Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 7/19/17
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chemical Office Pick Has Risk Experience, Industry Ties
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker and Steve Gibb
President Donald Trump's choice to head the EPA's chemical safety and pesticides office is winning praise from the American Chemistry Council and other industry groups, but some ex-agency officials say Michael Dourson's ties to industry need to be scrutinized. -
(ACC Mentioned) Michael Dourson Tapped To Lead U.S. EPA Chemical Program
Jul 18, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson
Michael Dourson, President Donald J. Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s office that oversees commercial chemicals and pesticides, is a board-certified toxicologist with decades of experience in risk assessment. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump's Pick For EPA Toxics Chief Draws Criticism Over Industry Ties
Jul 19, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
President Donald Trump's nomination of Michael Dourson, a risk assessor who left the agency in the 1990s, to be the agency's next toxics chief is drawing criticism from environmentalists, who charge he is the latest nominee for the office with close industry connections that raise doubts about implementation of the new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
EPA Eases 'Paternalistic' Oversight Of State Programs To A 'Trust' Approach
Jul 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
A top adviser to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and several state officials say the agency appears to be moving away from its close “matter-by-matter” oversight reviewing a slew of individual state actions under delegated agency authority, shifting from the “paternalistic” approach to a broader “trust” that states' programs are adequate. -
EPA Seeks Industry Help In Eliminating PMN Backlog
Jul 19, 2017 | Inside EPA
EPA toxics officials are urging the chemicals sector to quickly respond to agency determinations on new chemical reviews to help speed the agency's processing of a backlog of pre-manufacture notices (PMNs), an unexpected outcome of the recently revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which industry says is slowing chemicals from reaching the market. -
Harm From Low Doses of Chemicals Could Be Overlooked: Academies
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Potential health problems associated with low doses of hormonally-active chemicals could be missed unless the EPA specifically looks for them, according to a National Academies report released July 18. -
Ametek Can't Shake Elementary School Contamination Suit
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
A teacher and students at a Southern California elementary school presented enough exposure and causation evidence to proceed with claims stemming from a toxic plume that migrated from an adjacent industrial site, the Southern District of California ruled (Trujillo v. Ametek, Inc., 2017 BL 246482, S.D. Cal., No. 15-cv-1394, 7/17/17). -
When Asbestos is Found in Tween Makeup, It’s Time Congress Acts
Jul 18, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Sonya Lunder
An investigation by a Raleigh, N.C., TV station found asbestos – a deadly carcinogen for which there is no safe level of exposure – in a popular line of cosmetics marketed to young girls and tweens. -
3 Ways Activists Gamed California's Prop 65 List To Get Glyphosate On It
Jul 19, 2017 | Science 2.0
By Hank Campbell
Glyphosate, a component of the popular herbicide commonly known as Roundup in the United States, has been placed on California's Proposition 65 list, which requires a cancer warning label on it, despite the fact no regulatory body can find evidence it harms anyone or anything other than what it is supposed to harm, much less that it causes any cancer. -
Murkowski Aims For August Debate On Reform Bill
Jul 19, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Kellie Lunney
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski said today that she's aiming to bring her bipartisan energy reform bill to the floor during the first two weeks in August. -
Liquefied Natural Gas Export Plans Face Years of Oversupply
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
Plans for exports of U.S. liquefied natural gas have multiplied as a global supply glut has developed, raising the prospect that some exporters may lose money for several years. -
House Panel to Debate Two Bills For Streamlining Pipeline Permitting
Jul 19, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
Lawmakers on the House Committee on Rules were scheduled to begin debate Tuesday afternoon on a pair of bills designed to streamline the permitting process for energy infrastructure, including oil and natural gas pipelines. -
Senate Appropriators Vote to Fund Energy Innovation Agency
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
The Energy Department's innovation office, whose budget House appropriators have proposed to eliminate, would get $330 million in the Senate Appropriations energy and water panel's spending bill. -
Perry in talks on "new North American energy strategy" with Mexico, Canada
Jul 18, 2017 | Fuelfix
By James Osborne
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is bullish the United States can come to a deal on a "new North American energy strategy, " saying he discussed the prospect during his visit with officials in Mexico City last week. -
Energy Grid Security Risks Need Assessment, Democrats Say
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Dabbs
The vulnerability of U.S. pipelines and other energy infrastructure to cyberattack needs to be assessed, top energy policy Democrats told the Government Accountability Office. -
Industry Gets Reprieve on ‘Burdensome’ RMP Amendment
Jul 19, 2017 | Environmental Leader
By Jennifer Hermes
Chemical facilities and other industries were given a reprieve last month on complying with the amendment to the Obama-era federal Risk Management Program (RMP) requirements requiring additional public notice, reporting, accident prevention and emergency response planning obligations for facilities that use or store certain high-risk substances. -
(ACC Mentions) House Passes Ozone Bill That Faces Steep Climb In Senate
Jul 19, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
For a second straight year, the House took aim at U.S. EPA's 2015 ozone standard, approving a bill yesterday that would freeze enforcement until the middle of the next decade and permanently alter the Clean Air Act's timetable for updating air quality safeguards. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Must Revisit Toxic Air Pollution Standards, Court Says
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
Environmentalists will press for new toxic air pollution limits on petroleum refineries, chemical plants, and pesticide manufacturers after a federal court ordered the EPA to provide further evidence that it has adequately regulated those emissions. -
(ACC Mentioned) House Approves Delay Of Obama-Rra Smog Reductions
Jul 18, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)
The House voted Tuesday to pass a Republican-backed bill delaying implementation of Obama-era reductions in smog-causing air pollutants. -
Bill Delaying EPA's Ozone Standards Heads to Senate
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Catherine Douglas Moran
A bill to postpone deadlines under the EPA's updated ozone air pollution standards sailed through the House and heads to the Senate where its outlook is murkier. -
EPA Says States Lack Legal Standing For Role In Ozone NAAQS Challenge
Jul 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
EPA and groups representing several major industries are opposing a request by Democratic-led states to intervene in litigation over the Obama-era rule tightening federal ozone standard in order to defend the measure, with the agency and others saying the request is untimely and EPA also claiming the states lack legal standing to join the suit. -
D.C. Circuit Remands Air Toxics 'Completion' Finding For EPA Justification
Jul 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a unanimous July 18 ruling has remanded EPA's final rule declaring that it has met a Clean Air Act mandate to regulate 90 percent of sources of seven air toxics, agreeing with environmentalists that the agency needs to better justify its explanation for the rule.
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chemical Office Pick Has Risk Experience, Industry Ties
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker and Steve Gibb
President Donald Trump's choice to head the EPA's chemical safety and pesticides office is winning praise from the American Chemistry Council and other industry groups, but some ex-agency officials say Michael Dourson's ties to industry need to be scrutinized.
Trump late July 17 announced his intent to nominate Dourson, a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati and founder of the Risk Science Center. Dourson spent 15 years at the Environmental Protection Agency's offices in Cincinnati, Washington, D.C., and Region 5 headquarters in Chicago under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
After leaving the agency in 1995, he founded Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), a regulatory and chemical risk analysis firm that became the Risk Science Center when it joined with the University of Cincinnati in 2015.
“His knowledge, experience and leadership will strengthen EPA's processes for evaluating and incorporating high quality science into regulatory decision making,” American Chemistry Council spokesman Jon Corley said. “The Senate should act on Dr. Dourson's nomination without delay as it comes during a crucial point in the implementation of the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act.”
And Jay Vroom, president of the pesticide trade association CropLife America, hailed the choice. “We're delighted with the science and policy experience Dr. Dourson has under the industrial chemical and pesticide laws,” Vroom told Bloomberg BNA.
But Bob Sussman, a former EPA deputy administrator and senior policy counsel to the EPA administrator, said in an email that senators should look at Dourson's industry ties “to determine whether he has the impartiality and commitment to objective science necessary for sound public health decisions.”
No information was immediately available on when the Senate might receive or begin considering Dourson's nomination.
Risk Assessment Background
Dourson was considered in 2014 to lead the EPA's Integrated Risk Information System, which identifies and characterizes chemicals’ health hazards. The job went instead to Vincent Cogliano, then acting director of IRIS and currently an employee at the EPA.
Dourson has published widely in the fields of environmental risk assessment by co-authoring more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and has given more than 150 invited presentations, according to his biography on the University of Cincinnati's website.
Most recently, Dourson served as a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board, where he chaired an ammonia chemical review panel.
In 2014, the Center for Public Integrity and InsideClimate News published an investigation of TERA, suggesting it worked closely with the chemical and tobacco industries to fast-track chemical risk assessments. Dourson said in response that the criticism didn't bother him: “We get criticized by everyone. But that doesn't change the fact that TERA is neutral.”
Dourson defended his decision to work with the tobacco industry. “Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. He had dinner with them,” he said, according to the investigation. “We're an independent group that does the best science for all these things. Why should we exclude anyone that needs help?”
Vroom said his organization has no doubts that Dourson could become acclimated to pesticide issues after a background in the industrial chemicals world.
“The same science and risk assessment principles apply to assessing pesticides,” Vroom said. “Having a leader in place and the extra capacity that brings is what's important, and we commend the president and Administrator [Scott] Pruitt on this nomination.”
Unease Among NGO Community
The Environmental Defense Fund is opposing the nomination, and farmworker groups are raising concerns about EPA decision-making and several worker protection rules that the toxics office oversees.
“Farmworkers face unique pesticide risks, and if confirmed, we hope the EPA's toxics office under Dourson won't continue to delay the farmworker protection standard and certification of pesticide applicators rule,” Virginia Ruiz, director of environmental and occupational health at Farmworker Justice, told Bloomberg BNA. The latter rule creates more standardized training and certification requirements for applicators.
Officials at the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund said they plan to raise questions about what they called Dourson's failure to report his financial ties to the chemical industry.
“Unfortunately, this nomination fits the clear pattern of the Trump administration in appointing individuals to positions for which they have significant conflicts of interest,” Richard Denison, senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a blog post.
Former EPA Officials
Former EPA policy official and scientist Tracey Woodruff—now with the University of California-San Francisco—shared Denison's concern. She worked at EPA from 1997 to 2007 and echoed Sussman's emphasis on the importance of EPA properly implementing the overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
“Dourson's documented work with the industry could lead to a literal ‘open for business’ access to EPA decision making about toxic chemicals at a critical time of TSCA implementation,” Woodruff said in an email.
Sussman, who is a consultant to the advocacy group Safer Chemicals-Healthy Families, said the new TSCA “is at a critical stage right now.”
“We need someone at the helm who will provide leadership in addressing chemical risks, despite industry pressures to block action. Dourson's record raises questions whether he will provide that kind of leadership,” Sussman said.
But William Jordan, who served at the EPA between 1975 and 2016 and retired as the deputy director of pesticide program, cited Dourson's experience in expressing his support.
“Not only does he bring a lifetime of experience working on human health risk assessment issues, but he is familiar with EPA, serving in the Office of Research & Development, as well as a detail in EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs,” Jordan said in an email.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=116904779&vname=dennotallissues&fn=116904779&jd=116904779
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(ACC Mentioned) Michael Dourson Tapped To Lead U.S. EPA Chemical Program
Jul 18, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson
Michael Dourson, President Donald J. Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s office that oversees commercial chemicals and pesticides, is a board-certified toxicologist with decades of experience in risk assessment. Dourson’s close ties to the chemical industry, however, have some environmental groups raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
Dourson is a professor in the Risk Science Center at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Prior to joining the university in 2015, he directed the Cincinnati-based nonprofit consulting firm Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), which he founded in 1995. Dourson also held several positions at EPA from 1980 to 1995.
Well known in the toxicology community, Dourson has served on numerous U.S. government panels and toxicology journal editorial boards. He has also held multiple positions for the American Board of Toxicology, Society of Toxicology, Society for Risk Analysis, and Toxicology Education Foundation.
Dourson’s July 17 nomination, which requires confirmation by the Senate, drew praise from the chemical manufacturers trade group, the American Chemistry Council. The group is urging the Senate to quickly confirm Dourson, noting that his nomination comes at a critical point in EPA’s implementation of the revised Toxic Substances Control Act. “His knowledge, experience, and leadership will strengthen EPA’s processes for evaluating and incorporating high-quality science into regulatory decision making,” ACC says.
In contrast, some environmental advocates say they are troubled by Dourson’s nomination, citing his extensive ties to the chemical industry and previous connections to big tobacco. Dourson “has a history of undertaking work, often with significant funding from industry, to underminepublic health protections and the science underlying them,” claims Richard Denison, lead senior scientist with the activist group Environmental Defense Fund.
For example, “Dourson and TERA have worked extensively for the Texas Department of Environmental Quality to undermine EPA air pollution regulations,” Denison says. While at TERA, Dourson also received funding from ACC to set up a website for children on chemical safety, Denison adds.
Dourson is the author of a book series, “Evidence of Faith,” that aims to integrate science and religion. His “judicious integration of faith and the sciences has struck me as impressive as it is rare,” says the Rev. John Arthur Nunes, president of Concordia College, a Lutheran school in New York.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i30/Michael-Dourson-tapped-lead-US-EPA-chemical-program.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Trump's Pick For EPA Toxics Chief Draws Criticism Over Industry Ties
Jul 19, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
President Donald Trump's nomination of Michael Dourson, a risk assessor who left the agency in the 1990s, to be the agency's next toxics chief is drawing criticism from environmentalists, who charge he is the latest nominee for the office with close industry connections that raise doubts about implementation of the new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
“Unfortunately, this nomination fits the clear pattern of the Trump Administration in appointing individuals to positions for which they have significant conflicts of interest,” the Environmental Defense Fund's Lead Senior Scientist Richard Denison says in a July 18 blog post.
“Dr. Dourson has extensive, longstanding ties to the chemical industry (as well as earlier ties to the tobacco industry). He also has a history of failing to appropriately address his conflicts of interest,” he adds.
“If his track record is any indication, Dr. Dourson’s nomination threatens to move us further away from health-protective implementation of the new TSCA.”
Such concerns will almost certainly be echoed during Dourson's confirmation hearings given that some key Democrats have already raised similar concerns over chemical industry influence in the development of EPA's new TSCA rules.
But Dourson is expected to win confirmation, especially given his support from some state officials with whom he has long worked. Dourson “will do a tremendous job at EPA,” says Michael Honeycutt, director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's toxicology division, which has contracted with Dourson's firm on a number of peer reviews.
The White House July 17 announced its intent to nominate Dourson, a former EPA risk assessor, to be the assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), a post that will likely require extensive risk assessment experience as the agency works to implement the new TSCA law.
In its announcement, the White House touted Dourson's accolades as a Lehman award winner from the Society of Toxicology and as a fellow of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences and Society for Risk Analysis.
Dourson served as a risk assessor at EPA from the 1980s, where he was involved with the early creation of the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). This influential risk analysis program develops risk estimates used in EPA decision-making, which are often cited by many states and other countries as well.
Dourson left the agency in the 1990s to form his own non-profit consulting group, Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), which has since merged with the University of Cincinnati. In recent years, he sought staff management positions within EPA's research office, which were also protested by public health advocates.
Industry Influence
Dourson has long touted his non-profit group's ability to bring together parties of different viewpoints to collaborate on peer reviews of studies or risk analyses, but critics note that many of these efforts were underwritten by industry.
In 2014, TERA's website indicated the group's government work was with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the National Library of Medicine, Health Canada and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and its industry work was with American Cleaning Institute, Amgen, American Chemistry Council (ACC), Eli Lily and Genentech.
He also led the Alliance for Risk Assessment, a group of environmental consultants and other risk experts that crafts technical risk assessment products and services. Among its work, the alliance in 2012 agreed to a request from the Alliance for Site Closure (ASC), which advises cleanup professionals, property owners and insurance companies on strategies to assess and resolve issues stemming from contamination, to convene a panel to address several concerns related to EPA's risk assessment of trichloroethylene (TCE), as well as early agency efforts to apply the new risk values at waste sites.
Denison and other environmentalists are concerned that Dourson's ties would further cement industry influence in OCSPP, especially following the appointment of Nancy Beck, a former ACC official, as the office's political deputy.
They have already protested Beck's appointment, pointing to changes EPA made to three framework rules setting up the new program for evaluating existing TSCA chemicals last month, shortly after Beck's arrival at EPA.
“[The TSCA] legislation was able to advance even in a highly partisan Congress because all stakeholders saw reform as needed to restore public and market confidence in our broken chemical safety system. The law struck a delicate balance between public and private interests,” Denison writes. “Already, however, that balance has been upset when EPA recently finalized 'framework rules' implementing the new law that skewed heavily in the chemical industry’s favor."
Denison points, as one example, to the involvement of Dourson and his corporation with West Virginia's risk analysis of the chemicals that leaked into the Elk River in 2014, leaving the city of Charleston without its drinking water supply for days.
West Virginia hired Dourson's group to review the risks of the chemical's presence in drinking water. Dourson chaired the group that conducted the assessment, though he had previously worked for Dow Chemical, which produces some of the chemicals involved in the spill, Denison said.And he notes that Dourson did not disclose that information until questioned about it at a press conference by Ken Ward Jr, a reporter with the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
While Dourson drew criticism from environmentalists, he is winning support from Honeycutt. “As a state risk assessor, I have known and worked with Michael for nearly two decades. While at TERA, Michael reached out to the states to offer risk assessment training and expertise, most often free of charge,” he says in an email to Inside EPA.
Honeycutt also touts' Dourson's ability to build collaborative groups. “His Alliance for Risk Assessment efforts brought together federal, state, industrial, academic, and NGO scientists to reach consensus on risk assessment issues. Michael is an internationally-recognized thought-leader in chemical risk assessment, and his diplomatic and organizational skills will serve EPA well.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/trumps-pick-epa-toxics-chief-draws-criticism-over-industry-ties
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EPA Eases 'Paternalistic' Oversight Of State Programs To A 'Trust' Approach
Jul 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
A top adviser to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and several state officials say the agency appears to be moving away from its close “matter-by-matter” oversight reviewing a slew of individual state actions under delegated agency authority, shifting from the “paternalistic” approach to a broader “trust” that states' programs are adequate.
Speakers at the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) July 17 State Environmental Protection meeting in Washington, D.C., lauded the Trump EPA's move toward what Kenneth Wagner, Pruitt's senior adviser for regional and state affairs, called an “audit culture” approach that would avoid case-by-case reviews of state-issued permits or state-led enforcement actions if the agency more generally believes a state's environmental programs to be working.
Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) head Becky Keogh, secretary-treasurer of ECOS -- which represents many state environmental agencies -- said at the event that EPA's shift has already prompted a change at the agency's regional offices.
“What we're really trying to build, and I've already heard this from the region, which I'm really encouraged by,” is a culture where EPA does not seek to “do the whole work over again” when reviewing state-crafted policies like permit decisions, Keogh said during a panel discussion at the ECOS meeting.
Earlier at the meeting, Wagner questioned, “Is it efficient for the EPA to look at 80 percent of the permits that a state like [North Dakota] is doing? Or would it be better to have an audit function, because they're pretty good at what they do, and put those full-time equivalents to somewhere where they make a variable difference? Somewhere like getting state implementation plans approved,” he said, referring to state plans for compliance with national ambient air quality standards -- of which the agency has a significant backlog.
Wagner described the shift at EPA as “really moving from this very paternalistic view” adopted by past administrations to one where “your children are all grown up. . . . It's time to start trusting the states, that you guys are very good at what you do and very mature in your programs.”
ADEQ Senior Associate Director Julie Linck, speaking as an audience member, compared the change in the state's relationship with EPA under Pruitt and President Donald Trump -- such as on federal reviews of state's Clean Water Act section 303(d) lists of impaired waters -- to suddenly gaining the mind-control powers of the Star Wars film series' Jedi Knights.
“The paradigm has shifted very quickly . . . to have these meetings with Region 6, and they say things to us like 'well, we just need to trust the states,' or 'that's really not our role in a 303(d) list -- we're not going to take 60 days to redo your math,' or 'we have to trust states to interpret their own rules.' I feel like I'm in a Star Wars movie where I'm directing them. 'You will like our 303(d) list,'” Linck said.
'Cooperative Federalism'
All three were speaking in support of ECOS' June 12 paper laying out an agenda for “Cooperative Federalism 2.0,” a recasting of the relationship between states and EPA aimed at securing “equal or greater environmental and public health protection and outcomes through smart deployment of resources on critical priorities,” at a lower cost.
Wagner said diverting EPA's oversight from individual state decisions will help achieve those lower costs. “I would argue that when we look at the oversight function, redirecting those people to activities that aren't duplicative but are additive [will] create better efficiencies and better outcomes for the people we all serve,” he said.
However, Delaware environment director and former Obama EPA Region 3 Administrator Shawn Garvin said the change in culture at EPA threatens to leave behind states that backed the Obama administration's agenda. “There are things that we thought we were on the right track for that have suddenly shifted,” he said.
Wagner responded that the solution for those conflicts “is to have adult conversations. . . . If we truly are federalists, then what matters to Delaware should matter to us, and what matters to California should matter to us,” even when the administration opposes them on policy grounds.
Speakers at the ECOS conference appeared to embrace the idea of an “audit culture” giving states more leeway to manage their own programs as long as EPA deems them competent to do so on a broad scale, with the ECOS president, Minnesota environment head John Linc Stine, saying “it has the potential to be a sea change,” though he questioned “whether we can get it done quickly.”
Jon Cannon, who was EPA's general council from 1995-1998, said during his keynote address at the ECOS meeting that “there ought to be pilot projects going on” to test how a shift from “transactional” EPA oversight to Wagner's “audit” approach will work in practice.
Speaking with Inside EPA following the meeting, ECOS Executive Director Alex Dunn said the “audit” approach could also include a shift to include states in oversight of their peers, through “audits” of state environment programs that would be conducted by other state regulators rather than only federal authorities -- a practice she compared to universities' accreditation reviews.
“That part I know states have been thinking about -- the third-party verification,” she said. --
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-eases-paternalistic-oversight-state-programs-trust-approach
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EPA Seeks Industry Help In Eliminating PMN Backlog
Jul 19, 2017 | Inside EPA
EPA toxics officials are urging the chemicals sector to quickly respond to agency determinations on new chemical reviews to help speed the agency's processing of a backlog of pre-manufacture notices (PMNs), an unexpected outcome of the recently revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which industry says is slowing chemicals from reaching the market.
In a July 13 email to its members, the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA) says EPA recently reached out to SOCMA to ask that its members quickly respond to agency PMN determinations, especially if a company has objections to the agency's findings.
“SOCMA is working with [EPA] to represent your interests and eliminate the backlog of Pre-Manufacture Notices,” the group says in the email to its members. “The agency is committed to eliminating the backlog by the end of the month, but in order to accomplish this goal, your assistance as a PMN submitter is needed."
The email says EPA would like prompt feedback from industry on PMN decisions, and an immediate notification of company objections.
Ongoing delays in EPA's review and processing of PMNs for new chemicals has been a surprise outcome of the TSCA reform bill, which brought sweeping changes to the 40-year-old law, particularly for reviews of existing chemicals, when signed into law last summer.
But the law provided no transition time for EPA's new chemicals program, resulting in a nearly instantaneous backlog when former President Barack Obama signed the law June 22, 2016. Since then, EPA has struggled to address the backlog -- a major concern to the chemicals industry -- while adapting to the new requirements of a reformed TSCA.
EPA officials have indicated that they will eliminate the backlog by the end of July. And the agency recently announced that it has adopted a novel approach for reviewing “new” chemicals before approving them for market, an approach intended to address the backlog, though some charge the agency's new approach will impose onerous reporting requirements on most new chemicals.
A SOCMA official tells Inside EPA that the chemical industry has urged the Trump administration to quickly eliminate the backlog of new chemicals, including in a meeting this spring with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
Additionally, the group raised concerns that under the revised law, the agency is considering a broader scope of chemicals' uses during new chemical review process, which had worked well under the old law.
The source says that the toxics office has brought in additional staff to address the PMN backlog, but that industry is uncertain whether those additional resources will remain focused on PMN reviews once the backlog is eliminated.
“EPA has worked very, very hard to get this backlog down, and it seems like they might achieve their goal of getting it done by the end of July,” the SOCMA source says. “This administration has really listened.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-seeks-industry-help-eliminating-pmn-backlog
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Harm From Low Doses of Chemicals Could Be Overlooked: Academies
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Potential health problems associated with low doses of hormonally-active chemicals could be missed unless the EPA specifically looks for them, according to a National Academies report released July 18.
Determining whether human and animal studies both find evidence that low doses of a chemical cause harm also would be easier if experimental animal studies routinely measured internal concentrations of the chemicals in the test animals, David Dorman, the chairman of the academies committee that prepared the report told Bloomberg BNA. Dorman teaches toxicology at North Carolina State University.
The Dow Chemical Co. already uses a toxicity testing protocol recommended in the report: it measures internal doses of chemicals given to animals during toxicity tests. The National Toxicology Program also routinely measures internal concentrations of chemicals in experimental animal studies. The Environmental Protection Agency takes similar measurements when conducting some of its own research.
The academies report on low-dose toxicity from hormonally-active, or “endocrine-active,” chemicals recommends the EPA use a three-pronged strategy to detect health problems that could result from the low doses to which people are exposed. The report defines low doses as meaning chemical concentrations found or estimated to be in people.
It appears the EPA should incorporate the report's recommendations into its Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program, which examines whether pesticides and chemicals in drinking water affect the female or male reproductive hormones, estrogen and androgen, or the thyroid hormone, Nichelle Harriott, science and regulatory director for Beyond Pesticides told Bloomberg BNA based on BNA's summary of the report's key findings. The EPA's current chemical testing protocols could miss health problems that occur at very low doses and during vulnerable stages of development, Harriott said.
Three-pronged Strategy
The academies recommended the EPA first survey scientific studies, work with scientific organizations, and, perhaps, track social media to identify possible health effects that may occur when people are exposed to low doses of chemicals that mimic, block or alter hormone function.
The EPA should also examine experimental animal and human data systematically to investigate whether low-doses of endocrine active chemicals are causing potential effects, the report said.
To help it understand whether such effects are actually occurring at exposure levels in the general public or certain subpopulations, the agency should consider updating chemical toxicity test designs, requiring new data, securing new toxicity or exposure prediction models, and other actions to make sure it is identifying health effects occurring at exposures the public endures, it said.
Plasticizers, Flame Retardants
The committee followed its own recommendations as it analyzed phthalates, a group of which are called plasticizers, because they make plastic soft, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), a group of flame retardants.
Among its findings, the committee concluded fetal exposure to a plastic softener, diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), could cause a reproductive abnormality and decrease testosterone levels in males. Exposure to at least one of the PBDEs could decrease IQ, it said.
The report does not make any statement about the potential, or risks, of these harms occurring for two reasons.
First, it's difficult to compare the results of animal studies to epidemiological studies of people, because most animal studies report only the dose given to the animal whereas human studies use internal measurements of chemicals in serum or other body fluids or tissues, the report said.
Second, conclusions about whether harm was occurring would have necessitated a full risk assessment that examined exposures, which the committee did not undertake, it said.
Dow Measures Internal Doses
Dow began to routinely take internal measurements of new agricultural chemicals used in laboratory animal experiments at least five years ago, James Bus, who has retired from directing toxicology and environmental research at the company, told Bloomberg BNA. Bus is now a toxicological consultant with Exponent, Inc., an environmental and engineering consulting firm. Dow has continued that practice, a company spokesman confirmed July 18.
As a consultant Bus said he now recommends other companies take such internal measurements, because they can help determine whether the problem that's occurring in an animal occurs because the very high dose typically given an animal overwhelmed its ability to break down or eliminate the chemical, he said.
The internal experimental animal measurements also add valuable perspective showing how much lower—often 1,000s or 10,000s times lower—human exposures are, Bus said. He elaborates on these points and discusses their relevance to automated toxicity, or high throughput tests, in a newly published perspectives article in Current Opinion in Toxicology.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=116904783&vname=dennotallissues&fn=116904783&jd=116904783
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Ametek Can't Shake Elementary School Contamination Suit
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
A teacher and students at a Southern California elementary school presented enough exposure and causation evidence to proceed with claims stemming from a toxic plume that migrated from an adjacent industrial site, the Southern District of California ruled (Trujillo v. Ametek, Inc., 2017 BL 246482, S.D. Cal., No. 15-cv-1394, 7/17/17).
The ruling allows a proposed class action to proceed against Senior Operations LLC and Ametek, Inc., the current and former owners of a factory next to Magnolia Elementary School.
The suit isn't frivolous merely because the California Department of Toxic Substances Control has concluded that Magnolia's occupants don't face any human health risk as a result of the underground plume, the court said.
The plaintiffs met their burden by presenting expert reports stating they were exposed to “a significant level of chemical toxins that has increased their risk of developing certain health problems,” the court said.
The complaint alleges that toxins in an underground waste storage tank leaked, causing a plume containing trichloroethylene, benzene, toluene and other contaminants to spread to the school property.
The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory and punitive damages as well as medical monitoring costs.
The court in June 2016 issued a case management order requiring each named plaintiff to make a showing of exposure, increased risk of specific injury and causation, but did not require that such a showing be made as to any of the putative class members.
Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel issued the opinion.
Baron & Budd PC represents the plaintiffs.
Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch, LLP represents Ametech.
Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, represents Senior Operations.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=116904792&vname=dennotallissues&fn=116904792&jd=116904792
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When Asbestos is Found in Tween Makeup, It’s Time Congress Acts
Jul 18, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Sonya Lunder
An investigation by a Raleigh, N.C., TV station found asbestos – a deadly carcinogen for which there is no safe level of exposure – in a popular line of cosmetics marketed to young girls and tweens.
WTVD purchased eight Just Shine makeup products from Justice, a national chain of 900 clothing stores, and sent the samples to the Scientific Analytical Institute in Greensboro, N.C., for testing. The lab found traces of asbestos in one of the products, Just Shine Shimmer Powder.
“In this powder designed for children, they could die an untimely death in their thirties or forties because of the exposure to asbestos in this product,” Sean Fitzgerald, the head of the lab, told WTVD. After the report aired, Justice stopped selling Just Shine Shimmer Powder in its stores and on its website.
Fitzgerald is a nationally recognized expert who has conducted tests for asbestos in numerous consumer products, including tests on kids’ crayons and fingerprint kits that he directed in 2015 for EWG’s sister organization, EWG Action Fund.
As in his previous investigation, Fitzgerald said the presence of asbestos was likely from contaminated talc used in the children’s makeup. Talc mines may also contain asbestos deposits, and traces of asbestos may contaminate the talc even after the raw mineral is processed for use in consumer products.
Health experts and government agencies agree that there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA: “There is no ‘safe’ level of asbestos exposure for any type of asbestos fiber. Asbestos exposures as short in duration as a few days have caused mesothelioma in humans.”
If even the smallest asbestos fiber is inhaled by a child, it can become lodged in their lungs and, over decades, develop into mesothelioma – a deadly, incurable disease whose only known cause is asbestos exposure.
Most Americans think asbestos was banned long ago, but despite a steep decline in use, it remains legal. Asbestos-triggered diseases still kill an estimated 15,000 Americans a year. What’s it doing in kids’ makeup?
Federal regulation of the $60 billion-a-year personal care products industry is woefully scant. The Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, administered by the Food and Drug Administration, was supposed to guarantee the safety of cosmetics, but does not give the FDA the authority to take tougher action to ensure that all products are safe.
Bipartisan legislation by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, could go a long way in fixing this problem. The Personal Care Products Safety Actwould require that companies ensure their products are safe before putting them on the market and give the FDA the tools it needs to protect the public.
The Senate could take up this important public health legislation any day. For the sake of children and all other Americans, it is crucial that the bill passes and is signed into law.
When asbestos is found in products children put on their bodies, enough is enough.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2017/07/when-asbestos-found-tween-makeup-it-s-time-congress-acts#.WW8j2vmGOCg
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3 Ways Activists Gamed California's Prop 65 List To Get Glyphosate On It
Jul 19, 2017 | Science 2.0
By Hank Campbell
Glyphosate, a component of the popular herbicide commonly known as Roundup in the United States, has been placed on California's Proposition 65 list, which requires a cancer warning label on it, despite the fact no regulatory body can find evidence it harms anyone or anything other than what it is supposed to harm, much less that it causes any cancer.
Why is a system designed to protect California citizens getting a simple health issue so wrong? The short answer is that the state of California abdicated its ability to regulate products when Proposition 65 was passed by voter referendum in 1986; appearing in an International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) monograph as a possible carcinogen is one of the four ways that a product must automatically be added and the legislature can't do anything about it.
That's the downside to populism, though environmental groups and the lawyers and lobbyists they hired to make sure this got passed cheered then, and they are cheering now, because this populism opens the door to more lawsuits and settlements for them.
Yet in 1986 an IARC classification was at least meaningful, so Californians were not crazy, it was just putting the cart before the horse a little. As John Higginson, the first director of IARC and former trustee of the American Council on Science and Health, noted often, the job of IARC was simply to identify hazards for further study. Exposure needed, and therefore the actual risk of cancer, would be handled by others. Being on a list without noting the exposure needed - especially when 1 dose is equal to 10,000 doses, five orders of magnitude, in those broad IARC classifications - could lead to malicious efforts at scaremongering by environmental groups, critics of Prop 65 warned.
Boy, were they right. What they did not foresee was that the environmental groups would win from inside IARC itself.
The Gambit - Getting An Activist In Charge Of An IARC Working Group
When I give talks in front of audiences about science, I often joke about conspiracy beliefs promoted by anti-science groups like Center for Biological Diversity about the science and health community. In reality, we are not helping each other, much less conspiring with each other for the benefit of industry, we are instead a loose confederation of pro-science anarchists. The really organized long game is played by environmental groups; they truly help each other. And they ask to be rewarded by getting jobs as government insiders. Count the employees from Union of Concerned Scientists and other groups who got jobs in the Obama administration after successfully waging war against Republicans in 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 - they use that prestige when recruiting. By contrast, most scientists, and right-of-center people, don't want to work in government at all.
Environmentalists have successfully manipulated IARC using that same strategy. In 1986, when Prop 65 was passed, IARC was a world-class organization, that is why it was an honor to have the first director of IARC on our Board of Trustees.Today, IARC has run out of carcinogens to study so they have taken to inventing them - bacon, glyphosate, hot water, you name it.
Environmentalists have gamed the system, and they did it by creating a community where no one will debunk the claims made by other activists. They used the following three methods to gain insidious control of an entire United Nations group.
Method 1. Declaring that the only conflicts of interest are "industry" funding. I have good news for academics. Industry wants your help, even though they already employ plenty of scientists and are responsible for nearly 70 percent of American spending on research and development. That's also bad news for some academics. If you have never been asked to consult or be on a panel, and you are in any kind of applied field, you are just not very good at your job. Sorry, I know that stings, enjoy those government grants anyway, you can still always get on an IARC panel.
Because activists manipulated IARC that way. Eliminating the best scientists, the ones most likely to balk at breezy epidemiological glossing over of biology and toxicology, those who were esteemed enough to get paid to consult, was always part of the plan for activists.
A biostatistician named Chris Portier has an extensive resume advocating beliefs like that cell phones cause cancer and Agent Orange caused, well, everything, even though biologists and toxicologists, actual experts, can't find evidence. Armed with National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences experience, which caused that group to abandon toxicology and biology in favor of Portier's preferred epidemiological correlation, he quickly rose through the ranks at IARC, and when given the chance he engineered a rules change stating that if you have consulted for industry you can not be part of a Working Group at IARC. The italics are important. If you happen to be paid by an environmental group, you are fine, but if a company has even paid for your airfare to be on a panel, or paid for donuts at the breakfast before your university talk, you are banned from IARC participation.
Who was being paid by Environmental Defense Fund while he was convincing IARC colleagues, those left over after he made sure the best scientists could no longer participate, to have glyphosate declared a carcinogen? Chris Portier. Who never disclosed that obvious Conflict of Interest? Chris Portier.
That's just one example. There are plenty of other conflicts of interest that are not disclosed because they only involve payments from industry. And to protect those individuals from scrutiny, activists made sure to limit conflicts just to monetary ones. And so we get to...
Method 2. Believing that the only conflicts of interest are financial. Imagine you spend your whole career studying Biology X in the belief that Environmental Effect Y caused it. Are you a neutral scientist? No, clearly you have a conflict of interest. Yet it need not be disclosed, you can instead be considered an expert at the United Nations. In an article a few years ago I exposed an academic who claimed that non-organic pesticides were linked to autism. She did not disclose that she was a high-level member of both an autism advocacy group and a chemical activism group. She did not have to disclose those, because they were not industry groups. The journal only considered conflicts to be financial. The paper was rubbish, they used a proxy because actual measurements meant too much work. No one seriously now claims being next to a farm causes autism after I debunked it, yet that paper is still cited by anti-science groups today. If the rules on conflicts were not geared to be anti-corporation, the paper would have never have gotten to "peer" review much less been printed.
Those two ways prevent the best scientists from being on IARC panels. Then there is another way to game the system in California. And that leads us to...
Method 3. Putting hand-picked scientists on committees. In the case of Prop 65, being in an IARC monograph is just one of four ways to get on the list. There are two special California committees that can include a compound and "committee members are appointed by the Governor and are designated as the "State's Qualified Experts"".
We are talking about California and Governor Jerry Brown, arguably the most anti-science governor in the most anti-science state in the country, even though it is so reliant on agricultural science. Is such a governor going to pick a scientist with real-world expertise? No, he is going to pick scientists who already match his beliefs.
So what does the Prop 65 glyphosate label really mean?
The lawsuits will be great for Andrew Kimbrell's mortgage payments, and Organic Consumers Association will write checks to its 300 "astroturf" food groups as a reward, but is the public going to be any safer?
No, for obvious reasons. First, is because glyphosate is less toxic than caffeine or Tylenol, it's even less harmful than BPA, but second is because Californians have become jaded to the ubiquitous stickers by now, they are in every coffee shop, dry cleaning store, you name it.
They are even in hospital oncology wards, the one place we know people already have cancer. Prop 65 is a running joke.
So it is not going to improve the lives of anyone except lawyers. In 2014, lawsuits under Prop 65 resulted in $29 million in judgments and $21 million of that went to attorneys. Since 1986, that number is over $500 million.
http://www.science20.com/hank_campbell/3_ways_activists_gamed_californias_prop_65_list_to_get_glyphosate_on_it-225196
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Murkowski Aims For August Debate On Reform Bill
Jul 19, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Kellie Lunney
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski said today that she's aiming to bring her bipartisan energy reform bill to the floor during the first two weeks in August.
"That's what I am working on," the Alaska Republican told a frenzied scrum of reporters. She added that she was trying to "slot in" the energy bill during the Senate's extended work session "because we are ready to go."
The top Democrat on Energy and Natural Resources said separately today that she also was looking forward to the energy reform bill, S. 1460, hitting the floor soon.
Maria Cantwell of Washington and Murkowski have worked in sync for more than a year to get their legislation over the finish line.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took procedural moves last month to bring an updated version of last year's bipartisan energy bill to the floor, bypassing regular order amid an unusually partisan environment charged by the health care debate.
The revised bill largely reflects the core areas addressed in the last Congress, including efficiency, infrastructure, research and natural resources issues (E&E Daily, June 21).
That bill died in December, after months of formal talks with the House ended when conferees in that chamber said they had run out of time. Murkowski and Cantwell slammed their House counterparts for the retreat, which was widely blamed on the election of Donald Trump as president.
The Senate's packed schedule over the next few weeks, however, could temper Murkowski's optimism. McConnell announced last week the Senate would delay its August recess for the first two weeks of the month to work on health care, administration nominations and the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization bill, among other things.
But the apparent death of the Republican leadership's health care bill after two more GOP senators late last night said they couldn't support the legislation could boost the energy bill's chances at floor time.
Among the nominations pending in the Senate are several that Murkowski's panel advanced last month, including David Bernhardt as Interior deputy secretary, Dan Brouillette as Energy deputy secretary, and Neil Chatterjee and Robert Powelson to fill two Republican vacancies on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
McConnell yesterday filed a cloture motion on Bernhardt's nomination, meaning the Senate will proceed to a roll call as soon as this week to end debate.
Murkowski, surrounded by reporters grilling her on the Senate's health care bill this afternoon, clearly was happy to field a question about the energy reform package: "What about the energy bill? I heard an energy question!"
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/07/18/stories/1060057554
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Liquefied Natural Gas Export Plans Face Years of Oversupply
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
Plans for exports of U.S. liquefied natural gas have multiplied as a global supply glut has developed, raising the prospect that some exporters may lose money for several years.
Analysts say the LNG surplus also increases the likelihood that some contracts could be renegotiated, some projects may be delayed long enough to get past the oversupply period, and some plans may never come to fruition at all.
Fast growth in worldwide LNG demand should eliminate the surplus in five or six years, so there can be good reason to delay projects and become part of a “second wave,” analysts told Bloomberg BNA. But until then, markets—rather than lawmakers, regulators or activists—will pose obstacles to profitable exports.
“There are certainly going to be regrets,” said Kenneth Grant, executive vice president of Compass Lexecon, a subsidiary of FTI Consulting Inc. “Margins are going to be squeezed for years.”
Companies in the competition for LNG exports range from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc to relatively small outfits founded over the last decade with private equity backing.
About 70 percent of global LNG is consumed in Asia, where contract prices typically are indexed to spot crude oil prices. Currently that indexing produces Asian spot LNG prices of about $5.50 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). LNG from the U.S. for sale in Asia costs an estimated $8 to $9 per MMBtu, taking into account the costs of the gas, liquefaction, and transportation.
“Buying LNG at these prices is a guarantee of losing money,” Fereidun Fesharaki, chairman of consulting company FGE, said while speaking recently at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington.
Market Pressures Felt
U.S. LNG is being exported only from the Sabine Pass facility of Cheniere Energy Inc. in Louisiana. The buyers and sellers using the plant are struggling with global prices well below their estimated costs. GAIL (India) Ltd., one of the buyers, reportedly has been seeking to renegotiate its contract, although neither GAIL nor Cheniere has confirmed the reports.
GAIL, whose majority owner is the government of India, is not a small fish, but so far, Cheniere has indicated it has no intention of renegotiating anything.
The pressure for renegotiations may grow substantially, however, as top LNG traders like Shell see the growing risk of losses within their contract portfolios.
Fesharaki suggested some buyers, especially the national oil companies of some LNG-consuming countries, may walk away from contracts and trigger legal wrangling if they cannot renegotiate terms.
Cheniere, which started exporting in 2016, may be able to pass off most of its market risks to customers, but it has had its own financial strains, losing money in 2016. It turned a profit of $172 million in the first quarter of 2017, but its long-term debt amounted to $24 billion, a high level for such a specialized company with such a short track record in LNG.
Cheniere's contractual customers include GAIL, Shell, Korea Gas Corp., Total S.A., Spanish company Gas Natural Fenosa, and British utility Centrica Plc. Typically the companies will buy the gas and market the LNG themselves, although Cheniere also is willing to sell LNG overseas through its own marketing affiliate, giving it at least some of the market risk that its six big contractual customers take.
Challenge to Find Customers
Most companies planning to build U.S. LNG export plants need customers to sign 20-year contracts to give banks enough assurance of revenues to justify the loans for the projects. Projects currently under construction are proceeding because of 20-year contracts typically signed when LNG prices were much higher than they are now, before the slump in gas and oil prices that started in 2014.
The U.S. projects under construction are “tolling” arrangements, where the owner of the liquefaction plant provides the service but does not try to take an ownership stake in the LNG. Customers take the market risk.
Now, the challenge is to find customers willing to sign such contracts when everyone can see spot prices are not fully covering U.S. LNG costs. Big customers in Japan, South Korea, China and India have been the special prizes.
President Donald Trump has been talking of LNG sales as a way to improve the U.S. trade balances with China and South Korea and a way to provide Europeans with less reliance on Russian-pipelined natural gas. His remarks do not square with the market conditions, however.
Chinese companies are over-contracted, and Asian demand is so oversubscribed that the surplus has been going to Europe, Fesharaki said. LNG spot prices in Europe are lower than Asian prices, again raising the prospect of sales at a loss for the near term.
The glut shifts negotiating leverage to buyers, Grant at Compass Lexecon said. Buyers might ask for such things as shorter contract terms, fixed prices, and unlimited flexibility on shipping destinations, he said.
Looking farther ahead, Grant said LNG trading likely will shift as it matures to more flexibility in contracts and fewer tolling arrangements. “You can see where it's going,” he said.
Much More Supply Soon
Six U.S. LNG export projects are under construction, with in-service target dates spread over 2017-2019, according to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data. The great majority of their capacity already is committed to 20-year contracts, typically take-or-pay contracts where the LNG buyer either takes the amount in the contract or pays an alternative fee to the owner of the liquefaction plant.
Global LNG trade has been running at 34.6 billion cubic feet a day (Bcfd) and growing at about 6 percent a year. The six U.S. projects under construction will add about 9.6 Bcfd of export capacity, said Victoria Zaretskaya, an EIA analyst.
That is a very large capacity addition during a period when Australia also will be expanding its exports, the projects helping to assure an expansion of the global market surplus, Zaretskaya said.
Fesharaki, looking at the global growth, said, “Between 2017 and 2020 we are increasing the global supply by 40 percent. [There is] no way we can increase the demand by 40 percent in three years.”
Qatar, the world's largest LNG exporter, sent a tremor through the LNG market July 4 when it said it would increase its LNG exports by 30 percent in five to seven years through an expansion of its North Field natural gas production. Qatar Petroleum, with majority stakes in the nation's LNG export operations, has some big partners in those operations, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell, and Total S.A.
The cost of producing natural gas at Qatar's North Field and liquefying it is $2 to $2.50 per MMBtu under current market conditions, Zaretskaya said. Such low-price competition means lower utilization rates should be expected for U.S. export facilities once the extra capacity comes online, she said.
“It's very hard to compete with Qatar.”
Looking at the indexing of Asian LNG prices to crude oil, EIA estimates oil prices would have to climb to the $65-$70 range per barrel for U.S. LNG to be competitive in Asian spot markets, Zaretskaya said. Current prices are below $50 for the benchmark crudes West Texas Intermediate and Brent, though it is commonly expected that they will rise over time.
Prospects for Second Wave
Five U.S. LNG export projects have been approved by the Energy Department and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission but are not yet at the construction stage, in part because they do not all have customers locked up. Other projects have been proposed but not yet approved.
The projects that have yet to see construction and win permits would form the second wave for U.S. LNG export facilities.
Magnolia LNG LLC, planned for the Lake Charles, La., area, is one of the projects approved but awaiting customer contracts and construction. It is a subsidiary of Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd.
The target for Magnolia LNG is to complete customer contract negotiations and reach a final investment decision by the end of 2018, Greg Vesey, CEO of the parent company and the subsidiary, told Bloomberg BNA.
Vesey's timing might allow most of the glut to pass before his LNG export plant goes into operation. It can take four years to build an LNG export plant, he said. If the construction were to start late in 2018, the plant might be completed around the end of 2022. Analysts have been suggesting the glut will fade by about 2023-2024, although their forecasts preceded the Qatar expansion announcement.
Still, there are quite a few developers aiming for a similar window of opportunity.
“I accept that it is tough competition,” Vesey said.
Private Equity Prominent
Magnolia LNG, like many of the projects, has private equity as part of its financial backing. Private equity managers have been diving into energy infrastructure projects throughout the U.S. oil and gas sector.
Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, a private equity firm, is a partner of Magnolia LNG. Such investment managers look to energy infrastructure investments for their relative long-term stability, Vesey said.
Long-term stability is especially valued by pension funds. IFM Investors Pty Ltd., an Australian investment group owned by pension funds, has invested in one of the projects under construction, Freeport LNG, in Texas. Global Infrastructure Partners, a private equity firm, also owns a piece of Freeport LNG.
Cheniere Energy's institutional investors include BlackRock Inc., The Vanguard Group Inc., The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Carl Icahn, and hedge fund Baupost Group, among others. And Blackstone Group took a big ownership stake in Cheniere's Sabine Pass project through a Cheniere affiliate.
The developers with projects not yet approved will have trouble catching up because they will find that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission does not hand out approvals easily even when the five-member commission has a quorum for making such decisions, which it does not now, Vesey said. It took almost three years to get Magnolia LNG through FERC.
West Coast Export Plan
Most of the U.S. export plans are for Gulf Coast sites, and two are for the East Coast. One prominent plan, still at an early stage of permitting at FERC, is for the West Coast—the Jordan Cove project that would ship to Asia from Coos Bay, Ore.
Jordan Cove Energy Project L.P., a subsidiary of Canadian energy infrastructure company Veresen Inc., would build the liquefaction plant and a 235-mile pipeline across Oregon from a gas pipeline hub. A basic selling point would be lower shipping costs and less time than sailing from the Gulf Coast through the Panama Canal to Asia.
FERC rejected the Jordan Cove plan in 2016 because the commission did not see customers solidly lined up to justify pipeline approval. Now the “pre-filing” stage of the permitting process at FERC has been restarted for the project because 50 percent the liquefaction plant capacity and 66 percent of the pipeline capacity have been contracted.
The biggest buyers for Jordan Cove are JERA Co. Inc. and the Japanese trading giant Itochu Corp. JERA represents two Japanese utilities and is the world's largest buyer of LNG. Australian financial company Macquarie Group Ltd. also has contracted for part of the pipeline capacity through its Macquarie Energy LLC energy trading unit.
Much farther north is a Pacific Coast LNG export plant sitting idle and up for sale. The Kenai LNG plant at Nikiski, Alaska, was idled in 2015 by owner ConocoPhillips Co. and has not shipped anything since, though it is available to do so. ConocoPhillips halted its operations because of “market conditions,” it said in 2016, after competing sources of LNG from Australia, Indonesia and elsewhere had surged into the Asian market.
Lining Things Up for FERC
Jordan Cove is talking with other potential buyers and intends to have 100 percent of its capacity under contract within a time frame that should make the project acceptable to FERC, company spokesman Michael Hinrichs said.
“We prefer not to have any more curve balls thrown at us,” Hinrichs said, alluding to the company executives’ surprise when FERC rejected their plan in 2016.
Fesharaki, though skeptical about projects that are not in construction, said the Jordan Cove project “maybe is still doable.”
He was more definite about the Golden Pass project in Texas, with partners Exxon Mobil and Qatar Petroleum, a Qatari government-owned company. Golden Pass appears sure to go ahead because its partners have the money and appear determined to make it happen, Fesharaki said.
Grant at Compass Lexicon implied something similar, though he did not single out Golden Pass. He said the best bets would be the proposals that are well-capitalized and can make use of existing infrastructure. That would describe the Exxon Mobil and Qatar venture.
Canadian Projects in the Wings
There also has been a spate of proposals for LNG exports from Canada, but they have stalled in the face of the same problem of global oversupply.
LNG projects are not in construction in Canada now, although environmental cleanup as a first step in site preparation has begun at a British Columbia coastal site.
That is the location of the planned Woodfibre LNG project. It is owned by Pacific Oil & Gas Ltd., part of a Singapore-based group of companies. It is fully permitted, as are several other Canadian plans.
Woodfibre apparently would be the first Canadian LNG export project out of the gate, maybe with a startup as early as 2020, said Mark Pinney, manager of natural gas markets and transportation at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. It would be an integrated operation, the gas bought and sold by Woodfibre-affiliated companies, not a tolling arrangement.
The biggest question is how robust LNG demand will be, Pinney said. The underlying demand growth has been tremendous, but there can be slowdowns, as happened in 2016 in Japan and South Korea, he said.
Like other analysts, Pinney agreed the glut should be over by 2024 or 2025. “Demand is going to catch up,” he said.
James Henderson, director of the Natural Gas Program at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, put it tartly in an analysis issued in 2016. “The somewhat simplistic assumption that Asian markets would always obligingly provide consistently high LNG demand growth has become questionable,” he said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=116904774&vname=dennotallissues&fn=116904774&jd=116904774
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House Panel to Debate Two Bills For Streamlining Pipeline Permitting
Jul 19, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
Lawmakers on the House Committee on Rules were scheduled to begin debate Tuesday afternoon on a pair of bills designed to streamline the permitting process for energy infrastructure, including oil and natural gas pipelines.
The first bill -- HR 2883, also known as the Promoting Cross-Border Energy Infrastructure Act -- calls for replacing the presidential permit requirement for oil and natural gas pipelines and electric transmission facilities that cross the U.S. border between Canada or Mexico. Under the bill, FERC would issue certificates for oil and gas pipelines that cross the border, while the secretary of the Department of Energy would issue them for electric transmission facilities.
In a report, the House Energy and Commerce (E&C) Committee said it believes cross-border permitting authority "should be explicitly granted by statute, as opposed to the current framework created entirely by the executive branch.
"The [House E&C] Committee is concerned by the inconsistent, ad hoc manner in which presidential permit authority has been exercised among the agencies to which it has been delegated by executive order. This issue came into particular focus in the context of the State Department's review of the Keystone XL pipeline proposal, which originally applied for a presidential permit in 2008 and did not receive approval until 2017."
HR 2883 appears to have some bipartisan support, having been introduced by Reps. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and Gene Green (D-TX) on June 12. But two key Democrats -- Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), ranking member on the House E&C Committee, and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL), ranking member from the House Subcommittee on Energy -- said the bill would "substantially weaken" the federal approval process by exempting cross-border projects from the environmental and safety reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act.
"The effect of these changes will allow large and long-lived cross-border energy projects to be approved with no understanding or consideration of their environmental impacts," Pallone and Rush wrote. "In fact, such projects could even be exempted from any permitting requirement at all."
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), there were more than 50 operating cross-border natural gas pipelines -- between the U.S. and Canada, and between the U.S. and Mexico -- as of August 2013. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) from December 2016 shows that over the last five years, natural gas pipeline capacity between the U.S. and Mexico has grown substantially and is projected to double through 2018.
Meanwhile, a second bill -- HR 2910, also known as the Promoting Interagency Coordination for Review of Natural Gas Pipelines Act -- calls for strengthening the lead agency role of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and further defining the process for federal and state regulatory agencies involved in the permitting process for interstate natural gas pipelines. The bill was introduced by Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX) on June 15.
"There is growing evidence that pipeline infrastructure approvals are being delayed unnecessarily due to a lack of coordination or insufficient action among agencies involved in the permitting process," the House E&C Committee said in a separate report on HR 2910. "While FERC has established a pre-filing phase to facilitate and expedite the review, some agencies and states do not fully participate in the process, leading to delays.
"Testimony before the [House] Subcommittee on Energy has shown that the lack of coordination among federal and state regulators is having a negative impact on infrastructure modernization, job creation, and economic growth."
But Pallone and Rush said they also oppose HR 2910. "HR 2910 short circuits the process for considering natural gas project applications at the expense of private property owners, state and tribal rights, and the environment," they said. "The bill is unnecessary, not only because infrastructure permitting streamlining is already occurring at FPISC [the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council], but also because 88% of these projects are being certified within one year.
"At best, it is a solution in search of a problem; at worst, it is an assault on private property rights and the environment in the name of corporate profit and expediency."
Neither bill appears to have counterpart legislation under consideration by the Senate.
In separate cost estimates, the Congressional Budget Office said implementing HR 2883 would have no significant net effect on the federal budget, while enacting HR 2910 would not increase net direct spending or on-budget deficits in any of the four consecutive 10-year periods beginning in 2028.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/111129-house-panel-to-debate-two-bills-for-streamlining-pipeline-permitting
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Senate Appropriators Vote to Fund Energy Innovation Agency
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
The Energy Department's innovation office, whose budget House appropriators have proposed to eliminate, would get $330 million in the Senate Appropriations energy and water panel's spending bill.
The subcommittee on July 18 approved by voice vote $38.4 billion in fiscal year 2018 funding for the Energy Department, Army Corps of Engineers, and related agencies. The full Senate Appropriations Committee will take up the measure at a July 20 markup, where the bill will officially be released.
The overall funding level represents a $629 million increase over the fiscal year 2017 enacted level, or a 1.6 percent increase, and a $4.1 billion increase over President Donald Trump's request, or an 11 percent increase.
Increasing ARPA-E Funding
The Senate funding level for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) would be the largest proposed to date, and would be a $24 million increase from $306 million that was appropriated in FY2017.
The House Appropriations Committee left out funding for ARPA-E in their $37.56 billion version of the energy and water appropriations bill, which passed out of committee July 12. Trump proposed eliminating the program altogether and requested just $20 million to wind down remaining projects.
Both small, start-up firms and large companies as well as national labs and universities have received grants from the ARPA-E energy innovation program, which was created by President George W. Bush in 2007. Funding recipients include companies such as 3M Co. and General Electric Co., which received grants to do work on battery storage and power converter technologies.
The Senate bill also would provide $5.55 billion for the Energy Department's Office of Science to do basic science and energy research, develop high-level performance computing, and research next generation clean energy resource. This is approximately a $1.1 billion increase over Trump's request and $158 million more than the FY2017 enacted level.
Cuts to Loans Office, Energy Programs
Meanwhile, the bill would reduce some clean energy funding at the department. It would eliminate the Title 17 Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program, in line with Trump's budget request. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the subcommittee's ranking member, objected to that move.
It also would provide $11.1 billion to DOE's energy programs, a $189 million reduction below FY2017 enacted level. It also would cut funding to the Office of Fossil Energy's budget, providing $573 million, a $95 million reduction from the FY2017 level.
Feinstein still supported the overall bill and voted for it on the subcommittee.
“While I don't support all of the cuts in this bill, it's my hope that both parties will be able to negotiate a budget agreement later this year to restore funding to many of those programs,” she said.
The bill also would cut funding for continued work to license Yucca Mountain as a permanent repository for commercial nuclear waste. Trump requested $120 million for the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission to finish the application. Instead, the bill would provide $35 million for a pilot program for consolidated nuclear interim waste storage, according to a committee staffer.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=116904791&vname=dennotallissues&fn=116904791&jd=116904791
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Perry in talks on "new North American energy strategy" with Mexico, Canada
Jul 18, 2017 | Fuelfix
By James Osborne
WASHINGTON - Energy Secretary Rick Perry is bullish the United States can come to a deal on a "new North American energy strategy, " saying he discussed the prospect during his visit with officials in Mexico City last week.
At the core of the discussions is working together on increasing the United States, Canada and Mexico's energy production and exports, while working together on improving security on the countries' power grids, pipelines and "energy systems" at-large.
Pointing at the announcement last week of a historic billion-barrel crude discovery off the Mexican coast, Perry said, "Mexico is going to be a massive influence in the energy markets going forward."
"I'm excited they're our partner, and we look forward for many decades of economic prosperity for this region."
The prospect of turning North America into an energy powerhouse to rival the Middle East has been discussed wishfully by U.S. politicians for years. Since the advent of the shale boom, the United States has emerged as the world's largest oil producer. Canada is the world's fourth largest oil producer, and Mexico, which has undertaken historic reforms to its energy sector under President Enrique Pena Nieto, is eleventh, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Now with the Trump administration preparing to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, some in the energy sector believe it could lead to improvements in how the three countries move energy resources between themselves and to the rest of the world.
"The U.S. is now the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world, and this coupled with enhanced energy integration with Canada and Mexico will increase long-term U.S. energy and national security," Jack Gerard, president of American Petroleum Institute said.
The North American strategy is part of a larger vision within the Trump administration of expanding U.S. energy production while increasing exports abroad.
During a press conference in Washington Tuesday morning with Fatih Birol, director of the International Energy Agency, the former Texas governor discussed the administration's hopes to grow the U.S. LNG industry and develop clean coal technology that can then be sold abroad.
Asked how the Trump administration planned to grow the domestic coal industry, considering the glut of cheap gas in the power market and the expense in developing clean coal technologies, Perry chided society for thinking the current situation would be the same a decade from now.
"All too often we want to take a snapshot in times, like we did 15 years ago with peak oil, and say this is where we are," Perry said. "Back in the 70s acid rain was a major issue on the east coast of this country, and now we never even hear about it."
The press event came as the U.S. power industry and its teams of lobbyists are eagerly awaiting a study ordered by Perry three months ago into whether federal policies supporting wind turbines and solar panels were threatening the reliability of the nation's power grid.
On Friday Bloomberg News reported that a draft of the report concluded wind and solar energy were not the primary cause behind a series of closures of so-called "baseload" generators like coal and nuclear plants, which typically run day and night to supply the bulk of the nation's power needs.
"Costly environmental regulations and subsidized renewable generation have exacerbated base-load power plant retirements," the draft says, according to Bloomberg. "However, those factors played minor roles compared to the long-standing drop in electricity demand relative to previous expectation and years of low electric prices driven by high natural gas availability."
The Energy Department did not respond to phone calls or email for comment. But a department spokesman told Bloomberg, "those statements as written are not in the current draft," which is, "constantly evolving." And now insiders are wondering how Perry might adjust the report, at a time the Trump administration has promised to increase U.S. energy production while putting domestic coal miners back to work.
But Perry declined to offer any advanced hints during the press conference, stating he had not yet seen the study.
"There's lots of people breathlessly waiting to read that, and lots of folks throwing Jell-o at the wall," he said.
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Perry-talks-energy-11296194.php
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Energy Grid Security Risks Need Assessment, Democrats Say
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Dabbs
The vulnerability of U.S. pipelines and other energy infrastructure to cyberattack needs to be assessed, top energy policy Democrats told the Government Accountability Office.
The increasing U.S. dependence on the natural gas pipelines, coupled with constantly evolving hacking capabilities, raises alarms, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said in a letter July 18. Cantwell is the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee's ranking Democrat; Pallone holds that position on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“The reliability of the grid is now more than ever directly tied to the security of gas pipelines,” they said. “The potential risks are grave, given that an attack on natural gas pipelines could, potentially, cripple the electric grid, which is a significant economic and national security asset.”
Multiple reports suggest that Russian hackers are aiming to disrupt U.S. infrastructure, including attacks on U.S. nuclear power facilities. Cantwell has repeatedly urged the Trump administration to conduct an evaluation of those vulnerabilities.
The Senate energy package (S. 1460), which is sponsored by Cantwell and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Energy and Natural Resources’ chairman, would authorize $90 million in annual spending for safeguards against cybersecurity attacks.
The Energy Department's proposed fiscal year 2018 budget would slash funding to the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, which troubleshoots grid crises and develops new technologies to protect the grid.
That office would receive $120 million, a 42 percent downgrade from the $206 million appropriated in FY17.
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Industry Gets Reprieve on ‘Burdensome’ RMP Amendment
Jul 19, 2017 | Environmental Leader
By Jennifer Hermes
Chemical facilities and other industries were given a reprieve last month on complying with the amendment to the Obama-era federal Risk Management Program (RMP) requirements requiring additional public notice, reporting, accident prevention and emergency response planning obligations for facilities that use or store certain high-risk substances. The 20-month extension means the rule will not become effective until February 19, 2019, giving the EPA additional time to reconsider the rule and also allowing for additional comment opportunities, according to a blog article from law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP.
The RMP amendments were drafted in 2013, following several catastrophic chemical facility incidents, including an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas, and the EPA issued the final amendments just a week before President Trump took office.
The law firm says facilities in the chemical, petrochemical and petroleum sectors would be “subject to the most onerous new requirements, including process hazard analysis to identify potential inherently safer technologies, more regular and detailed coordination with local officials, and requirements for root cause analysis and third-party compliance auditing following certain releases or near-releases.”
Industry groups say that, if implemented, the amendments will “disincentives for public collaboration, interfere with effective process safety programs and increase security concerns.” On the other hand,environmental groups have argued that EPA’s changes will accomplish the opposite, writes the National Law Review.
The National Association of Manufacturers has long expressed concerns about the final approach to this rule, which it says creates burdens without significant benefits.
“The safety and security of facilities, employees, and communities are paramount to the Associations and their members,” the group said in congressional testimony in February. “The Associations’ members prudently engage in risk management planning, invest in security, and believe that fostering a continued partnership between businesses and federal, state, and local officials is fundamental to ensuring facility safety now and in the future. The Associations observe that certain aspects of the Risk Management Program (RMP) align with industry efforts to achieve these goals.”
https://www.environmentalleader.com/2017/07/industry-gets-reprieve-burdensome-rmp-amendment/
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(ACC Mentions) House Passes Ozone Bill That Faces Steep Climb In Senate
Jul 19, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
For a second straight year, the House took aim at U.S. EPA's 2015 ozone standard, approving a bill yesterday that would freeze enforcement until the middle of the next decade and permanently alter the Clean Air Act's timetable for updating air quality safeguards.
The bill, H.R. 806, won approval by a largely party-line margin of 229-199 after a half-dozen Democratic amendments went down in defeat. The measure now goes to the Senate where backers face a stiff challenge in marshaling the 60 votes needed for final passage.
"If you want to get something signed into law, you really need to work on both sides of the aisle," Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) said during yesterday's debate. A companion bill, S. 263, introduced in February by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), remains in committee.
Business groups, nonetheless, lauded passage of the House bill, sponsored by Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas) and urged a quick follow-up. "The Senate should waste no time in passing a bill that will also support global competitiveness for the forest products industry," Donna Harman, president and CEO of the American Forest & Paper Association, said in a news release.
Environmental groups who had lobbied equally strenuously against the legislation said it should go no further. "Make no mistake: real people, especially children, the elderly and asthmatics would suffer, and even die, if this legislation were enacted," said Terry McGuire, senior legislative representative for Earthjustice, in a separate statement.
House debate, which played out over several hours, was at times equally impassioned. Ozone, the main ingredient in smog, is linked to asthma attacks in children and aggravated breathing problems for adults with emphysema and other chronic respiratory diseases.
"When it comes to smog, it is not good to go back to the future; it is just wrong," Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.) said after recalling how he was not allowed to play outside while growing up in Southern California. Rep. Nanette Barragán, another Los Angeles-area Democrat, said that children in her district — which has some of the nation's worst ozone problems — carry inhalers around their necks.
"It just breaks my heart," she said.
But Olson and other Republicans said the bill would do nothing to roll back existing protections and pointed to EPA's own prediction that most parts of the country will meet the 70 parts per billion standard by 2025 with programs already under way.
"This commonsense bill is about listening to our job creators back home," Olson said. "It's about giving local officials the tools they need to make air rules work."
The legislation would roll back EPA's attainment designations for the 2015 standard, which had been scheduled for release this October, until 2025.
Those designations are a critical cog in the Clean Air Act's enforcement machinery because they start the clock for areas in nonattainment to come up with cleanup plans. The bill would also permanently stretch the act's timetable for reviewing the standards for ozone, lead and four other "criteria pollutants" from once every five year to once every decade. For the first time, EPA officials could take "technological feasibility" into account when choosing between a range of options to set a new air quality threshold.Playing catch-up?
The bill's supporters argue that many communities need more time to meet the previous ozone standard of 75 ppb set in 2008 and point the finger at EPA.
Then-Administrator Gina McCarthy set the 70 ppb standard in October 2015, in response to mounting evidence that the previous 75 ppb limit was too weak to adequately protect public health.
The new benchmark was at the upper end of a range recommended by an agency advisory committee; by 2025, EPA officials predicted that it would prevent at least 320 premature deaths and head off 230,000 asthma attacks in children each year. The minimum expected health benefits were $2.9 billion, or roughly twice the annual compliance costs by that point. (Those projections excluded California on the grounds that some parts of the state would need longer to comply than the rest of the country.)
But it was only seven months earlier, in March 2015, that EPA had issued the formal implementation guidance for the 2008 standard. The holdup, attributable at least in part to an abortive review of the 2008 standard scuttled by President Obama several years earlier, means that some areas are now having to juggle implementation of both standards. Critics also say the new standard is so stringent that some areas may never be able to comply.
"No matter how much better we make our air, we cannot catch up to reach the latest unrealistic EPA hurdle," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said yesterday. While public health advocates see little practical importance in the implementation overlap, manufacturers and other businesses contend that it could make it harder to get permits for new operations. Particularly concerned are the chemical and oil and gas industries, both of which produce the volatile organic compounds that help form ozone. While current EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt recently took advantage of a Clean Air Act waiver to postpone the attainment designations until October 2018, a longer-term fix is needed, according to business organizations.
"It is now up to Congress to address these issues," the American Chemistry Council and more than 140 other groups said in a letter to lawmakers yesterday urging passage of the bill.
While the House passed a similar measure, H.R. 4775, last year, it died in the Senate after an Obama administration veto threat. Though President Trump has repeatedly lambasted regulations as a hindrance to job creation, the White House had not taken an official position — known as a Statement of Administration Policy — on H.R. 806 as of last night.
Four Democrats voted for the bill, while 11 Republicans were opposed. For the Democratic amendments that received roll-call votes, all were also rejected largely along party lines. Those included one by Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida to block the enforcement delay from taking effect if an EPA advisory committee found that it could hurt children and other vulnerable populations, and another by Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado that he said would close a loophole for the oil and gas industry on aggregation of smaller emissions sources.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/stories/1060057579/search?keyword=%22American+Chemistry+Council%22
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Must Revisit Toxic Air Pollution Standards, Court Says
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
Environmentalists will press for new toxic air pollution limits on petroleum refineries, chemical plants, and pesticide manufacturers after a federal court ordered the EPA to provide further evidence that it has adequately regulated those emissions.
“This decision confirms we still have a lot of work to do to ensure people are protected from toxic pollution,” Neil Gormley, the Earthjustice attorney who argued the lawsuit, told Bloomberg BNA.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled July 18 that the Environmental Protection Agency must justify how emissions limits it set for other pollutants also control the three substances in question (Sierra Club v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 15-1246, 7/18/17).
While the court offered no opinion on whether the EPA's decision to rely on emissions controls for “surrogate” pollutants to reduce polycyclic organic matter, hexachlorobenzene, and polychlorinated biphenyls as well, environmental advocates will use the decision as a springboard to push the EPA for further regulations.
“EPA was trying to get away with not issuing protections for these pollutants,” Gormley said.
The EPA said it is reviewing the decision, but Jeffrey Knight, a partner in Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP's Washington, D.C., office said the additional review would be “a paperwork exercise.” The EPA has the data necessary to show that it has met its duty to regulate the toxic pollutants, Knight told Bloomberg BNA.
Knight had represented the Coalition for Clean Air Implementation, which includes the American Chemistry Council, and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, and other industries covered by the toxic pollution standards, in the lawsuit.
An American Chemistry Council attorney agreed with Knight.
“I'm cautiously optimistic that EPA got it right here,” Leslie Hulse, assistant general counsel at the council, told Bloomberg BNA.
EPA Argued Regulations Sufficient
Under Section 112(c)(6) of the Clean Air Act, the EPA must identify sources that account for at least 90 percent of the emissions of seven different hazardous air pollutants and issue emissions standards that control those sources. The agency in 2015 issued a finding that it had met that obligation.
That finding is disputed by environmental advocacy organizations, who say the EPA retroactively claimed it had sufficiently regulated three toxic pollutants because they were controlled by emissions limits set for other substances. The D.C. Circuit didn't rule on whether the EPA's claims were valid, but found that the agency failed to explain its reliance on those other “surrogate” pollutants.
The advocacy organizations that filed the lawsuit include the California Communities Against Toxics and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P. Bloomberg BNA is an affiliate of Bloomberg L.P.
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(ACC Mentioned) House Approves Delay Of Obama-Rra Smog Reductions
Jul 18, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — The House voted Tuesday to pass a Republican-backed bill delaying implementation of Obama-era reductions in smog-causing air pollutants.
Lawmakers voted 229 to 199 to approve the Ozone Standards Implementation Act of 2017. The measure delays by eight more years the implementation of 2015 air pollution standards issued by the Environmental Protection Agency under the prior administration.
The bill also makes key technical changes that environmentalists say will weaken the Clean Air Act, including switching the EPA's mandated review of air quality standards from every five years to every 10. Ground-level ozone can cause breathing problems among sensitive groups, causing thousands of premature deaths each year.
The House voted largely along party lines to approve the bill and defeat a series of Democratic amendments. Similar legislation is advancing in the GOP-controlled Senate.
More than a dozen major health organizations opposed the bill, including the National Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association. The head of the American Lung Association called the industry-backed bill a "direct assault" on the right of Americans to breathe healthy air, and urged senators from both parties to reject it.Continue reading the main story
"The bill would delay lifesaving protections against ozone pollution, exposing Americans to unnecessary pollution levels that will lead to asthma attacks and premature deaths that could have been prevented," said Harold P. Wimmer, the group's national president and CEO.
House Republicans on Tuesday lauded what they called common-sense legislation to protect American jobs. The GOP bill is supported by several pro-business groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, the American Chemistry Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
It is part of a larger push by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to weaken, block or delay stricter pollution and public health standards approved under President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
Primary sponsor Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, praised the progress made in cleaning up the nation's air since the 1970s, when choking blankets of smog regularly blanketed U.S. cities. But he said the stricter standards approved by Obama's EPA would force American companies to invest billions in new pollution reduction measures.
"This bill keeps us moving forward toward cleaner air," said Olson, whose Houston-area district depends on the oiland gas industry. "This bill is about listening to job creators back home."
Democrats countered that the GOP bill, which they derided as the "Smoggy Skies Act," would cost lives through increased rates of asthma and lung disease while endangering decades of hard-won progress in cleaning up the environment.
"This is a blueprint to Make America Sick Again," said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., mocking the Trump campaign slogan.
Ground-level ozone is created when common pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants and other sources react in the atmosphere to sunlight. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards adopted by EPA in 2015 reduced the allowed amount of ground-level ozone from 75 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion.
EPA estimated at the time that the $1.4 billion it would cost to meet the stricter standards would be far outweighed by billions saved from fewer emergency room visits and other public health gains.
The agency cited recent studies showing ozone at 72 parts per billion is harmful to healthy adults exercising outdoors. Children are at increased risk because their lungs are still developing and they are more likely to be active outdoors when ozone levels are high, the agency said.
EPA projected that the "vast majority" of U.S. counties would meet the stricter standards by 2025 under state and federal rules and programs then underway. Many of those clean-air initiatives are now in the crosshairs of regulatory rollbacks and budget cuts championed by the Trump administration.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/07/18/us/politics/ap-us-epa-ozone.html?_r=0
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Bill Delaying EPA's Ozone Standards Heads to Senate
Jul 19, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Catherine Douglas Moran
A bill to postpone deadlines under the EPA's updated ozone air pollution standards sailed through the House and heads to the Senate where its outlook is murkier.
Sponsored by Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas), the Ozone Standards Implementation Act of 2017 (H.R. 806) passed the House on a 229-199 vote and would give the Environmental Protection Agency an extra eight years to determine which areas of the country do not meet the 70 parts per billion ozone standards set in 2015.
The bill, a version of which also passed the House in 2016, would extend that deadline to 2025. Ozone can make bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma worse, according to the EPA.
The bill also would extend from every five years to every 10 years the requirement for the EPA to review and, if necessary, update the national ambient air quality standards for ozone and other pollutants. It also would allow the EPA to consider technical feasibility of pollution controls when setting new national pollution standards. Currently, only risk considerations enter into the setting of the health standards.
Should the legislation be enacted, companies may find it easier to secure operating permits for new industrial facilities because they wouldn't be subject to the more stringent standards.
The agency would also be required to report to Congress on how pollution from other countries affects states’ ability to meet the ozone standards.
The six Democratic amendments offered to the House were all defeated on the floor. There were no Republican amendments.
Senate Bill Stuck
Senate legislation to delay the ozone standard, introduced by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), has a half-dozen co-sponsors including one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.). But it appears to be stuck in neutral in that chamber. The Senate did not take up the bill when it passed the House in the last congress.
No markup has been scheduled in either the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee subcommittee chaired by Capito or the full environment committee. But she “is still working to advance” the bill, “either as a stand-alone bill or as part of broader legislation,” Capito spokesman Tyler Hernandez told Bloomberg BNA.
Capito has acknowledged the slim 52-48 Republican Senate majority makes it difficult to overcome the 60-vote hurdle for ending a likely Democratic-led filibuster threat. Instead, she has weighed attaching the measure to a spending bill or other “must-pass” measure that Democrats might be forced to accept.
Oil and Gas Industry Support
Before the vote, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said on the House floor that the bill gives the states flexibility to “focus on the most pressing environmental issues in each individual state rather than having the EPA dictate where resources must be used regardless of need.”
Out of the bill's 24 cosponsors, it has the support of Democratic Reps. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), and Henry Cuellar (D-Texas).
The bill has support from more than 100 industry groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, the Consumer Energy Alliance, and the Industrial Environmental Association. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called the House consideration a “key” House vote.
The bills “provide a common-sense plan that maintains continued air quality improvement without unnecessarily straining state and local economic resources,” more than 140 industry groups wrote in a July 18 letter supporting the legislation.
Ozone Bill Opposition
Before the vote, Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) said the bill would benefit oil and gas industries while increasing health impacts from unregulated air pollution.
“It only serves to make people sicker,” Polis said on the House floor. “More people would suffer from asthma and more people would suffer from cancer.”
The American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, and American Thoracic Society urged Congress to reject the bill in a letter because it “imposes additional delays and sweeping changes that will threaten health, particularly the health of children, seniors, and people with chronic disease.”
—With assistance from Dean Scott.
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EPA Says States Lack Legal Standing For Role In Ozone NAAQS Challenge
Jul 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
EPA and groups representing several major industries are opposing a request by Democratic-led states to intervene in litigation over the Obama-era rule tightening federal ozone standard in order to defend the measure, with the agency and others saying the request is untimely and EPA also claiming the states lack legal standing to join the suit.
The Democratic-led states argued that they need to intervene in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit suit and fight industry attempts to weaken the ozone standard in order to protect the health of their residents from ozone pollution.
But EPA in a July 17 filing argues, “[S]tates cannot establish Article III standing to challenge federal agency action by claiming to protect the well-being of their residents.”
EPA says the states “have not identified a concrete and imminent injury to their interests as states,” criticizing them for a “vague assertion” that the Trump administration might decide against strongly defending the Obama EPA's 2015 rule that tightened the ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) to 70 parts per billion (ppb). When the Obama administration issued the rule, GOP lawmakers and industry groups attacked the decision, saying the agency lacked justification for tightening the 2008 limit of 75 ppb.
States and others filed suit over the rule and the consolidated case was proceeding in the D.C. Circuit until the Trump EPA asked the court to halt the litigation while it reviewed the 2015 rule.
The agency did not say that it would definitively reconsider or change the decision, but it wanted the proceedings in Murray Energy Corporation v. EPA put on hold indefinitely while it assesses the Obama-era rule. Although the agency did not say definitively whether it would soften the standards, it said it intends to “closely review” the standards in part to assess whether it is subject to President Donald Trump's March 28 executive order directing EPA to reconsider rules that could burden energy development.
The court granted that request earlier this year, directing the agency to file status reports on the review.
More recently, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced in June that he is delaying by one year -- from Oct. 1 to Oct. 1, 2018 -- the issuance of designations for whether areas are attaining or in nonattainment with the 2015 ozone standard. Pruitt said the additional time is necessary for the agency to complete its review of the 2015 rulemaking, including factors such as the role of “background” naturally occurring ozone.
That decision has also prompted a lawsuit in the D.C. Circuit from environmentalists who say the agency lacks legal authority for the move, and environmentalists also oppose any weakening of the 2015 NAAQS.
The Democratic states led by California in their motion to intervene cited Pruitt's recent decision as a signal that the agency might not strongly defend the 2015 rulemaking in the Murray Energy case. They asked for a role in the suit to argue in favor of the stricter standard, which they say is vital to protect their citizens' wellbeing.
The states -- California, New York, Vermont, Washington, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware and Washington, D.C. -- “have a vital interest in ensuring that the primary ozone standard is set at a level that adequately protects their residents from the harms of ozone pollution,” saying if critics of the standard succeed in vacating the 2015 rulemaking, the states “will be deprived of important health protections and extensive economic benefits.”
Competing Arguments
EPA's own regulatory impact analysis for the 2015 rule showed that the 70 ppb limit “leads to net health benefits of billions of dollars of avoided health care expenses, avoided premature deaths, and thousands of avoided lost work days and tens of thousands of avoided lost school days,” the states argued.
But EPA counters in its new filing that the states “have not identified a concrete and imminent injury to their interests as states” that would give them standing to sue.
The agency also claims that the states should not be allowed to intervene in the case while it is in abeyance, and that the January 2016 deadline for filing motions to intervene in the suit “has long passed.”
In a separate July 17 filing, a coalition of industry groups including the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute, as well as several GOP-led states, also say they oppose the Democratic-led states' request to intervene but focus on the argument that the states filed the request too late.
“Such a request is due 30 days after the petition for review is filed in this Court,” the filing says. “California's request arrives 619 days after the first-filed petition in these consolidated cases. The court should deny the motion as untimely” as the 30-day deadline has passed for such motions under federal appellate rules.
The coalition echoes EPA's argument that the states cannot justify intervention under the possibility that the agency might no longer “vigorously defend” the revised ozone NAAQS. The groups claim there is no legal authority for extending the intervention filing deadline “based on one party's perceived vigor in defending an argument,” and add that “there is no evidence that EPA has, in fact, pared back its defense of the contested NAAQS.”
EPA's decision to delay the attainment designations does not show a decision to not defend the standard, the filing says, and instead merely shows the agency lacks adequate data to issue the designations.
Even if the agency had decided to drop its defense of the NAAQS, the states still fail to show whey they did not move to intervene in the lawsuit earlier, the coalition argues. “[O]ther intervenors had no trouble joining the case in support of the NAAQS in the cases' earliest days,” it adds.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-says-states-lack-legal-standing-role-ozone-naaqs-challenge
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D.C. Circuit Remands Air Toxics 'Completion' Finding For EPA Justification
Jul 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a unanimous July 18 ruling has remanded EPA's final rule declaring that it has met a Clean Air Act mandate to regulate 90 percent of sources of seven air toxics, agreeing with environmentalists that the agency needs to better justify its explanation for the rule.
The opinion, written by Senior Circuit Judge David Sentelle, says EPA's finding failed to adequately address comments filed by environmentalists criticizing the agency for relying on reductions from existing rules for other air toxics as “surrogates” that counted toward the 90 percent goal for the seven air toxics listed in the air law.
The ruling in Sierra Club and California Communities Against Toxics (CCAT) v. EPA does not vacate the rule nor criticize it on the merits, but requires EPA to better explain itself.
EPA “cannot hide behind” explanations in years-old air toxics regulations as adequate justification for the Obama-era finding that the agency has issued policies sufficient to achieve the 90 percent mandate, the court says. The agency failed to fully respond to environmentalists' attacks on the reliance on surrogates, it adds.
However, “[w]e wish to make clear that we are not holding that EPA's decision is substantively incorrect. Indeed we express no opinion on that subject. We simply remand the matter to EPA for further proceedings, which should include the explanations omitted from the present determination,” Sentelle writes on behalf of fellow D.C. Circuit Judges Judith Rogers and Patricia Millett.
The remand means the Trump EPA will now have to provide a more-detailed justification of the use of surrogates, but given the administration's deregulatory agenda it is expected to do that instead of issuing any new air toxics rules for the seven pollutants listed in the Clean Air Act 90 percent mandate.
The decision is not entirely unexpected because the judges at Feb. 10 oral argument questioned the agency's rationale for relying on existing air toxics rules as surrogates for the 90 percent target.
EPA's counter argument to environmentalists' suit was that it was untimely and should be dismissed, because -- the agency said -- Sierra Club and CCAT were criticizing the existing surrogate rules as inadequate rather than the 90 percent finding. EPA said that air toxics reductions from its various regulations would act as surrogate reductions for the seven air toxics listed in the Clean Air Act for the 90 percent goal. Environmentalists could not contest those years-old rules in the suit because such challenges were past the 60-day window to sue over those rules, EPA said.
But the judges did not accept that claim and instead said that the suit was timely because it challenged the agency's rationale in the June 3, 2015, final rule declaring that it had achieved the 90 percent mandate. EPA's reliance on surrogates in that rule was not adequately explained and did not fully respond to environmentalists' comments on the earlier proposed version of the finding criticizing the use of surrogates, the court said.
Statutory Mandate
Under Clean Air Act section 112 (c)(6), EPA was mandated to list for regulation by 1995 sources accounting for 90 percent of seven hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) that are “persistent” and “bioaccumulative.”
These chemicals are: alkylated lead compounds, polycyclic organic matter, hexachlorobenzene, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzofurans and 2,3,7,8- tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin. Rules regulating then-listed sources were required by 2000 under the air law.
The agency for years declined to make a formal finding that it had met the mandate. After protracted litigation, the agency was forced by a legal deadline to issue such a declaration. It ultimately issued its 2015 finding as a formal agency action eligible for judicial review.
EPA found that it had, through various rules dating back years, met the 90 percent obligation, in part through use of surrogates to control for the seven HAPs at issue.
That declaration prompted the suit from Sierra Club and CCAT, and the court agrees with the groups that the case is timely because they had no chance to challenge EPA's final rationale for using surrogates in the 90 percent finding until the agency issued the 2005 rule.
“Sierra Club's present challenge to the interaction of the surrogacy decisions with the 90% (c)(6) requirements is timely,” the court said in rejecting EPA's motion to dismiss.
Explaining the decision to remand the finding to the agency, the court says, “We wish to make clear at the outset that the question before us is the narrow one of the adequacy of EPA's justification for the use of surrogates. Insofar as the parties characterize the petition as a challenge to the achievement of the 90% requirement, that question rises or falls with surrogacy,” according to the ruling. The court notes that it has in prior rulings approved the use of surrogacy in Clean Air Act rules, but adds that the agency needs to better justify it for the 2005 rule.
“Although EPA provided some explanation of the surrogacy relationships in this case . . . EPA failed to respond adequately to comments disputing those explanations” that environmentalists filed on the proposed version of the finding, the court says. EPA's “failure” to fully justify the use of surrogates in the 90 percent finding and to respond to comments “dooms the current determination,” Sentelle writes.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/dc-circuit-remands-air-toxics-completion-finding-epa-justification
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