Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 4/5/2017
-
New York Pours $2.5 Billion into Clean Water Programs
Apr 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
New York is primed to pump $2.5 billion into its water infrastructure programs following the discovery of chemical contamination in drinking water throughout a number of sites across the state. -
NGO Calls on SC Johnson to Share Safety Standards
Apr 5, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
NGO Women’s Voices of the Earth (WVE) has welcomed SC Johnson's plans to phase out the fragrance ingredient galaxolide, but has called on the company to make its safety standards publicly available. -
8 Questions for Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s FDA Nominee
Apr 4, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Scott Faber
On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold a confirmation hearing for Scott Gottlieb, a doctor who is President Trump’s nominee to run the Food and Drug Administration. Here are eight questions committee members should ask... -
Fire Retardant Replacements Migrate to Arctic Sediment
Apr 4, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Janet Pelley
For the first time, researchers have measured a new class of fire retardants in Arctic Ocean sediments, far from the compounds’ intended end uses in couch cushions and television sets (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b00755)... -
PETA Protests Increase in TSCA Animal Testing Requests
Apr 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is protesting what it warns will be increased animal testing under EPA's plan to prioritize existing chemicals for risk evaluation in order to comply with requirements in the overhauled Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)... -
A US Trade Deal Out of the EU’s Reach Would Be a Health and Safety Disaster
Apr 5, 2017 | The Guardian
By Geraint Davies
With each day the repercussions of Brexit give pause for ominous thought. We know it threatens UK jobs in export industries. What should alarm us just as much are the awful implications for the health and safety of every one of us. -
States Raise Specter of Suit over EPA's Withdrawa of Oil & Gas Methane ICR
Apr 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
A coalition of eight states is hinting it may take legal action against EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's decision to scrap a data collection effort intended to inform methane standards for existing oil and gas drilling equipment, arguing Pruitt has not explained how EPA... -
Maryland Governor Signs Fracking Ban into Law
Apr 4, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Tuesday signed a bill establishing a ban on hydraulic fracturing in the state. -
Chevron Pivots to Permian Shale as Mega-Project Era Fades
Apr 5, 2017 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Ernest Scheyder
Nearly a century after Chevron Corp amassed the No. 2 stake in America's largest oilfield, Chief Executive John Watson is hitting the accelerator on developing the company's vast Permian Basin holdings. -
Senators Hear Case for DOE Research as Budget Cuts Loom
Apr 5, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Peter Behr
A government cybersecurity expert gave a Senate committee a shielded look at a new Energy Department and national laboratory research project that seeks to defend against the most virulent state-sponsored hacking attacks on critical infrastructure. -
Proposed Cuts Leave Agencies Two Choices: Keep Quiet or Speak Out
Apr 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
The deep budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration for fiscal year 2018 would leave more than a dozen small agencies in a quandary: keep quiet or speak out to tell the public why they should stay open. -
Challenges Remain to Sharing Cyber Threat Information on Grid: Industry
Apr 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
Dave McCurdy, a former House representative and president of the American Gas Association, has been waiting for his Energy Department security clearance to receive classified cybersecurity briefings. For over a year. -
I Write Thrillers. My Research Showed Me How Easily Terrorists Can Strike Us.
Apr 5, 2017 | Washington Post
By Matthew Quirk
A gray SUV idled across the street from the chemical plant. Gas storage tanks, four stories tall, towered over the low-slung neighborhood. It was a hot, dry Sunday in southeast Los Angeles. -
Thousands of Defects Found on Oil Train Routes
Apr 5, 2017 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Matthew Brown
Government inspections of railroads that haul volatile crude oil across the United States have uncovered almost 24,000 safety defects, including problems similar to those blamed in derailments that triggered massive fires or oil spills in Oregon, Virginia, Montana and elsewhere... -
(ACC Mentioned) Ewire: A Daily News Roundup
Apr 5, 2017 | Inside EPA
The Congressional Budget Office may have found that a House Republican bill overhauling EPA's scientific processes may only the cost the agency around $5 million per year but that estimate appears to have been made without input from EPA's staff. -
White House Disavows Two Controversial Tax Ideas Hours After Officials Say They’re Under Consideration
Apr 4, 2017 | Washington Post
By Damian Paletta and Max Ehrenfreund
The White House on Tuesday disavowed two controversial options for their planned overhaul of the tax code, after two Trump administration officials earlier in the day said the president's team was exploring a value-added tax to raise government revenue. -
Pruitt ECOS Keynote May Detail Plan To Shift Environmental Work To States
Apr 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will give the keynote speech later this week at the Environmental Council of the States' (ECOS) spring meeting, where he might elaborate for the group of state regulators on his previously announced plan to shift environmental protection work to the states.... -
AFL-CIO Chief Pitched Trump on Climate Benefits of Border Tax
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey
The leader of the largest federation of labor unions today said he had pitched President Trump on using a border adjustment tax to tamp down on carbon emissions and air pollution. -
Federal Haze Controls in Arizona Stay After Challenges Tossed
Apr 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By William H. Carlile
Industrial sources in Arizona will still have to comply with a federal plan to protect air quality in parks and wilderness areas after an appeals court dismissed objections to an EPA plan to reduce regional haze. -
Carper Seeks Staff Review of 'Secret Science' Bill Costs
Apr 5, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) is seeking all U.S. EPA records of a key analysis related to the cost of the controversial "secret science" bill. -
What Financial Markets Can Teach Us About Managing Climate Risks
Apr 4, 2017 | New York Times
By Michael Greenstone
Say an investor had only two options of what to put money in: gold or stocks. Gold has an average annual rate of return of 3 percent, while the stock market delivers a healthier 5 percent. Which should the investor choose? Seems simple, right? Take the higher payout.
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
LCSA News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
-
New York Pours $2.5 Billion into Clean Water Programs
Apr 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
New York is primed to pump $2.5 billion into its water infrastructure programs following the discovery of chemical contamination in drinking water throughout a number of sites across the state.
The Clean Water Infrastructure Act, which is included in a budget bill (S. 5492) expected to be signed shortly by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), would provide $725 million in the 2017-18 fiscal year, but residents of Hoosick Falls are disappointed they won't see dedicated cleanup funding as part of the measure.
“We're ground zero for water contamination in New York state,” Michele Baker, a Hoosick Falls resident, told Bloomberg BNA
Baker is the lead plaintiff in a class action against Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp. and Honeywell International Inc. over drinking water contamination after perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) were found in the drinking water. She estimates $25 million is needed to clean the city's drinking water supply. Saint-Gobain and Honeywell have been named as potential responsible parties for the Hoosick Falls contamination under the state Superfund law and are also facing civil lawsuits.
New York's water infrastructure measure also includes $130 million for the remediation of hazardous waste sites with water contamination and $100 million for municipal water supply infrastructure programs. It also provides $20 million for the replacement of lead drinking water service lines and $200 million to protect the New York City watershed.
Funding Applauded
Darren Suarez, director of government affairs for the Business Council of New York State, applauded the act.
“New York, like many other states, faces real challenges with our water infrastructure and these funds are critical to ensuring our water treatment and delivery systems continue to provide public health protection,” he told Bloomberg BNA in an email.
Paul Gallay, president of Riverkeeper, also praised the funding.
“After decades of under-investment, New York is finally doing what's needed to fix its aging water infrastructure,” he said.
The budget bill was approved by both houses of the Legislature April 3 as an emergency measure because lawmakers missed the deadline for the start of the state fiscal year on April 1.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=108559904&vname=dennotallissues&fn=108559904&jd=108559904
-
NGO Calls on SC Johnson to Share Safety Standards
Apr 5, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
NGO Women’s Voices of the Earth (WVE) has welcomed SC Johnson's plans to phase out the fragrance ingredient galaxolide, but has called on the company to make its safety standards publicly available.
SC Johnson announced in March that it planned to transition from using galaxolide to two macrocyclic musks – ethylene brassylate and habanolide – that meet the company’s safety and performance standards.
The announcement followed a campaign from WVE calling on the company to stop using the synthetic musk, which is an ingredient in 80 products including the Glade, Windex and Pledge lines.
Erin Switalski, executive director of WVE, said the NGO greatly appreciates “that SC Johnson is taking time and effort to ensure that these replacements are not regrettable substitutions as we have seen in too many similar chemical phase-out situations, like BPA.”
But added: “Unfortunately, the details of the company’s high safety standards are currently considered proprietary. Given the company’s proven leadership in transparency, we believe that publicly sharing the criteria of their safety standards is the best way to demonstrate the integrity of their process.”
SC Johnson previously said, in a letter to WVE, that the company constantly reviewed scientific information and considered reformulations when there was enough evidence.
The company said that Echa and the US EPA have found the substance not to meet persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) criteria, and defended the rigour of its chemical review efforts.
In response, WVE said that numerous studies have shown that galaxolide pollution is ubiquitous in our environment. Ms Switalski said it was "very concerned" that the US EPA and Echa relied on "the same handful of studies, which are largely unpublished and unavailable to scientists or advocates outside of the fragrance industry and which wholly contradicted the results of earlier testing and modelling."
Alexandra Scranton, director of science and research at WVE, said: “Given its PBT nature, eliminating the use of galaxolide today is the only way to prevent current and future harm from exposure to this chemical. Any continued use just adds to the already prevalent contamination of our environment and our bodies.”
https://chemicalwatch.com/54844/ngo-calls-on-sc-johnson-to-share-safety-standards
-
8 Questions for Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s FDA Nominee
Apr 4, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Scott Faber
On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold a confirmation hearing for Scott Gottlieb, a doctor who is President Trump’s nominee to run the Food and Drug Administration. Here are eight questions committee members should ask Gottlieb:
1. Will he make food safety a priority? Contaminated food kills 3,000 Americans every year. Will Gottlieb fully implement the Food Safety Modernization Act, including a rule requiring farmers to test irrigation water? And will he help fight to get the funds needed to regularly inspect food manufacturing facilities?
2. Will he finally subject food chemicals to review? Thousands of chemicals are added to food without adequate FDA review. Will Gottlieb subject food chemicals to meaningful FDA review, as the law requires? How will he stop industry from using secret industry “science” to approve food chemicals?
3. Does he think chlorpyrifos is safe? Last week, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt ignored overwhelming evidence linking this pesticide to neurological problems and scrapped a proposed ban. Does Gottlieb believe this pesticide should still be sprayed on our food? How will he address imported produce with high levels of chlorpyrifos residue?
4. Does he support FDA review of cosmetics chemicals? Cosmetics and other personal care products include thousands of chemicals – including some linked to cancer – that are not subject to any FDA review. Will he support bipartisan efforts to subject the most dangerous cosmetics chemicals to FDA oversight?
5. How will he reduce the use of medically important antibiotics? Recent FDA rules and guidance documents have done little to reduce the routine use of antibiotics in animal production. What steps will he take to preserve the effectiveness of these life-saving drugs?
6. How will he make sunscreen chemicals safer? Safer, more effective sunscreen chemicals have been approved for use by other nations but still can’t be used in American products. Will he provide the resources needed for the FDA to quickly review and, if warranted, allow these new formulations on the market?
7. Will he demand clearer food labels? Food labels are riddled with misleading claims like “natural” and “healthy.” Will Gottlieb increase FDA enforcement efforts to stop these deceptive claims? Will the FDA enforce deadlines to update the Nutrition Facts Panel and new menu labeling requirements?
8. Will he support GMO transparency? A new GMO disclosure law will go into effect next year, requiring food companies to disclose GMO ingredients. Will Gottlieb support efforts to require the disclosure of all GMO ingredients, including GMO sugars and oils?
http://www.ewg.org/planet-trump/2017/04/8-questions-scott-gottlieb-trump-s-fda-nominee
-
Fire Retardant Replacements Migrate to Arctic Sediment
Apr 4, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Janet Pelley
For the first time, researchers have measured a new class of fire retardants in Arctic Ocean sediments, far from the compounds’ intended end uses in couch cushions and television sets (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b00755). The findings add to growing evidence that organophosphate ester flame retardants (OPEs) might have many of the same properties that led to the phase-out of their predecessors, brominated flame retardants.
After decades of research, manufacturers and regulators curtailed the use of brominated flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in the early 2000s. Numerous studies cataloged how these compounds interfere with the endocrine systems of humans and animals and contaminate substances including mothers’ milk and arctic sediment. In 2009, the parties to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) added two kinds of PBDEs to their POPs list. The parties determined that the compounds met the criteria: The listed PBDEs are persistent, toxic, travel long range, and accumulate in food chains.
As concerns grew over PBDEs, manufacturers turned to OPEs as alternative flame retardants, but scientists are concerned that these replacements may also meet the Stockholm Convention’s criteria for POPs. Not much is known about the human health effects of OPEs, yet some governments have listed them as cancer-causing agents, and in vitro and animal data suggest that the compounds may be endocrine disrupters—so they may meet the criterion of toxicity. They do not appear to increase in concentration as they move up the food chain, although like the brominated retardants they are replacing, OPEs readily escape into the environment and have been found in fish and in human breast milk, research shows.
But gaseous OPEs readily break down in sunlight with a half-life of less than two days. Therefore researchers initially assumed that the retardants did not meet the criteria of persistence and long-range travel. “However, other researchers have reported OPEs in arctic air, suggesting that they are transported long distances as are traditional POPs,” says Yuxin Ma, an environmental chemist at Shanghai Ocean University. Because no one had looked for OPEs in Arctic marine sediments, Ma and her team decided to investigate.
The scientists sailed aboard an icebreaker from the Bering Sea to the Arctic Ocean as part of the fourth Chinese National Arctic Research Expedition in 2010, scooping up sediments along the way. At the same time, they tracked flame retardants in the air (Env. Sci. Technol. 2012, DOI: 10.1021/es204272v). Back in the lab, Ma’s group measured OPEs and PBDEs in the sediment using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.
The scientists detected OPEs in all the samples, ranging in concentration from 159-4658 pg per g dry sediment, higher than DDT levels noted in earlier research on arctic sediment. The samples that Ma took from the central Arctic Ocean posted the highest average amounts of OPEs in the study. “These concentrations of OPEs are 5 to 10 times higher than the levels of PBDEs that we found, suggesting that OPEs are just as prone to long-range transport as PBDEs are,” Ma says. She speculates that by adsorbing to solid particles in air, OPEs hitch a free ride to the Arctic, shielded from destruction by sunlight. Her shipmates who detected flame retardants in the arctic air also found OPEs at higher levels than PBDE concentrations on air particles. Taken together, the evidence suggests that OPEs are more efficiently transported to arctic sediments than PBDEs.
“This study contributes to a wider view of long-range atmospheric transport than found in the Stockholm Convention,” says Roland Kallenborn, an environmental chemist at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. OPEs are not classic POPs because on their own they have a short half-life and easily degrade in sunlight. But nonetheless they make their way to remote arctic sediments, raising the question whether the Stockholm convention’s way of evaluating chemicals’ long-range transport should be changed to account for other ways of transport besides just the pure chemical moving on its own, he concludes.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/web/2017/04/Fire-retardant-replacements-migrate-to-arctic-sediment.html
-
PETA Protests Increase in TSCA Animal Testing Requests
Apr 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is protesting what it warns will be increased animal testing under EPA's plan to prioritize existing chemicals for risk evaluation in order to comply with requirements in the overhauled Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), saying the law called for reduced animal testing.
In recent comments and a letter to EPA, PETA argues the prioritization plan “could require chemical manufacturers to conduct extensive toxicity testing -- before [EPA] even prioritizes chemicals for risk evaluation.”
EPA in January proposed its approach to prioritizing chemicals for evaluation using a four-step process. The agency 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. PETA is objecting to the first step, which EPA refers to as “pre-prioritization,” warning that it would be at odds with the TSCA overhaul's push to reduce animal testing.
The revised law, which required the prioritization program, “directed the Agency to reduce and replace the use of vertebrate animals in chemical testing,” says a March 30 PETA letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
The letter follows March 20 comments accusing EPA of ignoring of “TSCA section 4(a)(2)(B), which delineates its authority to 'require the development of new information for the purposes of prioritizing a chemical substance” for review under section 6 of the law. “Under the proposed screening process, the Agency expects to require the development of a significant amount of new information before initiating prioritization,” PETA says. “To the extent that this information includes the results of new animal tests, such overreach runs counter to the Agency’s responsibility to reduce and replace the use of vertebrate animals under section 4(h),” the comments say.
EPA “cannot require the development of new information before initiating prioritization without causing the statutory deadlines imposed upon it by sections 4(a)(2)(B) and 6(b)(1)(C) to conflict,” PETA argues. “As the Agency clearly lacks such authority, it must revise the proposed rule by replacing the proposed screening process with one that accounts for both statutory deadlines as well as all other relevant provisions meant to ensure that the use of vertebrate animals in the testing of chemical substances is reduced and replaced.”
PETA argues that the only way around the conflict in the statute created by EPA's proposal would be to initiate prioritization of a substance before requiring new testing. The most efficient approach for the agency would be using the screening process developed by the Obama EPA in 2012 for its TSCA work plan program, PETA says. Obama EPA leaders sought to prepare for the anticipated TSCA reform and to more strictly enforce the original TSCA in light of Congressional inaction with the work plan program, which used existing data to prioritize chemicals for assessment.
PETA's concerns are directed at one of EPA's proposed 'framework rules,' a handful of rules that Congress directs EPA to finalize -- some within a year of the law's enactment -- that will set up EPA's new TSCA program.
The changes affect existing chemicals, those that were on the market when the original TSCA took effect in 1976 -- and chemicals added to the TSCA inventory since -- because these were largely grandfathered under the original law. The overhaul gives EPA more authority over existing chemicals, and directs the agency to prioritize these for risk evaluation and if necessary, risk management action.
PETA's position, however, is also at odds with environmentalists. Environmental groups in comments submitted last month on the proposal agreed with EPA that the pre-prioritization step in the proposal is necessary. Their comments pointed to requirements in the law that EPA have some information about the chemical it is prioritizing, and the strict deadlines for completing the prioritization process, which then leads directly to the risk assessment deadlines.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/peta-protests-increase-tsca-animal-testing-requests
-
A US Trade Deal Out of the EU’s Reach Would Be a Health and Safety Disaster
Apr 5, 2017 | The Guardian
By Geraint Davies
With each day the repercussions of Brexit give pause for ominous thought. We know it threatens UK jobs in export industries. What should alarm us just as much are the awful implications for the health and safety of every one of us. As the Council of Europe rapporteur on the EU-US free trade deal TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) blocked by President Trump, and on the environmental audit committee, I have been talking to officials from the US chemical industry, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the American Federation of Labour (US TUC) and US members of Congress.
There is much jargon to be navigated, but put simply, if we leave the EU we step out of the protective umbrella of Reach, the EU directive that requires companies to prove their chemicals are safe to human health and the environment before they can be sold. The process works on the “precautionary principle” central to EU regulation: companies have to prove their products are safe. That basic approach simply isn’t recognised in the US.Is chlorinated chicken about to hit our shelves after new US trade deal?
Read more
If the UK abandons the single market, it will start the negotiation of a US-UK trade deal without the protection of Reach. Instead we will be expected to adopt the US Toxic Substances Control Act (Tosca) – a toothless tiger measure from 1976 that even allows asbestos to be sold in the US as well as other chemicals long outlawed by the EU.
There is irony here. TTIP would have meant the US chemical giants having to accept European health and safety standards. That’s why last year they acted swiftly to hamper an amendment that would have obliged them to prove chemicals are safe before selling them. Instead, the onus has now been placed upon the EPA to prove each new chemical is hazardous within just 90 working days. This is a very tough call; now made much tougher by Donald Trump’s announcement that the EPA budget will be cut by 30%. The odds are already stacked against the protection agency. It is already obliged to spend eight years of testing and consultation before it can ban existing chemicals, even those that have safe substitutes but cause respiratory, neurological or life-shortening effects, such as asbestos.
Even if states decided to ban chemicals unilaterally to protect their citizens, their hands can be tied. California, New York and 10 other states have introduced laws to ban dangerous chemicals. However, just the referral of a chemical to the EPA for testing prevents a state from banning it.
So far, so bad, but what does this mean for us? It means a health and safety disaster if our UK-US trade deal has chemicals regulated under US rules. We should also think about our agriculture. If US rules prevail in respect of our food, hormone-impregnated and antibiotic-saturated US beef and chicken linked to premature puberty in children could find its way on to our supermarket shelves.
A few weeks before the EU referendum, I asked Boris Johnson to name any EU law applied in the UK to which he objected. After complaining about bananas, he named Reach. His ignorance would have been harmless had the referendum vote gone the other way.
Instead, the UK faces the prospect of US chemical standards and other lesser regulations. We know enough about their application and the risks they present to the public on the other side of the Atlantic to know we don’t want them here.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/05/us-trade-deal-eu-reach-health-safety-food
-
States Raise Specter of Suit over EPA's Withdrawa of Oil & Gas Methane ICR
Apr 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
A coalition of eight states is hinting it may take legal action against EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's decision to scrap a data collection effort intended to inform methane standards for existing oil and gas drilling equipment, arguing Pruitt has not explained how EPA will “fulfill its legal obligation” to limit the sector's emissions of the potent greenhouse gas.
Also, a utility sector lawyer is arguing that scrapping related methane standards for new drilling equipment would be the “height of inconsistency” unless the Trump EPA entirely denies mainstream climate science.
The states, led by Massachusetts, argue in an April 3 letter that Pruitt's withdrawal of the information collection request (ICR) launched under the Obama administraiton was an “arbitrary action [that] demonstrates a disregard on your part for the mechanisms that ensure public participation in important governmental decision-making processes.”
They add that the March 2 withdrawal offered “no meaningful explanation, let alone a reasoned one,” and that it came “without any opportunity for other states, stakeholders, and the general public to provide input -- notwithstanding the fact that the ICR itself had been subject to two rounds of notice and comment prior to its finalization.”
The arguments allude to several requirements in the Administrative Procedure Act -- that agencies offer a “reasoned” explanation for their actions, generally seek and consider public comment on regulatory actions, and not act in an “arbitrary” manner.
Further, the states point to a Clean Air Act provision that says EPA “shall” issue methane standards for existing oil and gas equipment under section 111(d) of the law, given that the agency has already issued methane limits for new sources under section 111(b), though Pruitt is poised to target the new source rule.
“EPA is required to issue performance standards for existing oil and gas sector sources of methane emissions,” the states' letter says. While the now-scrapped ICR was not required to issue such standards, “EPA issued the ICR to assist in its development of standards that would be reasonable and workable for regulated entities.”
As such, the states urge Pruitt to reconsider his decision to withdraw the ICR, “or otherwise explain how EPA intends to fulfill its legal obligation to address methane pollution under the Clean Air Act.”
The letter does not specifically say that the states are mulling a lawsuit over EPA's withdrawal of the ICR, but the letter's numerous legal claims could form the basis of any such suit.
In addition to Massachusetts, states joining the letter include California, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. The District of Columbia also signed the letter.
NSPS Review
However, the letter comes just days after EPA launched a nascent review of the new source performance standards (NSPS) cutting methane from new drilling equipment, in response to President Donald Trump's executive order that urged EPA to reconsider the rule, along with a host of other climate policies. The review could lead to its “suspension, revision or rescission,” the agency says.
If the NSPS is scrapped, that would eliminate EPA's obligation -- cited in the recent states' letter -- to eventually regulate methane from existing oil and gas equipment.
The rule has been challenged in appellate court by several states and industry groups that argue, among other things, that EPA unlawfully did not issue a sector-specific endangerment finding before issuing the rule, and that its method of calculating the climate-related benefits of methane cuts was flawed.
However, William Bumpers, a Baker Botts attorney with several utility sector clients, told an April 4 Energy Bar Association conference that scrapping the NSPS would be “the height of inconsistency here unless you are a true climate denier.”
Any serious effort to address climate change “is going to result in a whole lot of new natural gas. Gas is coming on in huge quantities . . . and that’s what’s driving coal plants out of business. It’s what’s helping to reduce the carbon footprint in our industry, but if at the same time you don’t have rigorous oversight of the drilling and production facilities to reduce methane, we will have shot ourselves in the foot,” he said.
Bumpers added that “from an environmental standpoint, the single most important thing to preserve of all of the things in the executive order that were targeted.”
Pruitt withdrew the ICR just one day after a separate group of 11 Republican state officials asked him to scrap the data call.
But Massachusetts and its allied states say they are “troubled” that the withdrawal occurred so soon after the other states sought the move.
“These are the very states with whom you personally collaborated closely on your previous legal challenges to multiple EPA efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including the” NSPS, the April 3 letter says.
The states also underscore that methane is a much more potent GHG than carbon dioxide, and that studies show the oil and gas sector can cheaply reduce leaks and even yield net savings by selling the captured natural gas.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/states-raise-specter-suit-over-epas-withdrawal-oil-gas-methane-icr
-
Maryland Governor Signs Fracking Ban into Law
Apr 4, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Tuesday signed a bill establishing a ban on hydraulic fracturing in the state.
Hogan’s signature comes after the state’s Legislature passed the fracking ban last week. Maryland is now only the second state in the country to ban fracking, after New York established a similar ban in 2015.
Hogan’s signature is a victory for groups that fought for a fracking ban in Maryland.
The state doesn’t currently host any fracking sites. But the drilling industry has eyed the state’s portion of the Marcellus Shale formation as a potential location for fracking in the future.
The oil and gas sector dismissed last week’s legislative vote as “politically motivated” and said it would prevent an economic revival in the western reaches of Maryland.
But anti-fracking advocates celebrated the move as one designed to protect public health and the environment.
Hogan agreed with that viewpoint when he announced in March that he would support a fracking ban.
“The possible environmental risks of fracking simply outweigh any potential benefits,” Hogan said then, calling the bill in the Democratically controlled Legislature an “important initiative to safeguard our environment.”
He added, “Protecting our clean water supply and our natural resources is critically important to Marylanders, and we simply cannot allow the door to be open for fracking in our state.”
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/327266-maryland-governor-signs-fracking-ban-into-law
-
Chevron Pivots to Permian Shale as Mega-Project Era Fades
Apr 5, 2017 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Ernest Scheyder
Nearly a century after Chevron Corp amassed the No. 2 stake in America's largest oilfield, Chief Executive John Watson is hitting the accelerator on developing the company's vast Permian Basin holdings.
In an interview, Watson made clear his desire to put the West Texas to New Mexico expanse in the ranks of Chevron's biggest ventures. That is a stark change from just five years ago, when Chevron executives rarely mentioned the shale basin.
But with low oil prices, the company is now spending more than it makes to cover its prized dividend and find new reserves. Now, those 2 million Permian acres have emerged as to way to help fund both goals.
"Some of the best things we have in our portfolio are the shales," Watson said during an interview on the 48th floor of the company's Houston office tower. "My employees in the Permian know I'm featuring it as something very important."Continue reading the main story
Gone, for the next few years at least, are plans for any new multi-billion-dollar mega-projects, he said. To survive and grow, San Ramon, California-based Chevron is turning to acreage it has always controlled and that largely is free of royalties to landowners.
"We're just in a period now where markets are weak and everyone is focused on controlling costs," Watson said.
Within a decade, Watson expects Chevron's production in the Permian to grow eightfold to more than 700,000 barrels of oil per day. By the end of next year, nine drilling rigs will join the 11 that Chevron already has poking holes into Permian land.
It is all part of Watson's plan to methodically pump Chevron's more than 9 billion barrels of Permian oil, most of it owned outright by the company. That gives Chevron a cost advantage over rival Permian producers as the region in the past year has become the epicenter for the U.S. shale resurgence.
Chevron's Permian portfolio, which was acquired in stages by predecessor companies, is worth at least $43 billion, Chevron believes, greater than the market value of Pioneer Natural Resources Co, Concho Resources and other Texas producers.
Watson bristles at critics who say the company is moving too slowly in the Permian. "We're growing our portfolio in the Permian as fast as anyone," said Watson, an economist by training who has worked at Chevron his entire career.
"We're focused on growing value and growing the dividend over time."
Chevron is valued more highly by investors than rival Exxon Mobil Corp partly because of that dividend, which has risen annually for the past 29 years. Watson has called protecting the $1.08 quarterly payout his top priority.
"We like inexpensive, recurring revenue streams" such as the Permian, said Oliver Pursche of wealth manager Bruderman Brothers LLC, which holds shares in the company.
Chevron, which does not hedge oil production, is boosting spending in the Permian by 67 percent this year to $2.5 billion, an implicit bet that oil prices will rise and lift the company to a profitable year after an annual loss in 2016.
That makes the Permian the second-largest area for spending this year for Chevron after the Tengiz project in Kazakhstan, which is not expect to come online until next decade.
CARBON TAX WOULD ADD COST
Watson said he is not worried about demand for oil hitting a ceiling for at least the next 20 years, despite the rising popularity of electric cars. Rising petroleum needs for air travel and petrochemical production should buffer any drop in demand from the automobile sector, he said.
"There is no sign of peak demand right now," Watson said.
Like Exxon, BP and other oil peers, Chevron supports the Paris climate accord, a 2015 agreement between nearly 200 nations that aims to limit the rise in global temperatures to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
"We have said that Paris is a first step, but we need to understand what that translates to in terms of policy," Watson said.
Watson, however, has spoken out against a tax on carbon, something that Exxon supports.
President Donald Trump had considered a carbon tax as part of his proposed budget, but the White House on Tuesday said it was not under consideration. It could still be resurrected by Congress, where it has some support.
"A carbon tax will have the effect of adding cost on the people who can least afford it," Watson said. "If you increase energy costs you are going to make it more difficult here for industrial activity."
Watson said he is not opposed to renewable energy, just government financial support for it through subsidies and other means. He said he would be open to buying a Tesla or another electric vehicle.
"I have no particular aversion" to electric cars, he said. "I'll buy a car that meets all my needs, particularly around size and other characteristics."
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/04/05/business/05reuters-chevron-watson.html
-
Senators Hear Case for DOE Research as Budget Cuts Loom
Apr 5, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Peter Behr
A government cybersecurity expert gave a Senate committee a shielded look at a new Energy Department and national laboratory research project that seeks to defend against the most virulent state-sponsored hacking attacks on critical infrastructure.
Andrew Bochman, senior cyber and energy security strategist at the Idaho National Laboratory, testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in a hearing that ranged across cyberthreat challenges, from workforce shortages to persistent backlogs in security clearances for industry executives and cyber staff.The hearing comes as political aides to DOE Secretary Rick Perry finalize what are expected to be sharp cuts in department programs outside DOE's nuclear-weapons-related missions. President Trump's budget blueprint proposes to cut $2 billion from 2017 spending levels from the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE), three other DOE agencies, and federal building weatherization support. Unconfirmed reports say OE could take a double-digit percentage reduction.
"Cyber risk futurists, myself included, are experiencing a palpable sense of foreboding that our nation's current security activities will not yield the transformational changes we need," Bochman said.
However, the OE's programs promise significant improvements, he said, citing a project involving the Idaho laboratory and a utility and its partners he would not name.
Called the Consequence-driven Cyber-informed Engineering methodology (CCE), this pilot project seeks to clarify and prioritize the most damaging attack threats to control systems, and then "engineer out the cyber risk" from these parts of energy delivery processes, he said.
"While we are generally making incremental improvements to harden our defenses and respond to a cyberattack, CCE helps us identify and focus protections on the few areas where we have made engineering and business decisions that leave us exposed to high-national-security-level risks," Bochman testified.
Bochman would not go deeply into the CCE project, except to say the goals were prioritizing the most severe potential consequences of a successful attack, identifying specific scenarios that would take advantage of vulnerable pathways, and creating protection and "tripwires" to defend against these risks. Engineering solutions enable the infrastructure to continue to function, while "moving" or isolating vital equipment beyond the reach of internet attacks and corporate business networks, he said.
Pipeline vulnerability
Another top priority research effort at DOE involves "Section 9" companies, identified under provisions of the 2013 Executive Order on Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. These companies operate parts of the nation's energy infrastructure where a cyberattack could reasonably be expected to cause catastrophic damage to public health and safety or economic or national security. The companies' identities are classified, as are much of the research partnerships with the federal government, aimed at helping the companies find attack malware in their systems, officials said.
On another track in the hearing, committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) both queried whether more stringent cybersecurity standards were required to ensure protection of the nation's interstate national gas pipelines.
"On the gas side, do you think the industry would be better with mandatory standards?" Murkowski asked Dave McCurdy, president of the American Gas Association.
"No," McCurdy quickly replied. The Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration has the statutory responsibility for overseeing cyber protection of interstate gas lines, he said, adding that TSA and the industry have developed an effective voluntary regulatory oversight of a set of cybersecurity best practices and guidelines. "They are our subject matter experts," he said.
"We have a culture of safety," McCurdy added, "which means we constantly adapt and improve."
"Our real challenge here is to be nimble, be faster and smarter than the guys who are trying to bring us down," Murkowski said. "What is the right mix between mandatory as opposed to voluntary regulation?"
Gerry Cauley, CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the security monitor of the interstate high-voltage grid, said, "I think mandatory requirements have their place." The high-voltage grid is subject to mandatory rules drafted by NERC and enforced by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. "Where we have the most critical assets in the system, we want to make sure everyone is meeting a threshold set of requirements," Cauley said. He did not offer an opinion on the gas industry's regulation.
"We need to elevate this discussion," Cantwell told McCurdy. The need is for reporting requirements that hold the industry accountable, she said. "I think we have to have something measurable here," she added. "We'll be looking at that."
Security clearances
The hearing surfaced more complaints from industry representatives about the difficulty of getting timely, classified threat information from the federal government.
McCurdy, who led the House Intelligence Committee for 14 years in Congress, said that after a year of waiting, he still does not have a security clearance to see the most classified government information on cyberthreats.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said, "If it's this tough for you, you can imagine how tough it is for utility people in the industry broadly on both the electric and the gas side."
Cauley said the recognition that protection of energy networks is a national policy priority means the old bottlenecks in security clearance approvals must be overcome.
"What's happened in the last couple of years is, our position has changed to the point where protecting our critical infrastructure including the electricity system is a national security matter," Cauley said. "I think what we've got to do is figure out, how do we get government and industry to work together like we have a shared problem in front of us?"
Under the existing rules, he added, utilities companies have sometimes uncovered cyberthreat information and shared it with government, "and now the government says it's classified. And we just gave it to them."
One example, a grid official said, is data that energy researchers developed on threats to high-priority grid facilities from a electromagnetic pulse attack, the explosion of a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere above North America that could potentially damage electronic equipment on the power grid and elsewhere. The industry-sponsored research was tagged with a government security classification that limited utilities' access to it and development of defenses, one source said.
"We need to figure out a new set of ground rules around a partnership between industry and government," Cauley said.
This story also appears in Energywire.
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/04/05/stories/1060052622
-
Proposed Cuts Leave Agencies Two Choices: Keep Quiet or Speak Out
Apr 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
The deep budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration for fiscal year 2018 would leave more than a dozen small agencies in a quandary: keep quiet or speak out to tell the public why they should stay open.
While many larger agencies with Cabinet-level status, like the Labor Department and Environmental Protection agency, also saw steep proposed cuts in the White House's “skinny budget” released March 16, more than a dozen independent agencies and public corporations were targeted for defunding. These entities also have leadership structures allowing for less direct control by the administration.
These agencies, which together received $2.8 billion in federal funding in fiscal year 2017, must balance how to talk to the public in a way that doesn't antagonize the Trump administration or violate federal law restricting agency lobbying, and they have taken different approaches for doing so since the budget was announced.
Of the 19 agencies proposed for elimination, nine declined to comment on the plan or referred requests to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Ten have weighed in on the budget proposal.
Of those, nine argued in favor of continued operation, and one agency, Alaska's Denali Regional Commission, acknowledged the budget but pledged it couldn't say more until it confers with OMB “for further guidance on the next steps for the agency.”
Little Administration Control
The dilemma was evident at the Chemical Safety Board, one of the smallest agencies proposed to be cut, and one with minimal White House oversight. The board first referred inquiries to OMB before sharing a statement and posts to its social media accounts listing agency accomplishments. Board members also amplified the message on their own social media pages.
“The annoying part of it for me was there was no explanation given, no rationale,” John Bresland, who served as a board member and chairperson of CSB from 2002 to 2012, told Bloomberg BNA.
Bresland said industry organizations he visits around the world as a process safety consultant were “shocked” by the proposal. He speculated the White House may have targeted CSB, which received $11 million in the current fiscal year, as part of “a philosophical point of view” against government programs.
Other agencies, like the Interior Department, have seen “rogue” employees post unauthorized messages to social media accounts or make anonymous accounts to spread messages contrary to Trump administration policy. Independent agencies—some of which are run by boards or commissions—have had more latitude to defend their value in the past because they are influenced less by the White House.
Staff members at agencies targeted for elimination “are pretty hamstrung by what they can and can't say,” Liz Purchia, who served as communications director at the EPA in the Obama administration.
Purchia said the lack of clarity around the budget shows the Trump administration's poor management and lack of planning.
“We see that they don't have a strong ability to manage their own message and what they're saying from one office to the next,” Purchia said.
By law, agencies cannot use federal funds to ask the public to lobby Congress, such as to preserve their funding. But agencies can paint a positive message of what they do for the public. Voters could then conclude the agencies shouldn't be shut down.
OMB issued a memo to agencies March 17 to limit their communication on the budget.
OMB spokesman John Czwartacki said in a statement at the time the move was no different than actions taken under the Obama and Bush administrations.
An OMB spokesman declined to elaborate on an official statement on the memo, but CSB did not receive the document, spokeswoman Hillary Cohen told Bloomberg BNA in an email. The instructions appear to be more relevant to larger agencies, instructing them not to discuss account-level details not disclosed in the “skinny budget.”
Motivation for Closure Unclear
Much of the budget proposal came from a report last year by the Heritage Foundation, “Blueprint for Balance: A Federal Budget for 2017,” the Washington Post reported last month. But that document says nothing about the fate of the CSB. The Heritage Foundation didn't respond to a request for comment.
Michael Wright, health and safety director at the United Steelworkers union, told Bloomberg BNA the plan seemed poorly thought out. It seemed like “somebody went through a list of which agencies were in the federal government and said, ‘I haven't heard of that one, that doesn't sound important.’”
More broadly, Trump adviser Stephen Bannon has called for the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” which he says creates taxes, regulations and unfair trade agreements. The CSB, though, does none of those things, but its budget and those of the other small agencies could come at the expense of other priorities.
Facing leadership problems, low staff morale and criticism from Congress in 2015, some former board members proposed merging the agency with the National Transportation Safety Board. After the departure of former Chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso later that year, lawmakers have stepped back from close scrutiny of the agency.
Anna Fendley, legislative director at the United Steelworkers, told Bloomberg BNA Congress’ criticism was “very targeted at the now former chairman,” not a broader opposition to the CSB.
Congress Largely Ignoring Plan
The agencies may not have much to fear. Key lawmakers have made it clear they plan to go their own way on the budget.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, which oversees the CSB's funding, declined to comment on the CSB but noted in a statement earlier this month Murkowski said Congress will make its own decisions.
Bresland said the CSB has time this year to explain to appropriators the value they bring, which seems to be happening already.
“Ultimately, the budget document was pretty much just a glorified press release,” Purchia said. “It didn't actually include a lot of detail. It's a lot of talk, but I think in reality, things won't be as drastic as they're proposing.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=108559893&vname=dennotallissues&fn=108559893&jd=108559893
-
Challenges Remain to Sharing Cyber Threat Information on Grid: Industry
Apr 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
Dave McCurdy, a former House representative and president of the American Gas Association, has been waiting for his Energy Department security clearance to receive classified cybersecurity briefings. For over a year.
This is just one of the challenges that natural gas industry and electric utility groups voiced April 4 during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing as both groups try to share information on cybersecurity threats to the electric grid with the government and vice versa.
“Despite my military, congressional and intelligence experience, and currently holding a Department of Defense clearance, I've not received a DOE security clearance that I applied for over a year ago to be able to sit in some of the discussions that they have at the Electric Sector Coordinating Council and other areas,” McCurdy said at the hearing.
“And I am the leader of the natural gas sector for this industry,” he said.
McCurdy served for 14 years, from 1981 to 1995, in the House of Representatives as the Democratic member from the Fourth Congressional District of Oklahoma, and was the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said McCurdy's story is a good personal example of how the backlog in security clearances is affecting the energy and electric utilities sectors.
“If it's tough for you, I can't imagine how tough it is for lots of people in the utility industry broadly on both the electric and gas side,” Heinrich said at the hearing.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairman of the committee, called for greater government cooperation. “The number, scope, and severity of attacks continue to increase, and we must press government to be of greater assistance to asset owners and encourage better equipment designs,” she said.
National Security Issue
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), the nonprofit regulatory authority that ensures reliability of the North American electric grid, also expressed problems with sharing cybersecurity information with the government.
“In the last couple of years, our position has changed to the point where protecting critical infrastructure and the electrical system is a national security matter,” Gerry Cauley, president and CEO of NERC, said at the hearing.
“What we've got to do is figure out how to get government and industry to work together like we have a shared problem in front of us,” he said.
He cited a two-fold solution. First, he said industry and top levels of government need to get together to develop a strategy to protect the electric system assets that are critical to national security.
Second, they need to create a shared community. He cited examples of NERC sending cybersecurity information to the government, which turned around and classified the information, making it difficult for NERC to continue sharing.
“We need to figure out a new set of ground rules around the partnership” between government and the utility sector, he said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=108559921&vname=dennotallissues&fn=108559921&jd=108559921
-
I Write Thrillers. My Research Showed Me How Easily Terrorists Can Strike Us.
Apr 5, 2017 | Washington Post
By Matthew Quirk
A gray SUV idled across the street from the chemical plant. Gas storage tanks, four stories tall, towered over the low-slung neighborhood. It was a hot, dry Sunday in southeast Los Angeles.
The plant’s front gate was open. The driver tapped the throttle, then cut into the facility, past the “no trespassing” notices and the signs demanding that all trucks stop and check in with a guard. He pointed the car straight at three trailers loaded with compressed hydrogen. Behind them, on the other side of a rusting chain-link fence, rail tankers sat outside a facility that uses chlorine to manufacture bleach. One tanker car of chlorine, if ruptured (by, say, a nearby hydrogen explosion), could reach 4.9 million people in the Los Angeles Basin and kill 10,000 under worst-case conditions.
The driver veered away from the gas tanks, then stopped the car and waited. No one came to check on him as he took a few photos on his phone. After five minutes, he pulled away.
That was me. I write thrillers for a living. For my latest novel, “Dead Man Switch,” I spent a lot of time researching the materials lying around the United States that terrorists could use to kill tens of thousands of people. I like to think my books are pretty tense, but they have nothing on reality: More than 15 years after 9/11, we have failed to take basic steps to address glaring threats that have already cost American lives.
With its ongoing attempts to enact a ban on many Muslim travelers and “extreme vetting” for visitors to the United States, the Trump administration has treated terrorism as a political cudgel rather than the grave and present threat it truly represents. In the years after 9/11, there was extraordinary bipartisan momentum to identify threats and safeguard against them, but the work is unfinished. With terrorism back atop the agenda, we should spend our time and money addressing the obvious risks, not the hypothetical or concocted ones.
Chlorine is scary stuff. It hugs the ground as a slow-moving cloud of yellow-green gas, and it killed thousands as a chemical weapon in World War I. When inhaled, it turns to hydrochloric acid in the lungs, and organic material — flowers or skin — bleaches and oxidizes in its path, a slow, agonizing burn. Even without foul play, accidents are often fatal: Two trains crashed and ruptured a 90-ton chlorine tanker in Graniteville, S.C., in 2005, killing nine people and sickening 250 in an area that, thankfully, was not more densely populated.
Hijacker Mohamed Atta scouted out chemical plant attacks before 9/11, and since then, study after study has called out the risk from chlorine plants: 5 million people in the toxic-release zone in L.A., 12 million in and around New York City. But the government didn’t set new rules for chemical security until 2007. Department of Homeland Security officials identified the 4,400 highest-risk facilities, but by 2013, 78 percent of those were still waiting to have their security plans approved by DHS, and 99 percent had never been inspected.
It’s easy to beat up on DHS, but a lack of political will is really to blame. In a speech on the Senate floor during the 2006 fight over chemical security legislation, freshman Sen. Barack Obama argued: “We cannot allow chemical industry lobbyists to dictate the terms of this debate. We cannot allow our security to be hijacked by corporate interests.” Yet that is exactly what happened. Chemical companies spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying to win industry-friendly rules and watered-down regulations. They killed a proposal to encourage the use of chlorine alternatives, such as concentrated bleach, that could have eliminated the need to ship poison gas around the country in 90-ton tankers. Congressional funding for the DHS chemical security program was authorized only temporarily, so it lurched from one appropriation to another.
After Congress gave the program a long-term reauthorization in 2014, it made rapid progress. According to data from a senior DHS official who spoke with me on background, 91 percent of covered facilities have had safety plans approved, and 70 percent have been inspected. But DHS still hasn’t completed efforts to make sure plant employees aren’t on the terrorism watch list — a basic safeguard launched only in 2016 and now rolled out to just 6 percent of covered facilities — or to implement similar security measures for ammonium nitrate, one of many chemical threats that are not adquately covered by the current mishmash of loophole-filled rules.
That widely available compound, commonly used as fertilizer, forms a powerful explosive when mixed with fuel. It killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the second deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil. In 2013, a Texas fertilizer plant with a history of safety violations blew up, taking the lives of 15 people, injuring 160 and destroying 150 buildings, including a middle school. Long considered an accident, it is now under investigation as possible arson or domestic terrorism. If the explosion hadn’t occurred after work hours, many more people would have died.
That prompted the Obama administration to some EPA rules on the handling of ammonium nitrate but Republicans in the House are now moving to roll back even those minimal safety measures. Ammonium nitrate is a proven killer. DHS was charged with putting out rules to prevent it from being used in an attack 10 years ago; the agency is still studying the issue. In the meantime, someone on the terrorist watch list can still buy it in bulk.
Chemical safety isn’t the only failure. The Transportation Security Administration, our most direct answer to the 9/11 hijackings, missed 95 percent of weapons and mock explosives smuggled through in a 2015 test, and it now faces $80 million in cuts under President Trump’s proposed budget (flight security fees would increase, but the money would go to the border wall). The biodefense sensors DHS deployed after the 2001 anthrax attacks don’t work reliably, and as Steven Brill reported in the Atlantic, nearly half of the thousands of hospitals that hold radioactive materials suitable for a dirty bomb have inadequate security.
“The Bush administration put all their eggs in the ‘take the battle to the enemy’ basket, asserting that ‘the only defense is offense,’ ” says Stephen Flynn, who was the lead homeland security adviser to Barack Obama during his presidential transition in 2008, an expert adviser to the Department of Homeland Security and director of a host of blue-ribbon commissions. “This translated into homeland security being a decidedly secondary priority and their making only a token effort to advance critical infrastructure security.”
He pointed me to the 2002 “National Strategy for Homeland Security,” which says outright that, except for border security and national defense, free markets and private companies would be left to take care of homeland security without government intervention. The Obama administration took steps in the right direction, in Flynn’s view, but it wasn’t enough. “America’s critical infrastructure remains extremely vulnerable to sabotage,” he said, “and the consequences of a successful attack against assets such as chemical facilities remain potentially catastrophic.”
At the Los Angeles chlorine plant, I parked across the street and walked along the railroad tracks, between a hazmat site and a row of palms growing in a ditch. I spent a half-hour working my way around the facility, trying doorknobs, squeezing into openings in the fence and snapping photos of security weaknesses. An unarmed guard, a contractor, was posted at the main entrance, but in the back, out of view of the security cameras, only a padlock and chain secured a gate that led straight to the tankers. I leaned through and snapped a few shots of the gasworks. No one stopped or questioned me.
“That is 100 percent consistent with what I have always found, everywhere,” says Sam Faddis, a retired CIA operations officer who specialized in counterterrorism and ran similar tests on chemical, biological and nuclear targets for his book, “Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security.” Check-ups like mine have yielded similarly depressing results at dozens of other plants. “The security might stop a teenager from painting some graffiti,” Faddis said. “But it’s nothing that would even approach the level of stopping a terrorist who isn’t planning on living through the attack.”
Such glaring security holes at plants that could kill thousands of people are far more terrifying than any villain I could dream up. The next guy through the fence probably won’t be a writer with an overactive imagination and good intentions. Our vulnerabilities are well known, and documenting them for decades without fixing them makes us less safe than doing nothing at all.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/04/05/i-write-thrillers-my-research-showed-me-how-easily-terrorists-can-strike-us/?utm_term=.8e854db4ec71
-
Thousands of Defects Found on Oil Train Routes
Apr 5, 2017 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Matthew Brown
Government inspections of railroads that haul volatile crude oil across the United States have uncovered almost 24,000 safety defects, including problems similar to those blamed in derailments that triggered massive fires or oil spills in Oregon, Virginia, Montana and elsewhere, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.
The safety defects were discovered during targeted federal inspections on almost 58,000 miles of oil train routes in 44 states. The inspection program began two years ago following a string of oil train accidents across North America, including a 2013 derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.
Federal regulators said the inspections resulted in 1,118 violation recommendations, prompting railroads to become more responsive to concerns raised by track inspectors and to improve safety.
Problems identified by federal inspectors included worn rails and other equipment; bolts meant to hold tracks in place that were broken, loosened or missing; and cracks in steel bars joining sections of track. They also noted failures by railroads to quickly fix problems identified through inspections.
Such issues are not uncommon across the nation’s 140,000-mile freight rail network. But they’ve received heightened attention after rail shipments of crude oil increased and the number of major derailments spiked following a surge in domestic energy production.
A violation recommendation occurs when an inspector finds something serious enough to warrant a potential penalty, or a railroad fails to address a defect that’s been found. Federal officials declined to say how many penalties had been issued under the crude-by-rail inspection program.
A former senior official at the Federal Railroad Administration, Steven Ditmeyer, reviewed the inspection data obtained by the AP. He said it reinforces the need for railroads to stay on top of regular maintenance for their sprawling networks of track.
Many of the defects found by inspectors posed serious safety issues, Ditmeyer said, adding that it can be difficult for railroads to know when a seemingly small problem will result in a derailment.
“All of this is a call for continued vigilance,” said Ditmeyer, who directed the railroad administration’s Office of Research and Development for eight years. “One defect or one violation of the right kind can cause a derailment. These statistics give a good indication of the track quality, but most (defects) won’t cause a derailment.”
Some safety gaps found by inspectors bear similarities to the circumstances surrounding prior accidents.
In Lynchburg, Virginia, cracks in the track that went unrepaired led to a CSX Transportation oil train coming off the rails and exploding along the James River in 2014. In Culbertson, Montana, a 2015 accident that spilled 27,000 gallons of oil from a BNSF Railway train was blamed on defective or missing fasteners used to hold the tracks in place. And in Mosier, Oregon, broken rail bolts were blamed in a Union Pacific oil train derailment and fire last year.
The rail industry views safety defects as warnings from regulators that action is necessary, said Association of American Railroads spokeswoman Jessica Kahanek. She said violations are a better indicator of safety problems because not all defects pose an immediate risk. Hundreds of the violation recommendations on oil train routes were “paperwork-related,” Kahanek said, such as railroads not providing required forms to government inspectors.
Omaha, Nebraska-based Union Pacific received most of the violation recommendations issued under the targeted inspection program, with more than 800. A breakdown for violations involving other railroads was not available.
Union Pacific agreed to increase its inspection frequencies following the Mosier derailment under an agreement with federal regulators who said the railroad’s inspection program was too lax.
Union Pacific spokeswoman Calli Hite said the railroad shares the Federal Railroad Administration’s dedication to safety and safety compliance.
“Union Pacific has always paid close attention to track conditions and inspections,” Hite said.
Most violations were found in the months after the inspection program began in January 2015 in the U.S. Southwest, where officials said Union Pacific runs a majority of the oil trains. In many cases, violation recommendations came after the railroad did not respond quickly enough to problems found by inspectors, said Marc Willis, a spokesman for the railroad administration.
Subsequent inspections turned up thousands of additional safety problems but far fewer recommendations for violations.
That was because the high number of violation recommendations for Union Pacific sent a message to the entire industry to quickly address any issue raised by inspectors, officials said.
“Railroads are paying closer attention,” Willis said, adding that derailments have fallen 10 percent since the inspection program began. “Although many minor defects still are being identified ... both FRA and railroad inspectors are finding fewer serious conditions, resulting in significant safety improvements.”
It’s uncertain whether the targeted inspection program for oil trains will continue under the Trump administration, he said.
Since 2006, the United States and Canada have seen at least 27 oil train accidents involving a fire, derailment or significant fuel spill. Besides the targeted inspection program, U.S. and Canadian officials have responded with more stringent construction standards for tens of thousands of tank cars that haul oil and other flammable liquids.
The amount of oil moving by rail peaked in 2014 then dropped after crude prices collapsed. Major railroads reported moving more than 43,000 carloads of crude in the fourth quarter of 2016, down almost 50 percent from a year earlier, according to the railroad association.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/apnewsbreak-thousands-of-defects-found-on-oil-train-routes/2017/04/05/cd0ff868-19ce-11e7-8598-9a99da559f9e_story.html?utm_term=.6005b64396aa
-
(ACC Mentioned) Ewire: A Daily News Roundup
Apr 5, 2017 | Inside EPA
The Congressional Budget Office may have found that a House Republican bill overhauling EPA's scientific processes may only the cost the agency around $5 million per year but that estimate appears to have been made without input from EPA's staff.
That's because EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt blocked staff comments that warned the bill could cost the agency as much as $250 million per year, according to reports in Bloomberg/BNA and E&E News.
“The administrator’s office decided not to send our responses forward,” according to an internal email BNA obtained. "[The Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations] fought for the points we made, but [the administrator’s office] ultimately decided to send a response back to [the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)] that said no cost, no comment.”
And John Konkus, Pruitt's spokesman, told E&E that agency officials "fully support" the principles of the bill and "look forward to working with Congress throughout the legislative process to learn more about the agency's legal requirements" should the bill becomes law.
The bill at issue, H.R. 1430, also known as the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act, cleared the House 228-194 March 29. The bill was approved with the support of just three Democrats though seven Republicans voted against the bill's final passage.
The legislation directs the agency to use the “best available science,” in all its actions, but bars the agency from using any studies that cannot be released publicly online “in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results.”
The bill has broad support among industry groups, such as the American Chemistry Council, which says “it is critical that the regulated community and the public have confidence that decisions reached by EPA are grounded in transparent and reproducible science, while ensuring the protection of confidential business information [CBI] and competitive intelligence.”
But Democrats and other critics say the bill would undercut EPA regulatory actions because it bars the the agency from using many studies to justify rules because it cannot release the data underlying studies, including personal medical records, or because it lacks copyright or other permissions to disclose the data, such as CBI.
There is currently no Senate companion but as Inside EPA's Maria Hegstad reported last week, environmentalists believe that the seven Republicans who voted against the bill could be a sign that when a companion measure is introduced in the upper chamber it is going to face a tough haul.
The House vote “should send a signal to folks in the Senate this is going to be harmful to science,” said Gretchen Goldman, research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). “We were really surprised to see that many Republicans jump off the bill in the House. That's more than we've seen in the history” of these initiatives.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-daily-news-roundup-47
-
Apr 4, 2017 | Washington Post
By Damian Paletta and Max Ehrenfreund
The White House on Tuesday disavowed two controversial options for their planned overhaul of the tax code, after two Trump administration officials earlier in the day said the president's team was exploring a value-added tax to raise government revenue.
One of those administration officials also earlier Tuesday said the White House was considering the creation of a carbon tax, but a Trump administration spokesperson later said that idea was also no longer under consideration.
"As we have said many times, the President's team is hearing input from experts on all sides of the tax reform debate as we formulate what will ultimately be the President's plan to enact the first significant tax reform since 1986. As of now, neither a carbon tax nor a VAT are under consideration," deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said in a statement.
The rapid reversal illustrates a Trump administration still in the initial stages of a plan to rework the tax code, particularly as it looks to build support while also sticking close to conservative ideas. Administration officials have long been aware of how politically divisive these ideas are, but they had searched for ways find new revenue sources to offset the steep cuts in individual and corporate tax rates that President Trump promised during last year’s campaign.
White House officials have said they will be much more involved in proposing and negotiating elements of their tax overhaul plan than they were during their initial failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
But both of the taxes discussed Thursday would face significant opposition -- including from Trump's fellow Republicans. The value-added tax, which is popular in many other countries, would serve as a kind of national sales tax, one that consumers would pay when they make purchases and that businesses would pay for supplies, services and raw materials. But many economists view a VAT as a tax that disproportionately hurts lower-income workers, who typically benefit from a progressive income-tax system.
A carbon tax would target the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases in the burning of gasoline, coal and other fossil fuels. Many Democrats support the creation of a carbon tax as a way to address climate change, but they couldn’t even reach an agreement on the issue when they had control of Congress and the White House during the early years of the Obama administration. In the years since, many congressional Republicans have continually accused Democrats of seeking a carbon tax and promising such a fee would devastate the economy.
“The talk right now about a value added tax or a carbon tax would blow up the whole movement,” said Stephen Moore, who was a top economic adviser to Trump during the 2016 campaign. “It would bring it to a screeching halt.”
The White House sees its effort to overhaul the tax code as one of its top domestic and economic priorities.
The search for different options reflects a recognition of the political challenges facing a proposal known as a border-adjustment tax that the White House and some Republicans had begun to rally around. The proposal, effectively a tax on imports, would not only raise close to $1 trillion in needed revenue but also serve to fulfill Trump’s pledge to protect American companies from unfair export competition.
White House officials are split on whether to endorse the creation of this specific tax. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last month that the Trump administration was exploring a number of different ideas, including tailoring border adjustment tax so that it was applied differently to different industries or products.
Many GOP politicians have opposed value-added taxes. President Reagan warned that a value-added tax could become way for the government to raise revenue without the public being aware of it. “It’s hidden in the price of a product. And that tax can quietly be increased, and all the people know is that the price went up,” Reagan said.
All the same, value-added taxes enjoy broad support from economists, who argue that they are an efficient way of raising revenue without discouraging work or investment – a frequent criticism of the current system, which taxes income and capital gains. Conservative policymakers and politicians have proposed value-added taxes over the years, though often without using that term to describe them.
For instance, economists described the plan that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) proposed as a presidential candidate in 2015 as a value-added tax, though Cruz insisted his plan was not one. His primary opponent Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) attacked Cruz’s plan relentlessly, appealing to Reagan’s opposition.
A value-added tax of just 5 percent would yield $2.7 trillion in revenue over a decade, according to a projection by the Congressional Budget Office. The figure would vary widely, though, depending the rate and what goods and services were subject to the tax.
Many countries impose substantially higher value-added taxes – the average rate across rich countries is about 19 percent – but exempt broad categories of essential purchases such as food, health care and education. These exemptions would lessen the burden on poor households, but the federal government would collect less revenue.Some Democrats might also support a value-added tax, depending on the other provisions of the overall reform.
Many Republicans oppose the creation of a carbon tax, but several major oil companies have backed the idea. And there is other pockets of support from prominent Republicans. Former Secretary of State James Baker, former Secretary of State George Shultz, and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently met with White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn to push the idea of a carbon tax.
A key part of the plan proposed by Baker and his colleagues was to refund the revenues raised by a carbon tax by issuing dividend checks to American households.In 2013, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that a modest tax of $20 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions would raise roughly $1.2 trillion over a decade -- roughly the same amount that would be raised by the border adjustment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/04/white-house-explores-two-new-tax-ideas-a-value-added-tax-and-carbon-tax-as-leading-proposal-to-raise-revenue-falters/?utm_term=.999ec088f83c
-
Pruitt ECOS Keynote May Detail Plan To Shift Environmental Work To States
Apr 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will give the keynote speech later this week at the Environmental Council of the States' (ECOS) spring meeting, where he might elaborate for the group of state regulators on his previously announced plan to shift environmental protection work to the states -- despite a proposed cut to EPA grants for states.
At the same April 6-7 conference in Washington, D.C., Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW) Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) will also give a speech on “Environment, Energy, & the 115th Congress,” which will likely address legislative efforts to roll back the Obama EPA's energy regulations. It could also touch on how the Senate might respond to President Donald Trump's proposed 31 percent cut to the agency's budget.
ECOS represents many state environmental agencies and holds two major meetings per year, and also plans to hold an April 5 “engagement forum” held by the state-federal E-Enterprise for the Environment project that focuses on cooperative rulemaking efforts between EPA and the states, usually dealing with electronic reporting and data sharing.
While the E-Enterprise meeting is not expected to be contentious, the two-day spring meeting may give some states the chance to voice their significant concerns about the planned massive cuts to agency spending.
Pruitt has said he wants to transfer much environmental protection work back to state agencies, though states have countered that they are already struggling to fund implementation of existing federal environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. They say this situation would be exacerbated if their workloads increase and Trump wins his proposed major cuts to state grants to help pay for their work.
ECOS has largely opposed those cuts, making Pruitt's April 7 keynote address a potential opportunity for the EPA head to present a path forward to the state regulators with whom he pledged close collaboration.
State officials, including ECOS president and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency head John Linc Stine, have already attacked the fiscal year 2018 budget documents released by the Trump administration, which target EPA for a 31 percent funding cut. If enacted, the White House proposal would slash EPA's budget from $8.1 billion to 5.7 billion and reduce or eliminate a host of programs that provide funding or technical assistance to states, such as categorical grants for state water and air offices.
'Unworkable' Budget
“[C]uts to the core state programmatic grants are untenable. States welcome renewed confidence in our work and ability to protect human health and the environment. However, as ECOS' report shows, the federal government supports this function at an average of 27 percent. A cut of nearly 45 percent -- while state legislatures are in session -- is frankly unworkable,” Stine said in a March 16 statement.
Similarly, attorneys general for 12 states and the District of Columbia argued in a March 30 letter to appropriators that the FY18 proposal risks “[d]ecimating the EPA and states' ability to enforce the nation's environmental laws.”
In addition, the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA) -- representing many state and local air departments -- sent a March 27 letter to appropriators warning that the FY18 proposal would be “devastating” to their programs.
Barrasso could potentially discuss the upcoming appropriations process during his April 6 ECOS presentation, where he will also likely outline the Senate environment panel's priorities.
For instance, EPW is currently considering a bill to formalize EPA's Clean Water Act (CWA) integrated planning framework. -- a policy, developed under the Obama administration but used only infrequently, that allows municipal authorities to structure their stormwater and wastewater compliance plans into a single schedule. State and local authorities, including ECOS members, have long sought broader application of the framework.
Agenda Items
Beyond Pruitt and Barasso's addresses, the ECOS agenda includes discussion of EPA's future in the Trump administration from two former agency officials: Bob Perciacepe, deputy administrator under President Obama, and Jeff Holmstead, who headed the agency's air office under President George W. Bush and is now an attorney who has represented industry groups on air issues.
ECOS' Shale Gas Caucus, which considers issues related to gas extraction and hydraulic fracturing, will advance its long-running debate on use and disposal of produced water from those operations, focused in the April 6 session on potential beneficial reuse of the waste.
An April 6 session will focus on infrastructure policy, most prominently permitting and environmental review for all infrastructure projects. Construction and rehabilitation of new and existing infrastructure has been touted as a top priority of the new administration, spurring debate on how to best fund and speed the projects, even though legislation on the subject is still far off.
Another April 6 panel focuses on EPA's Clean Air Act settlement with Volkswagen as giving “states an opportunity to put new resources to use in communities and to partner with other states,” with discussion focused on how states can spend their allocation of the $4.3 billion deal.
Also on the agenda are panel discussions on sustainable materials management, elements of effective compliance-assistance programs, and the E-Enterprise meeting on April 5.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/pruitt-ecos-keynote-may-detail-plan-shift-environmental-work-states
-
AFL-CIO Chief Pitched Trump on Climate Benefits of Border Tax
Apr 4, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey
The leader of the largest federation of labor unions today said he had pitched President Trump on using a border adjustment tax to tamp down on carbon emissions and air pollution.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, a well-known critic of the president, told E&E News after an event at the National Press Club that he had pitched the idea of imposing a tax on goods from companies that relocate "south of the border" with lax or no environmental regulations. He declined to comment on the president's response.
"We ought to be able to have an adjustment tax that says, 'OK, you polluted, you had this unfair advantage, here's what we do to you to get the advantage up,'" Trumka said. "A border adjustment tax could very, very well be an effective means of helping us have fair agreements, depending on the details."
Trumka in his speech said he has no "particular allegiance" to American companies that move abroad to countries with weaker environmental standards and take good-paying jobs with them only to import goods back into the United States. "I think we ought to coddle the companies that actually work with the American worker and produce things here," Trumka said to applause.
The border tax adjustment has been hotly debated as part of larger trade discussions, and environmental groups and lawmakers have considered ways to tackle emissions in a political atmosphere of climate skepticism under the Trump administration (Climatewire, March 30).
Trumka's comments arrive as the president attempts to woo the nation's labor unions that backed Democrat Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House last year.
Trump, addressing members of North America's Building Trade Unions today at a separate event, touted his approval of controversial oil and gas pipelines like the Keystone XL project and pointed to his promised $1 trillion infrastructure package as "the great rebuilding." Yet Trump was met with boos after claiming he secured a vote from nearly everyone in the room.
In another challenge to the Trump administration, Trumka made clear unions will only stand behind the White House as long as the administration advances worker and environmental protection.
Pointing to the North American Free Trade Agreement, Trumka called for changes to provisions that allow foreign governments — but not U.S. citizens or companies — to challenge American trade laws. He also said "buy American" provisions in NAFTA are "riddled with loopholes" and should be changed.
Unions, he said, are also seeking worker protections in a $1 trillion infrastructure package that Trump has vowed to advance, including language that would ensure American products are being produced and bought. He also voiced concern about discrimination against rural people and a rising cost per capita in public-private partnerships.
Trumka, who said he hails from a long line of coal miners in Pennsylvania, also blasted the Trump administration for proposing steep cuts to agencies like the Department of Energy and U.S. EPA, and warned the president that union support could turn if the White House stops backing the workforce.
"You take away the clean energy stuff, it's going to affect jobs," he said. "We have an overhang in the coal industry; you increase the overhang, it's going to decrease jobs, lower wages."
Trumka today said he's hoping to work with the Trump administration but expressed concern that a Wall Street faction of the White House is hijacking the president's agenda.
Trumka said the president needs to decide whether he'll represent billionaires and banks or the common worker. He also said he's more than willing to work with Republicans who support unions.
"Give me more Republicans that support our issues and we'll support them," he said. "We can't find them."
http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/04/04/stories/1060052595
-
Federal Haze Controls in Arizona Stay After Challenges Tossed
Apr 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By William H. Carlile
Industrial sources in Arizona will still have to comply with a federal plan to protect air quality in parks and wilderness areas after an appeals court dismissed objections to an EPA plan to reduce regional haze.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in the April 3 decision that Arizona and the industries covered by the controls, including ASARCO Co. and Phoenix Cement Co., should have raised their objections to the Environmental Protection Agency's plan during the comment period (Arizona ex rel. Darwin v. EPA, 9th Cir., No. 14-73368, 4/3/17).
“Using perhaps the most unambiguous language possible, Congress has limited judicial review of EPA rules by requiring all potential petitioners to present their challenges first to the EPA itself,” the court said. “This congressional framework promotes regulatory efficiency by ensuring that the EPA—as the entity with greatest expertise in environmental matters— takes the first shot at resolving all issues with its regulations.”
Arizona—a state containing twelve wilderness areas subject to Clean Air Act requirements to protect visibility in national parks and other wild areas—sued the EPA after the agency rejected parts of the state's implementation plan to protect visibility in those areas. Although the state plan listed proposals to manage and reduce emissions from various industrial sources operated within the state, the EPA determined that Arizona could do better in improving visibility. The EPA disapproved certain aspects of Arizona's SIP and issued a federal plan instead that imposed required further pollution controls.
The court rejected most of the challenges to the EPA's federal plan in two prior decisions, concluding that the EPA acted within its authority when it disapproved portions of Arizona's state plan that the agency deemed problematic. All that remained before the court April 3 were the petitioners’ objections to several sections of the EPA's most recent federal plan, which the petitioners claimed were invalid agency action. The court rejected that argument.
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality is beginning a thorough legal review of the ruling, Timothy S. Franquist, director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality's Air Quality Division, said.
“We hope this matter will be one of many rules the new EPA administration revisits,” Franquist said in a statement.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=108559907&vname=dennotallissues&fn=108559907&jd=108559907
-
Carper Seeks Staff Review of 'Secret Science' Bill Costs
Apr 5, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) is seeking all U.S. EPA records of a key analysis related to the cost of the controversial "secret science" bill.
Carper's move follows a news report claiming agency leaders sat on career employees' review of the legislation's potential expense.
"The reporting of an alleged effort to keep EPA staff's input secret is deeply troubling," Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a letter yesterday to Administrator Scott Pruitt regarding the agency's review of H.R. 1430, the "Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act."
If true, Carper added, that effort "is particularly and grotesquely ironic, given the bill's purpose is to prevent EPA from using so-called 'secret science' to write regulations." He asked Pruitt to hand over by May 5 copies of all memos, emails and other records related to the analysis of the bill, including anything sent or received by members of the Trump administration's beachhead and transition teams for the agency.
An EPA spokesman did not respond to a request for comment late yesterday.
Carper's letter followed a report by Bloomberg BNA that senior EPA officials blocked the staff's analysis from reaching the Congressional Budget Office.
H.R. 1430, introduced last month by House Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), would bar EPA from pursuing any new regulations based on science that is not "transparent or reproducible." To that end, all of the underlying data from studies used in crafting new rules would have to be publicly posted online.
In 2015, CBO estimated that EPA would initially need to spend $250 million per year to implement a similar bill, dubbed the "Secret Science Reform Act." And in written comments made public by Bloomberg, EPA employees projected that H.R. 1430 would carry around the same price tag, while newly added exemptions would fail to protect sensitive personal and business information.
However, in a score released shortly after the House passed the bill last week, CBO cited information from EPA officials in concluding that the bill's cost would only be $5 million over five years because the agency planned to tap only scientific studies that already met the data-sharing requirements (E&E Daily, April 4).
But CBO added that the annual implementation expense could be more than $100 million if EPA continued to rely on the same volume of research as in the recent past.
Also taking aim at Pruitt yesterday was Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The allegations show "that the administrator has no intention of meeting the agency's legal obligations on critical environmental laws," Pallone said in a separate statement. "Whether he was intentionally lying about costs or purposefully ignoring health and science information, one thing is abundantly clear — Scott Pruitt continues to demonstrate that he is wholly unfit to lead the EPA."
http://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/04/05/stories/1060052619
-
What Financial Markets Can Teach Us About Managing Climate Risks
Apr 4, 2017 | New York Times
By Michael Greenstone
Say an investor had only two options of what to put money in: gold or stocks. Gold has an average annual rate of return of 3 percent, while the stock market delivers a healthier 5 percent. Which should the investor choose? Seems simple, right? Take the higher payout.
But annual averages can be deceiving. In fact, these two have very different risk profiles over time. Stocks tend to pay off steadily in good times when the economy is growing and we are relatively flush, but to decline in bad times. Gold might pay off next to nothing for years at a time and present real opportunity costs, but it delivers handsomely during unexpected economic crises.
Investing in gold is a type of insurance policy against tough times. Financial markets are revealing that investors are willing to accept a lower average return for that insurance, precisely because it helps to manage risk.
Last week, President Trump signed an executive order about climate change that runs counter to this insight from financial markets. The headlines rightly highlighted the dismantling of climate policies like the Clean Power Plan. But buried in the details is an administrative tweak to the most important climate measurement in the federal government’s climate toolbox: the social cost of carbon.
The social cost of carbon, the estimated monetary damages caused by the release of an additional ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, is the linchpin for how the federal government values climate damages. It drives the cost-benefits analyses that have determined the stringency of such things as fuel economy standards and the Clean Power Plan.
Before the executive order, the social cost of carbon was set at about $40 per metric ton of carbon released. Under the executive order, President Trump appears to be putting us on a path toward valuing climate damages at much less — possibly less than $5 per metric ton of carbon.
How is it that simple to reduce the estimated cost of climate damages from carbon emissions by 90 percent or more? It all depends on how we choose to value future risks.
A concept known as the discount rate makes it possible to translate future damages into their present value. In 2009, President Obama convened an interagency working group, of which I was a co-leader, to come up with a uniform method for estimating the social cost of carbon: the resulting number to be used across all federal agencies. Our group chose to emphasize estimates based on a discount rate of 3 percent.
The choice of a discount rate matters a great deal. Consider $100 of damages that occur 100 years from now. Because these damages are so far off in the future, it is natural to value them today at less than $100 — but how much is not immediately apparent. This is where the discount rate comes in.
With a discount rate of 3 percent, these damages are worth $5.20 today — that is, we would be willing to pay up to $5.20 to avoid them. But Mr. Trump’s executive order points to using a 7 percent discount rate. In doing so, the administration is saying that it is worth only 12 cents today to prevent $100 of damages in 100 years. (For the calculation, you divide $100 by a figure that is one plus the rate — in these examples 1.03 for a 3 percent discount rate and 1.07 for a 7 percent discount rate — for each of the 100 years, or to the 100th power.)
Although this might seem like an arcane administrative debate, the discount rate is the critical ingredient for how we value the future. And there is arguably no more consequential instance of the need to choose an appropriate discount rate than the case of climate change, because the greenhouse gases we release today will alter the climate for centuries.
At its core, using a lower discount rate to calculate the social cost of carbon means paying more to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions today. But, of course, paying more today means that those resources cannot be put to use for food, shelter and other goods.
Which discount rate best serves our interest in valuing climate risk? That’s where the financial markets’ lesson comes in.
When discounting future costs, the markets tell us to choose a discount rate that matches the risk profile of the investment. So if the risk acts like a tax on the economy (e.g., it reduces G.D.P. by a fixed percentage), a higher discount rate like the stock market’s average annual return of 5 percent would be justified. But if the risk is potentially disruptive, like a severe recession or worse, then markets point to a lower discount rate, perhaps like gold’s annual average return or even lower.
In this way, financial markets tell us that spending a little extra now as insurance to protect against potentially disruptive risk is a wise strategy. This lesson was most recently illustrated during the Great Recession. While the stock market declined by 53 percent from December 2007 to March 2009, gold’s value increased by 14 percent during this period.
Investors who had put some portion of their investments in gold — as an insurance policy — reaped the benefits as gold outperformed the stock market by almost 70 percent at exactly the moment that the job market was deteriorating and other investments were declining in value. In comparison, households with no such insurance policy were left completely exposed to the Great Recession.
Could climate change be broadly disruptive? The science suggests that the answer is yes. There is a lot that we don’t know with certainty about climate change: How much will temperature increase for a given increase in greenhouse gas concentrations? How much will sea levels rise?
Although we do not have certain answers to these questions, the range of potential answers includes very disruptive possibilities. This means that climate mitigation could protect us from possibly catastrophic events — mass migration, crop failures, a jarring sea-level rise and spikes in mortality due to high temperatures.
If those risks don’t materialize, there will have been costs to spending today on climate mitigation. But if those risks are real, using a low discount rate to choose the degree of climate mitigation today will be like having invested in gold before the Great Recession.
Michael Greenstone runs the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and is the Milton Friedman professor of economics at the university.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/upshot/what-financial-markets-can-teach-us-about-managing-climate-risks.html?_r=0
Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
LCSA News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested