Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 4/4/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) Global Chemical Output Ticks Up in February on Broad Gains
Apr 4, 2017 | ZACKS
By Zacks Equity Research
Global chemical production continues its gaining streak on a monthly basis with February seeing a rise in output on gains across all regions barring Latin America, according to the latest monthly report from the American Chemistry Council ("ACC"). -
(ACC Mentioned) Environmentalists Back TSCA Prioritization Proposal But Seek Tweaks
Apr 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Environmental groups are generally supportive of EPA's proposal for how it will prioritize the thousands of existing chemicals for risk evaluation, and appear largely joined by California's environmental agency, though they are recommending tweaks to EPA's approach, while industry groups are outlining their concerns with the agency's proposal. -
At Trump’s EPA, Less Science and More Industry
Apr 4, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Lauren Coleman-Lochner
Congress and the Trump administration are planning sweeping changes in how science is used to govern public health. -
Why Senator Lankford’s “BEST Act” is Really the Worst for Federal Science
Apr 4, 2017 | Union of Concerned Scientists
By Yogin Kothari
A few weeks ago, Sen. James Lankford (OK) introduced legislation called the “Better Evaluation of Science and Technology Act,” or “BEST Act” for short. -
New Version of Qsar Toolbox Launched
Apr 4, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Turley
The OECD has launched version four of its Qsar Toolbox, with some features designed specifically for companies looking to register substances under REACH ahead of the 2018 deadline. -
Clean Power Plan Foe Picked to Lead Deregulation Task Force
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Arianna Skibell
U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has tapped conservative attorney and Clean Power Plan foe Samantha Dravis to lead a task force for cutting red tape. -
Energy Law Likely Unfazed by Gorsuch at SCOTUS — Obama Lawyer
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Energy lawyers may not see big changes in the courtroom if Neil Gorsuch is confirmed to the Supreme Court, a top Obama administration lawyer said yesterday. -
Justice Official Recuses Himself from Clean Power Plan Case
Apr 4, 2017 | Bloomberg BNA
By Tiffany Stecker
The Department of Justice’s top official for the environment is recusing himself from the government’s defense of the Obama administration’s landmark climate change regulation, reports Bloomberg BNA’s Tiffany Stecker. -
Executive Order has Broad Implications for Oil Regulation
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
President Trump last week laid out a wide-ranging strategy to reduce the regulatory burden on companies extracting fossil fuels from public lands. -
Following Trump Order, EPA Launches Review of Oil & Gas Methane Rule
Apr 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
EPA is formally kicking off its review of its first-time methane limits for new oil and gas drilling operations, along with a host of other climate rules and policies, as directed by President Donald Trump's recent executive order targeting the Obama-era climate mitigation measures. -
Oil Regulator Pushed to be More Transparent
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
Environmentalists and landowners urged Texas lawmakers to make the state's top oil and gas regulator more transparent, saying it would improve public trust in state government. -
Dakota Access Pipeline Complete, Readying for Operations
Apr 4, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By David Hunn
Energy Transfer Partners has finished construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a spokeswoman confirmed, and is now filling the line with crude to prepare it for service in mid-April. -
Senate Warned Cyber Threat to Power Grid “At an All Time High”
Apr 4, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By James Osborne
The potential for a major cyber attack against the nation’s power grid is “at an all time high,” Gerry Cauley, president of the grid operators group North American Electric Reliability Corporation, warned during a Senate hearing Tuesday. -
Officials Hope Trump Cyber Order is Worth the Wait
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
The extended wait for President Trump's cybersecurity executive order may signal a welcomed deeper dive into the challenges, a Department of Homeland Security official said yesterday. -
Killing Clean Power Plan Moves US Backward on Air Pollution
Apr 4, 2017 | The Hill - Opinion
By Elizabeth Brandt
Last week, President Trump made official his administration’s plan to begin the process of dismantling America’s Clean Power Plan, a plan that protects American families by curbing dangerous carbon pollution and reducing other toxic pollutants from power plants. -
9th Circuit Backs EPA Power to Impose Haze Plans on States
Apr 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has reinforced EPA's Clean Air Act authority to impose federal implementation plans (FIPs) directly writing air pollution control plans to reduce regional haze in states where the agency deems a state-crafted plan for curbing haze-forming emissions to be inadequate. -
Trump Can't Kill State Efforts to Curb Pollution: California is the Latest Example
Apr 4, 2017 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Timothy O'Connor
As the Trump administration continues to tear down critical environmental and public health protections, an opposite trend is gaining momentum in states that understand what our president doesn’t: It’s possible to curb pollution while growing our economy.
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(ACC Mentioned) Global Chemical Output Ticks Up in February on Broad Gains
Apr 4, 2017 | ZACKS
By Zacks Equity Research
Global chemical production continues its gaining streak on a monthly basis with February seeing a rise in output on gains across all regions barring Latin America, according to the latest monthly report from the American Chemistry Council ("ACC").
The Washington, DC-based chemical industry trade group said that the Global Chemical Production Regional Index ("CPRI") rose 0.3% in February on a monthly comparison basis. This follows a 0.5% gain a month ago and a 0.4% rise in December. The Global CPRI, which is measured using a three-month moving average, measures chemical production volumes for 33 major nations, sub-regions and regions. It is comparable to the Federal Reserve Board (“FRB”) production indices.
Gains in production were witnessed across North America (up 0.2%), Western Europe (up 0.2%), Central & Eastern Europe (up 0.2%), Asia-Pacific (up 0.4%) and Africa & Middle East (up 0.1%) in the reported month.
The results were mixed on a product basis in February. On a year-over-year comparison basis, strongest growth was witnessed in coatings (up 4.4%). Plastic resins saw a 3.8% rise while inorganic chemicals racked up a 3.4% gain. Production for agricultural chemicals slipped 1% while consumer products edged down 0.4%.
The ACC also note that the Global CPRI went up 1.9% year over year on a three-month moving average basis. Capacity utilization for the global chemical industry moved up 0.1 percentage points to 79.4% in February.
The U.S. chemical industry has also got off to a positive start in 2017 with output rising in both January and February. The ACC recently said that the U.S. CPRI increased 0.2% in February following a 0.5% gain in January. Gains were witnessed in all seven chemical producing regions in February.
The chemical industry is finally back on track after bearing the brunt of the global economic crisis. While the industry remains buffeted by several challenges, its upturn is expected to continue this year on sustained healthy momentum in the automotive space and an upswing in the housing market.
In particular, the U.S. chemical industry is set for solid growth this year and the next notwithstanding a number of headwinds including a strong dollar, soft export markets and a low oil price environment.
The outlook for the American chemical industry paints an encouraging picture. The ACC sees national chemical production to rise 3.6% in 2017, further accelerating to a 4.8% growth in 2018. The trade group also expects basic chemicals production to expand 4.2% in 2017 on the back of advances in manufacturing and exports.
Moreover, the shale gas bounty is expected to drive investment on plants and equipment in the U.S. Chemical makers including Dow Chemical (DOW - Free Report) , BASF (BASFY - Free Report) , LyondellBasell (LYB - Free Report) , Eastman Chemical (EMN - Free Report) and Westlake Chemical (WLK - Free Report) are ramping up investment on shale gas-linked projects to take advantage of ample natural gas supplies.
Per the ACC, over 275 new chemical projects have been announced by chemical makers (worth more than $170 billion) since 2010, nearly half of which already complete or under construction. Such investments are expected to boost capacity and export over the next several years.
The Zacks categorized Chemicals-Diversified industry has also outperformed the broader market over the past year. The industry has gained around 20.5% over this period, higher than S&P 500’s corresponding return of 15%.
https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/255254/global-chemical-output-ticks-up-in-february-on-broad-gains
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(ACC Mentioned) Environmentalists Back TSCA Prioritization Proposal But Seek Tweaks
Apr 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Environmental groups are generally supportive of EPA's proposal for how it will prioritize the thousands of existing chemicals for risk evaluation, and appear largely joined by California's environmental agency, though they are recommending tweaks to EPA's approach, while industry groups are outlining their concerns with the agency's proposal.
The stakeholders' comments were submitted before a March 20 deadline in response to EPA's Jan. 17 proposal, which lays out a four-step process for implementing a mandate under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that the agency screen existing chemicals as either high- or low-priority for the purposes of further review.
Existing chemicals are those that were in commerce in 1976 when the original TSCA was enacted, and were at that time largely grandfathered under the law. The overhaul requires EPA to prioritize and assess this backlog of chemicals, and directed EPA to draft several rules by June 2017 laying out a framework to implement this. EPA says its goal in the prioritization proposal is a "pipeline" that will help the agency wade through the backlog of thousands of chemicals in commerce.
Section 6(b)(1) of the revised TSCA requires EPA to establish a risk-based screening process and criteria that EPA will use to identify chemical substances as either high-priority substances for risk evaluation, or low-priority substances for which risk evaluations are not warranted at the time.
The first action in EPA's proposed four-step process, what the agency calls the "pre-prioritization process," generated significant comments from stakeholders, with environmentalists and California's EPA generally supporting the proposal. EPA in January described this as an initial step in which it would narrow the pool of potential chemicals using the new statutory criteria.
The remaining steps in the proposed four-step prioritization process continue with an initiation phase in which the agency would announce a candidate chemical ahead of a 90-day public comment period. Then, under the third step, EPA would propose to designate a chemical as high- or low-priority, publish the proposed designation, information, analysis, and basis for the decision, and take a second round of public comment for 90 days.
Under the fourth and final step, EPA would either finalize a high-priority designation and initiate a risk evaluation, or finalize a low-priority substance, which would mean a review would not be necessary until or unless the agency received new information on that substance that indicated potential increased risks.
Pre-Prioritization Step
The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) writes in its March 20 comments that the pre-prioritization step is needed, pointing to requirements in the law that it says require EPA to have some information about the chemical it is prioritizing as high or low priority for assessment, and the strict deadlines for completing the prioritization process, which then leads directly to the risk assessment deadlines.
"Due to the data needs coupled with the deadlines set forth by Congress, we agree with EPA that it must generally have all or most of the data needed to designate a chemical as low-priority or conduct a full risk evaluation -- which must address all conditions of use -- at the outset of the prioritization process," EDF writes. "Given these demands, we fully support EPA's proposed pre-prioritization stage to gather needed data."
EDF urges EPA to use this step to gather information from companies, particularly studies they may have already submitted to other regulatory agencies, such as in Europe, and to order new studies if there are data gaps. The group also encourages EPA to remove consideration of substitutes to chemicals being prioritized -- a consideration EPA had suggested as a way to reduce the incidence of regrettable substitution. But EDF says that at this stage of the prioritization process, consideration of substitutes is too early. The Natural Resources Defense Council, in its separate undated comments, also encourages EPA to delay its consideration of alternate chemicals.
But California EPA (CalEPA), in March 20 comments, expresses its support for EPA's consideration of possible substitutes in the prioritization process, though Deputy Secretary for Science Gina Solomon does not specify where in the process CalEPA would like to see that occur. "Such an approach would provide a benefit by removing, rather than substituting, hazardous chemicals. In addition, it would conserve Agency as well as stakeholder/industry resources by avoiding time and resource intensive re-iterative risk evaluations by Agency and costly (and reiterative) switches to other chemicals by industry. To this end, EPA could consider requesting stakeholder input early in the process to help identify likely substitute chemical candidates."
The Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Coalition -- which broke with EDF in its support of the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act for the 21st Century that overhauled TSCA when signed into law last June -- agrees the initial pre-prioritization step is necessary. The group argues that "EPA should add other toxicity and exposure triggers to this list. These should include literature reports of potential mutagenicity, developmental toxicity, reproductive effects, developmental neurotoxicity, immunotoxicity, endocrine effects and sensitization. Similar triggers should be used for potential ecotoxicity."
Further, the coalition encourages EPA to consider the lists of chemicals of concern identified by other EPA offices, agencies and authorities, such as the Hazardous Air Pollutants list or the Toxics Release Inventory Database.
Chemical Uses
The Coalition, CalEPA and EDF also support EPA's approach to consider the conditions of use of chemicals in the prioritization process, already an issue of concern for industry based on EPA's new approach to its new chemical pre-manufacture review process.
Since the Lautenberg Act was signed into law last June, EPA had completed just 33 of these reviews by the time of the annual industry GlobalChem conference in February, Cal Dooley, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council said at the event. Before the new law, EPA completed reviews of some 1,000 new chemicals each year.
The new chemicals review process has stalled because the new law requires EPA to reach an affirmative finding about each new chemical that it reviews regarding its potential health risks, and EPA has interpreted the statute's language that it must review all reasonably foreseeable uses of the chemical. During the GlobalChem conference, EPA's acting toxics chief, Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, told attendees that she and her staff are considering all options to deal with the backlog, but that agency staff must be able to meet the statute's requirements.
The environmental groups are praising EPA's approach to the conditions of use interpretation in the proposed rule. The new law requires EPA by June 2017 to develop criteria and a final implementing rule outlining how agency staff will prioritize as high priority those chemicals that "may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment," and as low priority, not requiring assessment at the time, those that do not meet that standard.
EPA has proposed an approach wherein all of a chemical's potential uses must meet the unreasonable risk standard in order for the chemical to be deemed low priority, while just one use not passing muster will flag a chemical as high priority. The environmental groups generally praise this proposed approach, while industry groups are protesting it.
The coalition argues that "since the prerequisite for high-priority listing is a determination that a chemical 'may present an unreasonable risk,' a chemical will qualify as low priority only if it can be demonstrated to lack the potential for unreasonable risk. . . . Like high-priority designations, low priority listings apply to the chemical as a whole, not specific uses, and thus must be based on a finding of no unreasonable risk across all the conditions of use. Demonstrating the absence of unreasonable risk for all activities that fit the definition of 'conditions of use' is essential because low priority chemicals will not be subject to risk evaluations and will be perceived as 'safe' by users and the general public."
EPA Designations
The groups add that they support EPA's approach to designations, but add that low priority designations should be peer reviewed to "provide an essential safeguard against unwarranted 'false negatives.'"
By contrast, industry groups are arguing that EPA should treat high and low priority designations similarly. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in its March 20 comments urges EPA to "reconsider its treatment of low priority chemicals, as the bar is set extremely high for designating chemicals as low priority. . . . It is imperative that EPA give high priority and low priority chemicals the same treatment."
The business lobby adds that "It would be in EPA's best interest to adjust that proposal so that EPA is just as likely to designate a chemical as high priority as it is to designate one as low priority. . . . This would allow EPA to make low priority designations based on the likelihood that only certain condition(s) of use of a chemical have a low potential for risk, rather than the lofty standard of 'all.' This would benefit EPA as well, considering it would be able to conserve its resources and focus on fewer and less cumbersome high priority designations."
An industry coalition raises similar points, arguing in its March comments that EPA should release a supplemental proposal for comment, since the agency does not have time to withdraw and re-do its proposal given the June 2017 deadline. Among its many concerns, the group argues that it "does not agree [with EPA] that 'a large number' of chemicals will meet the high-priority definition. . . . The term 'may present an unreasonable risk' is used throughout TSCA and is not intended to cast a broad net."
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/environmentalists-back-tsca-prioritization-proposal-seek-tweaks
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At Trump’s EPA, Less Science and More Industry
Apr 4, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Lauren Coleman-Lochner
Congress and the Trump administration are planning sweeping changes in how science is used to govern public health.
Controversy over climate change may be getting all the attention right now, but legislation under consideration would transform the way the Environmental Protection Agency combats pollution, identifies harmful pesticides and classifies everyday toxins, such as laundry detergent, window cleaner and clothing dye.
President Donald Trump has vowed to flatten regulatory hurdles for American business, and Congress’s proposed EPA rules for science would make commerce easier. The president has proposed a 31 percent budget cut for the EPA and installed an opponent of the agency, Scott Pruitt, as its leader. Pruitt began the new era of industry over environmental regulation last week by reversing years of scientific opinion, rejecting a proposed ban on chlorpyrifos, a pesticide used on fruits and vegetables that has links to brain damage.
Bills under deliberation would open EPA expert advisory panels to industry representatives and mandate the use in formulating policy of what sponsors call the “best available science,” which opponents say would exclude widely used research methods and delay action. An EPA program that certifies consumer products that are free of hazardous substances could also be in peril.
Lawmakers and environmentalists are predictably split on the legislation.
The bills “really pull the rug out from under the independence of the scientific process,” said Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and former EPA adviser. “We’re going to turn back the clock on public health. This is the most devastating blow I’ve ever seen.”
‘Trust-Me Science’
Republican Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, who chairs the House committee that oversees the EPA, said that “the days of trust-me scienceare over.’’
“Open and honest science should be at the core of the EPA’s mission rather than rules that end up costing American taxpayers billions of dollars,’’ Smith said in a statement last week.
That was Smith’s rationale for the Honest Act, which the House passed 228-194 on Wednesday. It would bar the EPA from creating any regulation based on data that’s not publicly available or can’t be replicated.
The law would mean eliminating studies that cite epidemiological research, such as the one that led to the banning of the pesticide DDT, which was shown to cause cancer in humans and deadly effects in birds like bald eagles. Leaded gasoline was also taken off the market due to epidemiological research, which exposed its link to brain damage in children.
‘Cynical Time’
A day after the House approved the Honest Act, the EPA Science Advisory Board Act passed 229-193, allowing industry representatives to serve without special permission, while excluding scientists whose research receives EPA funding. Doing that would prevent extreme views, according to its sponsor, Oklahoma Republican Representative Frank Lucas.
“We live in a very cynical time, where people question everything the government does,’’ Lucas said in an interview. Revising the makeup of the board “creates a more balanced situation” and “will move the standard that is something closer to the middle no matter who is in charge of the federal government.”
But the legislation undercuts the EPA’s mission, said Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the House committee overseeing the EPA.
The bill “makes it easier for industry representatives with conflicts of interest to serve on advisory boards at the EPA while making it harder for scientific experts, all while slowing the regulatory process,” Johnson said in a statement.
Better Data
The Better Evaluation of Science and Technology Act, also called the BEST Act, aims to decrease the number of lawsuits filed against government agencies and reduce questions about the quality of underlying data in their regulations, its sponsor, Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford, said in a statement.
Yogin Kothari of the Union of Concerned Scientists called it a “Trojan horse transparency bill” that weakens regulations by casting doubt on the science used to back them. It could have the effect of excluding newer findings, which may reveal harm undetected by older research, he said.
These bills come at a time when an update of the Toxic Substances Control Act, signed into law last year, could limit the ability of states to enact regulations that are tougher than federal standards. They still must be approved by the Senate, where they could be stalled by filibusters.
Household Toxins
Environmentalists say they fear a stroke of a pen could eliminate the EPA’s Safer Choice program. Congress has tried to scuttle it before. The program approves household products such as laundry detergent and window cleaner that are free of hazardous substances.
Companies governed by the program say they favor it. Last month, almost 200 corporations, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., Dow Chemical Co. and BASF, wrote to Pruitt, saying it “helps consumers, businesses, and procurement officers/purchasers to identify products that go beyond regular safety standards.”
But many of the same industries that fought restrictions on DDT and leaded gasoline in the past are trying to block regulation now, said Daniel Rosenberg, senior attorney of the health and environment program at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington.
“If a bill would make it harder for EPA to protect the public from chemicals like lead, mercury and asbestos, it’s something that no reasonable member of Congress should support,” he said.
The bills are H.R. 1430 and H.R. 1341.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-04/research-that-saved-the-bald-eagle-at-risk-as-new-epa-settles-in
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Why Senator Lankford’s “BEST Act” is Really the Worst for Federal Science
Apr 4, 2017 | Union of Concerned Scientists
By Yogin Kothari
A few weeks ago, Sen. James Lankford (OK) introduced legislation called the “Better Evaluation of Science and Technology Act,” or “BEST Act” for short. The proposal takes the scientific standards language from the recently updated Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and applies it to the Administrative Procedures Act (which governs all federal rulemaking). Sen. Lankford claims the BEST Act would guarantee that federal agencies use the best available science to protect public health, safety, the environment, and more.
Nice sound bite, right?
In practice, though, this bill would cripple the ability of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to rely on scientific evidence to issue public health and safety safeguards. It’s just as radical as the numerous other bills that would enable politics to trump science, making all of us more vulnerable to public health and environmental threats.
How this works in the real world
How would it do that? It’s simple really. If you look at the bill language carefully, it consists of significant legal jargon and imprecise language that any lawyer worth his or her salt could use to shut down science-based decision making at federal agencies by tying up the rule-making process in endless challenges.
Let’s take a look at lead. The science is clear here. There is no safe blood level of lead. According to the EPA, lead poisoning can cause slowed growth, lower IQ, behavior and learning problems, and more. In the 1970s, it became increasingly clear that lead exposure resulted in negative health effects.
Rather than accept the growing weight of this scientific evidence, the lead industry started to use manufactured counterfeit science to cast doubt on the impacts of lead exposure and the acceptable amount of lead in blood.
Now if the “BEST Act” had been the law of the land when the federal government began to regulate lead, the lead industry could have used this counterfeit science to challenge EPA regulations on the grounds of “degree of clarity” and “variability and uncertainty” (among other things), forcing the agency into endless litigation over settled science. This could have ultimately prevented the agency from limiting lead exposure, especially among vulnerable populations like children.
Likewise, the tobacco industry would have been able to cast doubt on the link between cigarettes and lung cancer.
The list goes on. Today, you can imagine the fossil fuel industry using the vague language to attack climate science as a justification for slowing down solutions that prevent global warming.
Heavy on problems, light on solutions
The ambiguity of the text should be enough to realize that this legislation is bad news for evidence-based decisionmaking. But there are several other issues with the legislation as well.
One major concern is subsection (h), which would result in an enormous resource drain for agencies at a time when budgets are decreasing. Agencies would be required to divert additional resources to make public a number of documents and information, which, as we know from our fight against the HONEST Act, costs time and money.
Another major issue is the fact that this legislation would freeze science standards the way they are right now, killing the innovation and flexibility that agencies have now to consider new forms of research in their decisionmaking. As agencies begin to regulate new technologies like autonomous vehicles, they need to have the ability to consider the most cutting-edge research out there, which might include new scientific methods and models.
More importantly for human health, as the EPA looks to implement the updated chemical safety law, it needs to have the ability to utilize the best and most up-to-date scientific and technical information without having to worry about being sued, which was the problem with the original TSCA bill. Under the original chemical safety law passed in the 1970s, the EPA could not even regulate asbestos, a known carcinogen, because industry kept suing the agency. If the BEST Act were to become law, we could expect more of the same.
A wasted opportunity
Agencies are already basing their policy decisions on the best available science. They have to. If an agency did not issue a public health protection or a worker safety standard based on strong evidence, then the agency would be challenged in court, and probably forced to vacate the regulation.
Instead of promoting legislation like the BEST Act, what Sen. Lankford could do to improve the use of science in policymaking is ensure that agencies like the EPA, CPSC, Department of Energy, and others, are well funded and have the resources necessary to fulfill their respective science-based missions.
There is no disagreement among anyone (well, almost anyone) that science has an important role to play in federal policymaking and that the decisions made by agencies to implement the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Consumer Product Safety Act, and others, all need to be rooted in the best scientific and technical information that is available. We all want science to help ensure that our health and safety are protected, that the drugs and medical devices we use are safe and effective, that the food we eat is free of disease, that our drinking water is clean, and more.
If anything, the BEST Act would take science out of the hands of scientists, and into the hands of politicians, lawyers, and judges. Sen. Lankford’s legislation is misguided and simply a solution in search of a problem. While there is always more to learn about a scientific issue, the ideas in this proposal should not be used as an excuse not to act and protect the public from public health, safety, and environmental threats.
http://blog.ucsusa.org/yogin-kothari/why-senator-lankfords-best-act-is-really-the-worst-for-federal-science
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New Version of Qsar Toolbox Launched
Apr 4, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Turley
The OECD has launched version four of its Qsar Toolbox, with some features designed specifically for companies looking to register substances under REACH ahead of the 2018 deadline.
According to 2014 figures for REACH registration dossiers, the Qsar Toolbox is the second most popular tool for Qsars after EPI Suite, including Ecosar. But their overall use remains low and strongly endpoint dependent, says Tomasz Sobański, project manager for the work at Echa. Qsars are more frequently used for fate and environmental endpoints and use for high tier human health endpoints is "marginal".
Furthermore, 65% of the time they represent only supporting evidence in, for example, weight-of-evidence justifications, rather than standalone evidence.
Mr Sobański and his team are finalising the figures for the 2017 report on "the use of alternatives to testing on animals for the REACH regulation". Publication is expected on 1 June. But based on the preliminary work he believes that use of Qsars and the Qsar Toolbox in registrations is rising.
The total number of registered users has grown steadily from about 2,000 in 2012 to more than 10,000 in 2016. Academia and industry each account for about a third of downloads, government bodies one tenth and IT companies less than one twentieth.
Support
The scope of the tool has grown with the user base. The tool now comprises two million items of data for 80,000 substances over 49 independent databases.
The latest development was primarily funded by Echa, with contributions from the OECD, industry stakeholders and national governments.
The US EPA is sponsoring a project to incorporate into the tool a model for predicting cancer. This will run over the next biennium budget period.
Features
The new version includes automated workflows for two hazard endpoints:
acute toxicity for fish; and
skin sensitisation.
These allow users to generate predictions by simply inputting the chemical structure of the substance.
The new version also includes a standardised workflow that proposes the best options for the endpoints and lets the expert choose from among them.
Others changes include:
Iuclid 6 integration;
improvements to the reporting function, so that outputs are now more customisable and reports organised so that the most important information – about for example the endpoint under consideration – is clearly visible at the start; and
the option to export the data matrix in the form of an Excel file.
https://chemicalwatch.com/54873/new-version-of-qsar-toolbox-launched
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Clean Power Plan Foe Picked to Lead Deregulation Task Force
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Arianna Skibell
U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has tapped conservative attorney and Clean Power Plan foe Samantha Dravis to lead a task force for cutting red tape.
Pruitt's memo forming the panel conforms with President Trump's February executive order on regulations, requiring agencies to set up deregulatory bodies with members that include a designated reform officer (Greenwire, Feb. 24).
Dravis, currently EPA senior counsel and associate administrator for policy, will be that reform officer, said the March 24 memo obtained by Inside EPA. The document also directs specific offices to identify rules for repeal or modification.
Dravis previously worked with Pruitt at the Republican Attorneys General Association and its associated Rule of Law Defense Fund, two organizations that have been active in fighting to dismantle Obama's Clean Power Plan.
Ryan Jackson, EPA's chief of staff, will act as chairman of the task force. Jackson is a former chief of staff for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).
Byron Brown, EPA's deputy chief of staff for policy, and Brittany Bolen, deputy associate administrator for the agency's policy office, will also serve on the task force. Brown and Bolen both acted as counsel for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee while Inhofe was chairman.
"The Task Force is charged with evaluating existing regulations and making recommendations to me regarding those that can be repealed, replaced or modified to make them less burdensome," Pruitt wrote in the memo.
Pruitt set a May 15 deadline for an array of EPA divisions to recommend rules to toss out or alter, including the offices of Air and Radiation, Land and Emergency Management, Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Water, Environmental Information, Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations, and Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization.
Pruitt noted that Trump's order requires task force officials to gather input from "entities significantly affected" by EPA rules, directing offices to consult with state, local and tribal governments, small businesses and other stakeholders before making recommendations.
"Specifically, each of those offices should hold a dedicated public meeting on this topic so that we can listen and learn directly from those impacted by our regulations," he wrote.
Second memo
In a separate memo, Pruitt directs all program and regional offices to begin immediately reporting all regulatory actions, including any statutory or judicial deadlines, petitions, pesticide tolerances, significant new rules, national priority listings, permits, and federal and state implementation plans.
"I am fully committed to ensuring that EPA's policymaking process for regulatory and non-regulatory actions — whether routine and non-controversial or more complex and novel — is based on transparency, sound science and adherence to our legal authorities and executive orders," Pruitt wrote.
The second memo requires officials to enter all rule action into the regulatory management system after certifying accuracy.
"I am confident these improvements will enhance our efforts to protect human health and the environment, foster a credible process for EPA policymaking and provide proper implementation of our legal requirements and applicable executive orders," Pruitt wrote.
Pruitt further said the agency's Office of Policy would play a critical role in managing the information-sharing effort.
Rob Verchick, who served there as former deputy associate administrator early in President Obama's term, said the memo didn't seem to require more than what already happens at EPA.
"The practice is for the Office of Policy to be aware of just about everything," he said. "That said, you have to ask why is this memo being sent? It could be this memo is meant to pick up things that aren't being picked up."
The memo does explicitly mention complying with executive orders, Verchick noted. "Since there have been so many executive orders, I think that is a definite signal that [EPA administration] is going to be watching these regulatory actions in the pipeline to make sure they comply with the orders," he said.
For example, EPA is likely using the social cost of carbon formulation, which Trump took aim at last week in a sweeping executive order, to assess the benefits of certain rules, he said.
"That would be something that would appear to violate the order," Verchick said.
Within the Office of Policy is both an economics shop, which estimates costs and benefits of proposed rules, and the Office of Regulatory Policy and Management, which handles rulemaking.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/04/04/stories/1060052579
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Energy Law Likely Unfazed by Gorsuch at SCOTUS — Obama Lawyer
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Energy lawyers may not see big changes in the courtroom if Neil Gorsuch is confirmed to the Supreme Court, a top Obama administration lawyer said yesterday.
Former Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who spent five years as the government's top litigator, said that while Gorsuch's views on judicial deference to federal agencies could spark a "revolution" in administrative law, his position will more likely be confined by the court's limited appetite for such sweeping change.
At issue is the Chevron doctrine, under which judges typically defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous laws. Gorsuch is highly skeptical of the practice, and many court watchers have speculated that his position could win over a majority in the high court.
A Supreme Court decision scrapping Chevron could amount to a "sea change" in administrative law, Verrilli said. But he cautioned that the court would face numerous questions about federal agencies' flexibility to enforce laws that were written "in a time when no one envisioned the circumstances that exist now."
"I do have a sense that ... once the Supreme Court starts to grapple directly with questions like these, the notion that you want to keep some play in the joints is going to seem like an increasingly attractive and maybe even necessary feature of whatever doctrine emerges," he said, "whether it's a continuation of Chevron or something else."
Verrilli, now at the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, made the remarks at the Energy Bar Association's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. In comments last week at an American Bar Association event in California, he praised Gorsuch's track record as both a lawyer and a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (Greenwire, March 31). The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday sent Gorsuch's nomination to the full Senate.
Speaking to a room of hundreds of lawyers yesterday, Verrilli noted that the Supreme Court would also have to consider the managerial aspect of reshaping judicial deference for agency determinations: an influx of cases.
"If there are more administrative law cases in the Supreme Court, that would be a wholesome development, I think, now that I'm in private practice," he joked.
If the court takes up the issue, energy lawyers dealing with regulatory issues might still be able to dodge major changes to their field, he said.
He noted that recent Supreme Court decisions dealing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — Hughes v. Talen Energy Marketing LLC and FERC v. Electric Power Supply Association — avoided reliance on Chevron despite government arguments invoking the doctrine.
"Both of those cases at their most basic level did involve a question of how much latitude an administrative agency gets in trying to adapt its particular statutory framework to a technologically evolving and a marketplace evolving situation," he said. "And so even without the benefit of Chevron, the agencies were able to navigate successfully in those cases."
EPSA upheld a controversial FERC rule aimed at encouraging energy conservation in wholesale power markets through a practice known as demand response. Verrilli speculated that Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the opinion, likely intentionally avoided Chevron to attract the support of her colleagues Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, who joined the majority in the case.
'I wonder if he knows anything about energy law'
Verrilli also noted yesterday that the EPSA case was one of his favorites to handle as solicitor general.
"I thought that the problem that that case posed of, 'How do you figure out the application of a statute written for a very different world almost a hundred years ago to the world that we have now?' was an incredibly interesting problem," he said. "And I enjoyed working on it very much."
FERC Solicitor Robert Solomon joked that he was initially flattered but apprehensive about Verrilli handling the case himself.
"If he's taking the time and effort to argue the FERC appeal to the Supreme Court, that really speaks well of the importance and prominence and the public interest nature of what we were trying to accomplish," he said at the EBA event. "My second thought was: Hmm, I wonder if he knows anything about energy law."
He added that Verrilli quickly put his concerns to rest.
"Well, of course, I needn't be concerned," he said. "He did a fabulous job, of course, with respect to his familiarity with energy law. He quickly proved himself to be quite an energy lawyer."
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/04/04/stories/1060052545
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Justice Official Recuses Himself from Clean Power Plan Case
Apr 4, 2017 | Bloomberg BNA
By Tiffany Stecker
The Department of Justice’s top official for the environment is recusing himself from the government’s defense of the Obama administration’s landmark climate change regulation, reports Bloomberg BNA’s Tiffany Stecker.
Jeff Wood, acting assistant attorney general for the environment and natural resources division, said on Friday that he wouldn’t participate in the case over the Clean Power Plan because of his work before joining the Justice Department, Tiffany reported.
He previously worked at Balch & Bingham LLP, where he filed an amicus brief on behalf of Republican members of Congress against the Clean Power Plan.
Read more in Tiffany’s story DOJ Official to Recuse Himself From Clean Power Plan Case.
Trump issued an executive order Tuesday directing the EPA to review its various climate change regulations, including the Clean Power Plan. The administration is also rolling back a proposal to provide aid to states and reward early compliance with the plan.
https://www.bna.com/justice-official-recuses-b57982086151/
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Executive Order has Broad Implications for Oil Regulation
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
President Trump last week laid out a wide-ranging strategy to reduce the regulatory burden on companies extracting fossil fuels from public lands.
Yesterday, the Interior Department took a first step toward implementing that plan by announcing a review of an oil, gas and coal valuation rule promulgated by its Office of Natural Resources Revenue. The agency has proposed to repeal amendments made to the rule this year. An advance notice of proposed rulemaking to revisit the original regulation will appear in today's Federal Register.
"Developed by Interior's ONRR, the original intent behind the 2017 Valuation Rule was to offer greater simplicity, certainty, clarity and consistency and product valuation and reporting for mineral lessees," the news release says. "ONRR has since identified several areas in the rule that warrant reconsideration to meet policy and implementation objectives."
Interior previously announced plans to delay the ONRR rule's implementation and to stay litigation related to the regulation (Energywire, March 27).
The review follows the release of executive and secretarial orders last week calling to review and potentially rescind four Interior rules on oil and gas extraction on federally controlled lands (see sidebar).
The ONRR regulation does not appear in those orders.
Interior rules under review
An executive order from President Trump and a secretarial order from Secretary Ryan Zinke specifically identify four Interior Department rules for review and possible repeal. The Office of Natural Resources Revenue rule does not make the list:
The Bureau of Land Management's "Oil and Gas; Hydraulic Fracturing on Federal and Indian Lands" rule: 80 Fed. Reg. 16128 (BLM fracking rule).
The Bureau of Land Management's "Waste Prevention, Production Subject to Royalties, and Resource Conservation" rule: 81 Fed. Reg. 83008 (BLM methane rule).
The National Park Service's "General Provisions and Non-Federal Oil and Gas Rights" rule: 81 Fed. Reg. 77972.
The Fish and Wildlife Service's "Management of Non-Federal Oil and Gas Rights" rule: 81 Fed. Reg. 79948.
Section 2 of the executive order indicates that the regulatory scrubbing will go far beyond the rules the president and Interior have explicitly pinpointed.
"The heads of agencies shall review all existing regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and any other similar agency actions (collectively, agency actions) that potentially burden the development or use of domestically produced energy resources, with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy resources. ... For purposes of this order, 'burden' means to unnecessarily obstruct, delay, curtail, or otherwise impose significant costs on the siting, permitting, production, utilization, transmission, or delivery of energy resources," the order says.
Luke Johnson, a former deputy director of policy and programs at the Bureau of Land Management under President George W. Bush, called the use of the word "burden" in the executive order "significant language."
"This reaches deeper than the rules that are cited," he said.
Beyond the ONRR rule and the four regulations noted in the orders, BLM's onshore orders 3, 4 and 5 could be on the chopping block. Also in the crosshairs are nearly 30 guidance documents and rules related to climate mitigation, according to Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma.
"It's very important and fairly far-reaching the reorientation of Interior away from spending so much time analyzing and mitigating speculative impacts from climate change," she said.
Broadly axing Interior's oil and gas rules would cripple the agency, said Alexandra Teitz, former counselor to the BLM director under President Obama.
"It would severely inhibit the BLM's ability to ensure that they're receiving a fair return on the extraction of public resources," she said. "BLM wouldn't be able to require accurate measurement of production, they wouldn't be able to limit waste, and ultimately the American public would not receive the royalties they are owed."
Teitz questioned Interior's approach on the ONRR rule, calling it a "knee-jerk" opposition to Obama-era rules, regardless of their merit.
"Your car dies, you take it to the shop, they work on it for days and replace a bunch of parts," she said. "Now the car runs, but it backfires. So do you fix this by ripping out all of the brand-new parts and starting over? Of course not — you try to pinpoint the source of the new problem and fix just that.
"Here, we had a broken royalty system and a rule that at least partially fixed it," she said. "But the new administration is throwing out all of the fixes, going back to the broken system, and will then consider making new fixes to that system, including the fixes they will have just thrown out."
Nada Culver, senior counsel and director of the Wilderness Society's BLM Action Center, said she will be watching how Interior moves forward following the executive order.
"It sets a tone of looking to accommodate instead of looking to regulate," Culver said. "But their responsibility is to regulate."
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/stories/1060052550
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Following Trump Order, EPA Launches Review of Oil & Gas Methane Rule
Apr 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
EPA is formally kicking off its review of its first-time methane limits for new oil and gas drilling operations, along with a host of other climate rules and policies, as directed by President Donald Trump's recent executive order targeting the Obama-era climate mitigation measures.
“Pursuant to the Executive Order, EPA is initiating its review of this Rule and providing advanced notice of forthcoming rulemaking proceedings consistent with the President’s policies,” the agency says in a notice to be published in the April 4 Federal Register.
The notice adds: “If EPA’s review concludes that suspension, revision or rescission of this Rule may be appropriate, EPA’s review will be followed by a rulemaking process that will be transparent, follow proper administrative procedures, include appropriate engagement with the public, employ sound science, and be firmly grounded in the law.”
The formal announcement of the methane rule review is very similar to a pair of notices the agency issued last week over its greenhouse gas standards for new and existing power plants. The agency has already cited those notices, as well as Trump's order, in requests for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to pause litigation over the regulations.
The power sector notices will also be published in the April 4 Register.
Litigation in the D.C. Circuit over the oil and gas methane rule, North Dakota, et al. v. EPA, et al., is not as advanced as the power sector litigation. The court on March 29 granted an EPA request for a 60-day extension for the deadline to file proposed briefing formats. The new deadline is May 19.
The agency had earlier sought the delay to “allow EPA additional time to brief incoming administration officials with decision-making responsibility about this case, so that they may become familiar with the issues presented.”
The new source performance standards (NSPS) rule marked the first time the agency regulated methane directly from the oil and gas sector after previous emissions rules targeting volatile organic compounds would have reduced methane only as a “co-benefit.”
The rule is also important in part because it creates a legal obligation for EPA to eventually regulate existing oil and gas facilities' emissions of methane, which is a potent GHG. While the Obama administration had begun collecting information from industry that could have informed a rulemaking, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt early last month dropped the requirement at the request of states and others.
The notice launching review of the NSPS includes a host of factors the agency will use as it assesses the rule, including: whether it is consistent with EPA's statutory authority, whether it respects states' authority, whether it protects public health while supporting economic growth, and whether it will maintain “the diversity of reliable energy resources” and encourage domestic energy production.
Cost Analysis
Further, the notice says EPA will also assess the NSPS “and alternative approaches to determine whether they will provide benefits that substantially exceed their costs.”
The last factor could be important, given that the rule was one of the first examples of EPA using the social cost of methane (SCM) metric to calculate the bulk of the regulation's benefits.
Republicans have long opposed the SCM and a similar tool to calculate the benefits of carbon dioxide cuts, and the agency's use of the SCM is expected to be a key issue in the upcoming litigation over the rule.
Further, Trump's recent order directs agencies not to use the SCM and related metrics, potentially creating another hurdle for the Trump EPA to issue any replacement methane standards for oil and gas equipment.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/following-trump-order-epa-launches-review-oil-gas-methane-rule
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Oil Regulator Pushed to be More Transparent
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
Environmentalists and landowners urged Texas lawmakers to make the state's top oil and gas regulator more transparent, saying it would improve public trust in state government.
The Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees the energy industry and not railroads, is already going through a legislative reauthorization process. But the state House of Representatives isn't making any major reforms to the agency as part of that process (Energywire, March 29).
A separate group of bills would make needed tweaks to the commission, according to witnesses at a hearing of the state's House Natural Resources Committee. House bills 642 and 237 would change its name to the Texas Energy Resources Commission, H.B. 247 would require it to post a searchable database of its enforcement cases, and H.B. 2588 would allow it to conduct criminal background checks of its employees.
The commission's name, which dates to its establishment in 1891, makes it hard for citizens who want to file complaints about oil and gas or pipeline problems, said state Rep. Larry Phillips, a Republican from Sherman who is sponsoring one of two bills to change the name.
"We deserve to have a name that fits and does not confuse our constituents," he said.
Likewise, posting the commission's enforcement data would provide crucial information to landowners and other people who want to keep track of the energy industry, said Rep. Rafael Anchia, a Dallas Democrat.
Roxanne Elder, a fourth-generation rancher who lives in the Eagle Ford Shale oil field, said she was frustrated by the Railroad Commission after she filed a complaint about an oil company that spilled drilling mud laced with diesel fuel on her property. She had to file a written public information request with the Railroad Commission to find out whether the agency had taken action against the drilling company involved, she testified.
"Had House Bill 247 been in effect at that time, I would've had access to data to assist me as the impacted landowner in understanding what other types of incidents had occurred in our region of the state and how those had been resolved by the commission," Elder said.
The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club and Public Citizen Texas also spoke in favor of the bills.
The complaints about the Railroad Commission have been around for at least a decade, but the Republican-dominated Legislature has stopped short of addressing them, under pressure from the oil and gas industry.
The Texas House committee didn't vote on the bills yesterday, which is normal in the Texas Legislature. The commission didn't offer any testimony, nor did any oil companies or trade groups. Committee Chairman Drew Darby (R) noted that the Legislature is trying to increase the Railroad Commission's budget to help it improve its technology.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/04/04/stories/1060052546
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Dakota Access Pipeline Complete, Readying for Operations
Apr 4, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By David Hunn
Energy Transfer Partners has finished construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a spokeswoman confirmed, and is now filling the line with crude to prepare it for service in mid-April.
Dakota Access was the focus of heated protests and sometimes violent clashes with authorities for months last year. Environmentalists saw it as a symbol of global warming and the proliferation of fossil fuel use. The Standing Rock Sioux, who tapped the Missouri River for tribal water, argued that the pipeline’s river crossing threatened the tribe’s main water source, and also traversed sacred burial grounds.
Late last year, President Barack Obama refused to approve the pipeline’s final connection, under the Missouri, and sent plans back to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for review. But President Donald Trump, fulfilling campaign promises, quickly reversed Obama’s decision after taking office.
The 1,200-mile pipeline stretches from Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to Patoka, Ill. Energy Transfer Partners expects it to take a few more weeks to fill the line with oil. Then the company will fill the next line in the system, the $1-billion, 750-mile Energy Transfer Crude Oil project, which runs from Patoka to refineries in Nederland, Texas near Beaumont.
The company expects the full Bakken system to be in service by June 1, the spokeswoman said.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2017/04/04/dakota-access-pipeline-complete-readying-for-operations/
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Senate Warned Cyber Threat to Power Grid “At an All Time High”
Apr 4, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By James Osborne
The potential for a major cyber attack against the nation’s power grid is “at an all time high,” Gerry Cauley, president of the grid operators group North American Electric Reliability Corporation, warned during a Senate hearing Tuesday.
While acknowledging hackers had yet to shut down power to U.S. power customers, Cauley pointed to a 2015 attack in Ukraine that resulted in 225,000 customers losing power for several hours.
“We will never be complacent. The risk is very real,” he said.
His comments came during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing Tuesday, part of a long-term push by the federal government to bolster security at the nation’s power plants and substations to prevent attacks like those that have recently struck Europe.
The Department of Energy continues to work on developing what Patricia Hoffman, acting assistant secretary at the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, called “an ecosystem of resilience,’ by developing security standards and improve information sharing between government officials and the companies that operate the grid.
“This is one of the secretary’s top priorities,” Hoffman said.
The the growing presence of automated technology on the power grid is allowing hackers, “to develop more attack path options than ever before,” Andrew Bochman, senior cyber and energy strategist at Idaho National Laboratory, testified.
“Cyber risk futurists, myself included, are experiencing a palpable sense of foreboding,” he said in his testimony.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2017/04/04/senate-warned-cyber-threat-to-power-grid-at-an-all-time-high/
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Officials Hope Trump Cyber Order is Worth the Wait
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
The extended wait for President Trump's cybersecurity executive order may signal a welcomed deeper dive into the challenges, a Department of Homeland Security official said yesterday.
A leaked initial version of a new cybersecurity executive order was published in January in The Washington Post but was never officially confirmed and was pulled back for more work. There is still no public word on when it will be issued.
"I kind of like that they're out there surveying a lot of people," Brad Nix, director of the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team at the Department of Homeland Security, said at a cybersecurity conference in Annapolis, Md., yesterday.
"We have to see what it looks like," said Dan Jacobs, cybersecurity program coordinator for the General Services Administration, speaking at the Government Information Technology Executive Council conference.
"I am hearing a lot of good conversation taking place to get a sense of where agencies are and the challenges they're facing. That's good," he said. "Questions are being asked."
A later version of a draft cybersecurity executive order, "Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure," leaked last month, adopted two of the Obama administration's cyber initiatives. It stood in sharp contrast to moves by Trump to pull up other Obama policies by the roots. This draft, for instance, called for federal agencies to start using the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, based on a President Obama executive order.
Jacobs said that no matter what the big picture strategy turns out to be, the federal government will still be challenged to move cyber policies out quickly because of the hiring freeze and the spending limits across the government.
"Those topics still need to be dealt with," Jacobs said.
And some government officials are using the executive order as an excuse to delay decisions and actions, he said.
"It kills me, but we are still living in a world where even [information technology] implementers resist change," he said.
"I'm actually hearing on several occasions, 'I just want to see what is happening with the cyber executive order,'" he said. "It may not drop for another two to three months."
His response, he said: "Why are you waiting? You see what the draft is. You have the ability to start posturing your agency today.
"Why are you waiting for the president of the United States to do your job?"
Nix said concentrated leadership is needed at the top to reconcile a spate of administration actions on cybersecurity, numbering 13 executive orders, laws and policies over the past four or five years, some repetitive, some innovative.
"But to my knowledge there is no real central component that is pulling all these together," Nix said. "We are kind of doing the things that we knew were missed" when the last policy directive was issued, "or the things that may be politically expedient."
Jacobs said he would have other advice for the president.
"The perception is that we are allowing international organizations to walk uncontested through our backyard," Jabobs said he would tell the president.
"That needs to end," he said. "We need to tell the American people we're not going to allow that to happen."
Mark Kneidinger, DHS director for cybersecurity and communications at the Federal Network Resilience Division, said that within government, "we've made some huge gains in the past 18 months" in breaking down interagency barriers.
There is more determination than ever among government IT leadership to push ahead, he added.
But the level of collaboration is still rudimentary, he said. More must be done to improve communications models and processes. "Because the threat continues to grow," Kneidinger said. "We're going to have to reach another level."
Mike Echols, former director of the joint program management office at the DHS National Protection and Programs Directorate, said the goal remains for an integrated cyberdefense "where everybody is playing in the same direction."
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/04/04/stories/1060052549
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Killing Clean Power Plan Moves US Backward on Air Pollution
Apr 4, 2017 | The Hill - Opinion
By Elizabeth Brandt
Last week, President Trump made official his administration’s plan to begin the process of dismantling America’s Clean Power Plan, a plan that protects American families by curbing dangerous carbon pollution and reducing other toxic pollutants from power plants. The executive order invalidates the public health protections that would be achieved under the Clean Power Plan — the most significant step that our country has ever taken to address the urgent crisis of climate change.
Air pollution has real-life impacts, and dismantling the Clean Power Plan could allow up to 3,600 premature deaths, 90,000 asthma attacks in children, and 300,000 missed work and school days annually by 2030, according to the EPA.
As a mother and a social worker, I say not on my watch. We have an obligation to systematically reduce the air pollution that exacerbates asthma in our precious children and makes climate change worse.
In December, a group of concerned parents went to the EPA to back up the state of Maryland’s request that the agency ensure that coal fired power plants in other states use their quality controls on more summer days. In the summertime, downwind areas like Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia have high-ozone days where the air pollution has primarily blown in from other states. We need a strong EPA to make sure that we aren’t suffering from increased respiratory illnesses because another state doesn’t think environmental protection is a priority.
Kids suffering from asthma already miss a combined 14 million days of school each year because of scary episodes of labored breathing. We cannot afford to go backward on this issue.
We’ve made progress: Between 1970 and 2015, according to the EPA, aggregate emissions of common air pollutants dropped nearly 70 percent while the U.S. gross domestic product more than doubled.
From Elizabeth Brandt, Moms Clean Air Force, Field Consultant, Washington, D.C., Chevy Chase, Md.
http://thehill.com/opinion/letters/327057-killing-clean-power-plan-moves-us-backward-on-air-pollution
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9th Circuit Backs EPA Power to Impose Haze Plans on States
Apr 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has reinforced EPA's Clean Air Act authority to impose federal implementation plans (FIPs) directly writing air pollution control plans to reduce regional haze in states where the agency deems a state-crafted plan for curbing haze-forming emissions to be inadequate.
While the ruling backs EPA's FIP authority, the agency's critics -- including current Administrator Scott Pruitt, the former GOP attorney general of Oklahoma -- have often clashed with EPA over what they say is federal overreach in trying to override state's plans and impose its own in lieu of SIPs.
In a unanimous April 3 ruling, a three-judge panel ruled in State of Arizona ex rel. Henry Darwin v. EPA backed the agency's decision to reject Arizona's state implementation plan (SIP) for reducing haze and backing the agency's FIP.
Arizona has been battling EPA since the agency disapproved the 2011 haze SIP but has already lost several challenges to the FIP, and the new ruling concerns remaining elements of the FIP that were still at issue in litigation.
The court dismisses most of the state's complaints on largely procedural grounds without weighing in on the merits of the FIP. “We hold that several of Petitioners’ objections to the FIP are not properly before us because they were not first presented to the EPA during the notice-and-comment period,” writes Judge Jay Bybee on behalf of fellow 9th Circuit Judges Marsha Berzon and John Owens.
Arizona and utilities in the case objected to EPA's use of numeric, rather than merely qualitative reasonable progress goals (RPG) for tracking progress in meeting the goals of the agency's regional haze program, which aims to cut haze-forming emissions and improve visibility in “Class I” national parks and wilderness areas.
The petitioners also faulted the FIP's specific emissions limits for copper smelters for being too stringent. And they criticized the agency's elimination of an “affirmative defense” against civil liability for high emissions during malfunctions. EPA has been removing such defenses from its rules, and asking states to remove them from SIPs, in response to D.C. Circuit rulings that have declared the exemptions to be unlawful.
On numeric RPGs and the affirmative defense, the court finds that petitioners' claims are barred because they did not exhaust their options for administrative redress by asking EPA to reconsider those aspects of the FIP first. On remaining issues, such as the copper smelter claims, the court defers to EPA's scientific expertise. The limits for “copper smelters were neither arbitrary nor capricious, but reasoned, deliberate, and sensitive to data. We therefore decline to invalidate the emission limitations imposed on those sources,” Bybee writes.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/9th-circuit-backs-epa-power-impose-haze-plans-states
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Trump Can't Kill State Efforts to Curb Pollution: California is the Latest Example
Apr 4, 2017 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Timothy O'Connor
As the Trump administration continues to tear down critical environmental and public health protections, an opposite trend is gaining momentum in states that understand what our president doesn’t: It’s possible to curb pollution while growing our economy.
The latest example of such state leadership is California’s recent decision to cut emissions from the oil and gas industry. It’s the first major environmental regulation to be issued since Trump took office and it sends a clear message that state’s aren’t going to take the new administration’s attacks on the environment lying down.
California part of a bigger trend
Many Americans still view California, the world’s sixth largest economy, as an outlier. The state’s decision to pass the country’s strongest oil and gas regulations will undoubtedly feed that narrative.
Except in this case, California is following several other states such as Colorado, Ohio and Wyoming that already moved to reduce pollution from oil and gas operations. Pennsylvania, the nation’s second-largest gas producer, is pursuing similar policies as well.
California’s action will go farther than any other because of its scope of covered sources and the state’s extensive energy production. The Golden State is the third-largest producer of oil in the country and second-largest user of natural gas, which means the new policies will have a significant impact.
$50 million in lost gas
Going forward, operators in the state will be required to monitor and reduce methane emissions from oil and gas wells, natural gas processing facilities, compressor stations and other equipment used to process and deliver oil and natural gas.
It will help capture some of the $50 million worth of gas that the California oil and gas industry is wasting every year because of leaky equipment – a change that will benefit industry as well.
It will also show other states that sensible policies do work.
States are getting it
With state policies to curb methane emissions being adopted by red states as well as blue, California’s new methane regulations will help reinforce the message that environmental regulations and economic growth can actually go hand-in-hand.
Cutting oil and gas emissions is one of the most-cost effective ways to protect air quality, tackle climate change and reduce energy waste. And it can be done by implementing home-grown solutions that result in new business opportunities.
Such opportunities aren’t lost on visionary governors who look out for their citizens, regardless of who happens to sit in the Oval Office. We don’t have to choose between a healthy economy and healthy environment – we can, and should, have both.
https://www.edf.org/blog/2017/04/04/trump-cant-kill-state-efforts-curb-pollution-california-latest-example
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