Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 3/24/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) American Strategic Decline Is a Myth Donald Trump Continues to Peddle
Mar 24, 2017 | Proactive Investors UK
Loss of dominance has long been a staple of US discourse. John Kennedy decried the ballistic "missile gap" with the Soviet Union before the 1960 election, when Russia had just four missiles and the US had thousands with explosive power equal to 1.3 million Hiroshima-sized bombs. -
(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Specialty Chemical Markets Accelerated In Feb., ACC Says
Mar 23, 2017 | Chemical Engineering
By Scott Jenkins
The American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) reported that U.S. specialty chemicals market volumes rose a strong 0.6 percent in February. -
EPA Warns Trump's 'Two-For-One' Order Could Hinder Deregulatory Rules
Mar 23, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
EPA is warning that President Donald Trump's executive order (EO) requiring agencies to identify two rules for possible repeal for every new rule issued could create procedural hurdles for rules scrapping major EPA policies in an effort to ease industry burdens, because they would be considered new rules, says a knowledgeable source. -
(ACC Mentioned) Importers Seek More Time to Alert EPA of Chemicals in Mixtures
Mar 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Companies importing chemical mixtures would like more than six months to notify the Environmental Protection Agency about the components of those mixtures, according to chemical importers and trade associations. -
Industry Baulks At Pre-Prioritisation Step In TSCA Proposal
Mar 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (Socma) has called on the US EPA to strike the 'pre-prioritisation' step from its proposed TSCA framework rule for prioritising substances for risk evaluation. -
Congress Shouldn’t Make the Same Mistake Twice With Dangerous Chemicals
Mar 24, 2017 | Morning Consult
By Jim Jones
Americans expect the government to ensure the safety of the food they eat, the water they drink, the places they work and the products they buy. -
Chemicals Present Second Highest Product Risk In Europe
Mar 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Hazardous chemicals in products, such as toys and textiles, have become the second biggest risk to health and safety in the European market. -
BPA Alternatives May Mimic Oestrogen In Breast Cancer Cells
Mar 23, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Bisphenol A (BPA) alternatives may mimic oestrogen in breast cancer cells, say UK researchers, and should be included in biomonitoring programmes. -
Rac Begins Work On Titanium Dioxide Classification
Mar 23, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Echa's Risk Assessment Committee (Rac) is beginning to look into France's proposal to classify titanium dioxide as a category 1B carcinogen. -
REFIT Survey On Chemicals Customs Inventory Launched
Mar 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
A survey on the European Customs Inventory of Chemical Substances (Ecics) has been launched as part of the European Commission REFIT evaluation of the tool, which is used to track imports into the EU. -
Green NGOs Blame Monsanto For ‘Buying Science’ To Save Glyphosate
Mar 24, 2017 | EurActiv
By Sarantis Michalopoulos
A new report accuses glyphosate producers of “buying science” in order to secure the substance’s position in the EU market. -
U.S. Shale to Feed European Gas Market Battered by Winter
Mar 24, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Anna Shiryaevskaya
The heart of Europe’s gas market may finally get a helping hand from the American shale revolution as fuel is poised to cross the Atlantic to replenish depleted inventories after the coldest January in seven years. -
Colorado Appeals Court Sides With Teens Seeking to Block Fracking
Mar 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled in favor of six teenage activists who petitioned the state Oil and Gas Commission to consider a rule halting hydraulic fracturing until it can be proved the practice does not harm human health and the environment. -
Keystone XL Fight Shifts To Nebraska
Mar 23, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre
With the State Department set to grant a long-sought permit to build the Keystone XL, pipeline politics are about to go local. -
Pipeline OK Would Not Undermine U.S. Role On Climate — State
Mar 23, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey
Approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline will not undermine the United States' leadership on climate change, and to claim otherwise is "not fair," the State Department said today. -
6 Ways President Trump’s Energy Plan Doesn’t Add Up
Mar 24, 2017 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Jeremy Proville and Jonathan Camuzeaux
Just 60 days into Trump’s presidency, his administration has wasted no time in pursuing efforts to lift oil and gas development restrictions and dismantle a range of environmental protections to push through his “America First Energy Plan.” -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Seeks To Cut Safety Agency With Roots In N.J.
Mar 23, 2017 | NorthJersey.com
By Scott Fallon
The devastating 1995 Napp Technologies explosion in the heart of Lodi killed five men, created a plume of toxic black smoke that lingered over the county for days -- and led to the creation of a federal board that spent the next two decades investigating more than 100 chemical industry accidents across the nation. -
Washington Braces For Trump Climate Order
Mar 24, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama and Devin Henry
Washington is bracing for President Trump’s executive order on climate change, which could be released any day. -
Judge Gives EPA More Deadlines for Late Air Standards Reviews
Mar 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
A federal district court judge ordered the EPA to complete overdue assessments of 13 air pollution regulations, placing new deadlines on an agency that claims to have inadequate staff available for those reviews. -
Judge Grants EPA 3 Years To Finish Toxics Reviews
Mar 24, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA gets three years to wrap up overdue reviews of existing standards for toxic air emissions from tire manufacturing plants, iron and steel foundries, and 11 other source categories under a federal court ruling released late yesterday. -
Former EPA Officials Warn Climate Budget Cuts Might Hurt Other Programs
Mar 23, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Former EPA officials are warning that President Donald Trump's proposed massive budget cuts for the agency's climate change activities in fiscal year 2018 would likely hurt unrelated EPA programs, because statutory mandates mean the government would eventually have to divert funds to global warming efforts in lieu of the other programs. -
EPA Budget Cuts Wound Cooperative Federalism, States Say
Mar 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
The Trump administration's proposed 31-percent cut to the EPA's fiscal 2018 budget throws cold water on a pledge by Administrator Scott Pruitt to restore the proper balance between the federal government and states, some state officials say. -
House Panel To Weigh Climate Science
Mar 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
The House science committee is planning to hold a hearing next week focused on climate change science, amid Trump administration budget proposals to scale back federal climate research efforts and controversial remarks by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt denying that carbon dioxide is a “primary contributor” to global warming. -
Trump Adviser Lists 'Conditions' For Staying In Deal
Mar 23, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Jean Chemnick
Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), an energy adviser to President Trump, circulated a "dear colleague" letter to Republican House members this afternoon that could give the White House cover to remain in the Paris Agreement. -
Without Naming Trump, UN Acknowledges Nations’ Retreat on Climate
Mar 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joe Ryan
The United Nations is acknowledging that some countries may be retreating in the effort to fight climate change, recognizing an emerging fissure in the landmark Paris Agreement as President Donald Trump moves forward with plans to gut environmental programs.
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(ACC Mentioned) American Strategic Decline Is a Myth Donald Trump Continues to Peddle
Mar 24, 2017 | Proactive Investors UK
Here is a section from both the opening and the closing of this interesting and somewhat controversial column by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard for The Telegraph:
Contrary to widespread belief, the US is not facing economic and strategic decline in any foreseeable future.
It had already reclaimed its superpower lead before Donald Trump swept into office vowing to make America great again. With hindsight we can see ever more clearly that the Lehman crisis was a false alarm.
Loss of dominance has long been a staple of US discourse. John Kennedy decried the ballistic "missile gap" with the Soviet Union before the 1960 election, when Russia had just four missiles and the US had thousands with explosive power equal to 1.3 million Hiroshima-sized bombs.
Ever since I began covering the US as a journalist in the early Reagan years, there have been bouts of soul-searching. Paul Kennedy's theory of imperial over-stretch in Rise and Fall of the Great Powers was all the rage in the late 1980s, when the Washington clerisy thought Japan destined for economic leadership.
Edward Luttwack upped the ante in 1994 with Endangered American Dream, warning that the US was turning into a third world nation. This was just as the US was about establish its undisputed hegemony over the digital age.
US decline was a myth then, and remains a myth today. Putative rivals have all run into trouble or face structural limits that will be obvious within a decade. India's time has not yet come.
And:
A decade ago the US was preparing to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) on a large scale. The terminals have since switched into export hUBS. American shale gas is being shipped to Europe.
The effect is to force down the market price of gas in EU, depriving Russia's Gazprom of its lockhold on prices. Lithuania's "Independence" terminal can now import LNG, eliminating dependence on the Kremlin. Poland is following suit. That strategic implications are profound.
As Goldman Sachs said this week, US shale oil can go from zero to peak output within six to nine months. It can do so on a big enough scale to hold down global crude prices, and for long enough to bleed OPEC and the Kremlin almost white.
The Permian Basin in West Texas alone could match Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field within five years, topping 5m barrels a day. Fracking technology has cut break-even costs so fast that old "super-basins" are poised for stunning revivals. It is no longer a question of whether the US will become a net oil exporter, but how soon.
While the US "manufacturing renaissance" has been patchy, cheap gas has restored the fortunes of the plastics, chemical, and glass industries. The American Chemistry Council is tracking $130bn of new investment along the Gulf Coast, expected to create 460,000 jobs by 2022. The US unemployment rate is 4.7pc, near a half-century low
This is the recovery that Donald Trump managed to turn into a landscape of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones” in his dystopian inaugural address.
It is of course standard fare for opposition candidates to decry the decline of America during campaigns. What is different about President Trump is that he continues to push this line after taking office, presumably because he believes his own wild claims.
We all have to reach our own conclusions about Donald Trump. My view is that he matters less than we now think. His presidency may prove no more than a four-year embarrassment, leaving few traces.
His plans to slash science and technology funding by 20pc would indeed risk the sort of decline he rails against. But his budget is dead on arrival in Congress.
His contempt for allies and the multilateral bodies that vastly lever America's strategic power is folly but the US Senate is likely to take charge and run foreign policy on traditional lines. Grown-ups at the helm of the State, Defence, and Treasury departments will navigate the reefs. America's institutions and courts will contain Mr Trump.
http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/columns/fuller-treacy-money/27376/american-strategic-decline-is-a-myth-donald-trump-continues-to-peddle-27376.html
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(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Specialty Chemical Markets Accelerated In Feb., ACC Says
Mar 23, 2017 | Chemical Engineering
By Scott Jenkins
The American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) reported that U.S. specialty chemicals market volumes rose a strong 0.6 percent in February. This follows an upwardly revised 0.4 percent gain in January. Volumes have generally been moving up since May. All changes in the data are reported on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis. Of the twenty-eight specialty chemical segments we monitor, eighteen expanded in February, ten experienced decline and none were flat. During February, large gains (1.0 percent and over) occurred in antioxidants, food additives, mining chemicals, oilfield chemicals, paint additives, and rubber processing chemicals.
The overall specialty chemicals volume index was up 1.3 percent on a year-over-year (Y/Y) 3MMA basis. The index stood at 107.2% of its average 2012 levels. This is equivalent to 7.39 billion pounds (3.35 million metric tons). The down-turn in the oil and gas sector had affected headline volumes and weakness spread to other segments. Year-earlier comparisons were negative from second quarter 2015 through second quarter 2016 but are now improving as the recovery in the oil and gas sector has engaged and is now aiding head-line volumes. On a Y/Y basis, there were gains among 15 market and functional specialty chemical segments.
Specialty chemicals are materials manufactured on the basis of the unique performance or function and provide a wide variety of effects on which many other sectors and end-use products rely. They can be individual molecules or mixtures of molecules, known as formulations. The physical and chemical characteristics of the single molecule or mixtures along with the composition of the mixtures influence the performance end product. Individual market sectors that rely on such products include automobile, aerospace, agriculture, cosmetics and food, among others.
http://www.chemengonline.com/u-s-specialty-chemical-markets-accelerated-in-feb-acc-says/?printmode=1
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EPA Warns Trump's 'Two-For-One' Order Could Hinder Deregulatory Rules
Mar 23, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
EPA is warning that President Donald Trump's executive order (EO) requiring agencies to identify two rules for possible repeal for every new rule issued could create procedural hurdles for rules scrapping major EPA policies in an effort to ease industry burdens, because they would be considered new rules, says a knowledgeable source.
Further, a lack of Senate-confirmed officials to head up key EPA offices is also limiting the agency's ability to engage with the White House on how it can implement the order, according to the source.
After Trump issued the Jan. 30 order, the White House sought comment on Feb. 3 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance for implementing it -- a process the source says has not yet yielded clear answers on how to successfully comply with it. EPA in its undisclosed response to the comment request has argued that the order is confusing and potentially unworkable, the source says, echoing statements from non-EPA critics of the order. “I believe it is muddled right now.”
Trump's EO has prompted some push-back, with major industry groups urging the White House to de-prioritize the so called “two for one” language that requires agencies to identify two rules for repeal for every new regulation, and to emphasize instead provisions requiring agencies to limit the cumulative cost of regulations.
The order has also already halted at least one EPA rulemaking, temporarily delaying the Obama administration's Clean Water Act dental amalgam regulation because even though it was issued in January ahead of Trump's inauguration, it was not published in the Federal Register until after Trump took office. That means it is covered by the order as a new regulation, which would appear to trigger the “two for one” requirement.
Environmentalists are arguing that the dental amalgam rule is ultimately required by the water law, but EPA is grappling with how to reconcile the order with that rule and other future regulations.
EPA's struggles, as detailed by the knowledgeable source, illustrate the difficulty in translating the far-reaching order -- with heavy political symbolism on reducing regulatory burdens -- into a workable regulatory roadmap for federal agencies, and environmentalists are already pursuing litigation to undo the order's impacts.
Among the issues EPA identified in its comments to the White House is that, as written, the “two for one” provisions in the order would require identification of additional rules to repeal, even in the case where the agency issues a proposal to ease burdens on industry -- such as scrapping an Obama-era rule. “I believe that point has been made,” the source says.
The implication of such language is that any rule, including Trump's promised measure to begin rolling back EPA's Clean Power Plan, could become ensnared in the requirement, the source adds.
Compliance Costs
In addition, the source says the situation is complicated by the fact that while OMB has received some input from EPA career staff, EPA still lacks key political personnel in individual program offices, which means those offices are not able to fully engage on the discussion of how to implement the order. “All the program offices require Senate confirmed associate administrators. And that hasn't happened,” the source says.
The source says it is likely that EPA will not be “following the letter” of the EO given the difficulty of implementing it as written -- but adds that implementation issues around that order remain unresolved.
Trump's EO also established a “budget” for compliance costs, with no new net compliance costs allowed for 2017 meaning agencies could not this year issue regulations that would impose positive costs.
The source adds that the agency has also flagged questions about how to reconcile the order -- which does not account for benefits of rules -- with normal cost benefit procedures for implementing the rules.
That issue has already been identified by outside economists as well as environmental groups. Resources for the Future's economist Alan Krupnick, for example, said in a Jan. 31 blog post, “Counting only costs is like having a scissors with only one blade: pretty useless for accurate cutting, but great for gouging."
Meanwhile, a Feb. 8 lawsuit from Natural Resources Defense Council, the Communications Workers of America and Public Citizen challenging the order and the implementation guidance in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia also argues that the EO “introduces statutorily irrelevant and thus unlawful factors” into regulatory decisions, including regulation of greenhouse gases to protect public health. -
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-warns-trumps-two-one-order-could-hinder-deregulatory-rules
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(ACC Mentioned) Importers Seek More Time to Alert EPA of Chemicals in Mixtures
Mar 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Companies importing chemical mixtures would like more than six months to notify the Environmental Protection Agency about the components of those mixtures, according to chemical importers and trade associations.
“We anticipate significant time and effort will be needed to communicate with our suppliers of confidential mixtures that we import into the U.S.,” wrote the Procter & Gamble Co. in comments it submitted for a proposed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) inventory update rule(RIN:2070-AK24) the EPA published Jan. 13 (82 Fed. Reg. 4255).
“Because of this complexity, we request EPA to consider extending the allowable reporting period for importers beyond the first 180-day reporting period,” it wrote.
Missing the deadline would mean a company would violate the rule, and the chemical wouldn't be on the inventory the EPA will develop listing chemicals that can be active in commerce.
The EPA's rule, however, offers chemical manufacturers, importers and processors a simple notification process they could use to shift a chemical from the inactive inventory to the active inventory.
Notwithstanding that option, the American Chemistry Council, Japan Chemical Industry Association and a printing equipment and supply company called Videojet Technologies Inc. also urged the EPA to give companies importing chemical mixtures more time to notify it about chemical ingredients in those mixtures in public comments on the rule.
The chemistry council—along with law firms, consultants and other trade groups—backed the EPA's proposal in several other areas and offered consistent recommendations regarding aspects of the rule they want changed.
But the Environmental Defense Fund, the sole environmental health group to submit comments, raised concerns about some of these industry-backed positions.
The comment period for the inventory update rule closed on March 14.
Proposed Rule
The proposed inventory update rule would divide the agency's existing TSCA inventory of more than 85,000 chemicals into two parts: an active inventory of chemicals that have been in commerce during the 10 years that preceded the final rule's publication and an inactive inventory of chemicals that used to be in commerce, but no longer are.
The proposed rule has two purposes. This article focuses on the first; the goal of giving the EPA a clear understanding of what chemicals are in commerce as that information is missing. The agency has some information about what chemicals are or have been allowed to be in commerce since the TSCA inventory was established in 1982.
The agency can then sort those, decide which raise potential health or environmental concerns warranting closer scrutiny and begin to evaluate those risks.
The process the EPA will use to sort chemicals active in commerce, and the procedures it will use to evaluate chemical risks, are covered in separate rules the agency also has proposed.
Getting a clear, accurate picture of what chemicals are in commerce will help the EPA plan the resources it will need for those subsequent sorting and risk evaluation steps, said Richard Denison, lead senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund.
Deadline Tied to Final Rule's Publication
The deadline to notify the EPA about chemicals that should be on the active list is triggered with the EPA's publication of the final rule.
The TSCA amendments require the EPA to publish a final rule by June. Industry and nonprofit organization officials increasingly are telling Bloomberg BNA that deadline may not be feasible.
Once the rule is final, chemical manufacturers and importers would be required to notify the EPA about the chemicals they have made or imported in the 10 years preceding the final rule.
Domestic manufacturers and chemical importers, which the original and amended chemicals law defines as manufacturers, would have 180 days after the final inventory update rule is published to notify the agency about the chemicals they have made in or imported into the U.S., under the proposed rule.
The 180-day deadline is set by the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, which amended TSCA in 2016.
Special Provision for Processors
Companies that process chemicals, for example by mixing them to make paint, laundry detergent or car wax, could also notify the agency about the chemicals they use. Processors are not, however, required to notify the EPA.
The proposed rule would give processors up to one year after the final inventory update rule is published to submit their inventory notifications.
The EPA offered a rationale for giving processors more time than manufacturers. Doing so would allow processors to look at a first draft list of chemicals active and inactive in commerce and add additional ones to the active list if omitted, it said.
Different Legal Interpretations
Procter & Gamble, Videojet, the American Chemistry Council and Japan Chemical Industry Association asked the EPA to give importers of chemical mixtures one year—the same amount of time processors have—to notify it about the chemicals in those mixtures.
That is needed, they said, for reasons including the need to arrange joint submissions authorized by the rule. If an importer or domestic processor cannot provide the specific chemical identity of a substance to the EPA, because its supplier claims that identity confidential, the proposed rule establishes a process by which the companies can file separate, yet joint, submissions directly to the EPA.
Videojet wrote the mixtures it imports may have five to 15 ingredients and some of those “ingredients” themselves may also be mixtures.
“A more complicated formulated product may have over 25 substances and over 30 off-shore suppliers in the supply chain,” it wrote.
The farther removed the importer is from the off-shore chemical manufacturer, the harder it can be to secure information—such as the identity of the chemical it adds to a mixture—from it, Videojet wrote.
If only one off-shore processor or manufacturer is unwilling or unprepared to provide required information, the importer may not be able to meet the 180-day deadline and ensure the chemical is on the active inventory, it said.
P&G said it makes and warehouses some of its finished products in Canada and other countries.
“When we ship these finished products to the U.S. market, we become importers,” it said.
Time is needed to explain the proposed rule's requirements to some of its foreign and smaller-sized suppliers, P&G said.
“Negotiations likely will be needed with these suppliers to decide whether to pursue joint submission or permit disclosure directly by P&G,” it said.
Time Enough?
The law doesn't allow for that extra time, Denison told Bloomberg BNA.
Read strictly, the law doesn't even allow the EPA to give processors the extra time the agency proposed to give them, he said. But the EPA's rationale seemed reasonable, he said.
Expanding the scope of the companies that would have more time to notify EPA is a problem, Denison said. “It's not what the law provides for.”
Companies know this rule is coming and have time to reach out to their supply chains, he said.
The EPA has the authority to provide importers the additional time and it would make sense to do so, Karyn Schmidt, senior director for chemical regulation, regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council told Bloomberg BNA.
“The agency is responsible for a current, accurate inventory,” she said by email.
The additional time would offer an important buffer to address a number of complicated supply chain issues, Schmidt said.
Simple Step to Make Inactive Chemical Active
If any domestic manufacturer or importer fails to notify the EPA that a chemical should be on the active inventory the proposed rule will establish, it won't be onerous to correct that, Dimitrios Karakitsos, an attorney at Holland & Knight LLP, told Bloomberg BNA.
Karakitsos previously served as counsel to the Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. In that role, he served as a principal drafter and negotiator of the amended chemicals law.
“The law intended to only create a simple notification of a substance to move it from the inactive to active list,” Karakitsos said.
Denison echoed Karakitsos’ point: The process the law required, and that EPA has proposed, to move a chemical from the inactive to the active list is simple.
There's no approval implied by the process, it's simply designed to make sure the EPA knows what chemicals are in commerce and which are currently not in commerce, Denison said.
Agreement on Domestic Issues
On the domestic front, there was significant agreement among chemical manufacturers and processors regarding several parts of the EPA's rule they supported and the changes they want.
Aspects industry largely supported included the EPA's proposal to:
• require manufacturers to submit their inventory notifications first and then allow, but not require, processors to do so;
• give processors one year to submit their inventory notifications; and
• presume that non-confidential chemicals manufacturers reported making in their 2012 and 2016 Chemical Data Reporting rule submissions remain in commerce and, therefore, manufacturers wouldn't have to notify the agency that those chemicals are in commerce.
The Environmental Defense Fund, however, objects to the EPA's proposal to exempt companies from notifying it about non-confidential chemicals that were reported through 2012 Chemical Data Reporting rule submissions.Such chemicals may no longer be in commerce, Denison said.
“Given the low burden that inventory notification imposes on companies, the far more prudent approach is to require inventory notification of such chemical substances to verify they are in fact active,” the fund's comments said.
Changes Industry Would Like
Chemical manufacturers and processors also largely agreed on several changes they want the EPA to make to its proposed rule. These included asking the EPA to:
• drop its proposed requirement to have companies document the time period during which they made, imported or processed a chemical;
• update its draft active inventory in real-time; and
• require a “one and done” approach, meaning one notification for a chemical to be sufficient to keep that chemical on the active inventory.
The American Chemistry Council explained why it and other trade associations supported what some referred to as a “one and done” request.Many chemicals are manufactured by more than one company, the council said. That means the EPA will receive multiple reports for a particular chemical.
“Only one notification is needed to identify an active. All subsequent reports are duplicative and unnecessary, and impose an unnecessary burden on industry as well as EPA,” the chemistry council wrote.
Tricky for Businesses?
The “one and done” concept could introduce challenges for different companies that make the same chemical, Denison said.
One and done would mean that any company—after the first one that had a CBI claim for chemical identity—would not reassert its claim since that subsequent company wouldn't file its own notification, Denison said.
In short, no other company would make any assertion about information it needed to keep confidential, he said.
Confidential business information claims are company-specific, he said. That means, for example, one company might not claim a chemical's identity to be confidential. Or if it did and EPA found it invalid, then that chemical's identity would have to be made public per the new law, Denison said.
Any other company that would have wanted to maintain its claim that the chemical's identity was confident would have foregone the ability to make that claim, because the company hadn't asserted it. The confidential status of that chemical would be lost, he said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=107885098&vname=dennotallissues&fn=107885098&jd=107885098
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Industry Baulks At Pre-Prioritisation Step In TSCA Proposal
Mar 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (Socma) has called on the US EPA to strike the 'pre-prioritisation' step from its proposed TSCA framework rule for prioritising substances for risk evaluation.
In comments on the EPA's January proposal, Socma was among organisations raising concern with the introduction of the step, which was not specifically called for under the Lautenberg Act.
As proposed, the pre-prioritisation step would allow the EPA to identify a pool of potential candidate substances. It could then gather the requisite information to conduct a risk evaluation on them before starting the formal prioritisation process, as the latter sets in motion certain statutory deadlines.
But Socma says Congress intended the prioritisation process to be "open and iterative". And in establishing a pre-prioritisation phase, "the most important decisions would appear to happen then, without any identified procedures by which the public would be alerted or enabled to participate, or by which EPA would make decisions."
It urged the agency to remove the step from the final rule, or, if retained, "establish a structure and processes for it that are functionally equivalent to those spelled out in law”.
The International Fragrance Association North America (Ifrana) called the pre-prioritisation process a "'black box’' with no transparency or opportunity for stakeholder input".
Unchanged, it would substantially repeat the TSCA work plan process, in which manufacturers "had no idea that EPA was gathering information on those materials at the time, what information EPA was relying on, what information could change EPA's evaluations, to whom the information should be given, and when they could expect EPA to act on the chemicals and the relevant information once provided", it said.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) echoed the concerns. It said the EPA:does not define the criteria or tools by which it will choose work plan or other chemicals for the candidate pool;has not explained how many chemicals it will include in pre-prioritisation or how it will 'batch' chemicals;fails to provide details as to how it will apply the nine criteria it has identified for narrowing the pool of candidates;proposes no timeline for the pre-prioritisation step; andprovides scant guidance on the status of chemicals included in pre-prioritisation but excluded from prioritisation.
The American Cleaning Institute (ACI) urged the agency to take lessons from Canada's approach under its Chemicals Management Plan (CMP) to improve on the provision.
Using Canada's methods, it said, the EPA could use pre-prioritisation to "place large numbers of substances into certain broad categories, including some to be obvious candidates for low-priority, and thereby make clear which substances are not among those for which EPA considers risk evaluations must be undertaken in the near term".Process serves 'vital role'
But NGO Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, said the step serves a "vital role".
"In view of the tight deadlines for both prioritisation and risk evaluation, pre-prioritisation offers the best opportunity to collect available information and compel development of new data so that EPA is in a position to conduct a meaningful risk evaluation on chemicals that are designated high-priority," it said.
Indeed, without such a step, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) cautioned, data gaps could have a "significant impact on the order in which chemicals are subject to prioritisation, by forcing EPA to select data-rich chemicals independent of their relative hazard and exposure in order to meet statutory requirements".
And the NGO disagrees with industry qualms at the "lack of transparency" in the proposed approach. It argues that the process should remain "relatively informal".
"Specifically, EDF does not believe the process should require EPA to publish lists of chemicals it is screening, justify its selection of those chemicals, or be required to formally propose or take comment on its pre-prioritisation process development or on specific chemicals identified through pre-prioritisation."
Such steps would unduly slow down and complicate an already lengthy process already rife with opportunities for stakeholder engagement, it said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/54682/industry-baulks-at-pre-prioritisation-step-in-tsca-proposal
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Congress Shouldn’t Make the Same Mistake Twice With Dangerous Chemicals
Mar 24, 2017 | Morning Consult
By Jim Jones
Americans expect the government to ensure the safety of the food they eat, the water they drink, the places they work and the products they buy. In my 30-year career as a nonpartisan chemical policy expert — including the past five running the Environmental Protection Agency’s toxics program — I was responsible for ensuring the safety of chemicals in America’s homes, schools and workplaces. Unfortunately, neither I nor my predecessors were able to deliver the chemical safety Americans expect, due to serious limitations in the law we worked under. Fortunately, last year, a Republican-controlled Congress passed, and a Democratic President signed, reform that addressed the major problems with the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Yet now Congress is considering legislation that would replicate those same flaws across the federal government. Congress should heed the lesson it learned last year and avoid remaking the same mistakes.
In a bizarre turn of events, the current Congress is considering legislation known as the Regulatory Accountability Act that would apply the very features of TSCA that made it so unworkable to all federal laws. If passed, the RAA could put myriad health and safety protections at risk.
To understand why, TSCA provides a telling case. The most infamous failing of that law was the inability to ban most uses of asbestos, one of the best understood toxic chemicals known to humankind. Asbestos causes an irreversible deadly disease in individuals exposed to it, mesothelioma. To this day more than 10,000 Americans die from asbestos-related diseases every year. Armed with this scientific evidence the EPA finalized a rule under TSCA in 1989 to ban and phase out nearly all uses of asbestos. Yet, the rule was largely thrown out by the 5th Circuit Court in a ruling that created a bar so high that EPA, over successive administrations, never successfully restricted another existing chemical. In the interim, countries around the world and states in the US began tackling dangerous chemicals while the US government watched helplessly.
What requirements in the old TSCA that made regulation so difficult are now under consideration for inclusion in every health and safety law in the US? Largely, they were requirements that created an endless loop of analysis. The old TSCA required the EPA to identify the least burdensome means to reduce risk. The level of analysis required to identify the least burdensome option is nearly endless: There is always one more option that the Agency or a public commenter can identify. Even worse, the RAA would give agencies a tight time period to perform this work, and if exceeded, the Agency would have to start over. In a nutshell, agencies would be required to analyze more options than are practical and do so within a timeframe that isn’t practical or perhaps even possible.
To envision the consequences, consider the impact the RAA would have had on some of the important public health protections over the past 30 years. In 1977, CPSC banned lead in paint. Lead is a well know neurotoxin that has been demonstrated to reduce the IQ of individuals exposed during their childhood (among other bad things). There are a nearly infinite number of ways to reduce blood lead levels from exposure through paint. Should we reduce the concentration of lead in paint by 100 percent, 99 percent, 95 percent, or less? Under the RAA, even after evaluating all these different scenarios, a commenter could say: “But you didn’t analyze the costs and benefits of 97.5 percent,” sending the agency back to the drawing board to start over.
What about the dozens of drinking water standards that ensure the drinking water in our homes, workplaces, and schools is safe? EPA has established regulatory limits for 90 contaminants in drinking water. Imagine if, for each of these rule-makings, EPA had to evaluate the costs and benefits of every alternative. Any entity interested in slowing down or stopping the process, and there is always at least one, would just need to identify another value as an alternative and the EPA would have no choice but to evaluate the costs and benefits of that option.
But hypotheticals aren’t necessary. There are almost certainly people who have died because EPA couldn’t ban asbestos decades ago. Last year, Congress took long-overdue action to fix those problems. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to bring them back, this time across the federal government, particularly when the evidence of the impact on our health — the outdated TSCA fixed just last year — is staring Congress right in the face.
Until January, Jim Jones served as assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. He now consults, including for Environmental Defense Fund.
https://morningconsult.com/opinions/congress-shouldnt-make-mistake-twice-dangerous-chemicals/
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Chemicals Present Second Highest Product Risk In Europe
Mar 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Hazardous chemicals in products, such as toys and textiles, have become the second biggest risk to health and safety in the European market.
Risks related to chemicals comprised 23% of all notifications in 2016, according to a European Commission report on the EU's Rapid Alert System for dangerous products (Rapex). Injury from use of a product topped the risk categories at 25%.
The change in ranking was linked to a higher proportion of notifications concerning risk of injury from motor vehicles, the report said.
Rapex covers dangerous non-food products and ensures that information about products withdrawn from the market or recalled from consumers is quickly circulated between member states and the European Commission.
In 2016, the main product categories detected through the system were similar to the previous years:toys with 26%;motor vehicles with 18%; andclothing, textiles and fashion items with 13%.
Chemicals, such as phthalates, present in toys constituted the second biggest danger from toys after choking, it added.
The largest number of total Rapex notifications came from Germany (16%), followed by Spain (11%) and France (10%).
China remained the number one country of origin for dangerous product notifications, representing 53% of notified products. These were mainly toys and clothing items. But the proportion of Chinese origin products was down from 62% in 2015, while European origin products accounted for 23%, up from 15% in 2015.
The total number of notifications was broadly stable at 2,044, but follow-up activity increased significantly to 3,824, the report says, "meaning that consumer authorities in different countries increasingly follow up on alerts circulated".
https://chemicalwatch.com/54683/chemicals-present-second-highest-product-risk-in-europe
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BPA Alternatives May Mimic Oestrogen In Breast Cancer Cells
Mar 23, 2017 | Chemical Watch
King's College team calls for their inclusion in biomonitoring programmes
Bisphenol A (BPA) alternatives may mimic oestrogen in breast cancer cells, say UK researchers, and should be included in biomonitoring programmes.
BPA's primary mode of action involves oestrogen receptors, says a team led by Michael Antoniou from King's College London. Human studies have not provided a causal link between BPA exposure and breast cancer. However, rodent studies have suggested that prenatal BPA exposure may increase the propensity to develop breast cancer.
Manufacturers are moving away from BPA to use “BPA-free” products containing substances such as BPS. The researchers say they would like to see such alternatives included in biomonitoring studies. They also suggest that “bisphenol-free” labels on consumer products “may need to be more informative”.
The researchers used three different human breast cancer cell lines to test six BPA alternatives, used in BPA-free plastics: BPS; BPF; bisphenol AP; bisphenol AF; bisphenol Z; and bisphenol B.
All of the bisphenols showed oestrogenic activity in promoting cell growth. BPAF, BPB and BPZ were all more oestrogenic than BPA.
By comparing transcriptome profiles, the researchers suggest that the effects are mediated by oestrogen receptors.
Overall, the results highlight the need to conduct studies to “examine possible pathological effects in laboratory animals at concentrations relevant for human exposures”, say the researchers. They also suggest studying mixtures of some of the bisphenols.
ToxCast data
The US EPA ToxCast programme has already tested some BPA alternatives in ER high-throughput screening assays. Working with Christopher Corton from the EPA, the King's College team analysed ToxCast data.
To some extent, these “confirm” their results but they also reveal some differences. For example, some of the ToxCast assays did not detect oestrogenic effects for a number of BPA alternatives.
The EPA recently introduced in vitro assays into the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program's tier 1 tests. The researchers suggest that gene expression profiling should also be included.
The paper was published this month on a website called bioRxiv, run by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, US. The site provides authors with a way to receive feedback, before submitting articles to journals.
The study was funded by the Sustainable Food Alliance, US and by Breast Cancer UK
https://chemicalwatch.com/54670/bpa-alternatives-may-mimic-oestrogen-in-breast-cancer-cells
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Rac Begins Work On Titanium Dioxide Classification
Mar 23, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Echa's Risk Assessment Committee (Rac) is beginning to look into France's proposal to classify titanium dioxide as a category 1B carcinogen.
At its March 2017 meeting, an initial information session covered poorly soluble, low-toxicity particles.
“It's a question of distinguishing the effects of such particles, and of dust overload in the lungs, from toxic effects of chemicals,” says Rac chairman Tim Bowmer. “That will be one of the main discussion points when we get this into plenary in June,” he adds.
Titanium dioxide producers are fiercely contesting the proposed classification.
The substance is used in the manufacture of an extremely wide range of products and articles for consumer and professional use. It acts as a pigment in paints and related products and has been registered by more than 130 companies.
The producers' key argument is that the conclusions taken from a study using rats should not be applied to humans. Late last year, the Titanium Dioxide Manufacturers Association (TDMA) held a scientific meeting in Paris to discuss the proposals and concluded that “the tests on rats, used in the classification proposal, are not a suitable model for humans for inhalation studies of poorly soluble particles of low toxicity in overload conditions.”
At its March meeting, Rac also endorsed a joint report from a taskforce on OELs and Dnels, with members of DG Employment's Scientific Committee on Occupational Exposure Limits (Scoel).
The report highlights differences between OEL and Dnel approaches. The taskforce agreed on the need to avoid having different limit values for the same substance, where possible. It also agreed that more worker biomonitoring is needed. The two committees will continue to communicate and share data.
https://chemicalwatch.com/54651/rac-begins-work-on-titanium-dioxide-classification
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REFIT Survey On Chemicals Customs Inventory Launched
Mar 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
A survey on the European Customs Inventory of Chemical Substances (Ecics) has been launched as part of the European Commission REFIT evaluation of the tool, which is used to track imports into the EU.
While the list's purpose relates to trade, it has found other uses in the field of chemicals management. The evaluation is looking at a number of issues, including future financing and coherence with other substance databases, such as those for REACH and the classification and labelling inventory.
The ten minute survey asks for:background information on the respondent, to understand perspectives, expectations and needs in relation to Ecics;information on use of the inventory;benefits of using it, and other options for finding the same information; andsatisfaction with the tool and views on how it could be improved.
There is also an opportunity to upload position papers and supporting documents.
https://chemicalwatch.com/54665/refit-survey-on-chemicals-customs-inventory-launched
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Green NGOs Blame Monsanto For ‘Buying Science’ To Save Glyphosate
Mar 24, 2017 | EurActiv
By Sarantis Michalopoulos
A new report accuses glyphosate producers of “buying science” in order to secure the substance’s position in the EU market.
According to the Buying Science report published by GLOBAL 2000 (Friends of the Earth Austria member of Pesticide Action Network-PAN) with the support of Avaaz, BUND, Campact, CEO, GMWatch, (PAN) Europe, PAN Germany, and Umweltinstitut München, Monsanto and other glyphosate manufacturers allegedly “distorted scientific evidence” on the public health impacts of the pesticide.
The authors of the report claim that, between 2012 and 2016, the companies sponsored a series of review articles published in scientific journals, all of which conclude that glyphosate and its commercial formulations are not carcinogenic.
Scandalous
“Glyphosate producers have used every trick in the book to enable regulatory authorities around the world to play down the alarming health effects of glyphosate. The fact that the agencies accepted their ‘assistance’ is nothing less than scandalous,” insisted Helmut Burtscher, one of the study’s authors.
Earlier this month (15 March), the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) concluded that glyphosate weedkiller should not be classified as a carcinogen.
Environmentalist NGOs reacted strongly, with Greenpeace saying that the ECHA “sweeps glyphosate cancer evidence under the carpet”.
The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) went further, claiming that the decision contradicted the world’s most authoritative cancer research agency, the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which classified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” in 2015.
Scientific flaws
The NGOs claim that these reviews proving glyphosate is safe contain “fundamental scientific flaws spanning from apparently calculated omissions and the introduction of irrelevant data to the violation of OECD guidance for the evaluation of rodent cancer studies”.
“The reviews also consistently assign greater weight to unpublished industry studies than to studies that were peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals,” the report noted.
The report stressed that regulatory authorities like Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have all drawn on such review articles, which have concluded that glyphosate was not carcinogenic, have actually referred to these industry-sponsored review articles.
“In contrast, IARC refused to consider the unpublished industry studies summarised in industry-sponsored reviews in its assessment of glyphosate, stating that the data presented therein were insufficient and important details were lacking […] IARC generally does not accept unpublished scientific evidence,” the authors of the report concluded.POSITIONS
European Commission Spokesperson Enrico Brivio recently told EURACTIV that the EU executive “took notice” of ECHA’s opinion, which was “based on scientific evidence”.
“The submission of the final opinion to the Commission is expected before the summer break […] After submission of the final opinion, the Commission Services will re-start their discussions with the member states as regards the approval of glyphosate as an active substance in Plant Protection Products (PPPs).”
“A decision has to be taken within 6 months of receipt of the RAC Opinion from ECHA, or by the end of 2017 – at the latest,” he added.BACKGROUND
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said in November 2015 that glyphosate was unlikely to cause cancer in humans and proposed higher limits on the amount of residue of the weedkiller deemed safe for humans to consume.
The EFSA advises EU policymakers and its conclusion were expected to pave the way for the 28-member European Union to renew approval for glyphosate, which was brought into use by Monsanto in the 1970s and is used in its top selling product Roundup as well as in many other herbicides around the world.
Environmental groups have been calling for a ban after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organisation, said in March 2015 that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans”.
A campaign group said that 1.4 million people had signed a petition calling on the European Union to suspend glyphosate approval pending further assessment.
The EFSA said it had carried out a thorough analysis and taken account of the IARC’s findings. Greenpeace, for its part, called the EFSA’s report “a whitewash”.
http://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/green-ngos-blame-monsanto-for-buying-science-to-save-glyphosate/
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U.S. Shale to Feed European Gas Market Battered by Winter
Mar 24, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Anna Shiryaevskaya
Cheniere may sell LNG cargoes to Europe from next month
Russia also looking to replenish supply after winter chill
The heart of Europe’s gas market may finally get a helping hand from the American shale revolution as fuel is poised to cross the Atlantic to replenish depleted inventories after the coldest January in seven years.
Northwest Europe, one of the biggest trading regions for the fuel, hasn’t yet attracted any liquefied natural gas cargoes from the U.S., which the shale boom turned into the world’s biggest gas producer. So far, sellers have favored markets in South America and Asia where prices have been higher.
But that may be about to change with spring weather poised to damp demand and prices in the biggest consuming region of Japan and South Korea moving closer to those in the U.K. and the Netherlands. Supplies from the U.S. may arrive in the coming months to help replenish European stocks at their lowest level since 2013, according to Houston-based Cheniere Energy Inc., which is expanding its export plant in Louisiana.
“U.S. gas will find an obvious home in Europe once most other markets are filled up,” Trevor Sikorski, head of natural gas and carbon at Energy Aspects Ltd. in London, said by email. “There should be lots of gas as three trains should be operating for most of summer 2017” at Cheniere, he said.
As Asian demand subsides with milder weather, regional prices will move closer to parity with European rates, according to Energy Aspects.
The arbitrage for U.S. gas to both Europe and Asia is already “wide open,” Citigroup Inc. said in a report emailed Wednesday. Asian LNG prices may slide to below $5 per million British thermal units after May, according to the bank. That’s the price of summer gas in the U.K. on ICE Futures Europe in London.
“We are looking to sell into Europe in April-May as European storage sites start refilling, but we will only sell to Europe if we see it offers a price premium,” Eric Bensaude, Cheniere’s managing director of commercial operations, said by phone from London. “The main reason why we did not sell in Europe in the winter is because other markets were paying a higher price.”
Most U.S. LNG exports have so far gone to Latin America, with cargoes also reaching Asia and the Middle East. Supplies from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass have also arrived in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Turkey at an increasing rate over the past three months, according to London-based consultant Timera Energy, which counts BP Plc to Gazprom PJSC as clients. The company estimates that only 17 percent of U.S. LNG went to Europe since exports started in February 2016.
“After Latin America, Europe is the next cheapest destination for U.S. exports from a shipping cost perspective,” Timera said this month in a report. “As U.S. export volumes grow, significant volumes are likely to land in Europe, or to displace cargoes that flow to Europe from elsewhere.”
Cheniere’s marketing unit doesn’t have to pay the fixed fees the company charges companies with supply contracts, including Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Such costs add to export prices of the fuel.
Still, insufficient differences between U.S. and European gas prices may keep those cargoes at “minimal quantities,” said Zach Allen, president of energy consultancy Pan Eurasian Enterprises in Raleigh, North Carolina, who’s tracked the LNG market for more than a decade.
Competition will also come from Russia and Norway. They produce gas at a lower cost than U.S LNG and ship it via pipelines instead of on tankers. Russia’s Gazprom is also targeting Europe’s low inventories to help it sell a record volume to its highest-paying consumer.
It takes about two weeks to transport a cargo from Sabine Pass to France and as long as a month to India. U.S cargoes have no restriction on final destination, which means that companies with several supply options can ship to markets with highest prices.
“This is the evolution for the LNG market, it ends up where it’s needed most, Steve Hill, executive vice president for gas and energy marketing and trading at Shell, told reporters on Feb 20. “If it’s in the U.K., that’s where it will come.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-24/u-s-shale-to-feed-europe-gas-market-battered-by-harsh-winter
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Colorado Appeals Court Sides With Teens Seeking to Block Fracking
Mar 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tripp Baltz
The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled in favor of six teenage activists who petitioned the state Oil and Gas Commission to consider a rule halting hydraulic fracturing until it can be proved the practice does not harm human health and the environment.
The ruling was the first time a higher Colorado court has said the commission has the authority to promulgate and enforce rules prioritizing public health, safety and the environment over oil and gas development, Julia Olson, attorney for the youths and executive director of Our Children's Trust, told Bloomberg BNA March 23. The case has drawn intense interest in the oil and gas sector. (Martinez v. Colo. Oil and Gas Conservation Cmm'n, Colo. Ct. App., No. 16CA0564, 3/23/17).
Recently rulings by the Colorado Supreme Court have sided with industry, including rulings in two cases on the question of whether local governments can ban fracking (City of Fort Collins v. Colo. Oil and Gas Ass'n, Colo., No. 15-SC-668, 5/2/16City of Longmont v. Colo. Oil and Gas Ass'n, Colo., No. 16-667, 5/2/16).
The appellate court said it disagreed with the commission's conclusion that it lacked the authority to consider the petition because the state Oil and Gas Conservation Act “requires a balance between drilling and the protection of public health, safety and welfare.” It remanded the case to the commission for further proceedings.
Full Authority to Act
The ruling means the commission has “full statutory authority” to adopt the youths’ proposed rule, Olson said. The court “is saying ‘don't put oil and gas ahead of public health, safety and welfare,’” she said. “It is saying the commission is really the central entity to protect the people and the state.”
In finding the commission's decision to reject the youth's petition was erroneous, the appellate court focused on a section of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act, which states it is in the public interest of the state to “foster the responsible, balanced development, production, and utilization of the natural resources of oil and gas in the state of Colorado in a manner consistent with protection of public health, safety, and welfare, including protection of the environment and wildlife resources.”
The commission erroneously interpreted that section as requiring “a balance between oil and gas production and public health, safety, and welfare,” the court said. The commission said the youths’ petition would have required it to “readjust the balance crafted by the General Assembly under the Act,” something that was “beyond the Commission's limited grant of statutory authority.”
‘Condition to Fulfill’
The court disagreed, saying it was critical for the commission to put forward a proper interpretation of the phrase “in a manner consistent with.” That phrase does not require a balancing test, but rather “a condition that must be fulfilled,” the court said.
“The plain meaning of the statutory language indicates that fostering balanced, nonwasteful development is in the public interest when that development is completed subject to the protection of public health, safety, and welfare,” the court said.
Additionally, amendments to the Act in recent years reflect “the General Assembly's general movement away from unfettered oil and gas production and incorporation of public health, safety, and welfare as a check on that development,” the court said. The clear language of the Act “mandates that the development of oil and gas in Colorado be regulated subject to the protection of public health, safety, and welfare, including protection of the environment and wildlife resources,” it said.
In a dissent, Judge Laurie A. Booras said the commission has consistently recognized its duty to balance health and environmental concerns with the promotion of
oil and gas development. It has “promulgated an exhaustive set of rules and regulations ‘to prevent waste and to conserve oil and gas in the State of Colorado while protecting public health, safety, and welfare,’” she said, quoting a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court striking down local bans on fracking (City of Fort Collins v. Colo. Oil and Gas Ass'n, Colo., No. 15-SC-668, 5/2/16).Rights of the Environment
“Small wins build up to create massive change,” lead plaintiff Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, 16, said in a March 23 statement. “Our movement to fight for the rights of people and the environment is evolving.”
Tracee Bentley, executive director of the Colorado Petroleum Council, a division of the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement the council was disappointed by the “split decision,” saying it was “without sound legal basis.”
“The Colorado oil and natural gas industry's long record of environmental stewardship belies the need for additional onerous rules and restrictions,” she said. “This sweeping decision imperils jobs, incomes, and development of natural resources in our state.” CPC and API were interveners in the case, and some 29 state agencies and interest groups were amicus curiae parties.
Todd Hartman, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, which houses the oil and gas commission, told Bloomberg BNA the state is reviewing the ruling.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=107885095&vname=dennotallissues&fn=107885095&jd=107885095
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Keystone XL Fight Shifts To Nebraska
Mar 23, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre
With the State Department set to grant a long-sought permit to build the Keystone XL, pipeline politics are about to go local.
The State Department is expected to issue its permit by Monday, leaving a relatively obscure, five-member state commission in Nebraska as the last regulatory hurdle that pipeline developer TransCanada needs to clear to start building the 1,200-mile line that will deliver Canadian heavy crude to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners.
TransCanada has asked the Nebraska Public Service Commission to approve the pipeline’s route through the state. Now the commission — consisting of four elected Republicans and one Democrat — along with the state Legislature are feeling the full weight of the White House’s decision to back the Keystone XL pipeline, said Gavin Geis, executive director for good governance watchdog Common Cause Nebraska.
“If the review happens now, it will get ugly,” Geis said. “It is a big deal, and it will be big deal. There’s already more partisan infighting than we normally see here.”
Calgary-based TransCanada asked the commission in February to approve the route the pipeline will take through the state, beginning a process that could end with the NPSC in September accepting, rejecting or suggesting an alternate route.
TransCanada had tried, and failed, to have the state approve a route when it first attempted to build Keystone XL a few years ago, and the company spent more than a million dollars lobbying the state government before the Obama administration quashed the project in 2015.
But the NSPC is engulfed in its own local politics, and the Commission whose docket is mostly focused on petitions for local telephone service rate hikes may be ill-suited to judge a project of this size, sources in the state said. The NPSC didn’t even have regulations governing oil pipeline siting until 2011, when TransCanada first came calling about Keystone XL.
Now the commission is gathering information and testimony about how the 1,200-mile pipeline and the 830,000 barrels a day of oil it can carry past state cornfields and waterways will affect local landowners — some of whom are planning legal challenges to keep the pipeline off their property.
None of the NPSC commissioners replied to calls for comment. But they're already getting an earful from TransCanada lobbyists, environmental advocates and their own state politicians, said commission spokesperson Deb Collins.
“Commissioners are well aware of the passion and conviction surrounding the application,” Collins said.
The commission also got a nudge earlier this month when 33 of Nebraska’s 49 state senators — the state's sole legislative body — sent a letter to the commission “respectfully urg(ing) the members of the Public Service Commission to approve the route outlined in TransCanada’s recent permit application.”
“It’s going to bring construction jobs, it’s going to bring tax revenue. It’s just money that comes in,” said Nebraska Republican Party Executive Director Kenny Zoeller.
And the tax revenue isn't the only money Keystone XL is again generating.
TransCanada is also paying Omaha-based lobbying firm Heartland Strategy Group $5,000 a month to discuss “pipeline construction and management,” according to a January 2017 filing with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission.
While far less than the $579,000 it spent in Nebraska in 2011 alone, it represented a re-opening of the taps that some in Nebraska had expected to remain closed, Geis said.
TransCanada’s U.S.-based subsidiaries have separately donated $23,000 to Nebraska state political campaigns since September 2014, according to disclosure forms. Nearly $10,000 of that was a June 2015 donation to the Nebraska Republican Party.
While TransCanada spends, Keystone opponents are also lining up for a battle at the NPSC.
In the short-term, Bold Alliance’s Nebraska chapter has been recruiting local landowners to register as “intervenors” to give official testimony at NSPC hearings as to why Keystone XL may hurt their legal rights or interests.
Jane Kleeb, president of the group’s parent Bold Alliance and chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said Keystone XL opponents are prepping for possible challengers to run against NPSC Chairman Tim Schram and member Frank Landis Jr., both Republicans who are up for reelection in 2018.
“Landis is the big target for Bold, his is the district where we have many supporters,” Kleeb said. “Our focus is protecting the water and property rights of farmers and ranchers.”
Climate advocacy group 350.org has also applied for intervenor status, and may use its national mailing list to help "turn out people in droves to the NPSC hearings," according to Sara Shor, manager for its Keep It In The Ground campaign.
"We proved Keystone XL wasn’t in the national interest, and we think it’s the same for the public interest in Nebraska. We’re setting out to prove that at the state level," Shor said.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2017/03/keystone-xl-fight-moving-into-local-nebraska-politics-154038
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Pipeline OK Would Not Undermine U.S. Role On Climate — State
Mar 23, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey
Approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline will not undermine the United States' leadership on climate change, and to claim otherwise is "not fair," the State Department said today.
"This administration is conducting a review of climate change policy, but our record on this issue speaks for itself," acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. "I think we have been a leader in addressing climate change globally, regardless of this decision that's made with respect to this Keystone application."
The Trump administration has downplayed the threat of climate change and welcomed KXL to move forward, a sharp pivot from President Obama's 2015 rejection of the Canada-to-United-States pipeline partially based on climate concerns.
Obama determined KXL would do nothing to reduce fuel prices while exacerbating climate change despite the State Department's finding that the project wouldn't significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions (Greenwire, Feb. 3, 2015).
Toner also pushed back on reports that approval of the pipeline is imminent. When asked about White House press secretary Sean Spicer's announcement that an update on KXL would come tomorrow, Toner insisted that neither the administration nor the department had made a decision about whether to grant TransCanada Corp. a presidential permit.
The State Department, he added, is keenly aware that an executive memo President Trump signed in January set out a 60-day clock for approving or rejecting the pipeline, and that the window closes Monday.
But he said Tom Shannon, the State Department's undersecretary for political affairs, has not yet delivered a recommendation to the White House.
Shannon will lead the agency's decision on KXL in light of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's recusal, Toner said, adding that Tillerson will have "no role."
When asked about the Obama administration's reliance on the State Department review in denying KXL, Toner said the department is taking a "fresh look" at the contentious oil pipeline but will play the same role as it has previously. Toner would not provide details on whether some of the factors officials are looking at included environmental aspects or jobs, and would not say whether the department had commissioned new research.
"We're looking at previous data and other factors," he said. "I can't speak to any of the conclusions that this new review has discovered. ... We're looking at it with fresh eyes and trying to see if there are any new factors to consider."
Environmental groups including Greenpeace that have warned KXL will trigger an uptick in emissions met today to strategize on new ways to stop TransCanada from accessing new streams of money to finance the oil pipeline. Cassady Craighill, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace who attended the meeting, pushed back on Toner's comments.
"On a number of levels, [approving KXL] undermines our climate change leadership and signals … what our priorities are," she said. "And that's apparently burning fossil fuels."
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/03/23/stories/1060051993
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6 Ways President Trump’s Energy Plan Doesn’t Add Up
Mar 24, 2017 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Jeremy Proville and Jonathan Camuzeaux
Just 60 days into Trump’s presidency, his administration has wasted no time in pursuing efforts to lift oil and gas development restrictions and dismantle a range of environmental protections to push through his “America First Energy Plan.” An agenda that he claims will allow the country to, “take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own.”
Putting aside the convenient roundness of this number, its sheer size makes the policy sound appealing; but, buyer beware. Behind the smoke and mirrors of this $50 trillion is an industry-commissioned Institute for Energy Research (IER) report that lacks serious economic rigor. The positive projections from lifting oil and gas restrictions come straight from the IER’s advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance. Several economists reviewed the assessment and agreed: “This is not academic research and would never see the light of day in an academic journal.”
Here are six reasons Trump’s plan can't deliver on its promises.
1. No analytical back up for almost $20 trillion of the $50 trillion
Off the bat, it’s clear that President Trump’s plan relies on flawed math. What’s actually estimated in the report is $31.7 trillion, not $50 trillion, based on increased revenue from oil, gas, and coal production over 37 years (this total includes estimated increases in GDP, wages, and tax revenue). The other roughly half of this “$50 trillion” number appears to be conjured out of thin air.2. Inflated fuel prices
An average oil price of $100 per barrel and of $5.64 per thousand cubic feet of natural gas (Henry Hub spot price) was used to calculate overall benefits. Oil prices are volatile: in the last five years, they reached a high of $111 per barrel and a low of $29 per barrel. They were below $50 a barrel a few days ago. A $5.64 gas price is not outrageous, but gas prices have mostly been below $5 for several years. By using inflated oil and gas prices and multiplying the benefits out over 37 years, the author dismisses any volatility or price impacts from changes in supply. There’s no denying oil and gas prices could go up in the future, but they could also go down, and the modeling in the IER report is inadequate at best when it comes to tackling this issue.
3. Technically vs. economically recoverable resources
The IER report is overly optimistic when it comes to the amount of oil and gas that can be viably produced on today’s restricted federal lands. Indeed, the report assumes that recoverable reserves can be exploited to the last drop over the 37-year period based on estimates from a Congressional Budget Office report. A deeper look reveals that these estimates are actually for “technically recoverable resources,” or the amount of oil and gas that can be produced using current technology, industry practice, and geologic knowledge. While these resources are deemed accessible from a technical standpoint, they cannot always be produced profitably. This is an important distinction, as it is the aspect that differentiates technically-recoverable from economically-recoverable resources. The latter is always a smaller subset of what is technically extractable, as illustrated by this diagram from the Energy Information Administration. The IER report ignores basic industry knowledge to present a rosier picture.4. Lack of discounting causes overestimations
When economists evaluate the economic benefits of a policy that has impacts well into the future, it is common practice to apply a discount rate to get a sense of their value to society in today’s terms. Discounting is important to account for the simple fact that we generally value present benefits more than future benefits. The IER analysis does not include any discounting and therefore overestimates the true dollar-benefits of lifting oil and gas restrictions. For example, applying a standard 5% discount rate to the $31.7 trillion benefits would reduce the amount to $12.2 trillion.5. Calculated benefits are not additional to the status quo
The IER report suggests that the $31.7 trillion would be completely new and additional to the current status quo. This is false. One must compare these projections against a future scenario in which the restrictions are not lifted. Currently, the plan doesn’t examine a future in which these oil and gas restrictions remain and still produce large economic benefits, while protecting the environment.6. No consideration of environmental costs
Another significant failure of IER’s report: even if GDP growth was properly estimated, it would not account for the environmental costs associated with this uptick in oil and gas development and use. This is not something that can be ignored, and any serious analysis would address it.We know drilling activities can lead to disastrous outcomes that have real environmental and economic impacts. Oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez have demonstrated that tragic events happen and come with a hefty social, environmental and hard dollar price tag. The same can be said for natural gas leaks, including a recent one in Aliso Canyon, California. And of course, there are significant, long-term environmental costs to increased emissions of greenhouse gases including more extreme weather, damages to human health, and food scarcity to name a few.
The Bottom Line: The $50 Trillion is An Alternative Fact but the Safeguards America will Lose are Real
These factors fundamentally undercut President Trump’s promise that Americans will reap the benefits of a $50 trillion dollar future energy industry. Most importantly, the real issue is what is being sacrificed if we set down this path. That is, a clean energy future where our country can lead the way in innovation and green growth; creating new, long-term industries and high-paying jobs, without losing our bedrock environmental safeguards. If the administration plans to upend hard-fought restrictions that provide Americans with clean air and water, we expect them to provide a substantially more defensible analytical foundation.http://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2017/03/23/6-ways-president-trumps-energy-plan-doesnt-add-up/
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(ACC Mentioned) Trump Seeks To Cut Safety Agency With Roots In N.J.
Mar 23, 2017 | NorthJersey.com
By Scott Fallon
The devastating 1995 Napp Technologies explosion in the heart of Lodi killed five men, created a plume of toxic black smoke that lingered over the county for days -- and led to the creation of a federal board that spent the next two decades investigating more than 100 chemical industry accidents across the nation.
Now, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board is slated to be eliminated under President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, worrying supporters who say the board has helped improve safety nationwide.
The board’s 40-member staff has been at the forefront of examining some of the worst workplace disasters in recent memory, from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig fire in 2010 to the 2013 West Fertilizer explosion in Texas that killed 15 people, including 12 firefighters.
In New Jersey, where there are at least 90 facilities that house or manufacture hazardous substances, the board has conducted major investigations of chemical fires in Paterson, East Rutherford, Perth Amboy and the Napp explosion.
The Trump administration gave no explanation for the board’s elimination in its 62-page “budget blueprint” or in a phone call to staff informing them of the move last week, board members said.
“I don’t know why or what rationale was used to make the board a possible elimination target,” said Vanessa Sutherland, the board’s chairwoman. “We get at the root causes of chemical accidents and then explain how to prevent them. No one else is doing that work.”
rump’s blueprint budget, which targeted many environmental programs, is just the start of a long process and Congress will ultimately decide what programs get cut. Key to that is a past supporter of the Chemical Safety Board: U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-Morristown, who is chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which writes spending legislation.
Frelinghuysen’s spokesman would not answer where the congressman stands on the board’s future. And while he didn’t address the board in a “telephone town hall” with constituents on Monday, Frelinghuysen was critical of Trump’s budget and said he would not support some of proposed cuts to environmental programs.
The Chemical Safety Board has a budget of $11 million, which supporters say is meager compared to the current $3.65 trillion federal spending plan.
“Just one chemical catastrophe would dwarf that cost,” said Dan Fatton, executive director of the New Jersey Work Environment Council, which promotes workplace safety. “If ever there was an example of being pound wise penny foolish, it’s here. The Chemical Safety Board is a pretty good deal for what you get versus what you spend.”
The Chemical Safety Board was technically created five years before Napp when Congress amended the Clean Air Act. But it was never funded because the Clinton administration opposed it at a time when it was trying to streamline government.
Then on April 21, 1995, 10,000 pounds of chemicals exploded at Napp, killing five and injuring 41 others. Burning debris rained down on the neighborhood and more than 400 people had to be evacuated. For Lodi residents, where chemical plants were operating right next to homes at the time, it was a reminder of the dangers in their midst. The neighborhood had experienced fires and explosions before, notably a blast at another plant that had killed seven in 1973.
The accident was investigated by other agencies, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, but their findings were delayed for more than two years. When a report was published, it was roundly criticized by lawmakers and chemical experts because it did not delve deeply into the incident -- or how it could have been prevented.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg began pushing for the board to be funded. Among the supporters was Frelinghuysen, who spoke of the board in congressional hearings at the time.
The Chemical Safety Board does not have any power to levy fines or change rules. But like the National Transportation Safety Board, it offers recommendations to reform practices and regulations to prevent accidents.
Its recommendations have resulted in fire code improvements in New York City and increased safety at oil and gas sites in Mississippi. It also led Connecticut to ban the practice of cleaning debris from pipes using natural gas after six workers died in a 2010 explosion.
In New Jersey, the Chemical Board was called to Paterson in 1998 after an incident at Morton Specialty Chemicals Group, which injured nine workers and released a plume of toxic gas over the city.
The 2005 Acetylene Services Company explosion that killed three workers in Perth Amboy is now a case study in a board video on how to avoid volatile gas from building up to dangerous levels.After the 2012 fire at the US Ink Plant in East Rutherford seriously burned seven workers, the board laid out a series of steps federal and New Jersey agencies should take to reduce the likelihood of similar incidents.
Despite Trump’s campaign rhetoric to pare down the federal government and remove obstacles to business growth, Sutherland said she was “shocked, saddened and disappointed” by the news.
She was informed of the board’s proposed elimination via a telephone call from the White House budget office just a few hours before Trump’s “budget blueprint” was made public last Thursday. The 62-page report listed the Chemical Safety Board among 20 independent agencies whose funding would be eliminated. It offered no explanation. Sutherland said she was not offered a reason why the board was being cut.
“Of the 20 agencies, we were the only one with a safety mandate,” she said. “And the president has spoken a great deal about safety being a top priority.”
Sutherland said she doesn’t believe the chemical industry was pushing for the board’s elimination.
“I’ve traveled all across the country talking with the industry and they have always been positive about our role,” said Sutherland, who has been in the post for 18 months.
A spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, a national coalition of chemical companies, would not comment on the board’s proposed elimination.
Dennis Hart, executive director of the Chemistry Council of New Jersey, which lobbies on behalf of 75 manufacturers, would not directly address the board but said he hoped Congress and the administration “implement a budget that allows key agencies to fulfill their responsibilities.”
Sutherland said she and her staff will be spending the next few weeks “aggressively trying to save the board.” That includes talking to lawmakers, like Frelinghuysen, about the board’s importance.
“It’s all hands on deck, engaging every stakeholder,” she said. “We’re fighting for our survival.”
http://www.northjersey.com/story/news/environment/2017/03/23/trump-seeks-cut-safety-agency-roots-nj/99407398/
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Washington Braces For Trump Climate Order
Mar 24, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama and Devin Henry
Washington is bracing for President Trump’s executive order on climate change, which could be released any day.
The order is expected to disassemble President Obama’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan and end the moratorium on federal-land coal mining, steps that would make it all but impossible for the United States to reach its commitments to reduce carbon emissions under the 2015 international climate agreement reached in Paris.
The orders are expected to represent a wholesale overhaul of how the federal government deals with climate change and a major repudiation of Obama’s aggressive second-term global warming agenda.
Trump is said to be considering a broader order than originally thought. Sources said it could include other provisions aimed at climate regulations in general, oil and gas drilling rules and reducing the U.S.’s commitment in the Paris climate accord.
“What we’ve heard has been extremely troubling,” said Tomás Carbonell, the director of regulatory policy and lead attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund.
The energy sector and Republicans in Congress, however, think just the opposite.
They’re pressing Trump to go big, but to make sure his actions can withstand legal challenges.
“We’re very hopeful the president can deliver on his campaign promise to lift the regulatory weight his predecessor placed on our industry,” said Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association.
The order’s rollout has been repeatedly delayed, in part because the White House has been trying to decide what to include in it.
“There’s some discussion about how much to throw into it, how comprehensive it’ll be,” said Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a Trump ally who served as an adviser on energy during the presidential campaign.
While energy was not a primary focus of Trump’s populist campaign for president, he made bold promises to roll back Obama’s climate agenda and reduce regulations, with the goal of increasing jobs.
Trump has already taken significant actions to undo Obama’s policies.
Trump’s budget proposed cutting the EPA budget by 31 percent, and he signed executive orders taking on the Clean Water Rule and car emissions standards.
He’s taken steps to move forward with the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipeline, both of which are targets for climate activists.
Congress has been helping too. The House and Senate have passed legislation to repeal an Obama regulation protecting streams from coal mining, and the Senate could vote soon to repeal a rule meant to prevent the release of natural gas on federal land.
The work, and the promise of Trump’s order, have cheered the energy sector.
“Fundamentally, we are talking about unwinding eight years of multi-agency policies and regulations in two months,” said Stephen Brown, vice president for federal government affairs at fuel refiner Tesoro Corp.
Environmentalists are gearing up to fight Trump in the rulemaking process.
Trump’s actions won’t immediately invalidate Obama’s climate rules, but they will direct federal agencies to rewrite them.
That gives his opponents the chance to influence the process, or at least lay the foundation for legal challenges.
“You have to go through rulemaking. You take the same steps to tear it down as you take it built it up,” said David Doniger, the head of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and clean air program.
Lawsuits against Trump's move are unlikely on day one. But Doniger said groups like his are working to put together what they’ll need for litigation after the Clean Power Plan is formally nixed.
Greens contend that aggressive climate regulations like Obama’s are required by the law, and that Trump will be overplaying his hand if he tries to wipe it out completely.
“Certainly the administration and [EPA Administrator] Scott Pruitt seem to be moving to roll back these protections,” Carbonell said. “We’ll certainly be looking closely to make sure that there’s not a thumb put on the scale in [the rulemaking] process.”
Environmentalists and Democrats hope to rally the public to their cause.
Climate change is rarely considered a top issue for American voters. But climate action advocates have often framed arguments about its importance in messages Americans can better digest, such as its impact on public health.
With Washington buried by a debate over healthcare reform, the economy and the confirmation process for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, environmentalists say the climate order will give them a bigger platform from which to make their case.
“These kinds of issues are not profile issues when you compare it to health care, immigration and others,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee.
He said the climate order will give his party a bigger platform from which to make its case.
“Democrats have to raise the profile of this issue and fight as hard as we’re fighting back on a lot of other issues,” he said.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/325565-washington-braces-for-trump-climate-order
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Judge Gives EPA More Deadlines for Late Air Standards Reviews
Mar 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Patrick Ambrosio
A federal district court judge ordered the EPA to complete overdue assessments of 13 air pollution regulations, placing new deadlines on an agency that claims to have inadequate staff available for those reviews.
The 13 rules covered by the March 22 opinion are national standards for hazardous air pollutants emitted by various industries, including tire manufacturing plants, iron and steel foundries and leather finishing operations. A coalition of environmental organizations, led by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, sued the Environmental Protection Agency in 2016 over a failure to meet Clean Air Act requirements that those standards be reviewed within eight years to account for technological improvements and remaining health risks.
The court order requires the EPA to complete reviews of at least seven of the standards by Dec. 31, 2018, with a subsequent June 30, 2020, deadline for the remaining standards. Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia gave the EPA the ability to decide which of the 13 regulations to prioritize (Blue Ridge Envtl. Def. League v. Pruitt, 2017 BL 90412, D.D.C., No. 1:16-cv-364, 3/22/17).
The court-ordered deadlines offer the EPA more time than sought by the environmental plaintiffs, who asked the court to require the reviews to be completed within two years, but less time than the agency sought. The EPA didn't contest the allegations that it missed the Clean Air Act deadlines, but asked the court for a rolling schedule that would set a series of deadlines from January 2019 through October 2021. The agency cited inadequate staffing in the Sector Policies and Programs Division, which handles the reviews, as the reason that more time is needed.
Cooper said the EPA's resources concerns are “understandable” but concluded that Congress required the EPA to take action to protect the public from hazardous pollution.
“The Clean Air Act makes clear that Congress contemplated that the EPA could promulgate dozens of air toxics rules in a condensed amount of time,” Cooper wrote. “And if the agency finds this expectation to be unreasonable, its ultimate remedy lies with Congress, not the courts.”
The March 22 opinion is the second time in March the D.C. District Court set new deadlines for the EPA to complete overdue reviews of hazardous air pollution standards: Judge Tanya Chutkan gave the EPA three years to complete reviews of 20 different air toxics rules.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=107885091&vname=dennotallissues&fn=107885091&jd=107885091
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Judge Grants EPA 3 Years To Finish Toxics Reviews
Mar 24, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA gets three years to wrap up overdue reviews of existing standards for toxic air emissions from tire manufacturing plants, iron and steel foundries, and 11 other source categories under a federal court ruling released late yesterday.
The ruling, issued in a lawsuit filed last year by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and three other groups, requires EPA to complete seven of the residual "risk and technology reviews" by the end of next year, followed by the other six by June 2020.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper of the District of Columbia left it up to agency officials to decide which ones to prioritize; his order splits the difference between a two-year mandate for completion of all 13 reviews requested by the environmental plaintiffs and the 4 ½-year maximum sought by EPA.
While Cooper acknowledged the agency's "understandable" concerns over limited budget and staffing, EPA "has not met its heavy burden to show that a more expedited schedule than the one it proposed amounts to an 'impossibility,'" he wrote.
His decision is the latest in a rolling series of lawsuits typically alleging that EPA is far behind the Clean Air Act's eight-year deadline for revisiting and, if necessary, revising emission standards for specific pollution sources based on the residual risk to public health and new developments in pollution control technology.
The act's mandate for follow-up reviews covers 189 hazardous pollutants, according to court filings.
Cooper's order alludes to a ruling from last week by his colleague U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan requiring completed reviews of emissions standards for another 20 source categories within three years (Greenwire, March 15).
In the more recently decided case, EPA lawyers readily admitted that the agency was years late in conducting the 13 reviews; the only issue in dispute was the timetable for completion.
For companies, the upshot can be real-world — and sometimes costly — consequences. Last June, for example, Marathon Oil agreed to spend more than $330 million on upgraded pollution controls after a residual risk and technology review on flaring operations led to tighter refinery standards (Greenwire, June 9, 2016).
Last week, an Ohio manufacturer of manganese alloys sued after a separate review led to more stringent regulations on the ferroalloy sector (Greenwire, March 20).
The slow pace of EPA's reviews means major polluters are able to avoid installing readily available pollution controls, Katie Nekola, general counsel for Clean Wisconsin, another of the plaintiffs, said in a press release today. As EPA launches the latest round, Nekola said, "we will ensure the agency pays attention to reducing toxic pollution."
The remaining plaintiffs in the suit were the Midwest Environmental Defense Center and the Sierra Club.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/03/23/stories/1060051992
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Former EPA Officials Warn Climate Budget Cuts Might Hurt Other Programs
Mar 23, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Former EPA officials are warning that President Donald Trump's proposed massive budget cuts for the agency's climate change activities in fiscal year 2018 would likely hurt unrelated EPA programs, because statutory mandates mean the government would eventually have to divert funds to global warming efforts in lieu of the other programs.
Trump has proposed a 31 percent cut to EPA that would reduce its overall funding from $8.1 billion to $5.7 billion and the “pass back” -- the preliminary exchange of budget proposals between the agency and the White House -- would reduce overall funding for climate programs by 69 percent, says a new report from the former EPA and other federal and state officials known as the Environmental Protection Network (EPN).
The FY18 proposal, if it became law, “would save taxpayers over $100 million dollars -- but in reality, it would cost Americans tens of billions of dollars by increasing risks to their lives, health and property, and by irreparably damaging the world’s environment” because of the adverse impacts on a wide range of EPA programs, EPN says.
The proposed climate change cuts cannot erase the “expense involved in rolling back existing climate rules in court, and responding to adverse court decisions and petitions for new rules,” which means that EPA will almost certainly need to find funding in those areas, further threatening other agency initiatives.
“[T]he Passback’s proposed 69% cut would leave little capacity for EPA to protect the climate consistent with its obligations under the Clean Air Act. Funding needed to meet those obligations could come at the expense of other EPA programs,” the report says, without specifying what those non-climate programs might be.
EPN's report analyzing the FY18 budget proposal provides one of the most extensive critiques to date of Trump administration budget proposals contained in the recently released “skinny” budget outline, as well as the prior early pass back between EPA and the White House Office of Management & Budget.
While the pass back figures -- some of which have already made it into the public domain -- may have changed, it is plausible that some of the cuts have also only got more severe, the authors note.
“We do not approach our analysis of the Trump Administration’s budget proposal with the view that every program must continue as it exists today and that no priority can be reconsidered,” says EPN. “However, we do believe that the immense and ill-conceived cuts that the Trump Administration has proposed would inflict severe harm to the system of environmental protection that the nation has built over the past half century.
Climate Programs
Inside EPA and others have reported on proposals to zero out an array of greenhouse gas reduction partnership programs, which according to sources were not itemized in the pass back document.
The EPN report lays out the details of many of the partnership programs previously viewed as highly popular among industry groups and many lawmakers in both parties that could be threatened by the budget proposal.
Among them is the Combined Heat and Power Partnership which the document notes “encourages facilities that generate electricity on-site to capture heat that is otherwise wasted”; the Green Power Partnership which encourages organizations to use renewable electricity; the SmartWay program for reducing fuel use and GHG emissions from the freight sector; and the AgSTAR program which promotes biogas recovery systems to reduce methane from livestock.
Other climate initiatives between industries and EPA that could be halted by the proposed budget are: the Green Chill program that works with retailers to reduce hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) emissions; the Coalbed Methane Outreach Program that works with the U.S. mining sector and abroad to reduce methane; and High Global Warming Potential Voluntary Programs that work with producers of refrigerant, primary aluminum smelters, semiconductor manufacturers, power companies and others to reduce emissions of extremely potent greenhouse gases.
The report also identifies a slew of mandatory climate programs that would either be “undercut” or eliminated according to the budget pass pack, including funding to implement EPA's Clean Power Plan greenhouse gas rule for power plants. Trump is expected to soon sign an executive order directing the agency to rescind that rule.
Other Clean Air Act climate rules that could be hindered by the budget are EPA's vehicle GHG standards, GHG limits for new oil and gas drilling operations, landfill GHG standards, and others.
Proposed Budget
The analysis also offers a summary of increasingly familiar numbers from the Trump administration budget documents -- including the proposed cut of 31 percent in the overall agency budget and a 21 percent cut in its workforce. And the document reprises, often in more detail, previously reported cuts in numerous areas including state grants, diesel emission reduction grants and funding for the Great Lakes and other water bodies.
But the document frames the proposed cuts to the agency in historic terms, noting that the past three years of EPA budgets already caused “serious resources decline” from a period from 2003 to 2011 where the agency's funding was largely stable. And the proposed cuts come with the agency already being asked to do more, it says. “[I]t is worth noting that since 2000 the U.S. population has grown by 15% and GDP by 75%,” the document says, also referencing the growing threat of climate change and enactment of a Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016.
The importance of the document for defenders of the agency may lie as much in its in the weeds discussion of smaller, preliminary cuts included in the pass back document for an array of air, water, enforcement, Superfund and toxics programs -- cuts that have gotten less press play to date than issues such as climate change -- as well as the document's simple explanations of the purpose of multiple programs.
A few examples include an array proposed reductions, “many on the order of 10% to 35% to EPA's programs for clean air and water, safe waste management and regulation of pesticides and other chemicals,” the former officials say.
The document notes, for example, in reference to a proposed 23 cut in the pass back to the Toxics Release Inventory, that the program “provides tools that allow communities that the neighborhood level to learn about toxic chemicals that industrial facilities are using and releasing.”
EPN says the proposed funding cut would likely “hinder the collection of chemical release data and publication of this information to assist in preventing and reducing the release of toxic chemicals to the environment.”
A few of the many other cuts it flags are a potential 18 percent cut in `EPA federal vehicle and fuels standards and certification programs and a 20 percent cut in criminal enforcement.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/former-epa-officials-warn-climate-budget-cuts-might-hurt-other-programs
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EPA Budget Cuts Wound Cooperative Federalism, States Say
Mar 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
The Trump administration's proposed 31-percent cut to the EPA's fiscal 2018 budget throws cold water on a pledge by Administrator Scott Pruitt to restore the proper balance between the federal government and states, some state officials say.
“There's a disconnect between cooperative federalism and the proposed budget,” Alexandra Dunn, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States, told Bloomberg BNA March 21. “We're joined with EPA to implement our system of environmental protection. The nature of that federal-state cooperation includes a fiscal relationship.”
As Oklahoma attorney general and throughout his confirmation hearings, Pruitt stressed the need to restore “cooperative federalism” at the Environmental Protection Agency in which the federal government and states work together to achieve regulatory goals. The Obama administration's regulatory and enforcement actions overreached, he and other Republicans said.
Pruitt's view of cooperative federalism is to give the states more say in overseeing environmental programs. But some states—particularly those with Democratic governors and other senior officials—say money is a necessary part of the equation and one that the Trump administration has overlooked.
Talk of cooperative federalism is “just rhetoric” unless it's paired with funding to do environmental protection work, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman (D) told Bloomberg BNA at a March 21 news conference.
“There's no federalist element to this,” Schneiderman said of the budget plan. “It's not as if the federal government is putting new resources to the states. Let's not be distracted by the rhetoric. The fact is that these are severe cuts, without any countervailing effort to fund the states.”
Ohio More Welcoming
At least one state with a Republican governor—Ohio—said it welcomes Pruitt's notion of cooperative federalism.
“We're supportive of what we heard in his confirmation hearings,” Craig W. Butler, director of the state's EPA, told Bloomberg BNA March 22. “It fits well with the way we do our work.”
“The EPA should be working at setting the expectations for the work to do and checking our work,” Butler said. “Checking doesn't mean checking all our work. EPA has gone far away from that and has been dictating. We look forward to being his boots on the ground.”
The proposed cuts to the EPA budget could cost Ohio close to $15 million, Butler said. The cuts would affect the state's air, surface water, safe drinking water and clean up programs the most, he said.
“We all expected this to come in some way—maybe not at this magnitude,” Butler said. “The EPA is already reaching out to the states ... We need to work with EPA and Congress to let them know the severity of the cuts and the importance of those dollars to Ohio,” he said.
Alabama's Department of Environment Management also said the proposed cuts would require negotiations with the EPA to reduce the state's workload.
The EPA needs to have adequate resources, William Yeatman of the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute told Bloomberg BNA March 21. While he said he believed it was proper to unload non-discretionary programs, “you can't slash the agency's budget if they already don't have adequate resources to do the congressional duties assigned to them.”
“If the proposed budget is creating unfunded mandates, then I'd find that disappointing,” Yeatman said.
State Programs Need Funding
States overall are “encouraged” by Pruitt's emphasis on cooperative federalism, Julia Anastasio, executive director of the Association of Clean Water Administrators told Bloomberg BNA March 21. The Clean Water Act was set up as co-regulatory in nature, she said.
At the same time, the proposed cuts are concerning because state governments may not be able to backfill the funding gaps, Anastasio said.
A major concern expressed among states contacted by Bloomberg BNA is the proposed plan to cut the state categorical grants for core environmental programs 44.5 percent, from the 2017 annualized level of $1.02 billion to $482 million. The budget also would cut funding for the EPA's Office of Research and Development, which states say provides important scientific studies, and would entirely wipe out funding for climate change programs many states are pursuing.
Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the administration considers spending on climate change “to be a waste of your money.”
S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, criticized the proposed cuts in an email to Bloomberg BNA March 21.
“While states and localities welcome additional authorities to administer their air pollution control programs, they cannot carry out even their current responsibilities, much less additional work, while federal grants to these agencies are being proposed to be cut by 45 percent,” he said.
Cooperative federalism implies cooperation, Becker said.
“There have yet been no signs of cooperation in ensuring states and localities have the necessary funding and tools to do the job Congress mandated under the Clean Air Act,” he said.
Blow to Cooperative Federalism
The Trump administration's proposed cuts to state grants come at a time when state legislatures are adopting new budgets, so they will be unable to make adjustments, said Dunn of the Environmental Council of the States, whose nonprofit group represents state and territorial environmental agency leaders. Federal funding to state environmental agencies has been flat for many years, she said.
In Montana, Tom Livers, director of the state's Department of Environmental Quality, said the federal budget proposal arrived just as the state's Legislature is contemplating cuts to Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock's proposed budget. About one-third of the department's budget comes from federal grants and funding, he told Bloomberg BNA in a March 21 email.
In a March 16 letter to Pruitt, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's Acting Secretary Patrick McDonnell said the state-federal cooperation has significantly improved residents’ health, quality of life and economic prosperity.
“We urge the Trump administration not to turn its back on those federal-state partnerships that have produced these many benefits,” McDonnell said.
Cooperative federalism can be “a mixed bag” for state-specific programs, Larry Wolk, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, told Bloomberg BNA.
“It would be nice to have more control over those issues which are particular to a state's environment and the environmental agenda in general, as long as the funding isn't impacted to deter that state's expertise and its ability to carry out its commitment,” Wolk said of Pruitt's plan to give states more leeway.
A key concern for Colorado is funding Superfund cleanups, including the recently designated Bonita Peak Mining District site. The site includes the Gold King Mine where EPA contractors accidentally triggered the release of 3 million gallons of mining waste and sediment into the Animas River watershed in August 2015.
Similarly, in New York, cleanups at Superfund sites such as the Gowanus Canal—an industrial waterway that runs through residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn—could slow down and the cuts could affect the state's air pollution monitoring capacity, the state department said.
Other State Impacts
Among the other impacts mentioned in states contacted by Bloomberg BNA:
• Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality said the cuts could wipe out 22 positions in air and water quality programs. The categorical grants are an important funding source for those programs, said Richard Whitman, the department's director.
• Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and the state's agencies are “troubled by the Trump budget proposal and its impacts on Puget Sound recovery and of clean air and water and our efforts to confront climate change,” said Sam Ricketts, director of Inslee's District of Columbia office.
• California EPA Secretary Matthew Rodriquez said the budget “proposes a withdrawal of the U.S. EPA's commitment to addressing our most critical environmental issues, from climate change to environmental justice.”
• Maryland officials appreciate the administration's focus on cooperative federalism but remain concerned about meeting goals on “regional collaborations of national significance,” such as cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay, Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles old Bloomberg BNA in a March 23 email. Trump's budget calls for eliminating $73 million for the Chesapeake Bay Program, which supports the EPA's bay office, water quality monitoring and other elements.
In Oklahoma and New Jersey, officials said they are still reviewing Trump's budget proposal and did not respond to requests for comment on the implications for cooperative federalism. Texas’ Council for Environmental Quality declined to comment on the issue.http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=107885084&vname=dennotallissues&fn=107885084&jd=107885084
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House Panel To Weigh Climate Science
Mar 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
The House science committee is planning to hold a hearing next week focused on climate change science, amid Trump administration budget proposals to scale back federal climate research efforts and controversial remarks by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt denying that carbon dioxide is a “primary contributor” to global warming.
The March 29 hearing, “Climate Science -- Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method,” will feature several witnesses that do not accept mainstream scientific conclusions that human-released greenhouse gases are the main cause of climate change.
Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) during a March 23 address at a Heartland Institute event said the hearing would focus on scientific principles that were “repeatedly ignored” by the Obama administration's ambitious efforts to issue GHG mitigation regulations and other measures.
During the event, he named the three majority witnesses -- Judith Curry of the Climate Forecast Applications Network; John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville; and Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado -- drawing cheers from the crowd that is broadly hostile to mainstream climate science.
He also noted that Michael Mann of the Pennsylvania State University, a high-profile defender of mainstream climate science, was invited by minority Democrats -- an announcement that drew boos.
Asked by one audience member if he thought President Donald Trump would follow through on campaign promises to aggressively roll back climate change efforts, Smith said: “The president ushered in a permanent change in the political climate. I think he's going to keep his campaign promises. . . . You're not going to have any disappointment in the direction he's going.”
As evidence, Smith cited the nomination of Pruitt, who has drawn sharp criticism from environmentalists, scientists and Democrats after he said he did not agree that CO2 is a primary contributor to global warming.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/house-panel-weigh-climate-science
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Trump Adviser Lists 'Conditions' For Staying In Deal
Mar 23, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Jean Chemnick
Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), an energy adviser to President Trump, circulated a "dear colleague" letter to Republican House members this afternoon that could give the White House cover to remain in the Paris Agreement.
Cramer asked colleagues to sign a letter to Trump, which was obtained by E&E News, encouraging him to wring concessions out of international partners in exchange for staying in the landmark 2015 climate deal. They would include weaker emissions and aid commitments from the United States and more veto power in the negotiating process.
Cramer panned President Obama's promise to cut U.S. emissions between 26 and 28 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2025, contending that it would "cause irreparable harm to our economy, particularly our manufacturing and energy sectors, and should be rejected."
He urged the new administration to rescind the commitment and put forward a new one that would "reflect a range of economic scenarios, and take in adequate input from the private sector and other interested parties."
The administration is still weighing whether to make good on Trump's campaign pledge to "cancel" U.S. participation in Paris, with a final decision likely in the next weeks or months. White House officials who support the U.S. remaining in the deal have floated the idea of introducing a new nationally determined contribution to the deal that would reflect a business-as-usual emissions scenario based on low natural gas prices and other factors.
Also on Cramer's list of "conditions" would be an assurance that while the United States would provide no new money to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, it would retain a seat on the fund's board that would allow it to "use our power to veto any projects deemed wasteful and harmful to global energy security efforts and poverty eradication objectives in the developing world."
Finally, Cramer proposes that the Trump negotiating team use its position within the negotiating process to safeguard the interests of the U.S. fossil fuels and manufacturing sectors.
"We should work closely with our allies to develop, deploy, and commercialize cleaner technologies to help ensure a future for fossil fuels within the context of the global climate agenda, including support for the deployment of highly efficient and low emission coal, as well as carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies, in global markets," he wrote.
Sources say White House personnel have discussed unspecified new "concessions" with European Union and fossil fuels representatives. It's unclear what those would be, though some speculate they could come in the form of new trade agreements.
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/03/23/stories/1060051995
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Without Naming Trump, UN Acknowledges Nations’ Retreat on Climate
Mar 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joe Ryan
The United Nations is acknowledging that some countries may be retreating in the effort to fight climate change, recognizing an emerging fissure in the landmark Paris Agreement as President Donald Trump moves forward with plans to gut environmental programs.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who assumed leadership of the international body this year, told delegates at UN headquarters in New York that he remained optimistic that any withdrawal by national leaders will be offset by businesses and local governments that have pledged to continue cutting emissions.
“Even if some national governments backtrack in commitments, the combined impacts of sub-national authorities, businesses and civil society will create an unstoppable momentum,” Guterres said at the meeting on climate change and sustainable development.
Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, didn't single out the U.S. or Trump, who has called climate change a hoax and has threatened to pull out of the Paris Agreement. The secretary-general's comments come as Trump pushes to dismantle programs to fight global warming. His predecessor Barack Obama was a vocal advocate for curbing emissions and supported UN climate negotiations that led to the landmark global agreement in 2015.
Last week, Trump called for relaxing fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks and released a budget with sweeping cuts to climate change research and grants for clean energy development. In Germany, meanwhile, the U.S. successfully pushed to remove a reference to climate change from a statement issued following a Group of 20 meeting in Germany.
The UN meeting drew delegates, environmental groups and state and local leaders from around the world. Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, said his state was moving forward to close coal plants and cut emissions, despite Trump's vow to increase fossil fuel use.
“Our progress in Washington State is not going be stopped by anyone at anytime,” Inslee said during a panel discussion at the UN event. “You can count on the state of Washington to move forward.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=107885079&vname=dennotallissues&fn=107885079&jd=107885079
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