exporting industries, accounting for 14 percent of overall U.S. exports in 2015, and exports of specific chemicals linked to shale gas are projected to reach $123 billion by 2030. Most of ExxonMobil’s planned new chemical capacity investment in the Gulf region is targeted toward export markets in Asia and elsewhere.
“These projects are export machines, generating products that high-growth nations need to support larger populations with higher standards of living,” Woods adds in the release. “Those overseas markets are the motivation behind our investments. The supply is here; the demand is there. We want to keep connecting those dots.”http://theind.com/article-24683-exxonmobil-aims-to-take-advantage-of-%E2%80%98american-energy-revolution%E2%80%99.html
-
Exxon's Trump-Friendly Spending Includes 4-Year-Old Projects
Mar 8, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joe Carroll
Exxon Mobil Corp. announced a $20 billion building spree in the heart of the U.S. chemical and refining industry, a program it said would create 45,000 jobs. President Donald Trump quickly tweeted his support, calling the oil producer a “special company.“
The only problem? The March 6 announcement just gave a name to a series of investments the company began making as far back as 2013, before the collapse in oil prices. Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods dubbed the program “Growing the Gulf,” part of an effort to boost energy exports from abundant natural gas and oil supplies on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
It's the latest effort by a corporation to proactively present itself as a job creator to a president who has made the issue a centerpiece of his campaign and his less than two-month tenure in office. Trump described Exxon as a “true American success story” in a statement. The president followed up with a trademark tweet: “We are already winning again, America!” and a short video celebrating the announcement which he said was in part because of his administration's policies.
Gulf Coast Jobs
All the jobs will be located along the Gulf Coast, and many will pay an average of $100,000 a year, Woods said in a speech at CERAWeek, a huge annual industry conference in Houston. The investments will continue at least through 2022. Woods was making only his second public appearance as CEO since January, when he succeeded Rex Tillerson, who left the company to become Trump's secretary of state.
Exxon follows other U.S. giants such as Ford Motor Co., Intel Corp., General Motors Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. responding to Trump's call to eschew overseas investments and focus on domestic developments. Like those other plans, Exxon didn't specify how much of the 10-year investment program was previously announced.
After decades of locating refineries and chemical plants close to raw materials and end markets in the Middle East and East Asia, Exxon is committed to steering construction dollars to its home country, Woods said. The plan involves 11 projects in the Gulf Coast region.
“These projects are export machines, generating products that high-growth nations need to support larger populations with higher standards of living,” Woods said. “The supply is here; the demand is there. We want to keep connecting those dots.”
More than half the investment plan is accounted for by Exxon's previously announced $10 billion liquefied natural gas export terminal in Sabine Pass, Texas, analysts with Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. said in a research note March 7.
The announcement “largely addresses existing projects,” the analysts said. Exxon is making use of the shale boom's flow of “abundant, cost-advantaged natural gas” and natural-gas liquids to build up its petrochemical and refining businesses and “drive exports globally,” the analysts said.
Project Mix
Via email, Exxon spokesman William Holbrook said: “From the beginning, our statements were clear as to the time frame of the investments: over a decade from 2013 out to at least 2022.” The plan includes “a mix of projects currently under construction and some proposed that haven't begun construction.“
Woods’ comments followed Exxon's disclosure last week that it's shifting half its worldwide drilling budget to U.S. shale fields next year. The company's shares have dropped 8 percent this year as oil prices have stabilized between $50 and $55 a barrel, after falling from more than $100 in 2014.
One of the projects includes the construction of an ethane cracker at Exxon's Baytown, Texas, chemical complex that began in June 2014 and was projected to employ 10,000 construction workers and spur 4,000 additional full-time positions. Another was the expansion of Exxon's Mont Belvieu, Texas, polyethylene plant, where work began around the same time. The company didn't say how much the investments would cost.
“This is exactly the kind of investment, economic development and job creation that will help put Americans back to work,” Trump said in a statement. “Many of the products that will be manufactured here in the United States by American workers will be exported to other countries, improving our balance of trade.”
Free Trade
Like Exxon bosses before him, in his remarks Woods championed “free and fair trade” as essential for economic growth and corporate profitability. That stance may veer from Trump's repeated criticisms of various international trade deals, including the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, as unfair and disadvantageous to U.S. workers.
Woods, a 52-year-old Exxon lifer, inherited a company hobbled by the biggest reserves reduction in its modern history and the loss of the platinum credit rating it held for 85 years as a 2 1/2-year collapse in crude markets destroyed cash flow. The expansion program, dubbed “Growing the Gulf” by Exxon, hews close to Woods’ pedigree as a quintessential downstream executive, or one who focused on refineries and chemicals for most of his career.
Woods’ comments at CERAWeek may presage major themes up for debate at the oil industry's biggest annual conference. He was preceded at the conclave by Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak; luminaries yet to appear during the week-long conference include Saudi Oil Minister Khalid Al-Falih, OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo, and the CEOs of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Chevron Corp., Total SA and BP PLC.
Woods, an electrical engineer by training who initially joined Exxon as an analyst, also touted the Irving, Texas-based company's research and investments in carbon capture, biofuels and other ventures meant to address climate change.
Market Interventions
He also panned government subsidies, trade restrictions and other market interventions intended to prop up green energy sources: “They are more expensive and lead to poor investment decisions, focused on the limitations imposed, not true innovation.”
The tone of Woods address was in marked contrast to the bleak pronouncements that dominated CERAWeek gatherings in the previous two years as crude prices were in retreat and the industry retrenched, firing hundreds of thousands of workers and canceling billions of dollars in investments.
“The world's energy industry, represented here today, is the engine of the world's economy,” Woods said. “As we look forward, our opportunity is to grow.”
--With assistance from David Wethe, John McCormick, Catherine Traywick and Alex Nussbaum.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=106739042&vname=dennotallissues&fn=106739042&jd=106739042
-
Alaska Governor Sends Trump A Pipeline/LNG Wish List
Mar 7, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Joe Fisher
Alaska Gov. Bill Walker in early February wrote to President Trump with his wish list for the state's pipeline and liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, asking for environmental regulatory exemptions for the project as well as federal loan guarantees.
Walker told Trump that Japan "looks very favorably" on importing LNG from Alaska and said the federal government can assist the state "in bringing this important American infrastructure project to fruition." Trump has said U.S. infrastructure development is a key priority of his administration.
The governor said the federal government can help the Alaska LNG project with "relatively minor amendments to an existing federal loan guarantee previously passed for an Alaskan gas pipeline project, concessionary financing and/or guarantees (such as a first-loss investment) of up to 25% of the total investment for each project, and some changes to regulations that would provide Alaska with greater oversight of the existing and well-established pipeline corridor."
Walker is asking for a $40 billion federal loan guarantee for Alaska LNG, a now-state-run project that would pipe North Slope natural gas to a liquefaction plant for tanker export to Asian countries.
Some of the other items the governor is seeking are federal tax-exempt status for the project; exemption from federal wetlands compensatory mitigation requirements of the Clean Water Act (CWA); and removal of Environmental Protection Agency veto authority for federal authorizations under CWA.
Regulatory concessions/accommodations also are being sought from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"Alaska is America's last frontier and is one of the most resource-rich areas in the world," Walker said in his letter to Trump. "Building the gas pipeline will allow Alaska and the United States to increase exports of important raw materials, opening up vast mining opportunities in Alaska by having access to lower-cost energy, and enable value-added development of other goods."
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/109667-alaska-governor-sends-trump-a-pipelinelng-wish-list
-
Bloomberg Tanker's U-Turn Shows How Shale Is Changing World Gas Trade
Mar 8, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Naureen Malik
In new world order, China and Mexico vie for a tanker of gas
LNG market more fragmented with a spot market akin to oil
A cargo of chilled natural gas hauled from Louisiana in late December has become a symbol of how global trade is changing for a fuel increasingly seen as a cheap, cleaner-burning option for countries from Latin America to China and India.
The tanker Maran Gas Achilles passed through the Panama Canal and was headed toward Asia at a speed of 20 knots when, suddenly, it made a sharp u-turn in the Pacific. Next stop: Mexico’s Manzanillo terminal on the southwest coast, where it unloaded.
The abrupt route change shows how the U.S., which began shale gas exports just last year, is creating a new paradigm in an industry that once revolved almost entirely around longterm contracts with set destinations. As the new kid on the block, exporters of U.S. liquefied natural gas -- led by Cheniere Energy Inc. and Royal Dutch Shell SA -- are seeking the best price at any given time. As U.S. exports grow, it’s a strategy that could shift the economics of LNG toward an emerging spot market akin to oil.
“The U.S. puts gas into places on short notice at a good price,” said Jason Feer, head of business intelligence at ship broker Poten & Partners Inc., in a telephone interview. “It’s been flexible. The market’s becoming more short-term and the U.S. has been very effective at meeting those needs.”
The U.S. stands to become the world’s third-largest exporter by 2020, when it’s expected to ship about 8.3 billion cubic feet a day of capacity, or 14 percent of the world’s share, according to London-based consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. That growth is a testament to the power of the shale boom of the last decade, helping to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign energy sources.Supply Glut
U.S. natural gas futures traded at $2.893 per million British thermal units on Wednesday, compared to latest assessed spot LNG price in Singapore of $5.652 as of Monday.
Drilling technologies such as hydraulic fracturing have made it profitable to tap vast resources of carbon fuels trapped in rock thousands of feet below the surface. The results: A natural gas supply glut stuck stubbornly in place since mid-2015, and billions of dollars redirected toward new export facilities by Cheniere, Dominion Resources Inc., Kinder Morgan Inc. and others.
Breanne Dougherty, a natural gas analyst for Societe General SA in New York, calls the U.S. push into the global LNG market “an inarguable game changer.”
Having gas delivery that isn’t fixed by destination represents a new type of supply that will undoubtedly lead to more flexible contracts being signed elsewhere around the world, according to Dougherty. U.S. terminals made another key break from the global norm by pricing LNG off of the country’s benchmark Henry Hub in Louisiana instead of tying it to the price of oil, she said.First to Ship
Cheniere, which built the Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana, was the first to ship shale gas abroad. The Houston-based company is now in the process of starting up its third plant and, alone, is expected to own 7 percent of the world’s export capacity in 2020, according to Energy Aspects.
In its debut year, Cheniere shipped 56 cargoes to 17 countries, including Mexico, China, and India. Last week, it reported its first quarterly earnings gain since 2010.
“We continue to be pleasantly surprised by the speed and magnitude” of demand, said Anatol Feygin, Cheniere’s chief commercial officer, during a conference call last week. “China and India underscored their potential to quickly increase LNG demand and tighten global markets.”
Just a year ago, Cheniere was at CERAWeek by IHS Markit, the energy industry’s yearly get-together in Houston, to talk about the launch of its first tanker from Sabine Pass.
Fegyin is scheduled to present at this year’s meeting on Wednesday, a week after the company’s announcement that it has secured its first deal to tap Canadian shale to supply its LNG production, expanding its influence as one of North America’s largest gas buyers.
Prior to the start of U.S. exports last year, Asia and Europe were seen as the likeliest customers. Gas production in Europe is declining as demand grows and, in some cases, countries have expressed a desire to displace pipeline imports from Russia, seeking to diversify their supply at a time of unsettled geopolitics, according to Dougherty, of Societe Generale.
However, while analysts and traders watched whether Europe would emerge as a big buyer, Mexico, which already imports the most U.S. gas by pipeline, quickly became the largest importer of shipped-in LNG from the U.S., followed by Chile. China, South Koreaand Japan boosted buying during the winter. Perhaps the most unexpected customers were in the Middle East, as Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates took in tankers in the backyard of the world’s largest supplier, Qatar.
Dominion Resources Inc. is expected to join the fray as a U.S. exporter by the end of this year, with its Cove Point terminal in Maryland bringing the nation’s export capability to about 3.2 billion cubic feet a day, according to Energy Aspects data.
For natural gas, it’s “a new world order” that not only promises to establish the U.S. as the swing provider, but also allows emerging countries to take advantage of low prices, said Ted Michael, an LNG analyst with Genscape Inc.
Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan are already taking advantage of the change by using tankers docked at their shores that are basically floating factories, able to convert chilled fuel shipped into the country back into gas so it could be distributed on their pipelines. Outfitting ships with regasification plants are a third of the cost of building an onshore facility, and can be installed in a quarter of the time.
“The revolution has many moving parts,” Michael said. The broadening of outlets for exported gas could “easily” help boost U.S. gas output by about a third to 100 billion cubic feet a day in the next five years, he said.
The real test for U.S. LNG will be in 2018 when Dominion’s Maryland terminal begins operating along with Gulf Coast terminals planned by Freeport LNG Development LLC and Cameron LNG, said Madeline Jowdy, senior director of global gas and LNG at Pira Energy Group in New York.
“U.S. LNG has come on fairly quickly without any glitches,” Jowdy said by phone. “That’s great. You can’t take that for granted in terms of LNG production. I’m a little surprised they were able to place all the cargoes they were able to place.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/tanker-s-u-turn-shows-how-shale-boom-is-changing-world-gas-trade
-
Dakota Access Line Readies for Oil With Court Victory in Hand
Mar 8, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Harris
Energy Transfer Partners LP will soon be filling its controversial Dakota Access pipeline with oil after defeating a Native American tribe's challenge to stall the project on religious grounds (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng'rs, D.D.C., No. 16-cv-1534, 3/7/17).
A ruling March 7 by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington all but ensures the conduit can come on line as soon as final construction and testing is finished. Lawyers for the pipeline consortium have said crude could flow as soon as March 13. This is at least the third time Boasberg, appointed in 2011 by former President Barack Obama, has denied a bid to block work on the pipeline.
Dakota Access has become a symbol of President Donald Trump's support for controversial oil pipelines that were stalled under Obama. The site of its construction in North Dakota has served for months as a stage for protests by environmentalists waging war against oil and gas projects brought on by the shale boom.
Boasberg rejected a last-minute argument made by the Cheyenne River Sioux claiming the mere presence of oil in the pipeline under the man-made Lake Oahe in North Dakota taints those waters and interferes with sacred rites. The tribe argued that the project violated their religious freedom and symbolized the “terrible black snake” in a Lakota prophecy that would bring destruction to their homeland.
The tribe's “extraordinary” request to block the flow of oil was unlikely to succeed on the merits, Boasberg said in his ruling. He found unsatisfactory the tribe's argument that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers never engaged in proper consultations on the pipeline's path and noted the Sioux's silence on the Black Snake Prophecy for more than two years after becoming aware of the proposed route.
“The tribe is disappointed in the court's decision,” Cheyenne River attorney Nicole Ducheneaux said in a telephone press conference. She said the court's decision demonstrated the American government's continued misunderstanding of Native American religious beliefs.
The $3.8 billion project connects shale-oil rich northwest North Dakota with a terminal 1,172 miles (1,886 kilometers) away in Patoka, Ill. It's been embroiled in litigation since last July when another Sioux band, the Standing Rock, sued to prevent its construction across their historic lands and beneath water said to be sacred.
While that initial Standing Rock effort failed, the Corps put a voluntary hold on construction while it reviewed the project anew. In the waning days of the Obama administration, the Corps said it would conduct another environmental impact review. That plan was abandoned in January by the new administration and the Corps approved construction last month.
“Trump and his friends at Big Oil have not won,” Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault said in an emailed statement. “While this preliminary ruling is disappointing, it's not surprising. The bigger legal battle is ahead—we stand strong.”
Boasberg must still consider Standing Rock's claim that the Army Corps improperly canceled its commitment to conduct an environmental impact review. No date has yet been set to hear those arguments.
Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer, didn't immediately respond to phone and email requests for comment on the ruling.
In addition to Dakota Access, Trump also urged expediting TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline project previously blocked by Obama. It would carry Alberta crude to the Gulf of Mexico via a junction in Steele City, Nebraska.
—With assistance from Meenal Vamburkar.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=106739051&vname=dennotallissues&fn=106739051&jd=106739051
-
Enviro Attorneys Gird For Defense Of Obama Initiatives
Mar 8, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly and Hannah Hess
Environmental attorneys outlined a multi-pronged legal strategy today for defending the Obama administration's climate rules, including the Clean Power Plan.
Lawyers for green groups intend to use both the rulemaking process, which includes public notice-and-comment periods, as well as aggressively file litigation with state allies.
"We will make them face the music at every step in this process and in court at the end of the process," David Doniger, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate and clean air program, said on a call with reporters.
President Trump and new U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt have promised to "refocus" EPA on its core missions of ensuring clean air and clean water, and top officials have questioned the need for government regulations on carbon dioxide (Greenwire, Jan. 26).
At the top of the Trump administration's list is the Clean Power Plan, which called for reducing CO2 emissions from existing power plants.
As Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt joined the litigation over the signature Obama administration policy, arguing that it usurped states' rights. An executive order directing EPA to unravel the rule could land this week (Greenwire, March 6).
Environmentalists predicted that the executive order would be similar to one issued last week calling on federal agencies to review and revise or rescind the Obama administration's Clean Water Rule.
Joanne Spalding, a senior managing attorney at the Sierra Club who handles climate litigation, said that greens would be watchful for a replacement climate policy that ignores the record that the Obama EPA built up.
Sean Donahue, an attorney representing the Environmental Defense Fund, said that the Trump administration could become vulnerable to lawsuits if it attempts to rush the process.
"We've seen in some other areas including immigration, that sort of hasty efforts tend to not work very well," he said. "And given the enormous complexity of the Clean Power Plan ... if the administration attempted to sort of sweep it away with a grand gesture, I think that would be extremely vulnerable on judicial review."
Greens also pledged to fight any attempt to halt the litigation over the Obama rule that is currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In September, the court heard nearly seven hours of oral arguments but has yet to issue a decision.
"The case is all but at the finish line, and there are questions that have been put in this case that would be clearly relevant no matter how the agency might try to recast the rule," Doniger said.
Last week, environmentalists opposed an effort to delay the court's ruling by consolidating it with litigation over EPA's denial of administrative petitions (Greenwire, March 3).
Allowing the court to rule would give Pruitt direction on the legal bounds for a new carbon rule, including whether the Clean Air Act allows regulating outside-the-fence-line emissions, Donahue said.
Although the Supreme Court stayed the rule nationwide in February 2016, greens expect that the courts will uphold its inclusion of CO2 targets that would require the electricity sector to switch to natural-gas-fired power and renewable energy.
"It's often the case that courts will stay something and upon closer look decide it's lawful and let it go forward," Donahue said. Pruitt "should allow the court to reach a merits decision after months and months of consideration and full briefing."'Coming assault'
Doniger of NRDC predicted the "coming assault" on EPA climate policy would also include EPA's carbon rule for new power plants, which the agency has been defending in court.
Also potentially on the chopping block are regulations to prevent methane leaks from new and heavily modified oil and gas operations, plus fuel economy standards. Automakers expect to see action from EPA or the Transportation Department on the fuel efficiency rules by midweek (Climatewire, March 6).
Along with challenging efforts by the Trump administration to roll back final EPA rules, greens said they are also exploring ways to challenge the administration if it steps back from rulemaking activities that the Obama administration did not complete.
One such area is methane regulations covering existing oil and gas industry sources.
Pruitt last week yanked a request to operators seeking certain emissions information, including methane data. The request was an early piece of the Obama EPA's plan to slash methane emissions from existing facilities and spawned concerns by states and industry.
"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.
He stated EPA would take "a closer look" at the need for additional information from the industry.
Ann Weeks, senior legal counsel at the Clean Air Task Force, said that EPA already has "sufficient" information to regulate existing sources and that removing the information collection request "doesn't remove EPA's duty to issue the rules."
Doniger would not give details but said that environmentalists are exploring "innovative ways" to get the agency under court-ordered obligations "where it's disregarding the law."
"We're looking at a variety of options," he said, "for potentially challenging the withdrawal last week or the inaction that it seems to portend."
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/03/07/stories/1060051087
-
Who’s Against Fair Pay And Safe Workplaces?
Mar 7, 2017 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Debbie Berkowitz
Who could be against fair pair and safe workplaces? Well, it turns out Republican senators—with President Trump’s blessing—just voted to side with corporations that steal workers’ wages and cut corners on workplace safety. On Monday, these senators voted to block the Obama administration’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces final rule—to the detriment of workers, taxpayers and law-abiding employers.
In doing so, Congressional Republicans took a sledgehammer and destroyed a common-sense rule requiring businesses to disclose any labor violations when applying for federal contracts worth more than $500,000.
The rule was necessary and important because many companies with significant violations of worker protection laws—major safety violations, wage theft violations, and discrimination violations—continue to be awarded federal contracts. In fact, a 2013 Senate report found that almost 30 percent of companies facing the greatest penalties for labor law violations nonetheless continued to receive federal contracts.
Furthermore, a report issued on Monday by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) showed that 66 of the federal government's 100 largest contractors have been caught breaking federal wage and hour laws, and more than a third of the 100 largest penalties levied by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) since 2015 were issued to companies that held federal contracts.
Why should our tax dollars reward corporations that short-change workers on their paychecks or cut corners and jeopardize workers’ health and safety?
A few years ago, when I was working as a senior official at OSHA, there was an explosion in a shipyard that killed two workers and very seriously injured four more. OSHA found that the company had violated the most basic safety precautions and put their workers’ lives in grave danger. The company was charged more than $1 million in fines and citations. Unbelievably, even after this horrific incident—and for years afterwards—the company continued to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts.
Don’t you think it would’ve been important for the Navy to know that taxpayer dollars were being given to a company that cut corners on safety and jeopardized workers’ lives? Wouldn’t it have been better for the workers, their families, and the business itself if the company, as part of the federal contracting process, had been encouraged to come into compliance with basic safety standards?
Such disclosure requirements are nothing new to federal contracting: businesses have to disclose all sorts of financial and tax irregularities if they want federal tax dollars; this simply would’ve added labor violations to the list. In fact, many large corporations, including defense contractors, actually require this type of disclosure from their subcontractors; they require companies to submit their OSHA violations and other information.
Unfortunately, Congressional Republicans decided that they don’t care if companies receiving taxpayer dollars are violating the law. They don’t care if these companies fail to pay workers the wages or overtime pay owed to them. They don’t care if these companies cut corners on workplace safety or engage in sexual harassment and discrimination.
The lobbyists who represent industry and corporate interests sought to mischaracterize the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule as a “blacklist.” In fact, the goal of the rule was to bring pervasive violators of federal worker protection laws into compliance so they can be deemed responsible, not to shut them out. That’s why the rule laid out a clear process for egregious violators to work with the government to come into compliance. But Congressional Republicans weren’t interested in making sure that companies prevent future violations; and they sure weren’t interested in protecting workers.
What is clear from this vote is that Congressional Republicans and the president have failed to demonstrate any real commitment to improving the lives of America’s workers. They can talk all they want about how they’re all for the American worker. But talk is cheap—it’s their actions that matter. This latest action once again shows where they stand—and it’s not with the workers.
Debbie Berkowitz is a senior fellow for worker safety and health with the National Employment Law Project. She previously served as a chief of staff and senior advisor with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/labor/322711-whos-against-fair-pay-and-safe-workplaces
-
Freight Train Derails, Blocks Orange County Roadway
Mar 7, 2017 | CBS New York
NEWBURGH, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — A CSX freight train derailed in an industrial area of Newburgh Tuesday afternoon.
The Orange County Office of Emergency Management says the train hit a hi-lo boom lift operated by a steel company on the tracks, causing the locomotive and several train cars to derail and roar across River Road. The wreckage stopped just shy of the Global Diesel fuel terminal building.
As WCBS 880’s Peter Haskell reported, the train was carrying sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide. But CSX reported those tankers did not leak.
“The train’s hauling a variety of substances,” Brendan Casey from the county OEM said, “some of which are hazardous, they are hauling some tankers with sulfuric acid.”
Luckily the only fluid leak was a diesel fuel spill from the locomotives.
The railroad indicated that the train was headed from upstate New York to Georgia.
Nick Satera owns a pizza shop nearby.
“And you could just see the rear end of the train is off the tracks, and someone showed us a video of the front of it and it’s in the middle of the road, the train,” he said.
Satera said the scene is right along the Hudson River, but there are a few homes nearby.
A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) says their office is in close contact with the FRA and local officials.
“Our thoughts are with those who were impacted by this derailment, and with the first responders currently on scene,” spokesman Jason Kaplan said. “Senator Schumer will work closely with the FRA and other federal safety organizations to quickly get to the bottom of what cause this dangerous accident.”
In a statement issued Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) said he was getting “sick and tired of issuing statements about dangerous train derailments — this time only blocks from my office in Newburgh.”
“I’m glad to hear reports that no one was killed but even one injury is too many,” the statement continued. “It’s got to stop.”
Maloney called trains carrying hazardous materials “literally a train wreck waiting to happen.”
“We have to get smarter about how we transport crude oil, and invest in installing positive train control (PTC) on all our trains,” he continued. “The longer we fail to prioritize investing in rail safety infrastructure and technology, the more innocent lives we put in jeopardy.”
Maloney is a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
A long stretch of River Road remains closed with the last few damaged cars almost a quarter mile back from the lead locomotive. The road is expected to remain closed for at least two days for cleanup. Commuters will not be impacted since rail passengers travel on the other side of the Hudson.
Authorities say there are three minor injuries to members of the train crew, and investigators are currently looking into whether or not the railroad crossing signal was working properly.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/03/07/newburgh-train-derails/
-
Environmentalists Accuse EPA Of False Claims Over Utility MACT
Mar 8, 2017 | Inside EPA
Environmentalists in a new legal filing over EPA's utility maximum achievable control technology (MACT) air toxics rule are accusing the agency of making a false claim that its final MACT was as tough as the proposed version, an argument EPA is making to fight claims that the final rule unlawfully weakened emissions controls.
In their March 6 reply brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in ARIPPA v. EPA, a suit consolidating remaining industry and environmentalist arguments against the utility MACT, environmental groups again say that EPA in the final rule arbitrarily and unlawfully lifted its proposed requirement for power plants to install fabric filters to trap particulate matter (PM) pollution.
The suit addresses issues not already addressed in long-running litigation over the MACT, which culminated in the Supreme Court case Michigan v. EPA. In that case, the high court ruled 5-4 that the agency erred by not considering costs in its initial determination that the air toxics rule was “appropriate and necessary” under the Clean Air Act. As a result of that ruling, EPA issued a revised cost finding that utilities are now challenging in the D.C. Circuit.
The ARIPPA case will be heard at oral argument on the same day, yet to be announced, and by the same panel as the industry challenge to EPA's revised cost finding that underlies the MACT rule, Murray Energy Corp. v. EPA, et al.
In the new brief in ARIPPA, environmentalists say, “EPA’s lawyers’ new claim that the proposed and final particulate standards are equally stringent is post hoc, irrational, and inconsistent with the agency’s record conclusions.”
EPA argues that because environmentalists had an opportunity to comment on the PM issue, they cannot now raise it as a basis for reconsideration of the MACT. However, environmentalists say the basis of this reasoning is the agency's new claim that the proposed and final standards offer equivalent public health protection.
“If the agency itself had claimed that the two particulate standards are equally stringent, EPA’s lawyers would be able to point to the place in the record where that claim appears. That EPA’s brief does not do so confirms that the claim is a post hoc rationale that this Court 'may not accept,'” environmentalists say, citing D.C. Circuit precedent in its 1983 ruling in Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association of the United States, Inc. v. State Farm Insurance.
Meanwhile, industry group the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG) and Pennsylvania coal waste-burning utility ARIPPA in their March 6 reply brief reprise arguments that they raised earlier in the case. UARG says that EPA's data used to craft the MACT is based on contaminated sampling of pollution, while ARIPPA says EPA failed to take into account the particular properties of the coal waste the utility uses as fuel.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/environmentalists-accuse-epa-false-claims-over-utility-mact
-
Oil Exec: Trump Should Keep US In Paris Climate Pact
Mar 8, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The head of oil giant ConocoPhillips said President Trump should keep the United States in the landmark Paris climate change agreement.
Ryan Lance, whose company is one of the largest oil and natural gas producers, gave the comment at an industry conference in Houston.
“It would be good for the U.S. to stay in the climate agreement,” Lance said after giving a speech, according to Axios.
Lance puts ConocoPhillips in the same league as Exxon Mobil Corp. and numerous oil companies outside the United States in supporting the Paris pact, like BP and Royal Dutch Shell.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to pull the United States out of the agreement, a four-year process.
He so far has not taken any action to exit the accord, which includes non-binding greenhouse gas emissions limits that nearly 200 countries determined on their own.
Officials in the Trump administration have taken different public positions on the pact. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who used to be Exxon Mobil’s CEO, wants to stay in the accord, while White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon opposes it.
The president's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, presidential adviser Jared Kushner, reportedly convinced Trump to delete criticism of the Paris agreement form an upcoming executive order.
The agreement could be extremely beneficial to oil companies, particularly if the countries involved forego coal-fired power and switch to natural gas, which numerous utilities worldwide are doing.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/322796-conocophillips-head-trump-should-keep-us-in-paris-climate-pact
-
GOP Builds Case For Limiting Environment Reviews In Infrastructure Push
Mar 7, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
House Republicans are beginning a fresh push to limit environmental reviews of infrastructure projects, seeking to build a case that current environmental statutes and their implementation are blocking needed projects as the Trump administration is drafting a plan to make infrastructure a priority.
Lawmakers laid out their case at a March 1 joint hearing of the House oversight committee's environment and intergovernmental panels -- a proceeding that highlighted a barrage of criticism over the regulatory impacts of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act (ESA) and Clean Air Act, as well as interest by many lawmakers in curbing so-called “sue and settle” practices by environmental groups.
The oversight hearing, however, also articulated concerns from some lawmakers -- primarily Democrats -- that a current hiring freeze imposed by the Trump White House will only exacerbate permitting delays for projects requiring federal approvals.
“We have to find a way to stop this paralysis by analysis and get America building again,” Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX), chairman of the committee's environment panel, said in his opening statement at the hearing. He argued that NEPA has become a route to “constant tinkering” over highway projects that can drag out for roughly a decade.
Farenthold also raised separate concerns over EPA's new ozone standard and transportation conformity requirements, stating that delays caused by transportation conformity reviews for managing pollution impacts of highway projects have cost $65 million in Dallas and Fort Worth, TX.
The hearing generally provided a parade of complaints about the impact of environmental standards and reviews on projects and economic development, including the observation by Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) that it takes eight years on average to complete an environmental review of a project, compared to two years before NEPA.
Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) provided some bipartisan consensus, raising concerns at “drawn-out delays for permitting economic development projects.” For example, she cited the proposed construction of a hotel in the Virgin Islands that she said has dragged on for roughly a decade. Plaskett also criticized the impact of Clean Air Act controls she said had prompted closure of a refinery in her district.
But Plaskett also diverged from the primary narrative faulting environmental reviews by citing concerns that inadequate staffing is a major factor in slowing permitting. Specifically, Plaskett cited both the White House's hiring freeze -- which means “no hiring” by permitting agencies -- and a statistic that the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, which is responsible for managing permitting for projects that impact coral, has only 14 full-time employees handling ESA issues in the Southeast. That compares to 150 full-time staff capable of addressing those issues on the West Coast, she said.
Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) made the broadest defense of NEPA at the hearing. “I for one do not want to return to the days before NEPA, [when] the public had virtually no input,” Demings said, adding that “often infrastructure was built on the backs of the urban poor and minorities.” Demings cited as an example devastating impacts of interstate construction decades ago on an African American community in Orlando.
'Rational' Decisions
The hearing comes as the Trump administration has created a task force to advise the White House on how to proceed on infrastructure issues. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said last week that he had been tapped for the task force and was meeting with White House officials to urge them to include water infrastructure in any plan they develop.
At the hearing, witnesses, including the Steel Manufacturers Association's Wayne D'Angelo, suggested that NEPA began as a good idea but has been become a tool for bogging projects down. “Is this information we need for rational, informed decision-making or are we simply arming ourselves against litigation?” D'Angelo said, referencing the statute's analytical requirements.
Also, the Heritage Foundation's Nicholas Loris pushed back against Plaskett's notion of hiring more federal workers to expedite permitting efforts. Instead, he urged officials to “devolve” responsibility to the states and argued that recent permitting reforms enacted in 2015 transportation reauthorization legislation are a “Band-Aid” without “hard deadlines” for agency staff to complete environmental reviews.
Loris also cited the concerns about barriers to infrastructure development to reiterate the Heritage Foundation's long-standing opposition to the social cost of carbon (SCC) metric, arguing that it is “useless” for cost-benefit analysis and that it serves only to “artificially inflate” the cost of a project undergoing review.
Environmentalists in recent years have urged agencies to evaluate the greenhouse gas impacts of energy projects, in part by using the SCC to calculate the monetary damages of emissions.
Farenthold and Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) also questioned witnesses on “sue and settle” practices by environmental groups, criticizing the ability of groups to recover attorneys' fees. That spurred criticism by D'Angelo of two particular groups -- Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians -- that D'Angelo argued abuse “inflexible deadlines” in the ESA to prompt onerous government regulations related to protecting species, without significant “rigor” on the need for such protections.
D'Angelo also made general arguments against clamping down too hard on U.S. industry with environmental requirements, arguing that the alternative is to force production abroad, where he argued most countries have less stringent environmental programs.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/gop-builds-case-limiting-environment-reviews-infrastructure-push
-
E.P.A. Head Stacks Agency With Climate Change Skeptics
Mar 7, 2017 | The New York Times
By Coral Davenport
WASHINGTON — Days after the Senate confirmed him as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference and was asked about addressing a group that probably wanted to eliminate his agency.
“I think it’s justified,” he responded, to cheers. “I think people across the country look at the E.P.A. the way they look at the I.R.S.”
In the days since, Mr. Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who built a career out of suing the agency he now leads, has moved to stock the top offices of the agency with like-minded conservatives — many of them skeptics of climate change and all of them intent on rolling back environmental regulations that they see as overly intrusive and harmful to business.
Mr. Pruitt has drawn heavily from the staff of his friend and fellow Oklahoma Republican, Senator James Inhofe, long known as Congress’s most prominent skeptic of climate science. A former Inhofe chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, will be Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff. Another former Inhofe staff member, Byron Brown, will serve as Mr. Jackson’s deputy. Andrew Wheeler, a fossil fuel lobbyist and a former Inhofe chief of staff, is a finalist to be Mr. Pruitt’s deputy, although he requires confirmation to the position by the Senate.Continue reading the main storyRELATED COVERAGEThe Pruitt Emails: E.P.A. Chief Was Arm in Arm With Industry FEB. 22, 2017
To friends and critics, Mr. Pruitt seems intent on building an E.P.A. leadership that is fundamentally at odds with the career officials, scientists and employees who carry out the agency’s missions. That might be a recipe for strife and gridlock at the federal agency tasked to keep safe the nation’s clean air and water while safeguarding the planet’s future.
“He’s the most different kind of E.P.A. administrator that’s ever been,” said Steve J. Milloy, a member of the E.P.A. transition team who runs the website JunkScience.com, which aims to debunk climate change. “He’s not coming in thinking E.P.A. is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Quite the opposite.”
Gina McCarthy, who headed the E.P.A. under former President Barack Obama, said she too saw Mr. Pruitt as unique. “It’s fine to have differing opinions on how to meet the mission of the agency. Many Republican administrators have had that,” she said. “But here, for the first time, I see someone who has no commitment to the mission of the agency.”
A pair of Trump campaigners from Washington State are also heading into senior positions at the E.P.A. Don Benton, a former Washington state senator who headed President Trump’s state campaign, will be the agency’s senior liaison with the White House. Douglas Ericksen, a current Washington state senator, is being considered as the regional administrator of the E.P.A.’s Pacific Northwest office.
As a state senator, Mr. Ericksen has been active in opposing efforts to pass a state-level climate change law taxing carbon pollution. Last month, he invited Tony Heller, a climate denialist who blogs under the pseudonym Steven Goddard, to address a Washington State Senate committee on the costs of climate change policy. Mr. Heller’s blog says “global warming is the biggest fraud in science history.”
“I think the reason both of these guys are being considered for this stuff is they were the only prominent elected officials in the state of Washington that were early supporters and organizers for Trump,” said Todd Donovan, a political scientist at Western Washington University. “No other state legislators were putting their necks out for Trump.”
Another transition official under consideration by Mr. Pruitt for a permanent position is David Kreutzer, a senior research fellow in energy economics and climate change at the conservative Heritage Foundation who has publicly praised the benefits of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That view stands in opposition to the broad scientific consensus that increased carbon dioxide traps heat and contributes to the dangerous warming of the planet.
The agency’s policy agenda is snapping into focus: Last week, Mr. Trump signed an executive order directing Mr. Pruitt to begin the legal process of dismantling a major Obama-era regulation aimed at increasing the federal government’s authority over rivers, streams and wetlands in order to prevent water pollution. Also last week, Mr. Pruitt ordered the agency to walk back a program on collecting data on methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells.
This week, Mr. Trump is expected to sign an executive order directing Mr. Pruitt to begin the legal process of unwinding Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations aimed at curbing planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants, and Mr. Pruitt is expected to announce plans to begin to weaken an Obama-era rule mandating higher fuel economy standards.
A draft White House budget blueprint proposes to slash the E.P.A. budget by about 24 percent, or $2 billion from its current level of $8.1 billion, and cut employee numbers by about 20 percent from its current staff of about 15,000.
Agency employees say morale has already been damaged. After working for years to draft climate change regulations under the Obama administration, many of those same career scientists and lawyers will be ordered to go back and undo them.
Ms. McCarthy, who oversaw the writing and execution of those major water and climate change regulations, said it would be difficult and time-consuming to reverse them, especially if Mr. Trump succeeds in greatly downsizing the agency.
“If you want to do these executive orders that require a whole rewrite of the rule, you have to get that right, legally,” she said. “It took years to do those rules. To now ask for those things to be undone with less staff and low morale — how are they going to do it?”
There is one area in which Mr. Pruitt has vowed to continue the traditional work of the E.P.A.: a longstanding program for sending funds to states to clean up “brownfields” — former industrial sites that have been contaminated by pollution. Although Mr. Trump’s budget blueprint would slash funds for that program, Mr. Pruitt pledged to a gathering of mayors in Washington last week that he would fight to save the program.
“With the White House and Congress I am communicating a message about brownfields,” he told mayors. “I want to hear from you about successes and communicate them.”
J. Christian Bollwage, the Democratic mayor of Elizabeth, N.J., a city that has been plagued with industrial pollution, said he was heartened to hear the pledge.
“I’ve never heard such a vociferous defense of providing brownfields grants,” he said. “He was explicit. He said he was going to take the defense of brownfields to the White House. I was impressed and hopeful.”
But, Mr. Bollwage added, “Coming from New Jersey, climate change is also a big issue. And I’m still worried about an administration that seems to think climate change is a hoax.”
Concern over Mr. Pruitt’s stewardship may not be long-lived. There is speculation that the E.P.A. chief already has his eyes on a different office.
Mr. Inhofe, 82, will complete his current Senate term in 2020. While he declined to speak of his retirement plans, Mr. Inhofe said of Mr. Pruitt, “I think he’d make a great senator.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/politics/scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency.html
-
State Officials Request 'Collaborative Arrangement' On Regs
Mar 8, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
Elected officials from 19 states are calling on U.S. EPA to adopt a more "cooperative" stance in pursuing the goals of two pre-eminent environmental laws.
During the last decade, the "extensive regulation" from EPA "is directly at odds with the express terms and structure of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and 18 other attorneys general and governors said in a letter today to agency Administrator Scott Pruitt. "We ask that as you assess the performance of your agency, you do so with a keen eye toward compliance with these governing laws and not repugnance to them."
The Clean Air Act, for example, envisions a "collaborative arrangement" under which the federal government preferably "provides technical and financial assistance" to state and local regulators, the letter says. Instead, EPA "has replaced 'encourage' and 'promote' with 'command' and 'commandeer,'" the signers add.
All Republicans, they include the attorneys general of numerous Southern and Midwestern states, as well as the governors of Mississippi and Kentucky, both of which have Democratic attorneys general.
They specifically single out the Obama administration's handling of a program intended to cut pollution from Texas power plants that contributes to hazy conditions in national parks and wildlife refuges.
After EPA officials partially rejected a state cleanup plan as inadequate, the agency last year proposed a federal alternative with a projected price tag of some $2 billion for new and upgraded sulfur dioxide scrubbers at seven coal-fired power plants. After the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — in response to lawsuits from the state and affected power producers — stayed implementation of that initial alternative, EPA proposed another regional haze plan "almost as bad as the first," the letter says.
EPA recently agreed to a 60-day extension of the public comment period on that proposal. In an email this afternoon, Paxton spokeswoman Kayleigh Lovvorn declined to say whether he has asked Pruitt to change positions.
"We are allowing the letter and press release to speak for themselves at this time," Lovvorn said.
Pruitt spokesman Doug Ericksen did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on the letter. But in his prior post as Oklahoma attorney general, the Republican spearheaded or joined in more than a dozen legal challenges to EPA regulations, including a separate haze plan affecting Oklahoma power plants (Greenwire, Feb. 14).
Last week, Paxton and some of the same state officials wrote Pruitt seeking withdrawal of an information collection request on methane emissions from existing oil and gas operations; EPA pulled it the next day.
In the case of the agency's latest haze proposal for Texas, Earthjustice attorney Mary Whittle said in a phone interview that EPA is bound by a consent decree to produce the final version by September or else be in violation of a court order.
Whittle, who is representing the Sierra Club and National Parks Conservation Association in the litigation, viewed the letter as an attempt by the owner of three of the plants — which she said cumulatively emit more sulfur dioxide than every other source in Texas combined — to avoid installing up-to-date controls.
"I think they're just trying to use their clout with the state to get out of their obligations under the Clean Air Act in order to pollute with impunity," she said.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/03/07/stories/1060051093
-
Trump Adviser Peter Thiel Questions ‘Group Think’ Of Restricting Carbon Emissions
Mar 7, 2017 | Fuelfix
By James Osborne
Peter Thiel, the technology investor and adviser to President Donald Trump, questioned the global push towards restricting carbon emissions as “group think” while speaking Tuesday at the energy conference CERAWeek by IHS Markit.
“I’m not sure I’m an extreme skeptic of climate change but I have my doubts about the extreme ways that people try to push it through,” he said. “Even if climate change is quite as bad as people think it is, if we group think we’re more likely to misdiagnose the problem. Maybe it’s methane emissions, and the real problem is eating steak.”
The question of how the Trump administration will handle climate change is a cen-tral issue for energy companies, as they face the prospect of a shift to a lower carbon economy.
Trump has promised to roll back policies of former President Barack Obama, including his Clean Power Plan, and is considering whether to pull the United States from the Paris climate accord.
Thiel offered little insight on where Trump might ultimately end up on that decision. But as a close associate of the president, who worked on his transition team, he is believed to have his ear on a wide range of issues.
A co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, Thiel is known for his contrarian points of view and seeking investments missed by mainstream inves-tors. He commented during his talk with Dan Yergin, who leads the annual con-ference called CERAWeek by IHS Markit, that he was surprised hydraulic fracturing had generated the profits it had considering the degree of competition within the energy space.
“There is not necessarily a link between great innovation and great economic re-ward,” Thiel said.
Like most industries nowadays, energy companies have been nervously trying to figure out what President Donald Trump will mean. Yergin said it was among the first questions he got when talking with attendees in the lead up to this year’s event.
The common thinking is Trump’s pledge to grow American jobs and reduce regu-lation should be good news for an oil and gas industry that was hit with climate change regulations during the Obama administration.
Already, Trump has okayed the long delayed Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines and signed executive orders expected to aid fossil fuel production.
“Congress and the White House are going in the right direction, and it’s a different direction from what we’ve seen the last eight years,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Association. “Keystone and [Dakota Access] were ear-ly signs he’s serious about this.”
Thiel has become a controversial figure in liberal Silicon Valley for his support of Trump, including a $1.25 million donation to Trump’s campaign in October. Critics called on Facebook to remove Thiel from its board of directors, prompting a re-sponse from CEO Mark Zuckerberg defending Thiel.
“We care deeply about diversity,” Zuckerberg wrote. “That’s easy to say when it means standing up for ideas you agree with. It’s a lot harder when it means stand-ing up for the rights of people with different viewpoints to say what they care about.”
ut among the oil and gas executives who dominate CERAWeek, Thiel faced a more politically conservative audience.
Asked about what the Trump administration would mean for the oil and gas in-dustry at the conference Tuesday, Pioneer Natural Resources executive chairman Scott Sheffield said, “Hopefully better than the last eight years.”
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2017/03/07/706367/
-
GOP States Urge Pruitt To 'Restore' Federalism In New, Existing EPA Rules
Mar 8, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Abby Smith
A coalition of Republican state officials, led by Texas Attorney General (AG) Ken Paxton, is urging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to “reexamine” the agency's delegation of authority to the states in new and existing rules and “restore” the role that Congress envisioned for states in major environmental statutes.
The states' request appears to be a broad call to prioritize the regulatory balance between the agency and the states -- a message that Pruitt has been emphasizing since his confirmation late last month.
In a March 7 letter to Pruitt, Paxton and Republican leaders from 18 other states wrote to request the new administrator “reexamine delegation of certain environmental regulation authority to the States in accordance with express terms of the Clean Air and Water Acts.”
The states charge that the Obama administration ignored the role of the states in environmental regulation, and they call on Pruitt to “restore” the role of cooperative federalism in the agency's actions as required by the air and water acts.
“We ask that as you assess the performance of your Agency, you do so with a keen eye toward compliance with these governing laws and not repugnance to them,” the states write.
EPA has “the opportunity to correct that error under the leadership of Administrator Pruitt. We therefore invite the agency to turn away from its recent practices and bring its rulemaking back into compliance with the very statutes from which it derives its authority,” Paxton said in a statement accompanying the release of the letter.
He added that the Clean Air and Clean Water acts “expressly affirm” that states have the “primary responsibility” when it comes to environmental regulation. “It is about time that the EPA respected that role.”
While the states do not expressly call for reexamining existing rules, the letter charges that “extensive regulations from [EPA] during the last decade is directly at odds with the express terms and structure” of the environmental laws.
But the letter also notes that rules the agency issued “as of late . . . are in direct conflict with” statutory requirements, suggesting that Obama-era rules could be a high priority for review.
An official with Paxton's office declined to comment on the scope of the request or offer further details.
Pruitt is likely to welcome the request, as he has listed cooperative federalism as one of the three principles by which he aims to lead the agency, along with rule of law and process.
“Cooperative federalism is not just some legal concept. It's not just a technical concept. It's real,” he told the American Farm Bureau Federation Feb. 28.
And he noted that EPA under President Barack Obama issued 56 federal implementation plans (FIPs) preempting state requirements, more than the eight issued by the prior three administrations combined. He said that reflected an “attitude that Washington knows best. Washington doesn't always know best and we're in the position of making sure people know that in the rest of the country,” he said.
Texas Haze FIP
The states in their letter highlight the Obama administration's FIP for regional haze imposed on Texas as an example of agency overreach.
That federal plan is already the subject of ongoing litigation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which has already stayed portions of the FIP pending the conclusion of litigation.
Since then, the Obama EPA, in the days before President Donald Trump took office, proposed to disapprove other portions of the state's haze plan and replace it with a new FIP that was largely similar to the plan the court stayed.
EPA in the Jan. 3 proposed FIP said it analyzed the court's concerns when developing the plan, but found that no change was necessary to its proposed control requirements.
But Paxton and the other state leaders sharply criticize the Obama EPA's action to propose a new FIP. “These actions show that the Agency ignored the efforts of the State, perhaps blinded by the belief that good results can only result from top down management by the federal government. Or worse, the prior Administration's agenda and policy goals drove the Agency's decision rather than the requirements of the statute,” they write in the letter.
The states urge Pruitt to determine steps EPA can take to “restore the principles of cooperative federalism,” and they provide several examples of legal precedents that outline the “clear terms” a cooperative federal-state relationship.
“For example, federal agencies may not add conditions on the receipt of federal funds unless the terms are clearly stated in the controlling statute,” they write, citing the 2006 case Arlington Cent. Sch. Dist. Bd. Of Educ. v. Murphy. “And federal agencies may not stray outside the boundaries of their statutory authority by relying on policy documents and other non-statutory materials,” the coalition adds, citing the 2012 case Luminant Generation Co., LLC v. EPA in the 5th Circuit.
Some environmentalists, however, are already calling Pruitt's focus on cooperative federalism a “shell game” that could be used to justify weakening federal regulations.
John Walke, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate and clean air program, told lawmakers during a Jan. 24 panel held by Senate Democrats to oppose Pruitt's nomination that the administrator's statements of support for cooperative federalism include an “unnerving implication” that he does not believe EPA has a major role to play in curbing pollution within state boundaries.
He called it an “extreme and harrowing position” that has never been advanced by a senior agency official and that runs counter to the major environmental statutes that give EPA a central regulatory role in curbing pollution.
Successful Effort
Republican officials signing the March 7 letter include Govs. Matt Bevin (KY) and Phil Bryant (MS), as well as a number of AGs -- including Paxton, Steven Marshall (AL), Mark Brnovich (AZ), Derek Schmidt (KS), Jeff Landry (LA), Tim Fox (MT), Mike Hunter (OK), Alan Wilson (SC) and Patrick Morrisey (WV).
The coalition of states signing the letter has already enjoyed success with Pruitt. The same group of officials wrote to Pruitt on March 1 requesting he suspend and withdraw an information collection request (ICR) on methane emissions from existing oil and gas sources. The officials called the ICR “harassment” and said the states were outright opposed to any potential regulation of methane, the potent greenhouse gas, from existing oil and gas operations.
The next day EPA announced it was withdrawing the ICR -- effective immediately -- because Pruitt “would like to assess the need for the information that the agency was collecting through these requests.” The agency also cited the letter it had received from the GOP state coalition.
Pruitt had also met with Paxton on March 1. “Good to meet with” Paxton “today!” Pruitt said in a tweet. “We discussed restoring states' rights & working together to protect our water, air, & natural resources.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/gop-states-urge-pruitt-restore-federalism-new-existing-epa-rules
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested