Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 7/3/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) NWRA Selects Darrell Smith as President and CEO
Jun 30, 2017 | Waste Dive
By Cole Rosengren
The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) has announced that Darrell K. Smith with be the organization's next president and CEO. S -
Science Division of White House Office No Longer Staffed: Report
Jun 30, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Brandon Carter
The science division of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy reportedly had no staff members as of Friday. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Releases Final TSCA Rules
Jun 30, 2017 | Lexology
By Stephanie B. Sebor
On June 22, 2017, the U.S. EPA announced three final rules promulgated pursuant to the recently amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
The Devil’s in the Details: Trump EPA Rules Show Chemical Lobby Influence
Jun 30, 2017 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Liz Hitchcock and Bob Sussman
On June 22, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced final rules that establish the framework for implementation of the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act. -
Confidential Business Data Compounds Some Chemical Cleanups
Jul 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Federal agencies are working to help state health and environmental regulators better understand which of a particular class of chemicals are contaminating groundwater supplies and other natural resources. -
Vinyl Medical Monitoring Claim Dismissal OK'd
Jul 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
Vinyl factory workers seeking medical monitoring rightly had their class complaint dismissed as time-barred, the Third Circuit ruled June 30 (Blanyar v. Genova Prods., Inc., 2017 BL 227063, 3d Cir., No. 16-1684, 6/30/17). -
Peer Reviewers Question EPA Drinking Water Lead Modeling Approaches
Jul 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Lara Beaven
Scientific experts reviewing proposed modeling approaches that EPA plans to use in revising its Safe Drinking Water Act lead and copper rule are questioning whether the methods can fully address risks to key populations, noting limitations in each of the three... -
Udall Asks EPA for Data Backing Reversal on Chlorpyrifos Ban
Jun 30, 2017 | Inside EPA
Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) is pressing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to provide scientific evidence backing the Trump administration's reversal of an Obama-era plan to ban the commonly-used insecticide chlorpyrifos to protect against neurodevelopmental risks... -
(ACC Mentioned) Updated North American Trade Deal Could Boost U.S. Chemical Exports
Jun 30, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Glenn Hess
With talks aimed at revising the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) expected to start soon, chemical manufacturers and others on June 28 offered advice to the Trump Administration for updating the 23-year-old accord with Canada and Mexico. -
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Weighs in As NAFTA Rewrite Begins
Jul 1, 2017 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
If U.S. manufacturers had their way, the renegotiation of the NAFTA trade pact with Mexico and Canada would be a limited affair, and would reject controversial measures President Trump has floated like border taxes. -
As Trump Moves to Grow Oil and Gas, House Could Curb Environmental Suits
Jun 30, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By James Osborne
When it comes to expanding U.S. oil and gas production, President Donald Trump has few greater hurdles than litigation from environmental groups that can tie up companies and federal agencies for years. -
South Korea Is Very, Very Interested in America's Natural Gas
Jul 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ryan Collins
One thing became clear on the fourth day of the White House's Energy Week: South Korea is really, really into U.S. natural gas. -
Pipeline Agency Weighs Broader Scope for Data Sharing System
Jul 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
A planned information-sharing system should expand beyond its congressional mandate, a top official at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said. -
Commentary: Positives in Texas Shale Report Overshadowed by Rhetoric
Jun 30, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By Ed Longanecker
The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST) released a new study recently focused on the environmental and community impacts of shale development in Texas. -
Groups Sue Over Chemical Plant Safety Rule Delay
Jul 1, 2017 | Chem.Info
By Meagan Parrish
A coalition has formed to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned delay in implementing new chemical safety rules. -
Oil Train Legislation Sent Back to Committee After Criticism
Jul 1, 2017 | AP (In U.S. News & World Report)
By Gillian Flaccus
State lawmakers sent a proposed oil train safety bill back for more work Friday after growing concerns that an amendment favoring the railroad industry had watered down key provisions on public oversight and financial accountability. -
(ACC Mentioned) Counseled by Industry, Not Staff, E.P.A. Chief Is Off to a Blazing Start
Jul 3, 2017 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
In the four months since he took office as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency’s 47-year history, according to experts in environmental law. -
(ACC Mentioned) Bill to Delay Ozone Limit Moves in Congress
Jul 3, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
A U.S. House of Representatives committee has approved a bill (H.R. 806) that would push back the deadline for states to meet a more stringent, health-based air quality limit for ground-level ozone to 2025, a delay of eight years. -
E.P.A. to Give Dissenters a Voice on Climate, No Matter the Consensus
Jun 30, 2017 | New York Times
By Brad Plumer and Coral Davenport
Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, plans to convene a team of researchers to test the scientific premise of human-caused climate change, he told coal industry executives on Thursday. -
EPA Chief Pushing Government-Wide Effort to Question Climate Change Science
Jul 1, 2017 | Washington Post
By Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin
The Trump administration is debating whether to launch a governmentwide effort to question the science of climate change, an effort that critics say is an attempt to undermine the long-established consensus human activity is fueling the Earth’s rising temperatures.
Congressional Hearings - There are no hearings to report at this time.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) NWRA Selects Darrell Smith as President and CEO
Jun 30, 2017 | Waste Dive
By Cole Rosengren
The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) has announced that Darrell K. Smith with be the organization's next president and CEO. Smith was selected by the NWRA Board of Trustees after a "considered and comprehensive search." Smith is currently executive vice president of the Industrial Minerals Association - North America.
Smith previously worked for the National Association of Shell Marketers and American Chemistry Council, among other organizations. He is a Certified Industrial Hygienist by the American Board of Industrial Hygiene and holds a doctoral degree in environmental science and policy from George Mason University.
Smith said in a press release announcing his appointment: "The waste and recycling industry is profoundly important to the functioning of society, and the complexities and challenges faced by the industry are rarely appreciated. I am proud to have been trusted with the management of the industry's trade association, and I am ready to play a role in reenergizing staff, focusing on our mission and driving industry growth with the promotions of solutions-driven public policies."
Dive Insight:
This comes more than seven months after Sharon Kneiss resigned as president and CEO in a surprise announcement that also included the departure of Chris Doherty, vice president and chief marketing officer. The reasons behind these announcements were not disclosed, though anonymous employee reviews on Glassdoor indicate that dissatisfaction in the workplace may have played a role. Kevin Kraushaar, vice president of government affairs and chapter operations, has been the acting president since then with a continued focus on safety priorities.
Smith's safety background and experience with hazardous waste at Safety-Kleen were highlighted as a top attributes in the press release. Waste collection remains the fifth most dangerous occupation in the country according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, inspiring additional focus from the NWRA through support of "Slow Down to Get Around" legislation in multiple states and continuing safety training assistance for companies in the industry.
According to the press release, Smith is also seen as a good fit to take over a time when "the industry faces numerous challenges relative to public policy and community relations." His current biography on the Industrial Minerals Association website cites a "reputation of assisting heavy industry in the promotion of a positive, progressive image" and doctoral work on "the resolution of environmental conflict between indigenous populations and the mining industry."
http://www.wastedive.com/news/nwra-selects-darrell-smith-as-president-and-ceo/446278/
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Science Division of White House Office No Longer Staffed: Report
Jun 30, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Brandon Carter
The science division of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy reportedly had no staff members as of Friday.
Sources told CBS News that the last employees in the division, three holdovers from former President Obama's administration, all left the White House this week.
Under Obama, the science division was staffed with nine employees who crafted policy on STEM education, crisis response and other key issues, according to the report.
Eleanor Celeste, the former assistant director for biomedical and forensics sciences in the division, appeared to tweet about leaving the office this week.
While the science division had no staff members as of Friday, a White House official told CBS News that the science and technology office was still functioning with 35 staffers.
Still, that compares to the more than 100 employees who worked in the office under Obama.
"All of the work that we have been doing is still being done," the official said.
The news comes a week after President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency notified dozens of scientists that their advisory positions with the agency would not be renewed.
In May, the EPA dismissed five academic members of one of its scientific reviews boards. At the time, an EPA spokesperson said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was considering replacing the five scientists with representatives of the industries the agency polices.
“The administrator believes we should have people on this board who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community,” spokesperson J.P. Freire told The New York Times.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/340328-science-division-of-white-house-office-no-longer-staffed-report
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Releases Final TSCA Rules
Jun 30, 2017 | Lexology
By Stephanie B. Sebor
On June 22, 2017, the U.S. EPA announced three final rules promulgated pursuant to the recently amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). TSCA regulates the production, importation, use, and disposal of new and existing chemical substances and was amended in June 2016 by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. The 2016 amendments to TSCA required EPA to issue so-called framework rules by June 22, 2017.
EPA issued three framework rules intended to create an outline for assessing and managing the risk of new and existing chemicals: The final risk evaluation rule describes how EPA will determine whether chemicals present an unreasonable risk of injury to human health or the environment. The final rule will become effective upon publication in the Federal Register. The final prioritization rule describes how EPA will determine which of the existing chemicals will undergo risk evaluations and when. The rule will become effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. The final inventory update rule requires manufacturers, importers, and processors of chemical substances to provide various notices of active and inactive chemicals to EPA through an electronic reporting mechanism. The rule will become effective upon publication in the Federal Register.
EPA also released a guidance document to assist interested persons (also called external parties) in developing and submitting draft risk evaluations to EPA, and scope documents regarding the first ten chemicals that will undergo risk evaluation under the amended TSCA: asbestos, 1-bromopropane, carbon tetrachloride, 1,4-dioxane, cyclic aliphatic bromide cluster (HBCD), methylene chloride, n-methylpyrolidone, perchloroethylene, pigment violet 29, and trichloroethylene.
The final rules have garnered strong adverse reactions from environmentalists. Environmental Defense Fund’s Richard Denison has threatened a lawsuit regarding the final risk evaluation rule, claiming it “undermines the clear intent of Congress that EPA examine the full range of exposures to a chemical.” In contrast, the American Chemistry Council has commended EPA’s final rules.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0e5fe7ec-e538-446e-a9a9-5136cb4495f6
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The Devil’s in the Details: Trump EPA Rules Show Chemical Lobby Influence
Jun 30, 2017 | Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
By Liz Hitchcock and Bob Sussman
On June 22, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced final rules that establish the framework for implementation of the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act.
Safer Chemicals Healthy Families was profoundly disappointed that the final rules departed dramatically from EPA’s original proposal, heavily reflecting the input of the chemical lobby, and largely disregarding comments from the public health community. The rules fail to provide the assurance required in the law that EPA will fully evaluate and protect against the ways in which the public is exposed to and potentially harmed by toxic chemicals.
These “framework rules” are supposed to be the critical building blocks for how EPA will implement the Lautenberg Act to protect public health. When the draft rules were released in January, we were optimistic that they would require EPA to evaluate and protect the public from toxic chemicals for all conditions of use, just as the law requires. We were hopeful that the system for prioritizing chemicals for evaluation—among the thousands in commerce—would be efficient and transparent for industry and for the public. We hoped that the rule would support EPA’s ability to make thoughtful, high quality, science-based judgments on individual chemicals.
In the multi-year effort to reform U.S. chemical policy, the goal has been to restore the public’s trust in the safety of the products on store shelves and build our confidence that the EPA can protect our families from unsafe chemicals. The final rules fail to accomplish that and instead put chemical industry interests ahead of the health of our children and our families.
Safer Chemicals Healthy Families’ analysis of the rules package shows that:
· While the rules proposed by the EPA in January were generally well received by Safer Chemicals Healthy Families and the public health community, the final rules are a significant departure from the positive elements of the proposals.
· The changes in the final rules closely follow the recommendations in the chemical industry comments, but you won’t see the improvements proposed by the public health community.
· The final rules are likely to result in incomplete and insufficiently protective risk evaluations that ignore exposure pathways and use conditions and fail to meaningfully address risks to vulnerable populations. For example:
o The final risk evaluation rule backs away from the proposal of including all conditions of use and exposure pathways in risk evaluations;
o EPA asserts discretion to exclude uses and exposure when determining the activities that constitute the chemical’s conditions of use and when defining the scope of the risk evaluation itself.
· The rules send a strong signal that EPA will require little, if any, testing to fill data gaps on candidate chemicals for prioritization and risk evaluation.
· While the scoping documents for the first ten chemicals were rushed and have significant omissions, they do attempt to comprehensively describe the universe of uses and exposure.
· The problem formulation process announced with the final rule package seems intended as a mechanism to eliminate uses and exposures addressed in scoping documents, and will delay risk evaluations.
RISK EVALUATION RULE
Scope of Risk Evaluations
The final rule backs away from the proposed rule’s approach of including all conditions of use and exposure pathways in risk evaluations, instead allowing EPA to exclude some conditions of use from its evaluation.
EPA asserts discretion to exclude uses and exposure at two points:
· When determining the activities that constitute the chemical’s conditions of use and
· When defining the scope of the risk evaluation itself.
EPA’s claims of discretion are predicated on tenuous statutory language and legislative history and ignore the requirement in the law that evaluations must address “the conditions of use” of the chemical. This clearly means all conditions of use, not the ones that EPA would pick and choose.
EPA claims that it wants to use its limited resources for “highest risk” uses, but does not provide criteria for how these uses will be selected and others excluded.
Exclusions from Scope of Evaluations
The final risk evaluation rule’s preamble provides several examples of activities that will not constitute conditions of use or will be dropped at the scoping stage, including:
· Intentional product misuse
· Use in closed systems
· Use as intermediates
· Exposures from legacy uses
· Disposal of legacy chemicals (even if continuing)
· Manufacture or presence of chemical as an impurity
· Exposure to chemicals assessed/regulated by other agencies (e.g. OSHA)
· Uses with only “anecdotal” documentation
The list of excluded uses will be expanded on a case-by-case basis.
Industry-Requested Risk Evaluations
Under the January proposed rule, risk evaluations conducted in response to industry requests would address all conditions of use, just like the evaluations initiated by EPA itself, and the requesting industry would have needed to support such requests with information about all the conditions of use of the chemical and available data on exposure and hazard. In contrast, the final rule allows industry to request evaluations for specific conditions of use and to provide only information relating to these use conditions. EPA can expand the risk evaluation to include other conditions of use but is not obligated to do so.
The final rule drops the provision in the proposal directing EPA to prioritize industry-requested evaluations based on hazard and exposure potential. In contrast to the proposal, industry will not be required to submit any risk assessments it has conducted on the subject chemical.
EPA defends these changes as reflecting a Congressional intent to encourage industry to request risk evaluations.
Findings of Unreasonable Risk/Aggregate Exposure
The final rule provides that EPA will make individualized determinations of unreasonable risk for specific uses but will not make an unreasonable risk finding for the chemical as a whole or look at the combined contribution of multiple uses to total risk. This appears contrary to the law, which provides that determinations of unreasonable risk must be for the chemical substance as a whole, not for specific uses, and the requirement to integrate use and exposure information in the risk evaluation for the uses and exposures being considered.
Under the rule, risk determinations on individual uses may be made at different times in the 3-year period for completing risk evaluations. While the risk evaluation for each use would undergo peer review, there would not necessarily be peer review of the crosscutting issues common to multiple uses or vulnerable populations.
Comments submitted by SCHF and our partners supported the use of aggregate or cumulative exposure assessment for chemicals with multiple uses and exposure routes. The final rule does not address this recommendation and in fact seems to preclude aggregate and cumulative exposure assessments by requiring separate use-by-use determinations of unreasonable risk.
Definition of Scientific Terms
The final rule provides definitions of “best available science” and “weight of the evidence” (terms used but not defined in the new law).
The proposed rule explicitly reflected a policy decision by the Obama EPA not to codify definitions in rule language. In our comments, SCHF and our partners argued that the law did not authorize defining scientific terms in rule language and that guidance was the vehicle designated by Congress to perform this function. While the initial EPA proposal emphasized the dangers of rigidifying scientific judgments and preventing advances in risk assessment methodology, the chemical industry argued for rule language and provided recommended text for definitions.
In addition, because the definitions in the final rule were not included in the proposed rule, the public had no opportunity to comment on them.
PRIORITIZATION RULE
Pre-prioritization Process
The proposed rule would have created a process by which EPA would begin gathering information and filling data gaps on candidates for prioritization before making priority listings. SCHF and our partners strongly supported this approach because it would enable EPA to develop a complete database on hazards, exposures and uses before committing to prioritize and conduct risk evaluations on chemicals – better assuring that the evaluation was based on comprehensive information enabling the agency to fully assess the risks. Safer Chemicals Healthy Families asked EPA to go beyond its proposal and flesh out the stages of the pre-prioritization process so it could be applied to the first set of high-priority listings, which are required within 3.5 years of enactment of the Lautenberg Act. We also underscored the importance of a robust use of EPA’s expanded information collection and development authorities under the new law.
Based largely on industry opposition, EPA removed pre-prioritization from the final rule on the grounds that it was “confusing” and “poorly defined.” EPA will instead conduct a stakeholder process on pre-prioritization starting in Fall 2017 that may lead to an amended rule or guidance.
While acknowledging the need for “sufficient information” to conduct risk evaluations, the final rule suggests that the Agency will use TSCA information-collection authorities very sparingly. EPA states that it will collect information using a “tiered approach,” emphasizing voluntary information submission before using the mandatory mechanisms in section 4.
EPA defines the term “reasonably available information” – which it must collect to support its decisions – to exclude data from long-term studies. Several references to requiring testing to enhance the sufficiency of available information have been deleted in the final rule.
Definitions of High- and Low-priority
Although the rule incorporates the statutory definitions of high- and low-priority, it contains additional explanations of priority-setting that conflict with these definitions. For example, the rule provides that the objective of prioritization is to enable the Agency to address chemicals with the greatest hazard and exposure potential first, although this consideration is not mentioned in the law and EPA itself has said it is not establishing a formal “hierarchical or ranking” process at this time. The rule also provides that the purpose of low priority listing is “to select those chemical substances with hazard and/or exposure characteristics under the conditions of use such that a risk evaluation is not warranted at the time.”
The law simply does not provide this broad degree of discretion but requires EPA to have information sufficient to demonstrate that a low-priority substance lacks the potential for unreasonable risk – i.e. is without any potential for hazard or any potential route for exposure.
The final rule deletes the provision of the proposal directing that, if EPA determines during prioritization that a chemical fails to qualify as a low-priority chemical, it will automatically ‘default’ to high-priority status. This default mechanism seems to be simply a restatement of the statute since chemicals that can’t be shown to meet the low-priority criteria will necessarily meet the high-priority criteria because they will have a potential for unreasonable risk.
EPA offers no rationale for removing the default mechanism other than opposition from industry and the assertion that it “expects” to always have enough information for a high- or low-priority listing.
According to EPA’s rule, when listing a chemical as high-priority, it expects to have an understanding of the chemical’s conditions of use and intends to identify the specific uses that form the basis for the listing. This assumption that full use information will exist at the time of priority setting is unrealistic and could have the effect of “freezing” the chemical’s conditions of use at this initial stage and precluding further use analysis during the scoping process.
Since EPA has not conducted a risk evaluation at the time of priority listing, highlighting a specific use as the basis for listing may create a false impression that other uses have been investigated and determined to lack any potential for risk, in effect prejudging the later risk evaluation.
EPA’s prioritization rule incorporates the science definitions in the risk evaluation rule as well as the scientific “standards” in section 26(h). This could narrow the range of information EPA uses for priority setting and encourage challenges to listings based on the “quality” of the information on which they’re based.
INITIAL SCOPING DOCUMENTS ON FIRST TEN CHEMICALS AND PROBLEM FORMULATION
The scoping documents have gaps and fail to include information provided by SCHF and other commenters. They do, however, reflect a comprehensive approach to defining conditions of use and contemplate that the risk evaluation will address nearly all uses and exposure pathways.
Interestingly, however, the documents indicate that chemical uses targeted in EPA’s first three proposed section 6(a) rules (Trichloroethylene, Methylene Chloride and N-Methylpyrrolidone) will be excluded from the scope of the risk evaluation – suggesting that these rules will be finalized.
EPA indicates that it will develop “problem formulation documents” to supplement the scope documents. “Problem formulation” is not a step authorized by the law and is not discussed or defined in the risk evaluation framework rule. EPA does not explain the purpose of problem formulation except to note that the scoping documents were prepared quickly and need to be refined. Some have suggested that the purpose of problem formulation is, in fact, to narrow the scope of the risk evaluation by dropping uses and exposures identified in the scoping documents.
There was no public comment process on the selection of uses for evaluations of the first ten chemicals. EPA has established a six-month timeframe for problem formulation and indicated that it intends to solicit comments. EPA is also reopening the record for the scoping documents in order to receive additional information but has not offered any guidance on the types of information it wants to receive.
** The final framework actions package released on June 22 includes:
Final Prioritization Rule – creates process for designating chemicals as high- and low-priority
Final Risk Evaluation Rule – establishes definitions, procedures and process for conducting risk evaluations on EPA-selected and industry-nominated chemicals
Final Inventory Reset Rule – sets requirements for industry reporting of Inventory-listed chemicals as “active” or “inactive”
Guidance for Industry Risk Assessments – provides framework for risk assessments conducted by industry and submitted for EPA consideration
Scoping Documents on initial 10 chemicals – summarizes hazard, use and exposure information on 10 chemicals selected for initial risk evaluations
Initiation of Problem Formulation process – announces EPA plan to create “problem formulation” documents on initial 10 chemicals within 6 months
http://saferchemicals.org/2017/06/30/the-devils-in-the-details-trump-epa-rules-show-chemical-lobby-influence/
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Confidential Business Data Compounds Some Chemical Cleanups
Jul 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Federal agencies are working to help state health and environmental regulators better understand which of a particular class of chemicals are contaminating groundwater supplies and other natural resources.
They want to figure out how to prevent future contamination from what are known as poly- and perfluorinated chemicals. These refer to compounds that make other chemicals—or the materials they coat—heat, stick and stain resistant.
One challenge: the precise chemistry of some of these substances is considered confidential business information, making it difficult to come up with a mitigation strategy, Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, said during a June 29 meeting of NTP's Board of Scientific Counselors.
Some of these substances are toxic, can persist in the environment for long periods of time, and can even potentially accumulate in various organisms that come into contact with them, according to information from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Perfluorinated chemicals are used in a variety of household products, ranging from non-stick cookware to stain-resistant carpets, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Contamination is a costly issue for the U.S. military due to the use of a foam containing perfluorinated chemicals to fight petroleum fires. The Air Force needs to inspect nearly 200 bases for potential contamination, while the Navy estimates it could face billions in cleanup costs.
3,000 Chemicals
The most recognized perfluorinated chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), are no longer made in the U.S. However, similar substitutes for both chemicals are being made, according to Birnbaum.
Scientists have detected some 3,000 variations of poly- and perfluorinated chemicals in drinking water, she said.
For example, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality is working with the state's Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the Chemours Co.’s discharge of GenX, a PFOA substitute, into the lower Cape Fear River.
These agencies and those in other states face challenges in figuring out the best way to address the substitutes because confidential business information protections prevent agencies from knowing exactly what chemicals they are dealing with, Birnbaum said.
Seemingly small changes to a substance's chemistry can alter the technique for removing them from drinking water, according to Birnbaum.
For example, she said, long-chain molecules, such as PFOA and PFOS, can be removed from drinking water with carbon filters, but many shorter chained substitutes can't.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the National Toxicology Program will analyze a subset of the poly- and perfluorinated chemicals to help scientists and agencies understand what's getting into the environment, Birnbaum said. The precise number of chemicals that will be analyzed has yet to be determined, she told Bloomberg BNA by email.
The NIEHS and National Toxicology Program are working with other agencies to address concerns about these types of chemicals, Birnbaum told the advisory board.
Base Closure Implications
The Air Force already has stopped using a perfluorinated-based petroleum fire fighting foam, Aqueous Film Forming Foam, for training exercises, according to information that military branch provided Bloomberg BNA.
The Air Force no longer uses the foam unless it is warranted by an emergency or is in a contained environment certified by a civil engineer's environmental representative at the base where the chemical would be used, an Air Force spokeswoman told Bloomberg BNA June 29.
The Air Force has spent $152.5 million investigating and mitigating sites for PFOS and PFOA contamination, according to a fact sheet it updated on June 20. Further site inspections are needed at 190 bases, the fact sheet said.
Navy Base Closure and Realignment, or BRAC, officials have said the cleanup of PFOS and PFOA at both active and closed installations could cost billions of dollars, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in January.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=115318579&vname=dennotallissues&fn=115318579&jd=115318579
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Vinyl Medical Monitoring Claim Dismissal OK'd
Jul 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
Vinyl factory workers seeking medical monitoring rightly had their class complaint dismissed as time-barred, the Third Circuit ruled June 30 (Blanyar v. Genova Prods., Inc., 2017 BL 227063, 3d Cir., No. 16-1684, 6/30/17).
Louise Blanyar and other former employees of Genova Products Inc., a now-defunct vinyl pipe and rain gutter manufacturer, filed their claims after the expiration of Pennsylvania's two-year statute of limitations for medical monitoring claims, the three-judge panel said.
The time to file a medical monitoring claim in Pennsylvania begins when a person is placed at a “significantly increased risk of contracting a serious latent disease.” Though the Genova plant closed more than two years before the suit was filed, Blanyar argued the time to file wasn't triggered until the recent discovery of a list of toxic chemicals used at the factory.
But the plaintiffs in the would-be class action should have been aware of health problems associated with the vinyl chloride and polyvinyl chloride with which they worked as early as the 1970s, long before their discovery of the list of chemicals used at the plant, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said.
U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas I. Vanaskie wrote the opinion, joined by Judges D. Michael Fisher and Cheryl Ann Krause.
The law offices of Anapol Weiss, as well as Caroselli Beachler McTiernan & Conboy represented the plaintiffs.
Fox Rothschild, as well as Bodman, represented Genova.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=115318590&vname=dennotallissues&fn=115318590&jd=115318590
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Peer Reviewers Question EPA Drinking Water Lead Modeling Approaches
Jul 3, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Lara Beaven
Scientific experts reviewing proposed modeling approaches that EPA plans to use in revising its Safe Drinking Water Act lead and copper rule are questioning whether the methods can fully address risks to key populations, noting limitations in each of the three approaches -- although the peer reviewers are generally supportive of EPA's efforts.
EPA has not determined exactly how it will use the value it is calling a health-based benchmark, which aims to predict the relationship between levels of lead in drinking water and blood lead levels (BLLs). But in its charge questions to a contractor-run peer review panel that met earlier this week, the agency says it “sees value in providing states, drinking water systems and the public with a greater understanding of the potential health implications for vulnerable populations of specific levels of lead in drinking water.”
The agency's National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) in December 2015 recommendations urged EPA to establish a household action level based on the amount it would take for an infant to have a BLL greater than 5 micrograms per deciliter (ug/dL) based on a healthy infant's consumption of infant formula made with water.
NDWAC recommended that water systems be required to notify the consumer, the state drinking water program and the local public health agency if this level were exceeded, with the expectation that individuals and local health officials will use this information to take prompt actions at the household level to mitigate lead risks.
Additionally, EPA says the health-based benchmark value could help inform other potential elements of a revised lead and copper rule -- including public education requirements, prioritization of households for lead service line replacement or other risk mitigation actions at the household level, and potential requirements related to schools.
In a draft report released earlier this year, EPA outlines three different models for linking drinking water exposure to BLLs. Two of the approaches use the agency's Integrated Exposure Biokinetic and Uptake (IEUBK) model, and the third uses the Stochastic Human Exposure and Dose Simulation (SHEDS) multimedia model with regression equations relating to lead uptake to BLLs derived from IEUBK.
The first IEUBK approach estimates the concentration of lead in drinking water that would result in a 1 or 5 percent increase in the probability a child would have an elevated BLL while the second approach estimates the concentration of lead in drinking water that would result in a 0.5 ug/dL or 1 ug/dL increase in a child's mean blood lead level. The SHEDS-multimedia approach estimates the amount of lead in drinking water that would result in a target population of children's predicted distribution of lead levels having the 95th or 97.7th percentile blood lead level of 3.5 or 5 ug/dL. For each of the three modeling approaches, EPA examined three age groups: 0-6 months, 1-2 years and 0-7 years.
Peer Review
During a June 27-28 meeting in Washington, D.C., peer reviewers backed EPA's use of the 0-6 month age group and the 1-2 year age group but questioned whether the 0-7 year age group covered too many years and whether it adequately addressed activity changes among 3-5 years compared to younger and older children.
Panos Georgopoulos of Rutgers University said it was reasonable to accept the age ranges EPA used while noting that his “wish list for the future” would be to include in utero exposures as well, which would require more data and modeling than is currently available.
Eric Burneson, director of the Standards and Risk Management Division within EPA's Office of Water, explained in response to questions from the peer reviewers that EPA used the 0-7 years age range to account for individuals exposed through their childhood and address cumulative exposure effects on IQ.
The peer reviewers also raised some concerns about the inputs EPA used for the models, with Kathleen Vork of California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment noting an obvious sparse data problem. In discussing the pros and cons of the different approaches, Vork said, “It dawns on me how weak the 0-6 data set is,” adding that EPA would have to use maximum uncertainty” in modeling.
Anne Loccisano of Exponent preferred the input for approach 3, noting that while approaches 1 and 2 are useful, “we're missing so much.”
Ian von Lindern of TerraGraphics International Foundation said he has “a litany” of concerns about the model inputs, including moving away from the default values for the IEUBK and saying the SHEDS input corrupts the IEUBK. He also faulted the lack of age-specific variation and the use of soil and dust ingestion rates, among other things.
Many of the data inputs for approach 3 come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which represent drinking water data from the whole population. “But I don't think [NHANES] specially addresses formula-fed infants, so the use of that is going to underestimate [exposure] for that population,” one reviewer said. “That was a little bit of a concern to me.”
The peer reviewers also grappled with the pros and cons of each approach, with the panel chair, Barry Ryan of Emory University, noting that all of them “are supplying us with useful information.”
Von Lindern said approach 1, which seeks to predict the probability a child would have an elevated BLL, is the type of approach “that has had great utility in the past for EPA as an enforcement tool,” but “it doesn't mean much to the public.”
Approach 2, which estimates the concentration of lead in drinking water that would result in a 0.5 ug/dL or 1 ug/dL increase in a child's mean BLL, “really does tell you about a drop in BLL, which you can say that's an equivalent amount of IQ,” von Lindern said. “That's a tool that is useful to [relaying] it to the public. Both of those are the same information, just a different way of explaining it.”
“For the third one, I'm not sure what the significance of that is,” he said. “I think that's good information for regulations. I'm not sure it helps people in the health department.”
Marc Nascarella of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health said, “We need to ground whatever recommendations we put forward with a public health based interpretation.” It is worth exploring whether individuals with high BLL, possibly from non-water exposure pathways, are the same individuals that are drinking water with high levels of lead, he added.
Modeling Approach
EPA is asking for a modeling approach to inform notification when an exceedance has been identified, but “I think the current modeling approach would be difficult for me to explain at a public meeting for what it means for an individual child,” Nascarella said, in part because it does not account for lead in drinking water exposures at school.
Michéle Prévost of Polytechnique Montreal in Canada said it has been very useful in her experience when you can show specific tap levels of lead increase the probability of higher BLL, as approach 1 does. “We ran a BLL [epidemiological] study in Montreal. One of the things that was important for local health officials to understand” is what would push BLL over an action threshold, she said.
She also expressed admiration for the second approach but said it would be more difficult to defend in public meetings.
“For the third approach, it's the one I admire the most. I think it's the future,” Prévost said, though she added that she is “uncomfortable there is no water data in there. It looks like a bit of fudging.”
Nascarella said if he was forced to choose, he would lean toward the probability statements of approach 1 when considering the risk communication challenge to the public.
Public commenters during the peer review meeting summarized and re-iterated points they raised in written comments to EPA earlier this year.
Tom Neltner of Environmental Defense Fund, who also served on the NDWAC panel that developed the 2015 recommendations to EPA, said the modeling approaches are “an important outgrowth of the discussion that occurred” in the NDWAC work group. “I do appreciate EPA's efforts to go beyond what the [NDWAC panel] asked for,” he said.
Douglas Crawford Brown, speaking on behalf of the American Water Works Association, was fully supportive of EPA's modeling efforts through questioned the concept of a “risk cup” where water is the primary driver for changes in BLL, the use of biological averaging time in the models, and the truncation and correlation of the parameter values.
Lindsey Jones of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) submitted written comments to the panel that summarized the state's comments to EPA, where TCEQ criticized EPA's use of the term health-based benchmark and recommended the agency revise its soil ingestion, soil/dust concentrations, and outdoor air input parameters to exclude high-end exposures.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/peer-reviewers-question-epa-drinking-water-lead-modeling-approaches
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Udall Asks EPA for Data Backing Reversal on Chlorpyrifos Ban
Jun 30, 2017 | Inside EPA
Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) is pressing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to provide scientific evidence backing the Trump administration's reversal of an Obama-era plan to ban the commonly-used insecticide chlorpyrifos to protect against neurodevelopmental risks to children, and faulting Pruitt's testimony on the subject during a recent hearing.
In a June 29 letter, Udall argues that Pruitt's March 29 decision to drop a proposed rule banning use of chlorpyrifos on food rejected the scientific determination of agency officials. Udall asks Pruitt to provide evidence supporting the decision, and argues reversing the plan to quickly ban the substance may cause harm.
“Delay will only result in additional and unnecessary exposures by farm workers and children who continue to have chlorpyrifos experimented on them while the rest of the scientific community has determined there is reasonable cause for danger,” Udall's letter says. “As such, please provide to the Subcommittee the scientific information presented to you that resulted in your decision to reject the petition to revoke food tolerances of chlorpyrifos."
Environmentalists have long pressed EPA to ban use of chlorpyrifos on food, arguing it poses neurodevelopmental risks to children. The Obama EPA in November 2015, under pressure from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9thCircuit, issued a proposed revocation rule, which a 9th Circuit panel later ordered the agency to take final action on by March 31.
But in a March 29 order, Pruitt reversed course and denied advocacy groups' petition for a ban, citing uncertainty in scientific data on the substance's risks. Pruitt said EPA would continue to assess risks of chlorpyrifos as part of its Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act registration review scheduled for completion by October 2022.
The Udall letter follows the senator's questioning of Pruitt on the chlorpyrifos reversal during a June 27 Senate appropriations interior subcommittee hearing on EPA's budget.
In a statement, Udall faults Pruitt's testimony, saying that administrator failed to provide evidence supporting the decision. Udall also suggests that Pruitt incorrectly stated that EPA would reach a decision on chlorpyrifos this year when the agency's website says it will review the substance through October 2022.
“While I am concerned that Administrator Pruitt appears to have provided the committee with wrong information about the final deadline for his agency’s review of chlorpyrifos, either October 2022 or October 2017 is too late a date to ban this toxic pesticide,” the statement says. “EPA must act now to protect the health and safety of America’s children and families."
In the statement, Udall also notes that recent news reports that Pruitt met with chlorpyrifos producer Dow AgroSciences days before deciding not to ban the substance. The Associated Press June 28 reported that Pruitt met privately with Dow CEO Andrew Liveris March 9, for 30 minutes in Houston where both were speakers at an energy industry conference.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/udall-asks-epa-data-backing-reversal-chlorpyrifos-ban
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(ACC Mentioned) Updated North American Trade Deal Could Boost U.S. Chemical Exports
Jun 30, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Glenn Hess
With talks aimed at revising the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) expected to start soon, chemical manufacturers and others on June 28 offered advice to the Trump Administration for updating the 23-year-old accord with Canada and Mexico.
For chemical manufacturers, capitalizing on the shale gas revolution by securing expanded access to the two largest markets for U.S. chemical exports—Canada and Mexico—is a key goal, said Greg Skelton of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry trade association.
In testimony before the U.S. Commerce Department’s International Trade Commission, Skelton noted that the U.S. has a large and growing trade surplus in industrial chemicals that stands at $28.2 billion. It is “likely to grow significantly as increased production from more than $185 billion in announced new investment in domestic chemical manufacturing comes on stream,” said Skelton, ACC’s senior director of regulatory and technical affairs.
An ACC report estimates that exports of chemicals directly linked to the availability of abundant and cheap natural gas from shale, such as polymers, plastics, resins, and specialty chemicals, will more than double from $60 billion in 2014, to $123 billion by 2030.
But this increased production cannot all be consumed domestically, Skelton said. “To maximize this competitive advantage, it is essential to strengthen and expand access to key foreign markets,” he told the government officials.
The trade deal between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, which took effect in 1994, has been blamed by President Donald J. Trump and other critics for the demise of manufacturing in the U.S., as major industries moved factories to low-wage Mexico. Trump made the promise to renegotiate NAFTA a centerpiece of his campaign last year.
The U.S. had a $63-billion trade deficit with Mexico last year, compared with a surplus of $7.7 billion with Canada, according to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.
However, NAFTA has greatly benefited the chemical sectors in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. Since the deal took effect in 1994, trade in chemicals between the three countries has more than tripled, from $20 billion to $63 billion.
“After more than 20 years, modernization of NAFTA is an opportunity to upgrade the agreement to address inefficiencies and reflect procedures adopted or proposed in subsequent negotiations,” Skelton said.
A modernized NAFTA, he testified, must maintain duty-free trade for all qualifying chemical products, update rules by bringing them in line with measures adopted in more recent U.S. trade agreements, and enhance regulatory cooperation among the three nations.
With talks expected to kick off in late August, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has expressed optimism the U.S. could reach a new deal with Canada and Mexico by early next year. But Trump has threatened to walk away from NAFTA if he cannot get better terms for the U.S.
If he is not satisfied with the results of the upcoming talks, Trump could pull the U.S. out of NAFTA, setting up the possibility for bilateral trade agreements with the northern and southern neighbors..
http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/web/2017/06/Updated-North-American-trade-deal.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Weighs in As NAFTA Rewrite Begins
Jul 1, 2017 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
If U.S. manufacturers had their way, the renegotiation of the NAFTA trade pact with Mexico and Canada would be a limited affair, and would reject controversial measures President Trump has floated like border taxes.
Manufacturing groups, including for plastics, came out in force to several days of U.S. government hearings beginning June 27, urging caution and taking a pro-NAFTA line as the Trump administration starts work on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Not everyone in the plastics industry was on the pro-NAFTA page. The CEO of a small plastics processing company in Illinois, for example, complained in written comments about "American manufacturing businesses that were decimated due to NAFTA."
But, for the most part, industry came before the hearing called by the U.S. Trade Representative to argue in favor of NAFTA, which was signed by the three nations in 1994.
The Washington-based American Chemistry Council, for example, said NAFTA and free trade deals in general are key for the plastics industry to fully realize export benefits from the shale gas boom.
In testimony June 28, an ACC executive said NAFTA has created a deep and cost effective economic integration of supply chains between the three countries — trade within the same or closely related companies makes up 50 percent of U.S. chemical exports and 70 percent of chemical imports.
"Imposing tariffs or other trade barriers on trade in chemicals would be like putting a wall in the middle of a factory," said Greg Skelton, senior director of regulatory and technical affairs with ACC.
Likewise, the Plastics Industry Association said in written comments that its member companies want to keep the agreement in place, but they did say they are looking for help in more technical areas.
"In a survey of our members, members indicated their support for the continuation of NAFTA, however many shared their concerns about non-tariff barriers and technical barriers to trade," according to comments from Perc Pineda, the association's chief economist.
The Washington-based association said, for example, that its members noted that each of the three countries have different machinery safety codes. That leads to confusion in compliance.
And it said its members reported "no transparency in the frequent rulemakings made by the Mexican and Canadian governments on importing requirements."
The association said the U.S. plastics industry had a trade surplus of $12.26 billion with Mexico last year, and a $1.15 billion surplus with Canada.
It also argued that while plastics trade with Mexico has been favorable, some parts of the relationship with Canada should be improved: "The NAFTA modernization negotiations must address the seemingly inaccessible parts of the Canadian market for some plastic products."
NAFTA skeptic
Skeptics of NAFTA within the plastics industry were also making their voices heard.
Ken Cooley, CEO of small plastics processor ShapeMaster in Ogden, Ill., told the USTR in written comments that rethinking trade agreements would help the U.S. economy.
"The 'hollowed out cities' that Hillary Clinton talked about were due to the loss of manufacturing," he wrote. "I do not blame any one person or group but a global push to make Asia and those nations the manufacturing hub along with countries like Mexico."
In a follow up interview, he said he's skeptical of trade agreements because other countries have less stringent safety and environmental rules, and because they have more state involvement to help their companies. Both those allow other nations to cut manufacturing costs and gain an advantage, he said.
ShapeMaster employs 20, with several thermoforming machines and one injection press. It exports products worldwide. Cooley said assessing NAFTA is complex, but on balance it has hurt the United States.
"I don't like generalized answers but I'm going to say it's overall negative," he said.More NAFTA car content
One flashpoint of debate centered on how much of a car built in the NAFTA region should be made from components, including plastic parts, from within NAFTA for the car to qualify for NAFTA trade benefits.
A panel of five auto industry groups testifying all urged caution around increasing the amount, called the rules of origin. It's currently at 62.5 percent.
The AFL-CIO and other unions, along with the domestically-focused Alliance for American Manufacturing, argued for the level to be higher, so that, AAM said, "workers in signatory countries can enjoy more of the benefits" from the trade pact.
But auto industry groups argued that 62.5 percent is the right level. The American Automotive Policy Council, which represents Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler, said the 62.5 percent is the highest of any trade agreement in the world.
"Altering the rules of origin can have lots of unintended consequences," said Matt Blunt, president of Washington-based AAPC. "It could make us less competitive as compared to our international peers."
Blunt said there are three main centers of auto production globally that compete against other — North America, Europe and northeast Asia — with each having a mix of developed and developing economies.
"We certainly rely on Mexico to help keep us more competitive," he said.
Governments should be very cautious in making changes to that 62.5 percent "rule of origin" because it could hurt the complex auto industry supply chain, said Leigh Merino, senior director of regulatory affairs with the Washington-based Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association, which represents 1,000 vehicle parts suppliers.
"It's really an ecosystem," she said. "What disrupts the ecosystem even in the most small ways can be extremely disruptive — particularly on the component manufacturers side."
Others in the auto components supply industry were more open to something above 62.5 percent.
Mexican auto part maker Rassini SAB de CV, which employs 6,900 at factories in Mexico, the United States and Brazil, urged USTR to "maintain or increase the NAFTA rules of origin to limit input from non-NAFTA countries."
Rassini said it "strongly opposed" moves in the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement to set TPP rules of origin at a lower level than in NAFTA.
All the industry groups were pushing various technical changes under the NAFTA renegotiations.
ACC, for example, said it wanted upgrades to reflect the digitization of commerce — NAFTA was signed before the internet was part of daily life — and it wanted changes in "regulatory coherence" between the three countries.
ACC's Skelton told the government panel that expanding free trade agreements is vital for the U.S. plastics industry to realize the economic benefits of shale gas, and the dramatic increase in domestic plastics production that is creating. And he urged the government negotiators to be cautious.
"I think we would align ourselves with the view that others have said that we should first do no harm," Skelton said. "NAFTA has been overall of great benefit to the three economies."
'Imposing tariffs or other trade barriers on trade in chemicals would be like putting a wall in the middle of a factory."
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20170630/NEWS/170639986/industry-weighs-in-as-nafta-rewrite-begins
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As Trump Moves to Grow Oil and Gas, House Could Curb Environmental Suits
Jun 30, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By James Osborne
When it comes to expanding U.S. oil and gas production, President Donald Trump has few greater hurdles than litigation from environmental groups that can tie up companies and federal agencies for years.
Now Republicans in Congress are examining ways by which to reduce the delays such litigation can bring to drilling and mining projects on federal lands.
"In reality a legal subindustry has thrived from endless environmental litigation," Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Louis., said at a hearing in the House Committee on Natural Resources this week. "Our legal system is an important avenue for citizens seeking redress of wrongs perpetuated by the federal government... however special interests repeatedly exploit our legal system to further their own agendas."
So far House Republicans have not introduced any legislation or made specific recommendations on how the Department of Interior might go about speeding up the legal process. But members of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations heard testimony this week from an attorney that has frequently represented the oil and gas industry and Caroline Lobdell, head of the Western Resources Legal Center, which trains law students for careers representing mining, timber, oil and gas and ranching interests.
Lobdell recommended a series of administrative changes at the Department of Interior, including moves to reduce environmental groups ability to recover attorneys' fees and reducing the practice of putting strict requirements on companies operating on federal lands.
"Plaintiffs love to plumb the depths of voluminous Management Plans to find inflexible standards and required procedures to serve as a foundation for lawsuits to stop agency projects. Every use of the word "shall" in a management plan lifts a plaintiff lawyer's heart," she testified.
As the Trump administration moves to expand oil and gas drilling across federal lands, House Republicans have been reviewing regulations at the Interior Department across the board.
During another hearing at House Natural Resources Thursday, Democrats questioned whether Republicans planned to let, "the oil and gas industry call all the shots as to how to manage these lands.""It's only taken five months and nearly every move on energy that this administration has made could have come right out of the executive boardrooms of the American Petroleum Institute or the National Mining Association," said Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., ranking member on the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee.
Environmental groups have been adamant they plan to use the court system to block or at least slow any action President Trump takes to expand drilling on federal lands.
But so far, the moves by House Republicans are not setting off alarm bells around the offices of environmental attorneys, said Rebecca Riley, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"The oil and gas industry routinely files lawsuits under environmental statutes," she said. "I don't think [Congress] would be looking at cutting the avenue off. It's such an important means to keeping government accountable."
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/As-Trump-moves-to-expand-oil-and-gas-House-11256123.php
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South Korea Is Very, Very Interested in America's Natural Gas
Jul 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ryan Collins
One thing became clear on the fourth day of the White House's Energy Week: South Korea is really, really into U.S. natural gas.
In less than 24 hours, South Korea's energy companies had announced four partnerships with U.S. companies to explore opportunities in the U.S. natural gas business. Korea Gas Corp., the state-owned gas supplier, said it will look into potential investments in liquefied natural gas projects in Alaska, Texas and Louisiana. SK Group signed an agreement with General Electric Co. and Continental Resources Inc. to pursue shale gas developments.
It makes sense. South Korea is one of the world's biggest importers of LNG and has bought eight cargoes of U.S. gas from Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana. While Sabine Pass is the only one sending shale gas abroad, dozens of terminals have been proposed along U.S. coasts to do the same. The exports have put the U.S. on a path to becoming a net gas exporter for the first time in decades.
President Donald Trump noted during a June 29 Energy Week event in Washington that South Korea leaders were visiting the White House. He said they would be “talking about them buying energy from the United States of America. I'm sure they would love to do it.”
U.S. LNG may in fact play a big role in furthering South Korea's energy policies. After the election of Moon Jae-in as president in May, the country is looking to transition away from coal and nuclear power in favor of cleaner natural gas-fired electricity generation. And buying more U.S. fuel could allow the country to smooth geopolitical disputes over unbalanced trade, Korea Gas Chief Executive Officer Lee Seung-Hoon said Sunday at the Sabine Pass terminal, where the company celebrated the start of an LNG contract with Cheniere.
“All of these projects are looking to find more long-term offtake in order to get the financial support they need to move forward,” said Anastacia Dialynas, analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, in a phone interview June 29. South Korea “might even be pitting them against each other” by exploring several projects to “see who offers the best terms,” she said.
The Port Arthur, Texas, LNG export terminal is being developed by Sempra Energy and Woodside Petroleum Ltd., and Energy Transfer Equity LLC and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are planning the Lake Charles, Louisiana, one. The Alaska LNG export project is being proposed by the state's Alaska Gasline Development Corp.
Spot LNG prices in Singapore traded at about $5.244 per million British thermal units Thursday, according to a Singapore Exchange Ltd. assessment. That's down from more than $14 in October 2014 as production capacity rises and oil prices have tumbled.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=115318595&vname=dennotallissues&fn=115318595&jd=115318595
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Pipeline Agency Weighs Broader Scope for Data Sharing System
Jul 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
A planned information-sharing system should expand beyond its congressional mandate, a top official at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said.
The agency has called together a working group to create a nationwide information-sharing system that pipeline operators and other parties would voluntarily contribute to. The system would help operators and the agency identify emerging threats earlier, according to the agency.
The group's congressional mandate focuses some of its responsibilities only on in-line inspections, or data collected by tools inserted into a pipeline.
Alan Mayberry, associate administrator for pipeline safety at the federal agency, wants to expand the working group's system beyond data gathered by in-line inspections— which would broaden its charge beyond what congress envisioned.
The working group is formally tasked with creating a system that ensures dig-verification data are shared with in-line inspection operators to improve pipeline safety and inspection technology, among other responsibilities. Dig verification prevents inadvertent ruptures of pipelines and helps first responders locate problems quickly in the event of leaks, accidents or fires.
The group's members include representatives from two universities, Kinder Morgan, the Pipeline Safety Coalition, Marathon Pipeline, and Sunoco Logistics.
For in-line inspections, operators send high-tech tools, also known as “pigs,” inside an operating pipeline to scan for potential cracks, corrosion, leaks, and other problems.
“I see what we're setting up here as a framework to share information—all information, not just in-line inspections,” Mayberry said at a June 29 working group meeting in Arlington, Va.
Collecting Data
In-line inspections aren't the only way operators detect problems with pipes, John Stoody, vice president of government and public relations at the Association of Oil Pipe Lines, told Bloomberg BNA. Operators also confirm in-line inspection data with in-person testing and other types of data.
“In this context, AOPL would support the [voluntary information-sharing system working] group considering inspection and examination data beyond just [in-line inspection] data,” he said.
The working group has not yet formed a mission statement, and it is unclear whether the group will incorporate data outside of in-line inspections in its shared system.
The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America declined to comment before the working group settled on those details.
Christie Murray, the designated federal official for the working group, noted the group's discussions went beyond its mandated responsibilities.
“I think there's agreement that there's more that needs to be considered,” she said at the June 29 meeting.
Promoting Safety
Safety advocacy groups supported collecting and sharing more information.
“Lessons learned from a range of activities and near miss data shared by companies and regulators ought to help everyone drive the number of pipeline incidents even lower,” Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, told Bloomberg BNA.
Mac McMillan, PHMSA's executive director and acting deputy administrator, said at the meeting that the group's focus was safety.
“It's important to do what we can to make sure we don't have that next accident,” he said.
The working group is tentatively scheduled to meet again in September to continue work toward recommendations for the secretary of transportation.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=115318584&vname=dennotallissues&fn=115318584&jd=115318584
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Commentary: Positives in Texas Shale Report Overshadowed by Rhetoric
Jun 30, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By Ed Longanecker
The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST) released a new study recently focused on the environmental and community impacts of shale development in Texas. The report examines a wide range of issues, including water, air emissions, transportation infrastructure and the economic impact of oil and gas development throughout the state.
Despite sensationalized headlines, the report contains a variety of important data points and findings that illustrate the importance of oil and natural gas development and successful efforts by operators to protect Texas citizens, the environment and the communities in which they operate.
The following information outlines some of the conclusions featured within the report for a number of the disciplinary areas reviewed:
Air emissions. As noted in the study, although characterizing the impact of the production and use of shale resources on air quality is challenging, emissions from oil and gas production basins in Texas have been analyzed to a greater extent than production regions in most other states.
Specific to greenhouse gases, increasing use of natural gas for electricity generation has resulted in reductions in the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and criteria air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in recent years. Between 2005-2015, electricity generation grew by 1 percent, while related CO2 emissions fell by 21 percent.
Further, exploration and production companies have reduced methane emissions by 16.3 percent since 1990, while overall natural gas production increased by 53 percent. During the same period, emissions from hydraulically fractured gas wells were reduced by 59 percent. This decline is attributable to voluntary actions from operators, including investment of more than $90 billion in greenhouse gas mitigating technologies by U.S. oil and natural gas companies between 2000-2014. U.S. energy-related greenhouse gas emissions are now at their lowest level in nearly 25 years.
Water quantity and quality. The report outlines data on water use for hydraulic fracturing and provides qualitative use statistics. It denotes that water utilized for drilling and hydraulic fracturing is minimal in comparison to water used for agricultural activities and municipalities. Further, it specifies that water used in hydraulic fracturing processes in Texas represents less than 1 percent of total water use statewide.
In some regions in Texas, however, water used in hydraulic fracturing could represent a larger proportion of local water sources. Although this equates to a small fraction of overall water use, Texas operators and the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) continue with innovative efforts to support the use of recycled and brackish water.
With regard to environmental risks, the study concludes that "direct migration of contaminants from targeted injection zones is highly unlikely to lead to contamination of potential drinking water aquifers," citing a 2011 study from the Groundwater Protection Council that analyzed 211 cases of groundwater contamination associated with oil and natural gas activity in Texas.
This research joins a long list of studies and reports showing that hydraulic fracturing is not a major threat to drinking water sources. A five year study published by the EPA last year likewise showed no evidence of widespread contamination of groundwater resources from hydraulic fracturing activities.
Texas geology and earthquakes – These continue to be a key area of focus for researchers, lawmakers and operators. As the report concludes, Texas has led the country in efforts to study this important issue in order to provide more reliable and accurate data on the true cause of seismic events in the state. Substantive funding and legislative efforts to create TexNet, a statewide seismic research program, have proved to be instrumental.
TexNet has added over 40 seismometers to Texas' seismic network and the program's data collection is still in its infancy. Information collected to date does negate speculation that hydraulic fracturing is the cause of earthquakes in Texas. The TAMEST report speaks to this conclusion, stating that potentially induced earthquakes in Texas, felt at the surface, may be correlated with fluid disposal in a small number of Class II disposal wells, not with the hydraulic fracturing process.
While a definitive causal relationship between disposal wells and earthquakes cannot be established, the oil and natural gas industry continues to collaborate and support additional seismicity research, funding and analysis. It is important that faulty rhetoric does not hinder the process.
Transportation. As emphasized in the report, a consequential by-product of increased oil and gas activity is additional weighted truck traffic. This is an issue, particularly in rural areas of the state, where county roads were not constructed to withstand the volume or weight of traffic associated with large scale oil and gas production. As a result, the industry has worked at length with the Legislature in previous years to appropriate additional funding for these areas.
The report notes allocations from Proposition 1 passed during the 84th Legislature that provided $1.74 billion in transportation funding. What is not often emphasized is that the appropriation originated from oil and gas severance taxes provided to state's Economic Stabilization Fund. Further, during the 85th Legislative Session, the industry worked extensively on an effort to reallocate a percentage of severance tax permanently for road repair and maintenance within the energy sector, but due to a tight budget cycle, the effort was to no avail. Oil and natural gas operators will continue to work with county officials and the legislature to develop a permanent solution.
Although not widely recognized by anti-fossil fuel activists, the report reaffirms how the exploration, extraction, processing and distribution of oil and gas has been of vital importance to the Texas economy. From 2008-2016 alone, $107 billion in state taxes and state royalty payments were paid by the Texas oil and natural gas industry. Further, every one of Texas' 36 congressional districts, 150 House districts, and 31 Senate districts include counties where people are employed in the oil and gas arena.
The Texas oil and natural gas industry values the prosperity and well-being of the state and its citizens and looks forward to participating in continued research opportunities that will assist in shaping its operational footprint for years to come.
Ed Longanecker is president of the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association.
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/xxx-11258533.php
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Groups Sue Over Chemical Plant Safety Rule Delay
Jul 1, 2017 | Chem.Info
By Meagan Parrish
A coalition has formed to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned delay in implementing new chemical safety rules.
According to a report in Earthjustice, the group includes advocates, “fence-line” community members, scientists and industry employees.
Earlier this month, the EPA finalized a rule that would delay implementation of the regulations until Feb. 19, 2019.
The safety measures were passed under the Obama administration and were partially inspired by a 2013 chemical plant explosion in West, Tx. The rules are a part of the EPA’s Risk Management Program and require plants to consider safety upgrades, undergo third-party audits, and coordinate emergency preparedness efforts with local first responders.
Advocates praised the rule for enhancing safety protocols. But critics pointed out that the measures would not have prevented an accident like the one that happened in West (which the U.S. Chemical Safety Board determined was caused by arson and poor chemical storage practices). Some parts of the rule also lack regulatory teeth, such as the safer technology stipulation, which only requires that plants consider upgrades but doesn’t mandate that they purchase anything new.
The group petitioning the D.C. Circuit Court, however, argues that the rules would prevent chemical accidents.
“Preparation for an emergency in these situations, particularly in overburdened communities like ours along the Houston Ship Channel, can be the difference between life and death,” Dr. Bakeyah Nelson, executive director of Air Alliance Houston, said.
Earthjustice reports that there were 2,200 accidents at chemical facilities between 2004 and 2013 — 1,500 of which caused injuries. All told, 59 fatalities were also associated with chemical accidents during that time.
https://www.chem.info/news/2017/06/groups-sue-over-chemical-plant-safety-rule-delay
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Oil Train Legislation Sent Back to Committee After Criticism
Jul 1, 2017 | AP (In U.S. News & World Report)
By Gillian Flaccus
State lawmakers sent a proposed oil train safety bill back for more work Friday after growing concerns that an amendment favoring the railroad industry had watered down key provisions on public oversight and financial accountability.
The Oregon House was prepared to vote on House Bill 2131, but Rep. Barbara Smith Warner, a Democrat from Portland, made a surprise motion to send the proposed legislation back to the Joint Ways and Means committee for changes. The move came after environmental groups and residents of the Columbia River Gorge raised concerns about an amendment they felt neutered the state's ability to police the railroads that run oil trains through communities.
The bill was crafted at the start of the legislative session to address safety concerns after an oil train derailment near the small Columbia River Gorge town of Mosier sparked a fire near an elementary school that took hours to put out. Oil trains run continuously along tracks that parallel the Columbia River and pass through Mosier and other small communities.
The bill was amended in May. Critics said the changes compromised transparency and public safety for the benefit of the rail industry.
"Our intention was not to hide oil train safety plans from the public," Smith Warner said before the vote on the motion. "This has been a complicated path, a long negotiation, and despite that there are times when the need for good policy overrides the need for consensus."
The railroad industry says making information about oil train routes and plans for a potential spill public would endanger national security by identifying where the easily identifiable, mile-long trains move. Smith Warner said Friday that the proposed bill had been crafted in a way that would help it survive legal challenges.
Justin Jacobs, a regional spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad, said in a statement that the railroad had worked closely with legislators on the bill in question and also had safety as a priority. Railroads are only required to provide a detailed accident contingency plan in California, Washington and Minnesota, he said, and Minnesota allows those plans to be kept from the public.
Environmentalists had been vocal in their criticism of the amendments, which made the railroads' safety plans secret from the public.
The original bill would have allowed the public to read the plans; required railroads to pay a fee for oil response planning and required financial disclosures to prove railroads could pay for any accident cleanup, said Michael Lang, conservation director for Friends of the Columbia Gorge.
Oregon currently has the weakest laws on the West Coast around oil train safety and accident response planning, Lang said.
In Washington, railroads must provide extensive details on how they will respond to spills large and small and the public can read and comment on the plans.
In California, a federal judge in 2015 dismissed a challenge to a state law requiring that railroads and other entities that transport oil across the state prepare comprehensive spill response plans and prove they can pay for any cleanups.
"These laws in California and Washington passed, they're implemented and they've withstood judicial challenges and scrutiny," Lang said.
Not all lawmakers were pleased with Smith Warner's decision to pull the bill.
Rep. Mark Johnson, a Republican from the Columbia Gorge town of Hood River, blamed inflammatory coverage in the media for Smith Warner's change of heart and said sending it back to committee would jeopardize lawmakers' ability to get any oil train safety legislation passed. Oregon's legislative session ends in the next two weeks.
"My fear if this bill goes back to committee . it has a very uncertain pathway through this legislature," he said. "I am disheartened that we would send this bill back."
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oregon/articles/2017-06-30/oil-train-legislation-sent-back-to-committee-after-anger
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(ACC Mentioned) Counseled by Industry, Not Staff, E.P.A. Chief Is Off to a Blazing Start
Jul 3, 2017 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
In the four months since he took office as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency’s 47-year history, according to experts in environmental law.
Mr. Pruitt’s supporters, including President Trump, have hailed his moves as an uprooting of the administrative state and a clearing of onerous regulations that have stymied American business. Environmental advocates have watched in horror as Mr. Pruitt has worked to disable the authority of the agency charged with protecting the nation’s air, water and public health.
But both sides agree: While much of Mr. Trump’s policy agenda is mired in legal and legislative delays, hampered by poor execution and overshadowed by the Russia investigations, the E.P.A. is acting. Mr. Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who built a career out of suing the agency he now leads, is moving effectively to dismantle the regulations and international agreements that stood as a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s legacy.
“Just the number of environmental rollbacks in this time frame is astounding,” said Richard Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard. “Pruitt has come in with a real mission. He is much more organized, much more focused than the other cabinet-level officials, who have not really taken charge of their agencies. It’s very striking how much they’ve done.”
Since February, Mr. Pruitt has filed a proposal of intent to undo or weaken Mr. Obama’s climate change regulations, known as the Clean Power Plan. In late June, he filed a legal plan to repeal an Obama-era rule curbing pollution in the nation’s waterways. He delayed a rule that would require fossil fuel companies to rein in leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells. He delayed the date by which companies must comply with a rule to prevent explosions and spills at chemical plants. And he reversed a ban on the use of a pesticide that the E.P.A.’s own scientists have said is linked to damage of children’s nervous systems.
In a sign of both Mr. Pruitt’s influence in the White House and the high regard in which Mr. Trump holds him, he will take a leading role in devising the legal path to withdraw from the 194-nation Paris agreement on climate change, a job that would typically fall to lawyers at the State Department.
And he is doing all this largely without the input of the 15,000 career employees at the agency he heads, according to interviews with over 20 current and former E.P.A. senior career staff members.
“I have been consistently informed by multiple career people at E.P.A. that Administrator Pruitt is not meeting with them ahead of making decisions like rolling back these major regulations,” said James J. Jones, who had worked at the agency since the Reagan administration before retiring in January. Mr. Jones, an expert in chemical and pesticide pollution, was appointed by Mr. Obama as the E.P.A.’s assistant administrator for chemical safety in his final years at the agency.
Instead, Mr. Pruitt has outsourced crucial work to a network of lawyers, lobbyists and other allies, especially Republican state attorneys general, a network he worked with closely as the head of the Republican Attorneys General Association. Since 2013, the group has collected $4.2 million from fossil fuel-related companies like Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Murray Energy and Southern Company, businesses that also worked closely with Mr. Pruitt in many of the 14 lawsuits he filed against the E.P.A.
Within the agency, Mr. Pruitt relies on the counsel of a small network of political appointees, including a number of former lobbyists and senior industry officials. For example, he tapped Nancy Beck, previously a policy director for the American Chemistry Council, which lobbies on behalf of companies such as Dow and DuPont, to oversee the E.P.A. office charged with enforcing regulations on hazardous chemicals.
“It amounts to a corporate takeover of the agency, in its decision- and policy-making functions,” said Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, a government watchdog group.
Mr. Pruitt, 49, sees himself as a champion of states’ rights, pressing to diminish the intrusive authority of an overbearing federal agency. Hanging near the fireplace on the wood-paneled walls of his office is a portrait of President James Monroe, who opposed ratifying the Constitution because he said it gave too much power to the federal government.
Mr. Pruitt pushed that message in his first speech to the agency’s staff. “Congress has been very prescriptive in providing, in many instances, a very robust role, an important role of the states,” he said. He did not mention public health or climate change.
Since then, Mr. Pruitt has begun what he calls his “back to basics” agenda for the E.P.A. — one that he has described to multiple people as an effort to rein in the regulatory efforts of the Obama era, which focused on invisible greenhouse gases from tailpipes and smokestacks. Instead, Mr. Pruitt has said, he wants to focus on “tangible” pollution — for example, the Superfund program, which cleans up hazardous waste at old industrial sites.
“I am making it a priority to ensure contaminated sites get cleaned up,” he said. “We will be more hands-on.” (His proposed budget for 2018, however, would cut the Superfund program by about 25 percent.)
Mr. Pruitt made his message explicit in a visit to the Harvey coal mine in Sycamore, Pa., to kick off a “back to basics” promotional tour in April.
“It’s sad that a regulatory body of the government of the United States would declare a war on any part of our economy,” he told the miners. “The regulatory assault is over.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, who worked closely with Mr. Pruitt when he was Oklahoma’s attorney general to sue the E.P.A., said he was pleased that Mr. Pruitt’s new job hadn’t changed him. On March 1, Mr. Paxton met with Mr. Pruitt to request that the agency withdraw a rule requiring energy companies to collect data on emissions of methane from oil and gas wells. Mr. Paxton delivered the letter with the signatures of 11 attorneys general, laying out the case for walking back the rule.
“I personally handed him the letter, and the next day the rule was personally withdrawn,” Mr. Paxton said.
Meanwhile, the agency’s career scientists and legal experts say they have been largely cut out of the process. Senior staff members with decades of experience in environmental law and science said they had been consulted rarely on the agency’s major decisions to undo environmental protections.
It is not unusual for E.P.A. administrators to consult with lobbyists, state officials, and industry and advocacy groups as they develop major policy proposals. But veteran E.P.A. employees say Mr. Pruitt has gone much further in cutting out career staff members.
“Going back to the Reagan administration, I was never aware of a substantive decision made without input from career staff,” said Mr. Jones, the former head of the E.P.A.’s chemical regulation office. “It’s hard to imagine that you have all the relevant facts if you’re not meeting with the people who have a greater depth of knowledge on these issues than almost anyone in the country.”
Some career E.P.A. employees said they had been consulted, particularly in the writing of legal language to execute Mr. Pruitt’s agenda. After Mr. Pruitt drafted his plan to repeal Mr. Obama’s rule on pollution in the nation’s waterways, he turned to the E.P.A.’s legal office to help ensure the language was bulletproof, said Kevin Minoli, the agency’s acting general counsel.
“As lawyers, it’s not our job to choose the ultimate policy decision,” said Mr. Minoli, who has served as an E.P.A. lawyer since the end of the Clinton administration. “As lawyers, our job is to help articulate the policy in the most legally defensible way possible.”
But Mr. Pruitt’s main source of counsel on industry regulations appears to be the industries he regulates. An excerpt from his calendar for Feb. 21 to March 31, acquired through the Freedom of Information Act by the energy trade publication E & E News, details multiple meetings with chief executives and lobbyists from oil, gas, chemical, agribusiness and other industries regulated by the E.P.A., as well as with Mr. Pruitt’s personally appointed political staff — but few meetings with career employees or environmental groups.
Leaders of at least three major environmental and public health groups — the Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy and the American Lung Association — have had meetings with Mr. Pruitt, they said. E.P.A. officials said he had also met with advocacy groups such as the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the March of Dimes, the National Medical Association, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of American, and the National Environmental Health Association.
But the influence of those groups, which have pushed to retain environmental rules, appears to be outweighed by the counsel of industry groups.
Dow Chemical Company had pushed the E.P.A. to reconsider an Obama-era ban on the use of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that the E.P.A.’s scientists have concluded causes developmental damage in children. On March 30, Mr. Pruitt reversed the ban.
On March 13, Mr. Pruitt met with agriculture lobbyists, including Dale Moore, executive director of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which has lobbied heavily for the repeal of an Obama-era regulation that could restrict the use of fertilizers near waterways. Last month, Mr. Pruitt filed a draft plan to repeal the Waters of the United States Rule.
On March 22, he had dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington with 45 members of the board of directors of the American Petroleum Institute, a body composed largely of chief executive officers of the oil and gas industry. At the time, oil and gas companies were pushing the E.P.A. to roll back a set of rules on methane leaks from drilling wells, which the industry estimates could cost it over $170 million.
On June 13, Mr. Pruitt filed a proposal to delay those regulations by two years, and the agency is expected to rewrite them. In the filing, he noted that the E.P.A. had concluded that a delay of the pollution rules “may have a disproportionate effect on children.” But he also said the rules would come at a significant cost to the oil and gas industry.
“The nice thing is,” Mr. Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, said, “now we feel like we’re being heard.
Correction: July 2, 2017
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to a meeting between the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, and Andrew Liveris, the chief executive of the Dow Chemical Company. While the meeting was originally scheduled for March 9 at an energy conference in Houston, spokespeople for both the E.P.A. and Dow said it was later canceled and did not take place.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/us/politics/trump-epa-chief-pruitt-regulations-climate-change.html?_r=0
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(ACC Mentioned) Bill to Delay Ozone Limit Moves in Congress
Jul 3, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
A U.S. House of Representatives committee has approved a bill (H.R. 806) that would push back the deadline for states to meet a more stringent, health-based air quality limit for ground-level ozone to 2025, a delay of eight years. The legislation has the backing of a major chemical industry group, the American Chemistry Council, which is urging Congress to pass it...
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Story can be found here: http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i27/Bill-delay-ozone-limit-moves.html?type=paidArticleContent
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E.P.A. to Give Dissenters a Voice on Climate, No Matter the Consensus
Jun 30, 2017 | New York Times
By Brad Plumer and Coral Davenport
Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, plans to convene a team of researchers to test the scientific premise of human-caused climate change, he told coal industry executives on Thursday.
Speaking at a board meeting of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a lobbying group for coal companies and their industry allies, Mr. Pruitt said his staff had already begun preparations for a “red team-blue team” exercise to challenge mainstream climate science, according to two people who attended the meeting but were not authorized to speak about it publicly.
The initiative, first reported by E&E News, is the latest in a series of moves at the E.P.A. that critics say is undermining the role of academic research at the agency charged with protecting the nation’s environment and public health.
The idea for a “red team-blue team” exercise has gained prominence among those who play down the urgency of global warming. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, endorsed the idea in a Senate hearing on Thursday.
In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in April, Steven Koonin, a physicist at New York University, proposed that a “red team” of dissenting scientists be established to critique major scientific reports on climate change. A “blue team” of climate scientists would then rebut the criticisms, and the resulting back-and-forth would unfold in public view.
Dr. Koonin, who was an under secretary at the Department of Energy in the Obama administration, said the process “would produce a traceable public record that would allow the public and decision makers a better understanding of certainties and uncertainties.”
He drew an analogy to red-team exercises used by the military to test assumptions and analyze risks.
Many mainstream climate scientists say the proposal would make a mockery of scientific research, which already relies on an extensive process of peer review to weed out flawed analyses.
Those scientists worry that Mr. Pruitt’s exercise will not be conducted in good faith, and will only create a platform for marginal views that have already been disproved in the normal course of scientific debate.
“I think this is fundamentally a dumb idea,” Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University, said in an email. “It’s like a red team-blue team exercise about whether gravity exists.”
Mr. Pruitt has disputed the consensus on climate change in the past. He told CNBC in March that he did not think carbon dioxide was “a primary contributor to the global warming we see,” contradicting decades of analysis by federal researchers.
He is also pushing to dismantle E.P.A. regulations around greenhouse-gas emissions and has said he wants to help the declining American coal industry.
Those actions have led many scientists to question whether Mr. Pruitt will conduct a fair-minded review of climate research.
An E.P.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.
“The key will be to see who they get to staff the teams,” Dr. Dessler said. “I can’t imagine mainstream scientists rushing to sign up for a process which is clearly a waste of time. My guess is that, in the end, many of the participants will have dubious credentials.”
Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, agreed that the exercise was unnecessary.
“Scientists are already spending most of their time trying to poke holes in what other scientists are saying,” he said in an email. “The whole red team-blue team concept misunderstands what science is all about.”
Joseph Majkut, a climate scientist at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank that supports strong action on climate change, argued that a red-team exercise, carried out fairly and rigorously, could help defuse bitter political debates over climate science.
“If we want to disarm the climate debate, we have to be willing to assume there are good intentions on the other side,” Dr. Majkut said.
He cited the example of Richard A. Muller, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was initially skeptical of temperature records that showed the earth was warming.
In 2010, Dr. Muller established a team to aggressively investigate those records, and ended up confirming the conclusions of mainstream researchers.
The consensus on climate change rests on a long history of scientific inquiry.
In the 19th century, scientists established that carbon dioxide was trapping heat at the earth’s surface, and that adding more of it to the air was likely to warm the planet.
In the 20th century, researchers proved that human activities were increasing the amount of the gas in the atmosphere and that the earth was warming in response, largely ruling out other causes of the temperature increase.
By late in that century, atmospheric scientists had concluded almost unanimously that the warming poses profound risks for human society and for the natural world.
The exact magnitude of those risks remains heavily debated, but that cuts in both directions — the scientists say the effects could be weaker or stronger than expected.
hat broad understanding took decades to emerge, and all elements of it were subjected to scrutiny along the way, through the same procedures that apply to other sciences.
Climate science does have one unusual institution, however. Because the implications of the findings are so important, the nations of the world set up a committee in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to periodically review the research and issue exhaustive summary reports.
Critics of these reports argue that dissenting voices are often excluded, which is why they favor a red-team exercise of the sort Mr. Pruitt is proposing.
Judith Curry, a climate scientist formerly at Georgia Tech, said that differing perspectives on how to frame the climate problem have been “largely ignored.”
But many scientists counter that dissenting voices do have opportunity to air their views — and have been marginalized only because their arguments have been tested over the years and found wanting.
Christopher B. Field, the head of an environmental center at Stanford University and a leading figure in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change review, said that 142,631 comments were received on the drafts of that document. Scientists responded to all of them, and some led to extensive changes in the final report.
Justin Gillis contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/climate/scott-pruitt-climate-change-red-team.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront
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EPA Chief Pushing Government-Wide Effort to Question Climate Change Science
Jul 1, 2017 | Washington Post
By Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin
The Trump administration is debating whether to launch a governmentwide effort to question the science of climate change, an effort that critics say is an attempt to undermine the long-established consensus human activity is fueling the Earth’s rising temperatures.
The move, driven by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, has sparked a debate among top Trump administration officials over whether to pursue such a strategy.
A senior White House official, who asked for anonymity because no final decision has been made, said that while Pruitt has expressed interest in the idea, “there are no formal plans within the administration to do anything about it at this time.”
Pruitt first publicly raised the idea of setting up a “red team-blue team” effort to conduct exercises to test the idea that human activity is the main driver of recent climate change in an interview with Breitbart in early June.
“What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,” Pruitt said in an interview with Breitbart’s Joel Pollack.
ut officials are discussing whether the initiative would stretch across numerous federal agencies that rely on such science, according to multiple Trump administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because no formal announcement has been made.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who once described the science behind human-caused climate change as a “contrived phony mess,” also is involved in the effort, two officials said.
At a White House briefing this week, Perry said, “The people who say the science is settled, it’s done — if you don’t believe that you’re a skeptic, a Luddite. I don’t buy that. I don’t think there is — I mean, this is America. Have a conversation. Let’s come out of the shadows of hiding behind your political statements and let’s talk about it. What’s wrong with that? And I’m full well — I can be convinced, but let’s talk about it.”
The idea, according to one senior administration official, is “to get other federal agencies involved in this exercise on the state of climate science” to examine “what we know, where there are holes, and what we actually don’t know.”
Other agencies could include the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and NASA, according to the official, all of which conduct climate research in some capacity.
EPA officials on Friday declined to comment, and DOE could not immediately be reached for comment.
A plethora of scientific assessments over the years have concluded that human activity — such as the burning of fossil fuels — is driving climate change, and it poses grave risks to the environment and to human health. In its most recent report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it is “extremely likely” that, since the 1950s, humans and their greenhouse gas emissions have been the “dominant cause” of the planet’s warming trend.
But that conclusion, shared by the vast majority of experts in the United States and around the world, has done little to stop Pruitt, Perry and other administration officials from raising doubts.
The idea of a “red-team blue-team” exercise stems in part from a Wall Street Journal commentary by New York University professor Steven Koonin. E&E News on Friday reported that Pruitt intended to formalize the “red team, blue team” effort to challenge mainstream climate science. But should Perry and other agency leaders join the effort, the move would embed the Trump administration’s approach to climate science across the government in a very public way.
Kelly Levin, a senior associate with the World Resources Institute’s major emerging economies objective, wrote in a blog post last month that the kind of adversarial process Pruitt is advocating is better suited for policy debates than for scientific findings. Scientific arguments, she wrote, are mediated through a peer-review process in which experts in the same field evaluate one another’s work.
“Scientific understanding, unlike proposals for what to do about a given problem, is well established through the scientific method,” wrote Levin, noting that 97 percent of peer-reviewed papers on climate change support the idea that humans play a contributing factor. “If skeptics want their voices heard in scientific discourse, they should try to get their findings published in the peer-reviewed literature. They would then be assessed on their merits through peer review.”
Some members of EPA’s scientific rank-and-file, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, questioned Pruitt’s plan.
“It’s an obvious attempt to cast doubt on climate science under the guise of a common sense-sounding process,” said one EPA employee who focuses on climate issues. “But of course, we already have a process for scrutiny of the science — the peer review process is a much more robust assessment of scientific integrity than a childish color war.”
The employee called the effort “incredibly insulting” and said the red team-blue team idea “is a weaker process than we already have in place for peer review and scientific assessment.”
The efforts to question the existing science on climate change has raised questions within the government and among industry officials about whether Pruitt intends to try to roll back the EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” which determined that greenhouse gases posed a risk to public health and created the basis for Obama-era regulations on emissions from power plants, automobiles and other sources.
Two people with knowledge of the “red-team blue-team” undertaking — one inside the Trump administration and one lobbyist — said its purpose was not explicitly to help target the agency’s 2009 finding that emissions of greenhouse gases linked to climate change constitute as pollutants under the Clean Air Act, though that idea is still under discussion among administration officials
President Trump questioned the link between human activity multiple times during the 2016 campaign, though he has not addressed the issue directly since his inauguration. In his most recent remarks, in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace in December, Trump said that “nobody really knows” if climate change is real.
After the president announced a month ago that the U.S. would be withdrawing from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, multiple reporters have asked White House officials to clarify the president’s views on climate science. But they have declined to do so.
Pruitt’s EPA also took down an agency website in late April that was focused on climate change and highlighted the scientific consensus that it is caused by humans.
Steven Mufson contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/07/01/epa-chief-pushing-governmentwide-effort-to-question-climate-change-science/?utm_term=.a161085bcb29
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