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EPA Science Fight to Flare Up Over Looming Vacancy
May 30, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Wolff
An upcoming vacancy on the EPA scientific committee that gauges the health risks of air pollution is raising fears among health advocates and green groups that Administrator Scott Pruitt's plans to reshuffle the agency's advisers could weaken its upcoming rules. -
Wildlife, Renewables Take Back Seat to Oil and Gas in Budget
May 30, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
In southwest Wyoming, a plan to revise greater sage grouse management on a 3.5-million-acre mineral estate could be in jeopardy under the Interior Department's proposed fiscal 2018 budget. -
EPA Investigating Emissions in Tank Deaths
May 30, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
U.S. EPA is investigating air emissions from two North Dakota oil well sites where workers died from toxic vapors. -
States 'Awaken' to Critical Infrastructure Cyberthreats
May 30, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak and Edward Klump
A cyberattack on the power grid would be devastating but "especially in Las Vegas," said Pat Spearman. -
Colo. Regulators Find Another Leak Near Exploded Home
May 30, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
Colorado oil and gas regulators have found a second underground gas plume in the same neighborhood where a pipeline leak destroyed a home and killed two people in April. -
US PMSA Raises Fines for Federal Hazmat Transportation Violations
May 29, 2017 | HazMat Management Magazine
The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) recently announced increases in the maximum and minimum civil penalties for knowing violations of the federal hazardous materials transportation law or a regulation, order, special permit, or approval issued under that law. -
Opinion: Plastic Pollution Doesn’t Just Make for an Ugly Beach Day. It’s Contaminating Our Food Chain
May 29, 2017 | Los Angeles Times
By Julie Andersen
There’s a big lie about plastic — that you can throw it away. But that’s not true; there is no “away.”
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EPA Science Fight to Flare Up Over Looming Vacancy
May 30, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Wolff
An upcoming vacancy on the EPA scientific committee that gauges the health risks of air pollution is raising fears among health advocates and green groups that Administrator Scott Pruitt's plans to reshuffle the agency's advisers could weaken its upcoming rules.
EPA sources say that the agency is months behind schedule in finding a replacement for Dr. Ana Diez Roux, the chair of the seven-member Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, who will exit the board when her term expires on Sept. 30. As a medical doctor and member of the National Academy of Sciences, Diez Roux fulfills two of the requirements that the Clean Air Act mandates for CASAC, and her departure will prevent it from issuing recommendations on soot and sulfur oxides that the agency will soon use to decide new regulations.
Earlier this month, Pruitt alarmed scientists and green groups when he opted to remove half of the members of EPA's Board of Scientific Counselors, a part of the administrator's pledge to open up EPA's advisory bodies to more business-friendly voices.
But unlike BOSC, which was created at the discretion of the administrator and plays mostly an advisory role, Congress created CASAC when it amended the Clean Air Act in 1977 and specified the types of experts it must include. The committee is charged with reviewing and finalizing health recommendations for six key air pollutants, and its guidance sets the direction that must be followed by the agency when crafting new regulations.
When Diez Roux's term expires, the committee "cannot function," one EPA source said.
Terry Yosie, a former head of the EPA office that manages its science committees, said he has been told by EPA staff that Pruitt has a draft notice calling for new CASAC nominations on his desk, but he hasn't yet issued it.EPA did not respond to a request to confirm this information.
Yosie, who now runs the nonprofit World Environment Center, said the agency could get slots filled on time, but an EPA source said it would require "a significant deviation" from the agency's usual monthslong process of internal review and public input.
"That process needs to have already started," the source said.
EPA declined to offer details on the CASAC nomination process, but an agency spokeswoman said "there will be a concerted effort to assure diverse scientific perspectives on advisory panels and to look for additional ways to strengthen scientific review at EPA.”
After news that EPA would not extend members of BOSC to a second term, EPA spokesman J.P. Freire told The New York Times that Pruitt's aim was that the board should have people "who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community."
Republicans and industry groups have long accused EPA scientists of having an anti-industry bias and of concealing the data they use to draw conclusions. The Republican-run House Science Committee has twice advanced legislation that would force science committees to only use data that is publicly available.
And efforts by companies and previous Republican administrations to weaken health rules for pollutants given priority under the Clean Air Act — soot, smog, lead, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur oxide — have been repeatedly shot down by the courts. In 2009, the D.C. Circuit overturned a standard set by President George W. Bush's EPA for soot levels because it failed to follow the advice provided by CASAC.
That has turned CASAC into a major target for groups seeking to ease their regulatory burden.
"It provides a clear political motivation to stack the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee with industry-friendly members that will not apply the current state of medical science to protect Americans as the law requires," said John Walke, director of the Clean Air Project for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
At the same time that CASAC is hanging in limbo, the EPA has yet to issue a call for nominations for 15 members of the Science Advisory Board, another body created by statute. The board has 47 total members, nine of whom, including their chair, will be completing their second and final term, and six of whom are finishing their first term. The board has a broader mandate for advising the administrator, and the CASAC chair is a member.
EPA has historically opened up the nomination process for advisory committees in April. Last year it opened nominations for a seat on CASAC on April 6 for the position that was ultimately filled by appointing Donna Kenski, an analyst for the Lake Michigan Air Directors Consortium. Emails from EPA obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the blog junkscience.org show that Kenski didn't receive her invitation until Oct. 6, days after her term was to begin.
Kenski was selected despite a campaign by Michael Honeycutt, chief toxicologist for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to get on the committee. Honeycutt, who regularly impugned EPA's recommendations on everything from particulate matter to ozone, wrote to over 100 organizations and law firms to ask them to contact EPA and support his selection to CASAC, according to the Texas Observer.
"I hope that Administrator Pruitt better balances these advisory groups in terms of scientific expertise and practical experience that has been missing in the past," Honeycutt said in a statement to POLITICO. "Past advisory groups have had too much representation from individuals who are experts in very narrow fields of study, without experience in integrating across multiple lines of evidence."
The long selection process can be common. Peter Thorne, chairman of the SAB and head of the Occupational and Environmental Health Department at the University of Iowa College of Public Health, said he didn't get his invitation until early November or late October. He's concerned about replacing all people leaving the board.
"It’s a very deliberative process to come up with members who have all the requisite expertise to address the things that come before us," he said. "I would be concerned we could end up without sufficient strength in all those areas if we are unable to replace departing members."
The agency may already be signaling a willingness to ignore previous norms. Last week, it shortened the nomination process to replace BOSC members by three weeks.
House Science Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is content to let the agency work through its process.
"Given the previous administration’s close relationship with activist groups, it will take time to ensure a diversity of applicants are considered," he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, members of the committees are themselves jittery. Thorne said he's taking a "wait and see" view on how Pruitt will deal with open seats on the committees. Ron Wyzga, a senior technical executive at the Electric Power Research Institute and one of the seven CASAC members, started a new term on the committee last year. But he's worried about the signal the agency sent in its handling of decision not to renew terms for BOSC members.
"It’s kind of weird," he said. "The thing is, people had received appointment letters, then they [EPA] rescinded them. It struck me as duplicitous. People are willing to do some service to the government, and they're suddenly told, 'We don’t want you any more.' It's an awkward situation."
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2017/05/epa-takes-aim-at-crucial-clean-air-committee-157379
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Wildlife, Renewables Take Back Seat to Oil and Gas in Budget
May 30, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
In southwest Wyoming, a plan to revise greater sage grouse management on a 3.5-million-acre mineral estate could be in jeopardy under the Interior Department's proposed fiscal 2018 budget.
But with the domestic energy business in a natural pause prompted by low oil and gas prices, this is exactly the time for the federal government to focus on investing in critical wildlife habitats and sustainable job creation, some Western conservationists say.
"Now is the time to set up wildlife habitat for success," said Chris Merrill, associate director of the Wyoming Outdoor Council. "Now is the time to get the policy framework right."
The Bureau of Land Management's Rock Springs Field Office has been in the process of amending its Green River Resource Management Plan (RMP) to address greater sage grouse management. Last week, Interior proposed directing $40.5 million toward grouse protection, down from $68.9 million in the fiscal 2017 omnibus spending package (Greenwire, May 25).
BLM's budget also contains a $10 million reduction for the Resource Management Planning, Assessment and Monitoring program. The reduced allocation would require a reprioritization of efforts to focus on the expansion of coal, oil and gas development, according to Interior's budget in brief.
"If you don't have an emphasis on balance, on conserving the best habitat while at the same time allowing for development where it makes sense, we risk losing some of this great habitat that we have and that we need to conserve for the future," Merrill said.
The reductions to BLM's sage grouse and RMP programs are part of an overall $163 million proposed budget decrease for the bureau. BLM's oil and gas programs, however, received a $16 million bump (Energywire, May 24).
"The BLM budget generally prioritizes and advances the president's priorities related to jobs and energy security with resource allocation that supports increased coal, oil and gas production," the budget proposal says.
Wyoming's oil and gas regulator saw the increases as a promising sign — even if the market isn't currently supporting new production.
"The oil price is obviously one major factor for an operator in determining if they are going to pick up a rig, but the certainty of having these permits in hand allows the operator to optimize the rig schedule and drill those permits which provide the best chance for a return on the investment in this price environment," said Tom Kropatsch, deputy oil and gas supervisor at the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
The funding increase would help erase a backlog of nearly 3,000 applications for permit to drill (APDs), he said (Energywire, May 17).
But as of late 2015, more than 7,000 approved APDs were still unused by industry.
That pileup signals that BLM action won't automatically bring back production, said David Hayes, former Interior deputy secretary under President Obama.
"The notion that Interior is going to lead some renaissance here ... is misplaced," Hayes told reporters on a conference call last week.
Although the budget is unlikely to be implemented as is, the proposal is a bellwether of the Trump administration's priorities, said Greg Zimmerman, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities.
"It is an indication of the Trump administration and [Interior Secretary] Ryan Zinke's vision for public lands and the role of energy and conservation on public lands," Zimmerman said.
If the administration is also looking at rolling back drilling safeguards for water supplies and wildlife habitat, he said, "speeding up the pace of leasing could lead to some pretty unfortunate consequences."New Mexico
In New Mexico, Interior's budget has been regarded as a missed opportunity for renewables.
Oil towns have seen massive layoffs since the bust hit, and the governor is working to plug the state's budget gap. Fossil fuels are the backbone of New Mexico's economy, but with the industry in a slump, the time is ripe for investment in more sustainable job creation, said Garrett VeneKlasen, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation.
Yet onshore and offshore renewable energy programs got a reduction under Interior's proposed budget.
"I think the administration is being regressive in their approach around energy," VeneKlasen said. "I think it's a mistake. We need to fund renewables at the same level — if not more — than we fund fossil fuels."
New Mexico ranks 48th in renewable energy production, according to the Department of Energy.
"It's crazy that a sunny state like New Mexico isn't leading the nation in renewable energy production," VeneKlasen said.
The state's renewable energy industry will thrive regardless of federal priorities, said Carla Sonntag, president of the New Mexico Business Coalition.
"Even if government subsidies to those industries are not going to be increased, with increased demand, solar and wind are still going to do well," she said.
For the nation, increased oil and gas development means improved national security and less dependence on foreign energy sources, Sonntag said. For New Mexico, it means more revenue and jobs, she said.
"We couldn't have enough of that in New Mexico right now," she said.
Interior's investment coincides with an uptick in activity in the Permian Basin, the oily formation that touches New Mexico's southeastern corner, Sonntag said.
"When you have government at any level that is supportive of an industry, you will see the industry do better," she said. "When you have an attitude of not wanting to see production, that tends to flow through, and it does hamper production."Colorado
Shawn Bolton, a commissioner in Colorado's Rio Blanco County, welcomed the shift in BLM's budget — so long as proposed staff cuts don't reduce personnel count in the field offices.
"BLM seems to be awfully heavy in management, but it's the on-the-ground people they're missing," he said.
The field offices need more staff to conduct environmental analyses and APD site visits so applications can be processed in a timelier fashion, he said.
"Those are the time frames that need to be shortened," Bolton said.
Interior's budget includes recommendations cutting 1,062 BLM staff members and suggests limiting departmentwide hiring in Washington and Denver. Bolton said he's heard that Interior will be aiming to keep the BLM field offices intact.
"We can't afford to lose people on the ground," he said.
Others fear BLM could lose enforcers of its rules — like its Methane and Waste Prevention Rule, which remains on the books after a failed attempt by Congress to scrap it (Greenwire, May 10).
"It's dangerously irresponsible" to cut Interior's land management programs "while they elevate this one use," said Scott Braden, wilderness and public lands advocate for Conservation Colorado.
In Mesa County, where Braden lives, there are three national conservation areas that could be hurt by reduced visitor services, he said.
"As places like my town seek to diversify our economy and engage people, we're going to see a reduced capacity to do that at the expense of elevating oil and gas," Braden said. "That directly hurts our communities in our efforts to become more of a recreation destination."
Interior's energy priorities seem misdirected, said David Jenkins, president of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship.
"They're ignoring taking care of the land in the name of trying to chase some money in oil and gas when the market's not demanding it," he said.
BLM's budget should be more supportive of a diversified public lands economy, said La Plata County Commissioner Gwen Lachelt.
"We'll probably continue to have oil and gas development at some level for the next 30 years, but it can't be our only source of income," she said.
"We desperately need to get beyond the boom-and-bust economy."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/05/30/stories/1060055252
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EPA Investigating Emissions in Tank Deaths
May 30, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
U.S. EPA is investigating air emissions from two North Dakota oil well sites where workers died from toxic vapors.
The agency has asked Continental Resources Inc. and Marathon Oil Corp. for information to determine whether their operations violated the Clean Air Act on the days the workers died.
The inquiries were launched in September 2016 by officials in EPA's Denver regional office. Letters to the companies ask for details about the deaths of Dustin Bergsing and Zachary Buckles.
Bergsing, 21, died in January 2012 at a Marathon well near Killdeer. Buckles, 20, died in April 2014 at a Continental well near Alexander. Both men were "flow testers," assigned to regularly measure tank levels by hand. Each was found slumped near a tank hatch.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has identified at least seven other oil-field deaths where such vapors were suspected of killing workers (Energywire, April 13, 2015).
The letters from EPA's assistant regional administrator for enforcement, Suzanne Bohan, were posted online after a Freedom of Information Act request by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). An EPA spokeswoman declined to provide additional information, saying the investigation remains active. Continental and Marathon representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
It's rare, but not unprecedented, for EPA to investigate for environmental violations after an accident that injured or killed workers, said Eric Schaeffer, who ran EPA's Office of Civil Enforcement from 1997 to 2002.
"If they release enough to kill somebody, that means it's pretty potent," said Schaeffer, now executive director of EIP.
He noted that EPA brought an enforcement case after the 2005 explosion at a BP refinery in Texas that killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 people.
Joel Mintz, a former EPA official who is now a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, said it could indicate that EPA is looking at criminal violations. That would involve showing that someone knowingly allowed hazardous emissions.
"There are some pretty serious penalties that apply," said Mintz, author of "Enforcement at the EPA: High Stakes and Hard Choices." But he added, "It can't be a pure accident."
Schaeffer said EPA might not even be looking at civil or criminal sanctions. Officials could simply be looking for more information about a problem they want to understand better.
"It's pretty much doing your job to check these," Schaeffer said.Emerging hazard
The hazards of toxic vapors spewing out of crude oil tanks in shale fields have been an emerging topic in worker safety circles.
All crude oil has compounds called volatile hydrocarbons such as benzene, butane and propane. Shale crude, such as the oil produced in North Dakota's Bakken Shale play and Colorado's Niobrara Shale formation, sometimes has more of these compounds than conventional oil. It's related to why shale crude is more prone to explode in rail cars.
Safety and health officials say the volatile petrochemicals can whoosh out of crude oil tanks with enough force to knock off a worker's helmet. The vapors can disorient people to the point that they are unable to escape the lethal effect of the vapors. And at high concentrations, the hydrocarbons can push oxygen out of the air to the point that they asphyxiate victims, even outdoors (Energywire, Sept. 14, 2015).
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and others have issued safety alerts warning companies and their workers about the hazard. NIOSH repeatedly has recommended that crude should be measured without workers opening hatches and peering in.
Bergsing died in January 2012 at a remote Marathon site near Killdeer. A co-worker found him slumped below the open hatch of a tank of Bakken Shale crude oil. An autopsy found he died of "hydrocarbon poisoning due to inhalation of petroleum vapors."
OSHA investigators decided not to fine Bergsing's employer, Across Big Sky Flow Testing, after noting there was no indication of hydrogen sulfide poisoning.
But the state workers' compensation agency approved a claim for Bergsing's daughter to receive death benefits. Marathon settled a lawsuit brought by Bergsing's mother for an undisclosed sum described by her attorney as "very substantial."
An environmental engineer in Marathon's Dickinson, N.D., regional office had told attorneys for Bergsing's family that he'd been warning his bosses they were creating a dangerous buildup of lethal gases in their tanks. But, he said, they ignored him (Energywire, Oct. 27, 2014).
In a sworn statement, he said Marathon configured its well site operations in a way that boosted profits by making initial production seem higher than it really was. But it also created a hazard by diverting more gas into the tanks.
Buckles was found on a catwalk at a Continental Resources well site across the Missouri River from Williston.
In Buckles' case, inhalation of "petroleum vapor exposure" was listed on the state death report among "other significant conditions" along with obesity. The state forensic examiner listed the cause of death as cardiac arrhythmia (Energywire, July 8, 2014). The manner of death is listed as "undetermined."
A spokeswoman for Continental Resources said in 2014 that the company "is not aware of any dangers from hydrocarbon vapors or VOCs at any of our locations."
But OSHA fined Buckles' employer, Black Gold Testing, saying the company didn't prepare him for those dangers. The company went out of business, OSHA officials said, but agreed to pay the $2,800 fine.
According to the Montana news site Last Best News, Buckles' family sued Continental and others in February 2015. The suit alleged Buckles was exposed to deadly vapors without adequate air monitoring equipment or training.
Beyond the threat of immediate death, testing by NIOSH has shown that tank gaugers can be exposed to unsafe levels of benzene, a carcinogen, and other petrochemicals (Energywire, Sept. 18, 2014).
Public health researchers have indicated that the airborne chemicals that killed the workers also raise questions about whether the vapors pose a threat to people who live nearby. But they say there is little or no published research on the topic, and NIOSH researchers say their findings can be applied only to workplace hazards.
Click here and here for EPA's letters to Marathon and Continental.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/05/30/stories/1060055258
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States 'Awaken' to Critical Infrastructure Cyberthreats
May 30, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak and Edward Klump
A cyberattack on the power grid would be devastating but "especially in Las Vegas," said Pat Spearman.
So, to keep the lights on and the slots humming in Sin City, the Democratic state senator from North Las Vegas introduced a bill in March to boost Nevada's oversight of utilities' cybersecurity defenses.
The measure stalled after local business groups, including the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce, argued that S.B. 395 and a subsequent revision failed to account for overlapping state and federal government cybersecurity standards.
"We talked about it with some of the people who were concerned and went point by point in the bill," said Spearman in a recent phone interview. "After going through that exercise, they were right: Much of what we were proposing either already existed" or appeared in other pending legislation, she said.
Spearman is not alone in her concerns about the "number of outside sources probing our electric grid." State lawmakers across the country have increasingly looked for ways to wall off the grid from hackers and other threats, stepping into a realm traditionally reserved for security authorities on the national stage.
There have been more than 30 bills brought up in state legislatures across the United States addressing threats to critical infrastructure, according to Dan Shea, a policy associate with the National Conference of State Legislatures — almost double the number introduced in each of the past two years. Many of the bills are aimed at restricting public disclosure of certain information that could leave systems like the power grid vulnerable to attack, he said. Ten would have set up task forces to examine critical infrastructure cybersecurity, though none of those has passed, Shea added.
"There have been a number of highly publicized cyberattacks on the electric grid and utilities — in addition to the numerous other cyberattacks in the news — which have perhaps heightened concerns," he said.
A December 2015 attack on three distribution utilities in Ukraine marked the first known time that hackers have remotely disabled part of a power grid. That incident temporarily knocked out electricity to about a quarter-million people in the country and was followed up a year later with a similar attack on a transmission-level electric substation near Kiev (Energywire, Dec. 20, 2016).
Last year's cyber intrusions at the Democratic National Committee also turned heads in state legislatures and governors' mansions, experts say. U.S. intelligence officials later attributed that series of attacks and politically damaging leaks to Russia, concluding that Moscow set out to influence the 2016 presidential election.
"The election did do a lot to awaken the state and local governments that had perhaps not thought so much about cybersecurity," said Brian Nussbaum, assistant professor at the University of Albany's College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity in New York.
"Many of the kinds of infrastructure that are potentially vulnerable to cyberattacks are either entirely or mostly regulated at the state and local level," he said, citing election security, water purity and electricity distribution as just three examples. "State and local governments have come to the conclusion that, even if they are not the best-equipped in terms of staffing or capabilities, and even if they are facing these jurisdictional challenges, they feel like they are the ones that are going to have to deal with the outcomes" of a major cyber incident.Lone Star cybersecurity
Texas, which has the unique distinction of essentially managing its primary power grid separately from the two other main U.S. interconnections, took a few looks at cyber and grid issues during its 2017 legislative session. That included H.B. 787 from state Rep. Tan Parker (R) and S.B. 83 from state Sen. Bob Hall (R).
Both bills passed their respective chambers, but progress stalled after that.
For example, Texas' Senate Committee on Business & Commerce left pending H.B. 787, which would have created an electric grid security advisory committee to look at issues such as electromagnetic pulse threats, cybersecurity and geomagnetic disturbances.
Hall told the state Senate committee the House bill needed to be strengthened in various ways. He said power generating stations should be part of a basic study. And he called for legislative input on the structure of the advisory committee, not just selections from the governor's office.
The Association of Electric Companies of Texas was neutral on the version of H.B. 787 that emerged from the state House. It opposed S.B. 83. The latter bill included a plan for an electromagnetic threat preparedness task force.
A separate resolution, S.C.R. 55, also faltered as the regular legislative session came to a close. It sought to ask the Texas lieutenant governor and speaker of the House to establish a joint interim committee to examine power grid security, including critical infrastructure and threats tied to cybersecurity, electromagnetic pulses and geomagnetic disturbances, according to the resolution. A report with findings and recommendations was envisioned.
S.C.R. 55, with Hall as an author, gained backing from the state Senate but needed to make its way through the House.
An effort to set up an EMP threat task force failed to advance in Maryland, where the legislative session ended last month. State Del. Neil Parrott (R), who introduced H.B. 1454, credited previous efforts to address the issue in Texas and Maine.
"I think that the state needs to take action," Parrott said in a phone interview, noting that he would likely refine the bill and reintroduce it in the next session. "One comparison I [saw] was with vehicle emissions: California really went aggressive on vehicle emissions. We might need to do the same thing with hardening the grid."State-level worries
The security of the bulk power system is regulated at the federal level by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corp.
Energy executives have raised concerns about a potentially confusing array of state cyber rules that could duplicate efforts already underway at agencies like FERC or the Department of Homeland Security.
Pedro Pizarro, CEO of California-based Edison International, said earlier this year that cybersecurity is first and foremost a federal responsibility, noting that his industry works with various agencies.
At the same time, he said there's room for collaboration with state agencies for responding to possible cyber and physical events. He cited roles for entities such as the state National Guard, the governor's office and the office of emergency management services.
"They will be running operations in the state, right, in collaboration with the federal government, so the state clearly has an important role," Pizarro said.
He said state regulators need to be informed and have a seat at the table, given that expenses for cybersecurity are typically approved through rate cases overseen by state utility commissions.
"But with something like cyber, where you have these massive interconnected systems across the internet and across the whole economy, that's an area where I would worry personally about seeing different standards carried out ... on a state-by-state basis," Pizarro said at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston.The full story
Emefa Agawu, who leads state and local work as a program associate at New America's Cybersecurity Initiative, said states have plied various paths on their way to becoming more involved in critical infrastructure cybersecurity.
On occasion, state authorities have sought to shore up their cybersecurity in response to a breach, such as when South Carolina lost millions of financial records to a 2012 cyberattack or when hackers reportedly probed state voter registration systems in Illinois last year.
But governors or some other empowered "champion" can also decide to pursue cybersecurity as a priority without an underlying crisis driving them, Agawu said.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) decided to make cybersecurity his focus while serving as rotating chair of the National Governors Association for 2016-2017. He has said he hopes to find where "state-driven solutions can be replicated nationwide" to guard against online threats to energy, health care and other critical systems. Engaged governors can also help shepherd cyber bills through their respective state legislatures.
"For states falling behind, they've got different models to choose to follow," Agawu said.
She said that while it's still unclear which approach is best across many cybersecurity policy areas, "what people always want is well-thought-out information that's easy to voluntarily adopt." To that end, she suggested the federal government could do a better job of clarifying existing resources at the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, so state and local officials don't inadvertently waste time and effort.
Federal agencies, despite their advantages in funding and access to cyber intelligence, should also pay attention to the experiments playing out at the state level, Agawu suggested.
"If you start and end with the federal government, you're missing the full story," she said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/05/30/stories/1060055251
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Colo. Regulators Find Another Leak Near Exploded Home
May 30, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
Colorado oil and gas regulators have found a second underground gas plume in the same neighborhood where a pipeline leak destroyed a home and killed two people in April.
The leak came from a branch of the same gas well pipeline that was involved in the April 17 explosion in Firestone, according to a presentation the head of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission made to a neighborhood group.
The news comes as the oil industry is preparing its first-ever inventory of the type of pipeline that was involved in both leaks. Firestone and other suburban communities northeast of Denver have been built cheek-by-jowl with existing oil fields, and the inventory will help COGCC determine whether similar pipeline leaks are occurring in other neighborhoods.
"Certainly any discovery of a situation like that in Firestone would be addressed immediately," Todd Hartman, a spokesman for COGCC, said in an email.
Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which owns the well and the pipelines involved in both leaks, said it's cleaning up the underground gas.
"The levels in the soil are dissipating as a result of the remediation activities," spokesman John Christiansen said in an email.
The explosion happened in Firestone's Oak Meadows subdivision, a new community that was built on the edge of a natural gas field developed in the 1980s and '90s. Investigators determined that a 1-inch plastic pipeline known as a flow line was cut off near the foundation of one of the homes but left uncapped and connected to a gas well.
Gas from the well escaped through the severed pipeline into the soil and then into the basement of the nearest home. The explosion killed Mark Martinez and his brother-in-law, Joey Irwin, and severely injured Martinez's wife, Erin.
Anadarko and the COGCC found the second leak about two weeks after the explosion while performing soil tests. The second plume is larger and more concentrated than the plume that caused the explosion, but it's farther away from the subdivision's homes, COGCC Director Matt Lepore said, according to a copy of his presentation to the Oak Meadows Homeowners Association.
The pipeline that led to the Martinez home had a second branch that extended to the west, Lepore said.
It's possible that both pipelines were cut during construction, but they should have been disconnected from the gas well, said Hartman, the COGCC spokesman. Investigators including the Firestone police and the National Transportation Safety Board are still looking into those details.
COGCC has ordered oil companies throughout the state to inspect flow lines in residential areas and determine whether they are properly connected to wells and collection tanks. Companies have until today to provide that information (Energywire, May 3).
The state also ordered companies to test their flow lines for leaks by the end of June.
Anadarko, the biggest oil producer in Colorado, has voluntarily shut in 3,000 wells that are the same age as the one involved in the Firestone incident while it conducts safety inspections. The company later announced it was disconnecting all the flow lines it operates that are similar to the one involved in the Firestone accident.
The company also told residents it will permanently close three wells near the Oak Meadows neighborhood, and it is paying to provide gas-monitoring equipment for homeowners (Energywire, May 26).
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/05/30/stories/1060055260
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US PMSA Raises Fines for Federal Hazmat Transportation Violations
May 29, 2017 | HazMat Management Magazine
The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) recently announced increases in the maximum and minimum civil penalties for knowing violations of the federal hazardous materials transportation law or a regulation, order, special permit, or approval issued under that law. The penalty increases took effect last month.
U.S. PHMSA officials said the penalty increases were called for by the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015, which amended the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990. Agencies were required to update their civil monetary penalties in August 2016 through an interim final rulemaking. PHMSA has elected to do the 2017 update in a final rulemaking.
The rulemaking revises the maximum civil penalty from $77,114 to $78,376 for a person who knowingly violates the federal hazardous materials transportation law or a regulation, order, special permit, or approval issued under that law.
The maximum civil penalty increases from $179,933 to $182,877 for a person who knowingly violates the federal hazardous material transportation law or a regulation, order, special permit, or approval issued under that law that results in death, serious illness, or severe injury to any person or substantial destruction of property.
For violations related to training, the minimum penalty amount increases from $463 to $471.
http://www.hazmatmag.com/energy/us-pmsa-raises-fines-federal-hazmat-transportation-violations/1003275680/
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May 29, 2017 | Los Angeles Times
By Julie Andersen
There’s a big lie about plastic — that you can throw it away. But that’s not true; there is no “away.”
Plastic bottles, plastic bags, snack wrappers, foam takeout containers, foam coffee cups, packing materials: these common, everyday items make up 85% of our waste stream. These items aren’t biodegradable and our ability to recycle them is limited.
This societal reliance on throw-away plastic is strangling our environment — particularly our waterways.
More than eight million tons of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans each year, where it kills animals and fouls waterways and beaches. This isn’t the work of careless litterbugs at the beach. Over 80% of ocean plastic comes from land-based sources. Even if you live inland and take care to properly dispose of your trash, there is a good chance some of your plastic waste has found its way to the sea.
Consider the American Great Lakes, where 80% of the litter along the shorelines is plastic. That trash doesn’t stay put — it flows through the canals and river systems through the St. Lawrence Seaway and into the Atlantic Ocean. A takeout container that blows off a Chicago landfill can wind up off the coast of Africa.
From there, the damage gets far worse. Once in the ocean, plastic eventually breaks into micro-particles that cause toxins to enter the food chain.
A single discarded piece of plastic breaks down into millions — and these bits are mistaken for food and ingested by even the smallest organisms on the oceanic food chain. Contaminated zooplankton feed on phytoplankton, which are fed on by small fish, who are fed on by squid — and so it goes on up to our dinner plates.
Scientists discover a trove of plastic in the stomachs of dead seabirds, in a scene from the film "A Plastic Ocean." (Courtesy of Plastic Oceans Foundation USA)
Compounding the problem is that plastics adsorb chemicals that are free-floating in the ocean, so when the plastics enter the food chain, additional toxins settle into the muscles or fat of fish — the parts that we like to eat.
One of the worst offenders of plastic pollution is polystyrene, which is more commonly referred to by its Dow Chemical trademarked name, Styrofoam. It is sometimes called EPS, for expanded polystyrene, and is made into those ubiquitous white food takeout boxes. EPS is the second-most-found beach debris in Southern California, according to a recent study.
It’s also a health hazard. EPS is made using a chemical called styrene that has known carcinogenic effects. According to the EPA, regular exposure to styrene in humans can affect the central nervous system, with symptoms such as headaches, weakness, depression and CNS dysfunction (affecting reaction time, memory and intellectual function).
Here in California, we have access to better recycling options than most of the world. But EPS generally isn’t recycled because it is coated with food waste. When thrown away, its light weight allows the wind to blow it from landfills into our environment.
Even if we did make an effort to improve EPS recycling rates, California’s existing plastic burden is already overwhelming the state’s recycling capabilities. In the last year, more than 20% of recycling redemption centers in California have closed. The ubiquity of plastic products in our economy has driven down costs, making it economically challenging for recyclers to compete. Furthermore, unlike other recyclable materials such as glass and metal, plastic often can be turned into only one other product, which can then never be recycled again and ends up in landfill.
The longer-term solution is not just to recycle more: It is to use less. We call this the “upstream solution.” By reducing the amount of plastic we use, we make a more profound impact on the environment than by recycling.
The good news is that a bill now in the California State Senate, SB-705, proposes banning single-use EPS food containers in California. Passing the law would reduce tons of polystyrene (and its micro-pieces) from entering our oceans.
We have known about the negative environmental impacts caused by EPS for decades, and yet the plastic pollution continues. It’s time for California to take this critical stand to protect the environment.
SB-705, however, is just one step toward solving our global plastic problem. We can stop using single-use plastics altogether and find environmentally friendly replacement materials. Post-consumer recycled paper, bamboo, corn plastics, etc. are abundant and renewable resources — all of these products biodegrade when composted.
In the two minutes it took you to read this article, more than 60,000 pounds of plastic were dumped into our oceans — a fair share of it from California. That plastic could very well have profound health consequences for you and the ones you love.
Thankfully, solutions still exist. The less plastic we make, the less we throw away, the healthier our state, our planet and ourselves.
Julie Andersen is executive director of Plastic Oceans Foundation USA, which produced the film “A Plastic Ocean.”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/livable-city/la-ol-plastic-pollution-styrofoam-20170529-story.html
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