Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 4/21/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Industry Targets Mountain View TCE Cleanup
Apr 21, 2017 | Mountain View Voice
By Mark Noack
President Donald Trump's promise to bring back jobs by axing regulations is targeting environmental protections on Mountain View's contaminated, yet still valuable, real estate. -
(ACC Mentioned) Most Commodity Resins Move Up in March
Apr 21, 2017 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
North American commodity resins continued their early-year price surge in March, with regional prices for polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene and PVC all increasing. -
UN Treaty Listed Flame Retardants Found in Recycled Plastic Toys
Apr 21, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
A study by NGO the International POPs Elimination Network (Ipen) has found flame retardants, listed for global elimination under a UN treaty, in toys made of recycled plastic. -
Court Pauses Suit Over Updated EPA Refrigerant Guidelines
Apr 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
A federal appellate court has paused litigation challenging a final rule updating EPA's refrigerant management and handling guidelines to include high global warming potential (GWP) “substitute” chemicals, granting industry groups' motion to delay the case to allow them time to discuss and potentially resolve any issues with EPA administratively. -
Researchers Say EPA Overestimated Cost, Effectiveness of Methane Rules
Apr 21, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
Researchers from Stanford University said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overestimated how much it would cost the oil and gas industry to monitor and repair methane leaks at its facilities, and how many leaks would be found, when it updated embattled rules governing emissions last year. -
EPA Chief Delays Methane Rule at Behest of Oil and Gas Firms
Apr 20, 2017 | The New York Times
By Associated Press
The Environmental Protection Agency is again moving to derail Obama-era regulations aimed at reducing pollution from the fossil fuel industry. -
Exxon Picks Site of World's Largest Ethylene Cracker Plant
Apr 21, 2017 | E&E Energywire
Petrochemical giant Exxon Mobil Chemical Co. plans to build the world's largest ethylene cracker plant in Portland, Texas. -
Lack of Safety Management System Led to Fatal Airgas Explosion, U.S. Chemical Safety Board Concludes
Apr 21, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jessica Morrison
A 2016 Airgas facility explosion that killed one worker reveals a gap in federal process safety requirements for facilities that manufacture hazardous substances, a new report says. -
SEC Sees Room for Enforcing Corporate Hacking Disclosure
Apr 21, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
The Securities and Exchange Commission is sharpening its focus on cybersecurity as high-profile hacking incidents continue to pile up, agency officials said yesterday. -
Ohio Pipeline Crew Spills 2M Gallons of Drilling Mud
Apr 21, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
Two million gallons of drilling mud was dumped into Ohio wetlands by crews installing the Rover pipeline, according to a violations notice from Ohio EPA. -
(ACC Mentioned) Volunteers Work to Revitalize Los Angeles River
Apr 21, 2017 | Voa News
By Mike O'Sullivan
The Los Angeles River spans 80 kilometers through Los Angeles and its suburbs, and for much of its route it’s encased in concrete. -
Climate Change Is Now
Apr 21, 2017 | The New York Times
By David Leonhardt
The damage from climate change isn’t just coming in the future. It’s part of the present, as this weekend’s issue of The New York Times Magazine points out. -
Why We Will March for Science
Apr 21, 2017 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Bill Foster
This Saturday, scientists and science advocates from all walks of life will converge on Washington, D.C. and in cities throughout the country to draw attention to the need for evidence-based policies. -
Why Scientists are Marching on Washington and More Than 400 Other Cities
Apr 21, 2017 | Washington Post
By Joel Achenbach, Ben Guarino and Sarah Kaplan
The March for Science is not a partisan event. But it's political. That's the recurring message of the organizers, who insist that this is a line the scientific community and its supporters will be able to walk. It may prove too delicate a distinction, though, when people show up in droves on Saturday with their signs and their passions.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
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Transportation News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Industry Targets Mountain View TCE Cleanup
Apr 21, 2017 | Mountain View Voice
By Mark Noack
President Donald Trump's promise to bring back jobs by axing regulations is targeting environmental protections on Mountain View's contaminated, yet still valuable, real estate. In recent days, a chemical industry lobbying group is nudging federal officials to gut safety standards for trichloroethylene (TCE), citing the high costs associated with one of Mountain View's Superfund sites.
A March 31 letter sent by the American Chemistry Council singles out Mountain View's Middlefield-Ellis-Whisman (MEW) Superfund site as an example of environmental remediation that has become a money pit. The letter criticizes 2014 guidelines by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to expand the area being monitored for TCE vapor intrusion in Mountain View, estimating it will cost $19 million over the next 30 years. By scaling back these standards, the letter argues, contaminated land could more easily be redeveloped and brought back into productive use.
But local environmental advocates say the call to deregulate TCE, a carcinogenic chemical that is contaminating groundwater in parts of Mountain View, is a ruse that won't bring back manufacturing jobs. They suspect the real motive is to reduce costs for chemical manufacturers and companies obligated to clean up toxic sites.
"This is not about manufacturing jobs, this is about liability," said Mountain View Councilman Lenny Siegel, who is also the executive director for the Center for Public Environmental Oversight. "This is part of an overall effort by polluters and producers of toxic substances to roll back progress that's been made over many years."
Although produced only in limited quantities these days, TCE was widely used as an industrial degreaser at thousands of military and manufacturing sites throughout the last century. In Mountain View, it is the leading contaminant in a string of Superfund sites near the Moffett Field area, many resulting from former semiconductor plants.
EPA officials have long classified TCE as a carcinogen by any route of chronic exposure. Mountain View's contaminated ground water plumes can result in exposure to TCE vapors, especially in poorly ventilated buildings. TCE is known to cause cancer, among other health problems, including heart defects in children born to mothers who were exposed during critical stages of heart development, according to the EPA.
The American Chemical Council letter does not dispute chronic exposure cases, and instead it takes aim at a more recent push by EPA officials to monitor the short-term health risks of TCE, particularly for pregnant women in the first trimester. Starting in 2011, the agency issued guidelines warning that even a single day of TCE exposure could pose health risks for early-stage fetuses. These guidelines became the basis for a regimen of indoor air monitoring throughout hundreds of offices and residences in Mountain View. In 2013 it was discovered that a building housing Google employees, including some pregnant ones, had been exposed to elevated TCE levels.
The American Chemical Council urged the Trump administration to scale back TCE guidelines to monitor only long-term health risks. The short-term dangers were based on "flawed" toxicity studies on rats that assumed individuals had already experienced long-term exposure, representatives said.
"The EPA has developed potential cancer risk estimates for lifetime exposure to TCE which are a more appropriate basis for evaluating indoor air levels," wrote Steve Risotto, American Chemistry Council senior director, in an email to the ==I Voice.
The chemistry council is not the only industry group to criticize these short-term health risks. In 2015, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group sent a letter to local EPA officials urging further evaluation of the costs and benefits of mitigating short-term health risks, noting it would cost more than $100 million to implement. Like the chemistry council, the SVLG also was skeptical of the testing data linking TCE to birth defects.
The new letter from the American Chemical Council was sent to the U.S. Department of Commerce in response to a request for regulations that could be cut to specifically to restore domestic manufacturing. It remains unclear exactly how Trump administration officials intend to act on any submitted suggestions.
Siegel said a formal reversal of established guidelines would take time, but the EPA policies could be revised through alternate means. Staffing and budgeting could easily be redirected away from TCE monitoring to other priorities, he said.
"By mentioning our local sites, this is a reminder that our environmental protections are severely threatened," Siegel said.
The EPA has already become a main target of Trump's push to curb government regulation. The president's proposed 2018 budget calls for wiping out $2 billion of the agency's $8.1 billion budget.
https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2017/04/21/chemical-industry-targets-mountain-view-tce-cleanup
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(ACC Mentioned) Most Commodity Resins Move Up in March
Apr 21, 2017 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
North American commodity resins continued their early-year price surge in March, with regional prices for polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene and PVC all increasing.
The 3-cent PE price hike came about after some back-and-forth between suppliers and processors. Initial reports indicated that the full 6 cents that PE makers had been seeking would take hold. Then it appeared for a brief time that market prices would roll over flat vs. February.
Producers and buyers finally split the difference, moving prices up 3 cents and announcing plans to try for the other 3 cents in April.
A combination of events allowed the 3-cent hike to stick, according to Mike Burns, a market analyst with the Resin Technology Inc. consulting firm in Fort Worth, Texas.
"There were low prices in November and high exports in December," he said. "Then there was restocking in January. This all lined up to reduce [PE] supply."
Supply also was limited by production issues experienced by several resin makers, including Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. CP Chem on March 13 declared force majeure on high density PE because of a power outage at its plant in Orange, Texas.
The March hike was the second consecutive monthly increase for regional PE prices, following a 5-cent January hike. Prices had been flat in January, after falling an average of 2 cents per pound in December. They were up a net of 4 cents for full-year 2016.
U.S./Canadian sales of low and linear low density PE came charging out of the gate in the first two months of 2017, with HDPE trailing behind. Two-month sales of LDPE were up 7 percent, according to the American Chemistry Council, with regional LLDPE sales through February up almost 7 percent. HDPE in the region only managed two-month sales growth of less than 1 percent.
PP on the rise
North American PP resin prices increased by 4 cents per pound in March. The increase was connected to tightness in supplies of propylene monomer feedstock, which caused prices for that material to rise as well. Regional PP resin prices now are up 20.5 cents per pound since Jan. 1.
But market sources told Plastics News that the March PP hike might be the last for a while.
"March will be the peak," said Scott Newell, a market analyst with RTI. "I see a large correction coming. We can already see the signals that this thing is starting to turn around."
A major regional PP buyer agreed, saying that "it appears all resins have peaked and the downward slide is next."
North American PP sales were up almost 1 percent in the first two months of 2017. Domestic sales were down almost 1 percent in that period, but export sales more than doubled. Regional PP sales grew 0.4 percent in full-year 2016.
Other increases
Regional solid PS prices shot up an average of 6 cents per pound for March. PS prices now have climbed for three straight months after being flat in December. Increases in January and February totaled 13 cents per pound.
The March price hike for PS surprisingly went against directional pricing for benzene, which declined by 7 cents per gallon for the month. Benzene is used to make styrene monomer and in recent years has had a strong effect on prices for PS resin.
North American PS sales grew 2 percent in the first two months of 2017. Sales of the material into electrical/electronic uses in particular were strong, growing more than 3 percent in that two-month period.
For PVC, a 2-cent March hike was the second straight monthly increase for that material. Prices had risen 4 cents in February. Prior to that, prices had been flat since November.
The PVC market is moving into the construction season, which is traditionally strong for the material. More than 60 percent of domestic PVC demand comes from the construction market.
Through February, U.S./Canadian PVC sales were up 3.3 percent. Domestic sales grew almost 6 percent, but were dampened somewhat by an export sales drop of more than 1 percent.
PET down, ABS up
PET bottle resin was the only North American commodity resin market to see lower prices in March, as prices ticked down an average of 0.5 cents per pound for March. The March drop ends a streak of six consecutive monthly price increases for the material.
The PET decline reflects lower prices for feedstocks such as paraxylene and purified terephthalic acid. The six previous increases had totaled 9.5 cents per pound.
In the engineering resins market, regional ABS prices jumped an average of 6 cents per pound in March, after being up 8 cents in February. Prices for the material are being driven up by higher prices for acrylonitrile and butadiene feedstocks, as well as higher prices for benzene, which is used to make styrene monomer. ABS makers now are seeking further increases of 5 cents per pound for April.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20170421/NEWS/170429975/most-commodity-resins-move-up-in-march
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UN Treaty Listed Flame Retardants Found in Recycled Plastic Toys
Apr 21, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
A study by NGO the International POPs Elimination Network (Ipen) has found flame retardants, listed for global elimination under a UN treaty, in toys made of recycled plastic.
It identified the presence of OctaBDE, DecaBDE and HBCD – often used in the plastic casings of electronic products - in children’s articles from 26 countries.
Both HBCD and OctaBDE are listed in the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs), under Annex A. This requires Parties to the convention to take measures to eliminate the production and use of listed substances. However, OctaBDE is subject to an exemption that permits recycling of materials containing the substance until 2030.
The report says: "Ending the Stockholm Convention recycling exemption would reduce wider human and environmental contamination and help preserve the credibility of recycling."
Conversely, Ipen says in the report: "Recycling materials that contain POPs and other toxic substances contaminates new products, continues human and environmental exposure, and undermines the credibility of recycling."
A laboratory analysis of toys and other items, including a thermo cup, hair clips, combs and headdresses, found that 90% of the samples contained either OctaBDE or DecaBDE and 43% contained HBCD.
Ipen says it found samples of children’s products exceeding proposed and existing hazardous waste limits. For example, 43 samples (39%) contained OctaBDE at levels greater than 50 parts per million (ppm) – one of the proposed hazardous waste limits under the Stockholm Convention.
Counterfeit toys
But the toy industry insists that toys are safe and the study used samples of counterfeit products.
Adrienne Appell of the US trade group, Toy Industry Association (TIA), said that all toys sold in the US conformed to stringent federal safety standards and the Ipen report "should be taken with a grain of salt".
She said the items tested in the report were of unknown origin and could potentially have been counterfeit items.
Catherine Van Reeth of Toy Industries of Europe (TIE) said, even though sustainable waste management and a circular economy are "important principles", toy safety must never be compromised.
She said that reputable companies heavily invested resources to make sure their toys complied with strict safety requirements and it was "highly challenging to source viable safe alternatives to the virgin plastics used by manufacturers to meet the exacting standards of the Toy Safety Directive and other relevant legislation."
The study comes the week before the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention (COP8), which will take place in Geneva, Switzerland from 24 April to 5 May.
Parties at the COP8 will decide whether to continue allowing the recycling of materials containing OctaBDE and possibly make a new recycling exemption for DecaBDE.
Ipen has made the following recommendations:
COP8 should end the toxic recycling exemption for brominated diphenyl ethers in parts IV and V of Annex A;
Parties should not create a recycling exemption for materials containing DecaBDE; and
COP8 should adopt the following low POPs content levels, HBCD: 100mg/kg (100ppm), OctaBDE (HexaBDE and HeptaBDE): 50mg/kg (50ppm), PCBs: 10mg/kg (10ppm).
However, Ms Van Reeth said lower content limits would have little effect on "disreputable traders who don’t play by the rules".
"In this respect, better enforcement of existing rules is a far more effective approach," she said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/55378/un-treaty-listed-flame-retardants-found-in-recycled-plastic-toys
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Court Pauses Suit Over Updated EPA Refrigerant Guidelines
Apr 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
A federal appellate court has paused litigation challenging a final rule updating EPA's refrigerant management and handling guidelines to include high global warming potential (GWP) “substitute” chemicals, granting industry groups' motion to delay the case to allow them time to discuss and potentially resolve any issues with EPA administratively.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit April 11 granted petitioners' motion to hold the case, NEDA/CAP v. EPA, in abeyance.
At issue is a Nov. 18 final rule updating provisions limiting leaks of ozone-depleting substances used for refrigeration, issued under Clean Air Act section 608. The rule further expanded the section 608 provisions to “substitute” refrigerants, including hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that do not deplete the ozone but have a high GWP, as well as their lower-GWP replacements.
The regulation has split industry groups. Two groups -- the National Environmental Development Association's Clean Air Project (NEDA/CAP) and the Air Permitting Forum (APF), which represents a range of industry groups including auto industry firms -- charge the expansion of the section 608 guidelines to cover non-ozone-depleting substances is unlawful.
Others, including appliance manufacturers represented by the Alliance for Atmospheric Policy and chemical companies Honeywell and Chemours, have intervened to defend the 608 rule. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is also backing the refrigerant guidelines.
In its April 11 order, the court granted the abeyance motion but also set a number of filing deadlines for both petitioners and respondents in the case, including the submission of any procedural motions by May 16 and any dispositive motions by June 5.
Petitioners, in their Feb. 14 motion, requested the abeyance “in order to afford the Parties time to discuss issues that may be raised in the Petitions for Review filed in this Court and issues raised in the Forum's Petition for Reconsideration pending before EPA, and potentially to resolve these issues in whole or part.”
NEDA/CAP in its Feb. 17 statement of issues raised several questions over whether the leak detection and repair requirements; provisions requiring retrofit or retirement of appliances; and compliance deadlines are “unreasonable,” arbitrary or capricious, or otherwise unlawful. The group also alleged that EPA failed to provide the data underlying the technical basis asserted for the rule.
While it is possible industry groups and EPA could resolve some technical issues regarding the guidelines, industry petitioners also question whether the agency has the underlying legal authority to expand the section 608 guidelines -- originally designed to cover ozone-depleting chemicals -- to HFCs and other substitutes that do not deplete the ozone but accelerate climate change.
The section 608 rule is one of several where EPA has sought to limit high-GWP HFCs via its air act authority, which critics charge is intended only to regulate the chemicals' ozone-depleting properties. Such measures were an important part of the Obama administration's climate policy agenda.
The Obama EPA's rules phasing out the high-GWP HFCs under its Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program face a similar challenge from two chemical firms, which charge the agency lacks authority under that program to regulate non-ozone-depleting substances like HFCs.
And a D.C. Circuit panel during Feb. 15 oral arguments in that case appeared skeptical that the agency has such an authority. Two judges on the panel asked tough questions of a Department of Justice attorney, suggesting they might ultimately find EPA overstepped the bounds of the statute.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/court-pauses-suit-over-updated-epa-refrigerant-guidelines
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Researchers Say EPA Overestimated Cost, Effectiveness of Methane Rules
Apr 21, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
Researchers from Stanford University said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overestimated how much it would cost the oil and gas industry to monitor and repair methane leaks at its facilities, and how many leaks would be found, when it updated embattled rules governing emissions last year.
Arvind Ravikumar and Adam Brandt, co-authors of a study published Wednesday in IOP Publishing's Environmental Research Letters, contend that the use of optical gas imaging (OGI) technology in leak detection and repair (LDAR) surveys "varies significantly with environmental conditions, operator practices and characteristics of the facility." They said additional study of OGI technology, which includes infrared cameras, is needed to understand its effectiveness in reducing emissions.
EPA issued three rules, collectively updates to the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), in May 2016, during the Obama administration. The rules were designed to reduce methane, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and toxic air pollutants. Earlier this week, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the agency will reconsider the rules and invited petitioners, including representatives of the oil and gas industry, to submit comments.
When EPA unveiled the rules last May, it revised its estimate for climate benefits to $690 million (in 2012 dollars) in 2025, with the benefits outweighing an estimated $530 million in costs to industry. The agency estimated net climate benefits would total $170 million in 2025. But Ravikumar and Brandt disagreed, saying their model shows the costs would be 27% less, or roughly $386.9 million.
"The difference arises because EPA has higher repair and resurvey costs compared to our model," the researchers said. "This occurs because the EPA likely overestimates the number of leaks found through an OGI-based LDAR survey...
"It should be noted that both models assume repair and resurvey costs are based on the number of leaks detected rather than the leak size -- a reasonable assumption given that studies have shown no correlation between repair costs and leak size."
EPA's updated rules called for requiring leak monitoring on a fixed schedule: twice a year at well sites, and on a quarterly basis at compressor stations. The agency also planned to allow operators to deploy a portable VOC monitoring instrument -- such as an organic vapor analyzer, or methane "sniffer" -- as an alternative for finding and repairing leaks with a repair threshold of 500 parts per million (ppm), a process the EPA calls "Method 21."
Ravikumar and Brandt said EPA, in its attempt to estimate repair and resurvey costs, assumed that operators using OGI technology would find 1.18% of its components are leaking methane. But that estimate was based on prior measurements of valves at oil refineries using a Method 21 device at a 10,000 ppm screening level.
"This Method 21 leak definition cannot be directly applied to natural gas well sites on an OGI monitoring schedule because of significant differences in detection thresholds," the researchers said, citing other surveys. "Available evidence suggests that the number of components found to be leaking will be an order of magnitude lower using OGI (0.1-0.3%) rather than Method 21 (1-2%). This difference translates to significantly lower repair and resurvey costs, and hence, lower LDAR implementation costs."
The researchers added that environmental factors, especially air temperature and wind velocity, can also impact OGI.
"It would seem logical to specifically target and repair as quickly as possible the small number of ['super-emitting' leaks], resulting in large marginal abatement benefits," the researchers said. "In this regard, OGI technology is ideally suited due to its ease in finding large leaks.
"However...the performance of this technology is sensitive to environmental conditions and 'detection' relies on the subjective judgment of the operator. Moreover, a semi-annual LDAR schedule could mean that large leaks go unnoticed for up to six months. When looking for super-emitters, continuous monitoring technologies can trade-off sensitivity for lower cost, paving the way for real-time leak detection and mitigation."
On March 28, President Trump issued an executive order that included a directive for EPA to immediately review regulations on energy sources, and then to either suspend, revise or rescind them. The administration also asked an appellate court to delay a series of lawsuits over the rules.
The rules were designed to help meet a goal by the Obama administration to slash by 2025 methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40-45% from 2012 levels. EPA previously said it expected NSPS to reduce 510,000 short tons of methane in 2025, which is the equivalent of reducing 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. The rules were also expected to reduce other pollutants, including 210,000 tons of VOCs and 3,900 tons of air toxics, by 2025.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/110196-researchers-say-epa-overestimated-cost-effectiveness-of-methane-rules
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EPA Chief Delays Methane Rule at Behest of Oil and Gas Firms
Apr 20, 2017 | The New York Times
By Associated Press
The Environmental Protection Agency is again moving to derail Obama-era regulations aimed at reducing pollution from the fossil fuel industry.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Wednesday he's issued a 90-day delay for oil and gas companies to follow a new rule requiring them to monitor and reduce methane leaks from their facilities. Pruitt said the agency will now reconsider the 2016 measure, which the companies were required to comply with by June.
It was the latest in a slew of actions by Pruitt to set aside environmental regulations opposed by corporate interests. The American Petroleum Institute, the Texas Oil and Gas Association and other industry groups petitioned Pruitt to scrap the requirement.
"American businesses should have the opportunity to review new requirements, assess economic impacts and report back, before those new requirements are finalized," Pruitt said in a statement.
Natural gas is largely made up of methane. It is a potent greenhouse gas, causing up to 100 times more warming in the planet's atmosphere than the same amount of carbon dioxide.
Pruitt's decision came less than a month after he waived an earlier EPA edict that asked 15,000 oil and gas producers to track and report their methane emissions.
Environmental groups contend that actual methane emissions from leaks and intentional venting at fossil-fuel operations are many times greater than what is now reported. They vow to take Pruitt to court.
"Rolling back these rules benefits the worst actors in the business, at the expense of both responsible companies and ordinary everyday Americans," said Mark Brownstein, a spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund. "Plugging the leaks is straightforward and cost effective."
Oil and gas companies say they were already working to reduce methane emissions and that complying with the new rules would make many low-production wells unprofitable.
Howard Feldman, a senior director at the American Petroleum Institute, said his group would work with the Trump administration and Congress on new policies "that recognize our industry as part of the solution to U.S. economic, environmental and national security goals."
Prior to his appointment by President Donald Trump to serve as the nation's chief environmental regulator, Pruitt was attorney general of Oklahoma and closely aligned with the state's oil and gas industry. In recent weeks, Pruitt has moved to scrap or delay numerous EPA regulations enacted during the Obama administration to curb air and water pollution from fossil fuel operations.
Like the president who appointed him, Pruitt has expressed doubt about the consensus of climate scientists that the world is warming and that man-made carbon emissions are primarily to blame.
"Scott Pruitt is continuing his relentless assault on public health and a stable climate at the behest of corporate polluters by seeking to dismantle life-saving methane safeguards," said Andres Restrepo, a lawyer for the Sierra Club. "His decision to delay the standards on behalf of his close ally is, quite simply, illegal."
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/04/20/us/politics/ap-us-epa-methane.html
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Exxon Picks Site of World's Largest Ethylene Cracker Plant
Apr 21, 2017 | E&E Energywire
Petrochemical giant Exxon Mobil Chemical Co. plans to build the world's largest ethylene cracker plant in Portland, Texas.
Exxon formally announced its selection of Portland during a public event Wednesday at the Portland Community Center.
"It has all the elements we wanted to see in a location to build our project," said Robert Tully, venture executive of Gulf Coast Growth, the local arm of Exxon.
The plant will cost $10 billion to construct over a period of five years. It is expected to inject more than $50 billion into the local economy during its first six years of operation.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), whose staff worked behind the scenes to bring the project to Texas, said the choice of Portland is a "tremendous win" for the state.
"This record-breaking project illustrates that our business climate is exactly what leading and growing companies are seeking when investing in their future," Abbott said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/04/21/stories/1060053364
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Lack of Safety Management System Led to Fatal Airgas Explosion, U.S. Chemical Safety Board Concludes
Apr 21, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jessica Morrison
A 2016 Airgas facility explosion that killed one worker reveals a gap in federal process safety requirements for facilities that manufacture hazardous substances, a new report says.
The plant in Cantonment, Fla., which makes nitrous oxide, was not in violation of federal regulations when the explosion happened, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) says in an investigation report released last week. OSHA and EPA regulations that require chemical facilities to have process safety management systems largely do not apply to facilities that manufacture nitrous oxide.
“Airgas lacked a safety management system to identify, evaluate, and control nitrous oxide process safety hazards, which led to the explosion,” CSB concludes.
“Since 1973, the nitrous oxide industry has averaged one major explosion about every seven years,” says CSB, an independent federal agency that investigates serious chemical accidents in the U.S. but does not regulate.
CSB says the explosion at the Airgas facility was most likely caused when a pump heated nitrous oxide above its safe operating limits during transfer from a holding tank to a transport tanker. But damage to the facility, minimal process data, and absence of a surviving eyewitness kept investigators from making a definitive determination.
Nitrous oxide manufacturing has not resumed at the facility. Airgas says it is implementing a process safety initiative for its nitrous oxide business.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i17/Lack-safety-management-system-led.html
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SEC Sees Room for Enforcing Corporate Hacking Disclosure
Apr 21, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
The Securities and Exchange Commission is sharpening its focus on cybersecurity as high-profile hacking incidents continue to pile up, agency officials said yesterday.
Shamoil Shipchandler, regional director at the SEC's Fort Worth, Texas, office, said the agency is in the "development phase" with its approach to cybersecurity, meaning regulators are "looking at the bright-line examples of places where this has gone wrong."
"We'll get more and more deeply into [cybersecurity] as other incidents, other events happen," Shipchandler said at a conference hosted by the International Association of Privacy Professionals in Washington, D.C.
The SEC has broad authority to bring cases against registered companies, including publicly traded utility holding companies and oil companies that neglect to properly inform investors of the risks associated with a cyberattack.
In practice, the agency has not yet brought any cases for under-reporting cybersecurity risks, though some energy companies include dire language about the threat in their SEC filings to cover their bases (Energywire, Sept. 25, 2014).
"We've been fairly measured in our enforcement actions in this space," noted Stephanie Avakian, deputy director of the SEC's enforcement division, who spoke alongside Shipchandler at the conference.
The SEC has more leeway to regulate cybersecurity at financial institutions and has already used its authority there to reach settlements with several firms caught failing to protect their data.
"I'm not going out on a limb in predicting more account intrusions, more hacking, more use of nonpublic information and that sort of stuff — so I would expect to continue to see cases in that space," said Avakian.
President Trump's nominee to lead the SEC, Jay Clayton, has shown an interest in cybersecurity in the past, once calling for a government-led "cyber threat commission" modeled off the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission set up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Clayton previously focused on regulatory and enforcement proceedings as a partner at the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm (Greenwire, Jan. 4).
For now, Shipchandler said the agency appeals to "reason and common sense" when reviewing companies' actions in the run-up to major hacking incidents.
Avakian said one "critical factor" for reviewing proper cybersecurity disclosure would be whether a company ever self-reported a hacking event to law enforcement.
"I don't necessarily mean the SEC in that regard: I mean the proper law enforcement in that circumstance," Avakian said. "It could be any number of federal agencies or local agencies."
But industry-run information sharing and analysis centers, such as the Electricity ISAC or the Financial Services ISAC, probably don't count, Avakian added in response to a question from the audience. "I'm not sure I would put it in the bucket of being the same as reporting to the FBI or the Secret Service," she said.
Both Shipchandler and Avakian offered the caveat that they spoke from their personal experiences rather than for the agency as a whole. But their comments offered rare insight into a U.S. regulator only beginning to flex its muscles in the cyber arena.
"As we educate people, we still see people who have not taken steps to even think about [cybersecurity] right now," said Shipchandler. "Right now we're still in that education-bright line [phase]. It's only a matter of time before that develops even further, only because the risks are continuing to grow."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/04/21/stories/1060053388
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Ohio Pipeline Crew Spills 2M Gallons of Drilling Mud
Apr 21, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
Two million gallons of drilling mud was dumped into Ohio wetlands by crews installing the Rover pipeline, according to a violations notice from Ohio EPA.
The larger spill left as much as 2 million gallons of bentonite mud, a drilling lubricant, over 500,000 square feet of wetland near the Tuscarawas River.
The mud is a natural drilling fluid that does not contain added chemicals, according to an Ohio EPA spokesman.
Both spills have been contained. Adjacent waterways, private wells and public water systems are all safe, EPA spokesman James Lee said.
"Discharges of bentonite mud and other material into waters of the state, including wetlands, can affect water chemistry and potentially suffocate wildlife, fish and microinvertebrates," Lee said. "Any affected public water system would need to apply extensive and costly treatment in order to remove the material from the source water."
The Rover pipeline is a $4.2 billion underground pipeline running from Washington County in southeast Ohio to connect with pipelines to send natural gas across the country.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/04/21/stories/1060053401
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(ACC Mentioned) Volunteers Work to Revitalize Los Angeles River
Apr 21, 2017 | Voa News
By Mike O'Sullivan
The Los Angeles River spans 80 kilometers through Los Angeles and its suburbs, and for much of its route it’s encased in concrete. Like many urban waterways, the river is being restored to its natural state, and volunteers are helping for three weekends in April in an annual cleanup. The sprucing up coincides with Earth Day, April 22.
Much of the river was lined with concrete after devastating floods in 1938, and today the channel is filled with rainwater in winter but is often dry in summer. When barren, the riverbed has been featured in Hollywood movies such as the 1978 musical Grease, where it was the scene of a teenage auto drag race.
Increasingly, however, stretches of greenery have re-emerged amid the concrete, drawing birds, other wildlife and human visitors.
“Being exposed to this natural section where there’s wildlife, and quite a bit of trash as well ... it’s really eye-opening and shocking for a lot of people,” said Stephen Mejia of the nonprofit group Friends of the Los Angeles River. He was sorting through trash collected by volunteers on a recent weekend.
This season’s winter flooding brought tons of trash, and volunteers from clubs, businesses and industry groups are helping remove it.
Lauren Scott of the American Chemistry Council, an industry group whose members produce some of the plastic debris that finds its way into the river, is helping sort the trash to determine its composition and origin, and ultimately, she told VOA, “to help prevent the litter.”
Local restrictions on plastic bags and recycling programs are helping, but the annual cleanup is still needed, said Scott, after this year’s heavy rains and “because everyone wants a clean river that we can swim and boat and hike in.”
Nine-time Paralympic athlete Candace Cable, a member of the committee to bring the Olympic Games to Los Angeles, is helping with the cleanup by collecting trash from her wheelchair. She says the volunteer-run program to bring the Summer Games to the city in 2024 hopes to “get future volunteers for the Games” as its promoters help to beautify the city.
Los Angeles is competing for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games against the sole remaining rival, Paris.
A volunteer named Tom pulls a blanket from the thick underbrush and says he is helping Los Angeles recover its natural beauty.
“We’ve got beautiful places,” he said, “but as you can see, with the trash they become not so beautiful, so I’m just glad to do what I can to help change that.”
Urban waterways play a vital role in a region’s ecology, said Christine Lee, a science applications engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Lee studies water quality, using data from earth-observing satellites and airborne monitors, focusing in part on another waterway, the San Francisco Bay Delta. It is home to endangered species and is a crucial source of water for California farmers. Debates over its role have put agricultural and environmental groups at odds.
In Los Angeles, officials must weigh the need for flood control with the requirements of the natural ecosystem, where wetlands fed by the Los Angeles River purify and recharge the groundwater.
The annual cleanup and other efforts to revitalize the river are showing results, as residents take advantage of bike paths and jogging trails along the river’s meandering route.
Taking a break from collecting trash, teacher Lois Keller told VOA, “It’s been really exciting to start to see the river come back.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/volunteers-work-to-revitalize-los-angeles-river/3819669.html
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Apr 21, 2017 | The New York Times
By David Leonhardt
The damage from climate change isn’t just coming in the future. It’s part of the present, as this weekend’s issue of The New York Times Magazine points out.
“Last year, melting permafrost in Siberia released a strain of anthrax, which had been sealed in a frozen reindeer carcass, sickening 100 people and killing one child,” Jon Mooallem writes. “Parts of Washington now experience flooding 30 days a year, a figure that has roughly quadrupled since 1960. In Wilmington, N.C., the number is 90 days.”
Yet in the face of this urgent challenge — one that affects all of humanity, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, America and the rest of the world — President Trump has chosen to accelerate climate change. He and his aides are encouraging pollution.
What can you do about it?
You can get involved politically, and you should. Participate in efforts to persuade the administration and Congress to take a different tack. Strive to elect people who take climate change seriously. But such work has a long lead time and an uncertain outcome.
In the meantime, you can do something else, as well: Look for ways to influence companies, communities, cities and states, all of which can have a big effect on the climate. In these realms, there is reason for optimism — and room to do so much more.
This week, Walmart announced that it planned to remove one billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its supply chain by 2030. “That’s more than the annual emissions of Germany,” writes Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, which is working with the company. “It’s the equivalent of taking 211 million cars off the road every year.”
Cities — including New York, Mexico City, Shenzen and others — have also taken big steps. Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope, the former head of the Sierra Club, have a new book out, with many more details on what can be done. (Tom Friedman talked about their book in his column this week.)
These actions are not a full replacement for action by national governments, as Nick Stockton of Wired notes. Trump’s pro-pollution policy will do great damage. But climate change is too big a problem for defeatism. Even now, there are many ways for citizens to act.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/climate-change-is-now.html?_r=0
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Apr 21, 2017 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Bill Foster
This Saturday, scientists and science advocates from all walks of life will converge on Washington, D.C. and in cities throughout the country to draw attention to the need for evidence-based policies. As the only PhD physicist in Congress, I will march as a concerned member of the scientific community, not as a congressman. Science, logic, and truth should not be partisan issues; they are the cornerstones of fields that have made the United States a leader in innovation and a better place for everyone to live.
The Trump administration’s policies threaten this leadership. The president’s anti-science policies began on the campaign trail when he called climate change a hoax, directly contradicting decades of climate science data and research and instilling a falsehood as fact to millions of Americans.
As president, Mr. Trump has stacked his Cabinet with individuals who have either actively worked to undermine the agencies they now lead or have demonstrated a willingness to wipe out federal funding for science entirely. At the time of his nomination to the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt had repeatedly sued the agency for its regulations. Mick Mulvaney, now head of the Office of Budget and Management, caused controversy last fall when he openly questioned the need for any federally funded research at all. Scientific discovery requires sustained funding for decades, and politicians can destroy it in a single budget cycle.
The president’s proposed cuts to the budget will significantly harm our long-term national interests. His FY18 budget proposal would slash funding for the EPA by 31 percent and the Department of Energy by 20 percent. The National Institutes of Health, which conduct cutting edge research on diabetes and dementia diseases, would lose six billion dollars. This money would go a long way to find treatments for diseases that will greatly affect our aging population and are extremely costly for Medicaid and Medicare.
These actions are the culmination of Republican attacks on science and research. In the U.S. House of Representatives, I serve on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee where few of the committee hearings are actually related to science. Just last fall, a Republican witness who was called to testify before our committee insisted that it was a matter of scientific debate whether it would be harmful if the Greenland ice sheet melted.
In science, the declaration of a false statement would end your career. Today, many politicians knowingly make false statements on the campaign trail for their short-term political benefit. These promises based on false facts lead to policies based on false science that become detrimental to the long-term vitality of our country.
If we choose to ignore science and refuse to fund important scientific research, we voluntarily cede our place as a world leader in innovation. Scientific advancement has given our society a standard of living that was unimaginable for many generations. Science has improved public health, taken us to the moon, and allowed us to understand the origins of our universe. It also has given us the tools to solve problems now instead of reacting to them after it is too late.
Climate change denial and budget cuts to critical science funding puts us dangerously close to an outright rejection of the expertise of scientists and the knowledge that centuries of scientific inquiry have yielded. The Science March is a call to academics, universities, experts, and anyone who values education to stand united against this wave of ignorance, lies, and disregard for facts for the next generation.
Citizen involvement in support of science doesn’t have to start with running for high political offices. We need people at every level of government to advocate for evidence-based policies, science and education. Science advocates can run for their local school board or city council, or simply request a meeting with their member of Congress.
Until the Trump administration changes course significantly, we must work together to bridge the divide between academia, education and policymaking. This administration’s decision to ignore the science will not absolve them of responsibility. Our actions will have a lasting effect and history will judge us more kindly. See you at the March.
Rep. Foster represents the 11th District in Illinois. For over twenty years, he worked as a high-energy physicist and particle accelerator designer at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and was a member of the team that discovered the top quark, the heaviest known form of matter.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/329809-why-we-will-march-for-science
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Why Scientists are Marching on Washington and More Than 400 Other Cities
Apr 21, 2017 | Washington Post
By Joel Achenbach, Ben Guarino and Sarah Kaplan
The March for Science is not a partisan event. But it's political. That's the recurring message of the organizers, who insist that this is a line the scientific community and its supporters will be able to walk. It may prove too delicate a distinction, though, when people show up in droves on Saturday with their signs and their passions.
“We’ve been asked not to make personal attacks or partisan attacks,” said honorary national co-chair Lydia Villa-Komaroff, in a teleconference this week with reporters. But Villa-Komaroff, who will be among those given two-minute speaking slots, quickly added: “This is a group of people who don’t take well being told what to do.”
The Science March, held on Earth Day, is expected to drawtens of thousands of people to the Mall, and satellite marches have been planned in more than 400 cities on six continents. The crowd will gather on Saturday near the Washington Monument for five hours of speeches and teach-ins, culminating in the march at 2 p.m. The march will follow Constitution Avenue along the north edge of the Mall to the foot of Capitol Hill.
Protest marches may be common in Washington these days, but one centered on the value of science is unprecedented. The march is part of a wave of activism in the scientific community. Scientists are jumping into the political fray by running for public office — such as in southern California, where geologist Jess Phoenix, a Democrat, has announced her candidacy for a congressional seat held by a Republican.
Many mainstream science organizations — such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Chemical Society — have signed on, despite their lack of experience in going to the barricades.
Rush Holt, head of AAAS, said there was initial hesitationabout whether this was the kind of event a scientist ought to be joining but that members of his association overwhelmingly support the decision to participate.
This is not simply a reaction to President Trump's election, Holt said. Scientists have been worried for years that “evidence has been crowded out by ideology and opinion in public debate and policymaking.” Long before Trump's election, people in the scientific and academic community raised concerns about the erosion of the value of expertise and the rise of pseudoscientific and anti-scientific notions. Science also found itself swept up into cultural and political battles; views on climate science, for example, increasingly reflect political ideology.
Mona Hanna-Attisha, the Michigan pediatrician who sounded the alarm on lead in Flint’s drinking water, is one of the march's honorary co-chairs. Her experience as a physician in Flint paved the way for her science advocacy, Hanna-Attisha told The Post. “Pediatricians care for a population that can’t speak, can’t vote,” she said, noting that doctors take an oath to protect patients from harm. “It is your role to be an advocate.”
The line up for the event on the Mall includes some of science's biggest names. Bill Nye, CEO of the Planetary Society and another honorary co-chair, will speak, as will climate scientist Michael Mann and NASA Astronaut Leland Melvin. The musician Questlove is slated to give a performance.
Notably, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the most well-known living American scientist, will not be attending a science march, according to a representative. Tyson did not respond to a request to comment on why.
No politicians have been invited to participate in the march, organizers say, even as they acknowledge that this was inspired by the Women’s March on the day after Trump’s inauguration.
“Science is nonpartisan. That’s the reason that we respect it, because it aims to reduce bias. That’s why we have the scientific method. We felt very strongly that having politicians involved would skew that in some way,” Caroline Weinberg, a public health researcher and co-organizer of the march, said at the National Press Club earlier this month.
Carol Greider, a Johns Hopkins molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, said in the conference call this week that she will bring dozens of students and postdoctoral researchers to the march. “People are actually questioning whether they can even go on and have a career in science,” she said, noting the Trump administration's proposal to cut nearly a fifth of the National Institutes of Health budget. “Potentially, we will lose an entire generation of people who are now trained and have the talent and are eager to make the next breakthroughs.”
Greider said it's possible to fight for science without “labeling ourselves” as being on one partisan side or the other. That was echoed by Elias Zerhouni, former NIH head under President George W. Bush: “This is not a partisan issue. This is not one administration versus another. . . . It's really an age-old debate between rational approaches to the universe and irrational approaches to the universe.”
Not every scientist is convinced. Arthur Lambert, a cancer researcher at the Whitehead Institute at MIT in Boston, said he was initially excited about the science march. But as the event drew closer, it seemed increasingly unlikely that it would appear to be anything but partisan.
“It’s a bad idea to align all of science against any political administration,” Lambert said. “I don’t think that's their goal … But it runs that risk, especially after such a heated election.”
Recent political developments in Washington are among the primary drivers of this march. Before he became president, Trump promoted anti-scientific theories. He tweeted in 2012, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.” He echoed the fully discredited notion that there is a link between vaccines and autism. During the presidential transition he reportedly discussed with vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the possibility of creating a vaccine safety commission.
To run the Environmental Protection Agency, he appointed Scott Pruitt, who as Oklahoma attorney general had sued the agency many times and who, during an interview in March, said he did not believe that human activity is a primary driver of the observed climate change — a statement at odds with scientific research.
The entry ban pushed in the early days of the administration, and associated rhetoric about building walls and restricting immigration, alarmed many leaders of science-related institutions that rely on the expertise of foreign nationals (at MIT, for example, 40 percent of the faculty was born outside the United States, according to the university's president).
The administration has not taken some actions initially feared by the scientific community. One fear was that climate data would be deleted or sabotaged; that hasn’t happened. The EPA’s website continues to describe climate change as largely driven by human activities.
Trump has yet to appoint anyone to several key science-related posts. He has not picked a White House science adviser. He hasn’t nominated anyone to run NASA or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the U.S. Geological Survey. He has let Francis Collins stay on an interim basis as head of the NIH, though it’s not clear that Collins will be permanently retained. Public health positions are unoccupied that are crucial for responding to a global pandemic, a disaster every president since Ronald Reagan has faced.
Behind the scenes at the March for Science, there has been internal controversy about inclusiveness and diversity, and whether social justice should be central to the march’s messaging. On social media, a number of scientists have said they are skipping the march because they think the organizers haven’t focused enough on racism, sexism, and the scientific community’s centuries-long history of marginalizing women and people of color.
Meanwhile, conservatives have derided the march as a political enterprise in which what’s being advocated is not science, exactly, but left-leaning policies, such as the Obama administration’s environmental regulations designed to curb carbon emissions.
But for most of those who will come to Washington or other cities on Saturday, the march is a chance to show solidarity, enjoy witty protest signs, and stick up for evidence and reason.
And not all of them will be scientists. Dennis Moore, a patrol cop at the Cherry Hill, N.J. Police Department, said he's marching to make the point that science benefits everyone.
“I've always been kind of a nerd,” he said, mentioning that he was wearing a flux capacitor t-shirt as he spoke. “Science is our best tool for understanding the world around us … but I think we’re basically just de-emphasizing science in our lives and in our communities.”
Moore lives in New Jersey, but he and his wife will be visiting Boston on Saturday on a trip to celebrate their anniversary, and Moore plans to stop by the local science march while they're there.
How does his wife feel about that?
“Great!” He laughed. “She's pretty nerdy too.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/04/20/why-scientists-are-marching-on-washington-and-more-than-400-other-cities/?utm_term=.0f4486b8fadb
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