Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 7/24/17
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Hearing On "Sue And Settle"
Jul 25, 2017 | Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittees on the Interior, Energy and Environment, and Intergove
Location: 2154 Rayburn / 10:00 AM. -
Hearing on NAFTA and Agriculture
Jul 26, 2017 | Agriculture
Location: 1300 Longworth / 10:00 AM. -
Hearing On Infrastructure Permitting
Jul 26, 2017 | Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Location: 342 Dirksen / 2:30 PM. -
(ACC Blog) Getting Ready For #ACCaugust 3.0
Jul 21, 2017 | American Chemistry Matters
By Marcus Branstad
August is normally a time for resting and relaxation, students are enjoying the last days of freedom before school starts and parents are taking the last weekend trips to the beach or lake before the start of fall. -
(ACC Mentioned) Container Cos. Tell High Court To Let Antitrust Win Stand
Jul 21, 2017 | Law 360
By Matthew Perlman
Solo Cup Co., Dart Container Corp. and other food container makers have urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to take up defunct polystyrene recycling company Evergreen Partnering Group’s appeal of the First Circuit’s summary judgment ruling in its antitrust case against the companies, arguing that no court would have decided it differently. -
(ACC Mentioned) Controversy Greets Trump Pick To Lead EPA Chemical Safety Programs
Jul 21, 2017 | Science Magazine
By Puneet Kollipara
A toxicologist named this week by President Donald Trump to oversee the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) chemical safety programs is catalyzing controversy. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump’s EPA Chemical Safety Nominee Was In The “Business Of Blessing” Pollution
Jul 21, 2017 | The Intercept
By Sharon Lerner
MICHAEL DOURSON, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, founded and ran a toxicology consulting firm whose work enabled DuPont to avoid providing clean water to people in West Virginia after the company contaminated the area around one of its plants with a dangerous industrial chemical. -
EPA Chemical Safety Nominee Aided DuPont in Teflon Scandal
Jul 24, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Bill Walker
Michael Dourson, President Trump’s expected nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety office, has made a career of helping industry stave off or weaken regulations on toxic chemicals. -
EWG News Roundup (7/21): Trump’s Troubling 6 Months, Asbestos in Children’s Cosmetics and Chemical Industry Shill Tapped for Top EPA Slot
Jul 21, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Robert Coleman
This week we marked the six-month mark of the Trump presidency, which has been nothing short of an unprecedented assault on children’s health. -
California Proposes Clarifications To Prop 65 Warning Requirements
Jul 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has proposed a series of amendments on how regulated parties must provide 'clear and reasonable' warning under Proposition 65. -
NGOs Urge Labelling, Restriction Of Nanomaterials In French Consumer Products
Jul 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
A group of French NGOs has written to the country's prime minister and several ministers calling for labelling and restriction of nanomaterials "as a matter of urgency". -
(ACC Mentioned) US Gulf Petrochemical Investment A Boon For Project Cargo
Jul 23, 2017 | Journal Of Commerce
By Joseph Bonney
Project cargo shippers and carriers hope to benefit from continuing petrochemical investment in the US Gulf, a rare bright spot in a generally weak global breakbulk market, and from increased shipments of large construction modules. -
(ACC Mentioned) Howard Swint: There’s a Better Way Than Just Burning Off Excess Natural Gas Liquids
Jul 24, 2017 | Charleston Gazette Mail
By Howard Swint
Could the development of an underground ethane storage facility, located in the heart of the Marcellus and Utica shale natural gas formations, be justified from an environmental perspective? -
Republicans Brewing Russian Scandal To Target Greens
Jul 22, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre
GOP House members and at least one Trump Cabinet member are pushing yearsold allegations from conservative activists that Russia has funneled money to U.S. environmental groups to oppose fracking. -
White House Plan Would Scrap Hundreds of Regulations, Including Clean Power Plan, NSPS Updates
Jul 21, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
The Trump administration, following through on a promise to cut regulations, including many made during the Obama era, unveiled plans to repeal or scuttle hundreds of existing or planned rules across the federal government, including many that affect the oil and natural gas industry. -
Trump's America-First Pipeline Plan Draws Ire of American Oil
Jul 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Donald Trump's allies in the oil industry are warning the president that his bid to boost U.S. steelmakers could backfire against their efforts to achieve his goal of “American energy dominance.” -
Dominion, Duke Get Environmental OK on Atlantic Pipeline Project
Jul 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew M. Ballard
Four domestic energy companies—Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, Southern Company Gas—scored a victory with a federal pipeline regulatory agency's assertion that a planned 600-mile natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to North Carolina would have minimal environmental impacts. -
Energy Transfer Faces Fresh Pipeline Woes as New Spill Probed
Jul 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naureen S. Malik
Energy Transfer Partners LP, whose drilling practices have already drawn scrutiny in Ohio, is facing fresh controversy following spills related to a separate pipeline project under construction in Pennsylvania. -
Environmentalists Push Back Against EPA Defense Of RMP Rule Delay
Jul 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Environmental and labor groups are renewing their arguments aimed at vacating the Trump administration's lengthy delay of an Obama-era update to the agency's Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility safety rule, charging the delay violates the Clean Air Act and faulting EPA's claim that seeking public input allows for lengthy reconsideration of final rules. -
Trump Plan To Expedite Permitting Comes Under Review
Jul 24, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Camille von Kaenel
President Trump's push to remove governmental red tape and speed the development of infrastructure projects will be under the microscope in a Senate panel this week. -
(ACC Mentioned) Stefanik Again Votes To Keep Clean Air Regulations
Jul 21, 2017 | The Adirondack Daily Enterprise
By Antonio Olivero
The U.S. House of Representatives voted Tuesday to delay the implementation of Obama-era reductions in smog-causing air pollutants, but north country Congresswoman Elise Stefanik was one of only two New York Republicans who voted against the legislation. -
House Science Dems Call For Details On Pruitt's Climate Debate
Jul 21, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
Top Democrats on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee want details from U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on his plans to formally challenge climate science. -
Environmentalists Protest Further Delay Of SO2 NAAQS Suit
Jul 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
Environmental groups are protesting EPA's request to further delay litigation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit over the agency's 2016 rule defining which areas attain or not federal sulfur dioxide (SO2) standards, as EPA tries to consolidate suits in the D.C. Circuit.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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Jul 25, 2017 | Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittees on the Interior, Energy and Environment, and Intergove
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Hearing on NAFTA and Agriculture
Jul 26, 2017 | Agriculture
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Hearing On Infrastructure Permitting
Jul 26, 2017 | Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
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(ACC Blog) Getting Ready For #ACCaugust 3.0
Jul 21, 2017 | American Chemistry Matters
By Marcus Branstad
August is normally a time for resting and relaxation, students are enjoying the last days of freedom before school starts and parents are taking the last weekend trips to the beach or lake before the start of fall. But not ACC’s Political Mobilization department, we are getting ready for #ACCaugust 3.0. Last year’s #ACCaugust was a huge success this year we hope to have the same success. Our team will be bringing elected officials to not only the largest companies but many of the smaller companies that play a vital role in the industry and their communities.
Through these tours we are able to highlight how important each facility was to the local community and how chemistry impacts the state and federal economy.
The business of chemistry is a major factor in the nation’s manufacturing renaissance, providing 810,000 high-paying skilled jobs that supports over a quarter of the U.S. GDP. All who participate are able to see how chemistry is vital to everyday life and that the business of chemistry directly touches more than 96% of all manufactured goods.This August, our talented road-warriors will be back on the road visiting facilities and meeting with influential federal and state elected officials. This will also be the second year of ChemistryMatters, ACC’s online portal that helps educate and engage members of the chemistry community with the important work being done within the community and helping advocate for positive change in legislation to help the business of chemistry. Our chemistry community has grown exponentially over the last year and for many this will be their first taste of #ACCaugust, and we will not disappoint them.
During the month of August and beyond, be sure to check on our progress and see what innovative products chemistry is helping to create by following the tours and town halls here on our blog, on our new Twitter account @AmChemMatters, or our Facebook page. Participate in the experience by joining the conversation using the hashtags #ACCaugust and #ChemistryMatters.
Want to get even more involved? Sign-up at ChemistryMatters to join our growing community to see events coming to your community and learn more about the important role chemistry plays in our economy and everyday life.
https://blog.americanchemistry.com/2017/07/getting-ready-for-accaugust-3-0/
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(ACC Mentioned) Container Cos. Tell High Court To Let Antitrust Win Stand
Jul 21, 2017 | Law 360
By Matthew Perlman
Law360, New York (July 21, 2017, 4:35 PM EDT) -- Solo Cup Co., Dart Container Corp. and other food container makers have urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to take up defunct polystyrene recycling company Evergreen Partnering Group’s appeal of the First Circuit’s summary judgment ruling in its antitrust case against the companies, arguing that no court would have decided it differently.
The companies, whose products include polystyrene food service items, won summary judgment in July 2015, a decision that was affirmed on appeal in August last year. The suit alleges a conspiracy to muscle Evergreen out of the market for polystyrene recycling, especially for recycled egg containers and school lunch trays, but the courts have found a lack of evidence and said the claims are short on logical inferences of an illegal scheme.
Evergreen filed a petition for certiorari March 17, arguing that the First Circuit's ruling would mean that evidence needs to rise to the level of a "smoking gun" to get an antitrust case before a jury, citing the high court’s 1992 decision in Eastman Kodak Industry Co. v. Image Technical Services Inc. as containing the proper standard. But the container companies said in their opposition brief on July 17 that Evergreen hasn’t raised any issues that would cause a court to rule differently.
“The courts below, applying settled principles of antitrust law, correctly concluded that the record evidence was far too ambiguous to support petitioner’s claims of antitrust conspiracy,” the brief said. “Far from identifying any clear division of authority, the authorities petitioner cites reveal remarkable agreement about the basic principles governing summary judgment motions in the antitrust context, and there is no reason to believe that any court would have decided this case differently. Further review is not warranted.”
The company claims that Solo, Dart, Pactiv Corp., Dolco Packaging, Genpak LLC and the American Chemistry Council agreed to boycott it because they did not want their market disrupted. According to the suit, the companies agreed in a trade industry conference call not to pay Evergreen the commission on which it depended, and they pumped up a sham competitor and planted positive stories in the press about non-Evergreen entities.
A district judge previously dismissed the suit, but that decision was reversed at the First Circuit, and Genpak has since settled out of the suit, court records show. On remand, the remaining defendants won summary judgment, which was upheld by the three-judge First Circuit panel in August, saying that Evergreen failed to show plausible evidence of a concerted conspiracy.
Evergreen argued in its petition to the high court that the summary judgment ruling is at odds with its decision in Kodak, which it said found plaintiffs need to show only that a jury could reasonably find in its favor on the facts, as opposed to a higher standard that applies when there’s no rational economic motive for the defendants to collude.
The companies shot back in their brief that the proper standard was applied, and that the lower courts simply concluded that the container makers decided not to do business with Evergreen because its products cost more and because they had quality concerns, not because they had conspired against it.
“Conduct that amounts to declining to pay for costlier but inferior product would seem to be precisely the sort of ‘inherently pro-competitive’ conduct to which the ‘tends to exclude’ test would apply even under petitioner’s current theory,” the opposition brief said.
Evergreen had also said in its petition that there’s a circuit split on the issue of what standard to apply, with the Fourth, Sixth and Eighth circuits having ruled similarly to the First Circuit in the past. The container companies said this isn’t the case and that many of the decisions pointed to by Evergreen don’t address issues related to Kodak.
“But even a brief review of the cases petitioner cites shows broad agreement on the basic principles governing consideration of summary judgment motions in antitrust cases, even if cases sometimes frame the inquiry in slightly different ways,” the opposition said. “Moreover, there is no indication that many of the decisions petitioner cites even considered the issue, much less took sides on the supposed ‘split.’”
An attorney for Evergreen declined to comment Friday. Attorneys for the other parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
Evergreen is represented by Richard Wolfram.
Solo Cup Co. and Dart Container Corp. are represented by William E. Lawler III, John P. Elwood and Ralph C. Mayrell of Vinson & Elkins LLP. Pactiv is represented by Richard A. Sawin Jr. and Richard E. Bennett of Michienzie & Sawin LLC. Dolco is represented by Steven M. Cowley of Duane Morris LLP. The American Chemistry Council is represented by Ralph T. Lepore III, Michael T. Maroney and Benjamin M. McGovern of Holland & Knight LLP.
The case is Evergreen Partnering Group et al. v. Pactiv Corp. et al., case number 16-1148, before the Supreme Court of the United States.https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/946742
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(ACC Mentioned) Controversy Greets Trump Pick To Lead EPA Chemical Safety Programs
Jul 21, 2017 | Science Magazine
By Puneet Kollipara
A toxicologist named this week by President Donald Trump to oversee the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) chemical safety programs is catalyzing controversy. Some scientists and industry groups are praising Michael Dourson of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio for his policy experience and technical expertise. But critics worry Dourson’s links to the chemical industry will color how he’ll implement a new law reforming EPA’s process for regulating potentially dangerous chemicals. Dourson’s religious beliefs are also attracting attention, in particular his past use of scientific findings to support claims made in the Bible.
Dourson, tapped on 17 July to be EPA’s assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), would oversee EPA programs that regulate industrial chemicals and pesticides if he earns Senate confirmation. The nomination has become a political hot potato, as Dourson would lead OCSPP as it reworks its approach to implementing a bipartisan 2016 law that reformed the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA, the statute that governs EPA’s ability to regulate industrial chemicals).
Dourson’s experience, spanning 4 decades, includes multiple science- and risk-assessment–related posts in low- to middle-tier EPA offices throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as well as decades as a research toxicologist. That experience has proved to be a double-edged sword, though, as a chemical risk-assessment nonprofit that he led for 2 decades has come under scrutiny for its longtime reliance on chemical industry funding and its history of consulting for chemical companies
“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 at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a New York City–headquartered group, said in an 18 July statement.
The nomination follows another controversial appointment, of Nancy Beck—a toxicologist formerly of the Washington, D.C.–based American Chemistry Council (ACC), the largest U.S. chemical industry lobbying group—as deputy assistant administrator of OCSPP. More generally, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has sought to institute changes at EPA that could lead to greater industry voice in agency decisions, including through changes to its science advisory panels.
ACC and other industry groups have welcomed the new approach, faulting what they called the Obama administration’s overly stringent and economically stifling regulations. The group has called on the Senate to swiftly confirm Dourson, who it says is a “highly respected, award winning scientist,” to ensure the success of TSCA reform.
But environmental, health, and consumer advocates have balked at what they view as an industry-friendly implementation of reforms so far. “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,” EDF’s Denison said.
Meanwhile, another aspect of Dourson’s background—his authorship of “science-Bible stories”—is attracting attention. Dourson authored a trio of books called Evidence of Faith, which assume Bible stories are literally true and discuss how modern scientific findings might relate to the stories. Dourson has characterized his works as “matching science and Biblical text,” according to BuzzFeed News.
The Reverend John Arthur Nunes, president of Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod–affiliated Concordia College in the New York City metropolitan area, cited Dourson’s “judicious integration of faith and the sciences” as a big asset. “Far too often the proposal of a relationship between science and religion is viewed with incompatibility at best or with inimicality at worst,” he said in statement shared by EPA.
Detractors are highlighting a remark he made to the Center for Public Integrity and InsideClimate News in 2014, when he used a biblical analogy to defend his risk-assessment nonprofit group’s industry funding and consulting work for chemical companies: “Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. He had dinner with them.”
This week, the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York City–based environmental group, had a blunt reaction to that comment: “God help us.”
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/controversy-greets-trump-pick-lead-epa-chemical-safety-programs
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(ACC Mentioned) Trump’s EPA Chemical Safety Nominee Was In The “Business Of Blessing” Pollution
Jul 21, 2017 | The Intercept
By Sharon Lerner
MICHAEL DOURSON, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, founded and ran a toxicology consulting firm whose work enabled DuPont to avoid providing clean water to people in West Virginia after the company contaminated the area around one of its plants with a dangerous industrial chemical.
In 2000, DuPont was seeking a consulting company to guide the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in a delicate project. DuPont had used PFOA to make Teflon and other products and allowed the chemical to seep into water near the plant. The assignment was to help the state set safety levels for PFOA that would determine when DuPont had to provide clean water to residents.
After asking around, a DuPont employee named Timothy Bingman decided Dourson’s consulting firm, Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, was just the right company for the job. “I’ve talked to a number of colleagues that use external toxicity peer review services to see who they like as contractors,” Bingman wrote in an email to his DuPont colleagues that had the subject line “Prospective Contractors for PFOA Review.” “While everyone had a few names to offer, the common theme that emerged was that TERA (i.e. Mike Dourson) was the leading choice.” TERA had “a very good reputation among the folks that are still in the business of blessing criteria,” Bingman explained, going on to describe the company’s ability to “assemble a package and then sell this to EPA, or whomever we desired.”
TERA didn’t disappoint. In 2002, the company helped West Virginia set a safety threshold of 150 parts per billion — a number that stayed in place from 2002 to 2006, and determined whom DuPont was obligated to provide with clean water during this period. That number was 150 times higher than the maximum safety level DuPont’s own scientists had determined in 1988 — 1 pbb — based on internal company research showing that PFOA was toxic to both workers and lab animals.
In May 2016, the EPA set a national drinking water health advisory level for PFOA at .07 ppb — thousands of times lower than TERA’s number. As research has increasingly tied PFOA to kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disease, immune deficiency and other health problems, several regulatory agencies have arrived at safe drinking water levels that are even tinier fractions of TERA’s. Minnesota, for instance, recently proposed a level of .035 ppb. Vermont set an even lower drinking water standard of .02 ppb. And New Jersey has proposed, though not yet officially set, a level of .014.
Attorneys investigating how the consultants arrived at 150 ppb were unable to obtain the notes from the discussions that led to it. A science adviser at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection later admitted that she had shredded documents from the meeting and that the state agency had a “standard practice and policy of destroying documents they anticipate might be the subject of a subpoena in this litigation,” according to a court document.
In 2015, DuPont was found liable for negligence in the case of a woman who developed kidney cancer after drinking water contaminated by PFOA. The company was ordered to pay $1.6 million in damages.
If confirmed by the Senate, the man who helped put forward the extremely high level of PFOA contamination would oversee the implementation of the recently overhauled chemical safety law, the Toxic Substances Control Act. In that role, Dourson could decide which chemicals are subject to the high priority reviews laid out in the new law, how many company-requested risk evaluations the EPA will grant, and how the EPA will use its newly expanded authority to test chemicals. Dourson, who has worked for Dow, will also be in a position to make decisions about the pesticide chlorpyrifos, a chemical manufactured by Dow that the EPA was poised to ban before Trump took office.
Dourson has worked for a variety of other government agencies, industry groups, and companies, including the Petroleum High Production Volume Testing Group, the American Flame Retardant panel of the American Chemistry Council, and the Brominated Flame Retardant Industry Panel.
The EPA issued a press release on Monday with the headline “Widespread Praise for Dr. Michael Dourson.” Among the accolades it presented was one from Samuel M. Cohen, who along with Dourson was a witness for DuPont in the kidney cancer trial over PFOA and also co-authored a paper with Dourson that was paid for by the American Chemistry Council. Cohen described Dourson as “a leader in the field of risk assessment” and “well suited for the position of assistant administrator for the EPA.”
Michael Dourson and the EPA did not respond to a request for comment.
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/21/trumps-epa-chemical-safety-nominee-was-in-the-business-of-blessing-pollution/
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EPA Chemical Safety Nominee Aided DuPont in Teflon Scandal
Jul 24, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Bill Walker
Michael Dourson, President Trump’s expected nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety office, has made a career of helping industry stave off or weaken regulations on toxic chemicals. Particularly disturbing is his work on behalf of PFOA, a notorious carcinogenic compound formerly used by DuPont to make Teflon – a chemical that, if Dourson is confirmed, he will be in charge of regulating.
In 1981, DuPont received secret studies from 3M, which made PFOA, that found birth defects in the eyes of rats whose mothers were dosed with it and closely related chemicals during pregnancy. Later that year, a DuPont worker in its Teflon plant in near Parkersburg, W.Va., gave birth to a son with multiple facial defects. Alarmed, DuPont transferred all female workers out of the plant.
In 1988, according to a just-published report by Sharon Lerner of The Intercept,DuPont scientists determined that a “safe” level of exposure to PFOA was 1 part per billion, or ppb – about one drop of water in an Olympic-size swimming pool. The company didn’t disclose this finding to area water utilities, although it knew PFOA from the plant was contaminating tap water in nearby towns.
Over the next decade-plus, new evidence continued to emerge that PFOA was even more hazardous than the DuPont scientists thought, as workers in the Parkersburg plant and at a 3M’s PFOA plant were found to have an excess of deaths from cancer. By 2000, PFOA contamination of Parkersburg-area drinking water had erupted into a public health crisis, and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection asked DuPont to find a consulting company to lead a study to determine a safe level for the chemical in public drinking water supplies.
As Lerner reports, DuPont recommended TERA, the science-for-hire firm founded and led by Dourson. An internal DuPont email described why Dourson and TERA were right for the job:
I’ve talked to a number of colleagues that use external toxicity peer review services to see who they like as contractors. . . [T]he common theme that emerged was that TERA (i.e. Michael Dourson) was the leading choice. . . . [TERA has] a very good reputation among the folks that are still in the business of blessing criteria.
The email went on to extol TERA’s ability “to assemble a package and then sell this to EPA, or whomever we desired.”
In 2002, the team led by Dourson and TERA published a toxicity assessment that put forth a “safe” level for the compound in drinking water of 150 ppb – 150 times higher than what DuPont’s own scientists concluded 14 years earlier. The 2002 study was commissioned by the state and included scientists from the EPA, but was paid for by DuPont.
Time has shown that the 150 ppb safety level determined by Dourson’s team in 2002 is even more woefully lax.
It is 375 times higher than the EPA’s 2009 health advisory for short-term exposure to PFOA in drinking water, and more than 2,000 times higher than the revised advisory level the EPA issued in 2016. Further, it is 150,000 times higher than the level deemed safe by a 2015 study by Phillipe Grandjean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Richard Clapp of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.
But despite the mounting evidence of PFOA’s hazards at ever-smaller concentrations, Dourson has continued his DuPont-bankrolled efforts to downplay its dangers.
In 2015, DuPont paid Dourson to testify in its defense of a lawsuit brought by an Ohio woman who alleged she contracted kidney cancer from drinking water contaminated by PFOA emitted from DuPont’s Parkersburg plant.
A federal jury in Columbus, Ohio, relying on an independent science panel’s finding that linked PFOA to kidney and testicular cancer, found DuPont liable and awarded the woman $1.6 million in damages. This was the first test case in a proceeding combining the personal injury claims of more than 3,500 people in West Virginia and Ohio, which DuPont and its spinoff company Chemours settled in February for $671 million.
If Dourson’s nomination is confirmed by the Senate, he’ll be taking the helm of the EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention as crucial decisions loom about PFOA and related chemicals in the family of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs.
Because of their nonstick, waterproof and grease-repellent properties, these and closely related chemicals were used in hundreds of consumer products and industrial applications, including cookware, outdoor clothing, food packaging and firefighting foam. The Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention have found PFOA, or its cousin PFOS, in the bodies of virtually all Americans, and these chemicals can be passed through the umbilical cord from mother to fetus.
In 2015, a string of towns in New York, Vermont and New Hampshire tested their drinking water and found high levels of PFAS contamination. At about the same time, PFOS from firefighting foam was discovered in the water near hundreds of military bases, airports and fire department training sites. Last month, research from EWG and Northeastern University in Boston detailed PFC pollution in tap water supplies for 15 million Americans in 27 states and from more than four dozen industrial and military sources from Maine to California.
Despite widespread contamination and mounting evidence of health hazards, there are no federal legal limits for PFOA and PFOS, or other PFAS chemicals, in drinking water. After persistent pressure from contaminated communities and elected officials, last year the EPA dramatically lowered its nonbinding health advisory level to 70 parts per trillion for either PFOA or PFOS, or the two combined.
There is no ongoing nationwide testing of PFCs in drinking water, and the EPA has said it could be 2019 or later before it decides whether to set a national drinking water standard for PFOA and PFOS. In the meantime, several members of Congress have introduced bills that would require federal standards for PFCs or further study on their health effects: Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, both of New York, have introduced a bill that would require the EPA to set drinking water standards for PFOA and PFOS.Reps. Frank Pallone and Josh Gottheimer, both of New Jersey, have also each introduced legislation that would require the EPA to create an enforceable standard for perfluorinated chemicals in drinking water within two years.Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York has introduced legislation that would require the CDC to study the health impacts of PFCs and similar chemicals in drinking water.Three House members from Pennsylvania – Reps. Brendan Boyle, Brian Fitzpatrick and Pat Meehan – succeeded last week in attaching amendments to a military spending bill that would require the Defense Department to fund a comprehensive CDC study of PFOA and PFOS’ health effects.
Dourson’s work for DuPont has continually placed him in opposition to the science that clearly shows PFOA and PFOS are dangerous carcinogens in critical need of regulation. There is no reason to believe that if he is placed in charge the nation’s chemical safety that he will see the light. What’s more, at the EPA he would be teamed with former chemical industry bigwig Nancy Beck, appointed in May to be an assistant administrator of the chemical safety office.
The Senate should reject Dourson’s nomination.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2017/07/epa-chemical-safety-nominee-aided-dupont-teflon-scandal#.WXWtvvmGOM8
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Jul 21, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Robert Coleman
This week we marked the six-month mark of the Trump presidency, which has been nothing short of an unprecedented assault on children’s health. Some of the low points of the half-year mark for the Trump team include pulling clean water protections for 117 million Americans, cancelling a scheduled ban of a nerve-damaging pesticide and slashing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency – including its funding to protect children from lead poisoning.
“If the pace of President Trump’s first six months continues in removing common-sense health protections and allowing increased toxic pollution in our water, air and consumer products, the stark truth is that more Americans will die,” said EWG Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Scott Faber. “Trump’s battering of these regulatory safeguards is a cold-hearted attempt to side-swipe public health and the Environmental Protection Agency into a ditch in order to distract his shrinking base of supporters from his unraveling presidency.”
On a separate startling note, research out of North Carolina found the deadly carcinogen asbestos in cosmetics products marketed to tweens. This is a stark reminder that lawmakers must take action to prevent the most vulnerable among us from harmful ingredients in everyday products. Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, have introduced the Personal Care Products Safety Act, which would give the Food and Drug Administration the ability to better regulate such products.
Also this week, EWG has been following the nomination of chemical industry ally Michael Dourson to a key EPA position with enormous responsibility to protect children from toxic chemicals. The Trump team has picked Dourson to be the next head of the EPA’s chemical and pesticides office. Dourson has been very closely linked to the chemical industry for decades, and EWG has long documented his fights against clean water rules and children’s health protections.
News came out today that Dourson and his science-for-hire firm aided DuPont in defending cancer-causing nonstick chemicals that were found in drinking water throughout the nation.
For additional coverage on those stories and more, here’s some news you can use going into the weekend.
Asbestos in Children’s Products
Huffington Post: Parents Beware: Asbestos May Be In More Toys Than You Think
Just two years ago, the Environmental Working Group Action Fund (EWG) discovered asbestos in children’s crayons manufactured in China and imported to the United States. Multiple crayon brands were yanked from store shelves in order to prioritize our family’s safety before corporate profits.
WKRC: Asbestos found in department store makeup
The best advice for parents is to carefully read the ingredients on the products. The only way to know if makeup is asbestos free is through tests. Organizations such as the Environmental Working Group can tell you which products are safe and free of toxins.
WTVD: Company issues response after I-Team finds asbestos in girl's makeup
There are websites you can use, such as http://www.ewg.org/, which verifies products that are toxic free and safe to use in your home. On this site you can search for different types of makeup, food sources, and household cleaning products and see how what you are using rates on the EWG scale of low, medium, or high hazard. Reprinted by ABC 11.
TCP in the California Central Valley
NBC News: Cancer-Causing Chemical TCP Plagues California Drinking Water
The precedent set by California on Tuesday could be important nationwide. The Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization, collected data from water utilities nationwide and concluded that TCP has been detected in at least 17 states, serving millions of people. EWG currently lists 13 on its website, but will be updating the list to include four more states. Reprinted by MSN and five other outlets.
KNTV: State Water Board Sets Limit for Cancer-Causing Chemical 1 Million Californians Could be Drinking in Harmful Amounts
According to the advocacy organization Environmental Working Group, California is not the only state with troubling amounts of TCP in drinking water. The group collected water data from water utilities across the country and found the chemical in at least 17 different states.
EPA Nominee Michael Dourson
Chemical Watch: NGOs question Dourson's ties to industry, conflicts of interest
Fellow NGO Environmental Working Group said that in the more than two decades Dr. Dourson has spent away from the EPA, he has served as a "scientist for hire", working for chemical companies.
Toxic Substances Control Act
Chemical Watch: House committee calls for EPA to delay TSCA section 6 rules
Melanie Benesh, legislative attorney at the NGO Environmental Working Group (EWG), called it an "outrageous demand". It "reaffirms the hostility" toward environmental protections being seen from both Congress and the White House, "in the name of protecting the profits of the chemicals industry", she added.
Arsenic in Rice
Prevention.com: 6 Dangerous Food Prep Mistakes That Make You Sick
Environmental Working Group, a consumer-advocacy group, suggests rinsing brown rice through before you cook it (as well as these other strategies to keep your family arsenic-free). A good rinse could lower arsenic levels by 30-40%. (This doesn't work with white rice.) For babies, consider orange vegetables as a first food instead of rice-based cereal, suggests EWG, or cook your rice in a coffee pot. Really.
Bug Repellent
Atlanta Journal Constitution: Natural protection from mosquitos and sun
Although the Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Environmental Working Group all say that the best protection against insect bites is DEET at 20 to 30 percent protection, many people who want natural-based insect repellents shy away from it. Originally ran in the Chicago Tribune. Also reprinted by the Palm Beach Post and My Daytona Daily News.
Chlorpyrifos
Parents.com: Pediatricians Are Protesting as the EPA Reverses Pesticide Ban
Last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) issued a joint letter to Scott Pruitt, the EPA's administrator, expressing their concern that the proposal to ban chlorpyrifos had been tabled.
Cosmetics
Bustle: 15 Scary Ways You Didn’t Realize You’re Putting Yourself In Danger Every Day
"According to a study by the Environmental Working Group, women in the US apply an average of 168 chemicals to their faces and bodies every single day," Diane Elizabeth, beauty expert and founder of Skin Care Ox, tells Bustle. She suggests reading the ingredient labels and, if you don't recognize one, to do a quick search online.
Popsugar: These 28 Drugstore Finds Prove Nontoxic Makeup Doesn't Have to Be Expensive
The nonprofit Environmental Working Group also researches environmental health issues, like pesticides, GMOs, and chemicals in consumer goods. As part of its work, EWG powers the Skin Deep database, cataloging more than 60,000 cosmetic products, giving each a ranking from one to 10. Ratings of one and two indicate a low hazard.
Phthalates
MindBodyGreen: A New Study Shows This Hormone Disrupter Is In A LOT Of Food (Even Healthy Kinds)
Switch personal care products to phthalate-free by checking out resources like the Environmental Working Group.
EWG's Consumer Guide to Seafood
MindBodyGreen: Vitamin Sea: 9 Next-Level Ways To Use The Healing Magic Of The Ocean
Fish such as wild-caught salmon, sardines, rainbow trout, Atlantic mackerel, and shellfish like mussels and oysters are rated by the Environmental Working Group as the best fish for you and the environment for their high omega-3 fats, low mercury levels, and sustainability factors. The ones you want to avoid due to higher levels of toxins are king mackerel, marlin, orange roughy, shark, swordfish, and tilefish.
Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in ProduceTM
Daily Mail: Why you should only buy organic strawberries: The summer-favorite fruit contains AT LEAST 20 pesticides
Researchers from the Environmental Working Group analyzed 48 types of popular non-organically grown fruit and vegetables. The analysis was based on more than 36,000 samples collected by the The United States Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.
Huffington Post: The Health Benefits Of Strawberries For Older Adults
Strawberries hold the dubious distinction of ranking first on the Environmental Working Group's Dirty Dozen List, which means that they have the highest pesticide content of any fruit or vegetable. As such, you definitely should buy organic. If you take beta blockers, be sure to minimize your strawberry consumption because the fruit contains high levels of potassium.
EWG’s Guide to Sunscreen
Dallas Morning News: What you don't know about spray-on sunscreen could burn you
"It's a flawed product," says Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that researches public health issues. Lunder, who wrote the group's 2017 Guide to Sunscreens, says her organization thinks so poorly of spray sunscreens that it refuses to rank which brands perform better than others. Studies show sprays "are basically the worst format of sunscreen" when it comes to protecting your skin, Lunder says.
Golf Digest: Healthy Living: Nine Suncare Essentials
Generally speaking, wearing any sunscreen is better than none at all. But many products come with ingredients that are bad for you, says the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit health-research organization. Look for titanium dioxide or zinc oxide on your sunscreen's list of active ingredients. If it lists anything other than those two things, don't say we didn't warn you.
Huffington Post: More Information Is Always Better, Right?
After settling on a sunscreen that is approved (for now) by the Environmental Working Group and Consumer Reports I decide to take the kids to that park with the lake beach.
US News & World Report: How to Choose a Sunscreen That's Healthy and Effective
While we can turn to sunscreens to help protect ourselves from some of the negative side effects of too much sun, all sunscreens are not created equal. Specifically, a report from the Environmental Working Group found that nearly 75 percent of sunscreens don't work. So, how do you choose a sunscreen that's effective and healthy? Start by following these guidelines.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2017/07/ewg-news-roundup-721-trump-s-troubling-6-months-asbestos-children-s-cosmetics-and#.WXWtxvmGOM8
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California Proposes Clarifications To Prop 65 Warning Requirements
Jul 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Oehha) has proposed a series of amendments on how regulated parties must provide 'clear and reasonable' warning under Proposition 65.
The modifications come in response to a number of inquiries regarding the regulatory amendments made last year on how warning must be provided for exposure to a chemical listed under Prop 65 as a carcinogen or reproductive toxicant. In an initial statement of reason, Oehha says the proposed changes are "necessary to add clarity and specificity" for businesses preparing to comply with the new regulations by the 30 August 2018 deadline.
The clarifying amendments would affect several sections of the Article 6 regulations, including:consumer product exposure warnings, such as methods of transmission, content and responsibility to provide them;furniture product and vehicle exposure warnings;food and beverage exposure warnings for restaurants; anddefinitions.
In separate notices, the agency has also proposed adopting tailored warnings for exposures to listed chemicals at hotels and other lodging establishments, and to establish default natural background levels for arsenic in rice.
Comments on the proposals will be accepted until 7 September. A public hearing will be scheduled on request, provided one is received no later than 23 August.
https://chemicalwatch.com/57809/california-proposes-clarifications-to-prop-65-warning-requirements
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NGOs Urge Labelling, Restriction Of Nanomaterials In French Consumer Products
Jul 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
A group of French NGOs has written to the country's prime minister and several ministers calling for labelling and restriction of nanomaterials "as a matter of urgency".
In an open letter, the leaders of eight environmental NGOs say a national strategy on nanomaterials is essential, adding "unanimity is impossible" on the subject and the government should instead apply the precautionary principle to protect the public as soon as possible.
The NGOs are part of a nanomaterials working group established almost two years ago under the French environment ministry. There are "no tangible results to date, nor a clear signal of a willingness to take concrete action in the short term," they say. Officially nearly 500,000 tonnes of nanomaterials are imported or manufactured in France – but the NGOs say is well below reality.
They are calling for the mandatory nano-labelling of all consumer goods. And labelling obligations must be better monitored, be accompanied by additional information measures and be promoted at European level, they add.
In addition, the government must ensure "true traceability" of nanomaterials and the products that contain them. It can do this by improving the functionality and the accessibility of the French register of nanomaterials R-nano, the letter says.
"France did not wait for Europe to create the R-nano registry," it says, and given that the European Commission last year rejected the creation of a European register, "it is time to make improvements to the R-nano registry".
Instead Echa launched an EU observatory for nanomaterials (EUON) in the form of a public website aimed at increasing transparency of information on nanomaterials on the EU market.
As part of a potential French national strategy on nanomaterials, a nano taskforce must be set up with a dedicated contact person to interact with the NGOs, the letter says.
The leaders of the following organisations signed the letter:the Center for International Environmental Law (Ciel);the Association for Monitoring and Informing Civic Societies on the Challenges of Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies (AVICENN);the French Nature Environment (FNE);the General Organisation of Consumers of Meurthe-et-Moselle, Families of France (ORGECO);Action for the Environment (EPA);Women Engage for a Common Future France (WECF France);the Committee for Sustainable Development in Health (C2DS); andthe Centre for Information on the Environment and Action for Health (CIEAS).
After a delay of three and a half years, the European Commission published its first version of an inventory of nanomaterials in cosmetics on the EU market in June.
In the same month, German speaking countries called for nano-specific adaptations of the legal framework of REACH by 2020.
https://chemicalwatch.com/57808/ngos-urge-labelling-restriction-of-nanomaterials-in-french-consumer-products
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(ACC Mentioned) US Gulf Petrochemical Investment A Boon For Project Cargo
Jul 23, 2017 | Journal Of Commerce
By Joseph Bonney
Project cargo shippers and carriers hope to benefit from continuing petrochemical investment in the US Gulf, a rare bright spot in a generally weak global breakbulk market, and from increased shipments of large construction modules.
Gulf ports and transportation service providers in the region have had plenty of business during the last several years. Ample volumes of shale gas have provided petrochemical manufacturers with low-cost feedstocks and producers with natural gas for export.
As multibillion-dollar projects from this wave of construction hit or approach completion, talk has turned to prospects for a second wave of construction.
“The current situation in the United States is playing out similarly to what occurred in the Middle East decades ago, when the region emerged as a low-cost supplier due to competitive feedstock. As a result of the shale gas revolution, that feedstock advantage is shifting toward the US,” Neil Chapman, president of ExxonMobil Chemical, said at the recent Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference.
ExxonMobil this year announced plans to invest $20 billion into new and expanded Gulf Coast production, primarily polyethylene.
However, Chapman told Chemical Week, a sister unit of JOC.com within IHS Markit, that he does not agree with the concept of first or second waves. “I think it will be a continuous progress,” he said. “Some of the announcements that have been made for new projects are not likely to be built to the same scale or time.”
Others agree that the next round of construction activity, while still robust, may not match what the industry has seen during the last few years. “We do think a second wave is coming, but we think it will be smaller than the first one,” said Manav Lohiti, Dow Chemical’s commercial director of US olefins, who spoke at a recent Petrochemical Insight conference in New Orleans. “We are still optimistic about the US feedstock position.”
The American Chemistry Council reports that $85 billion worth of petrochemical projects in the US, mostly along the Gulf Coast, have been started or completed since 2010. Announcements or starts of new projects by Dow, ExxonMobil, and other companies are replenishing the pipeline.
“I have heard people say that we should not be talking about a second wave of investment, because it is not just going to be a second wave. It is going to be a continuous flow of investment in chemical manufacturing in the US for a significant period of time,” said Cal Dooley, the council’s president.
The new and ongoing projects provide welcome business for breakbulk and project carriers, but have not been enough to restore the industry’s balance of vessel capacity and cargo demand. Low oil and commodity prices have cut deeply into energy- and mining-related breakbulk volume in many regions.
Ed Bastian, director of global sales of BBC Chartering USA, said the carrier’s US Gulf import business has been strong, but is largely one-way. He said BBC and other carriers have had to accept bulk or other less-desirable shipments to help offset vessel repositioning.
Our company has anywhere from 25 to 30 ships a month coming in from different parts of the world, but there’s just no export cargo right now,” Bastian said at the JOC’s recent Gulf Shipping Conference. “When oil and gas was strong, that was supporting the export market and providing a balance, but that balance has gone away.”
http://www.joc.com/breakbulk/us-gulf-petrochemical-investment-boon-project-cargo_20170723.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Howard Swint: There’s a Better Way Than Just Burning Off Excess Natural Gas Liquids
Jul 24, 2017 | Charleston Gazette Mail
By Howard Swint
Could the development of an underground ethane storage facility, located in the heart of the Marcellus and Utica shale natural gas formations, be justified from an environmental perspective?
Absolutely, especially when taking into account that the facility would dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by redirecting the massive amounts of ethane produced in the area away from its use as a fossil fuel and toward that as a feedstock for the plastics industry.
As background, ethane is the predominate liquid constituent of wet natural gas and the essential feedstock for a dizzying array of consumer products developed downstream in the petrochemical and plastics value chain.
From a commodities perspective, ethane and related natural gas liquids (NGLs) have significant industrial worth, but their actual market value is determined by contract delivery points, such as Mont Belvieu, Texas, where composite prices are determined for exchanges.
As the Appalachian region does not have sufficient storage capacity to warrant an exchange, the massive amounts of NGLs prevalent in the Marcellus and Utica shale fields are greatly devalued because of the pipeline transportation costs required to get them to market.
This has historically resulted in “ethane rejection,” whereby the liquids remain in the natural gas stream and are effectively wasted as fuel for power plants or even flared off in remote regions, resulting in millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.
With every barrel of NGLs diverted from the manufacturing supply chain, the greater the need for more exploration, drilling, production and even new pipeline construction to replace the lost feedstock.
Correspondingly, the concept of near-source production economics holds that significant efficiencies and their environmental benefits can be further realized when vertically integrated industries collocate between feedstock supply and end-consumer product markets, primarily from supply chain logistics.
The geographical location of the Marcellus and Utica shale fields is the key, as the Midwest has the greatest concentrations of secondary plastics industries in the United States, as well as a clustering of auto parts suppliers that are projected to become the predominate users of high-end plastics for years to come.
This is due primarily to federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards that necessitate lighter vehicles to satisfy increasingly stringent MPG ratings which further results in significantly lower carbon emissions nationally and internationally.
West Virginia can capitalize on our abundant supply of NGLs for industrial development by addressing the intermediate infrastructure gap that has formed since the region eclipsed production levels of other states closer to the Gulf Coast but for whom the exchange mechanism still provides skewed economic advantages.
The key is the development of an interstate ethane bulk storage facility in depleted salt caverns that can store the massive amounts of NGLs produced regionally and that can also serve as a new exchange that satisfies long-term supply contract guarantees industrial users require.
It would correctly revalue regional NGLs within the marketplace, restore competitive advantages — from wellhead through the entire manufacturing cycle — and dramatically reduce ethane rejection, along with its diseconomies and negative environmental consequences.
Near-source efficiencies would also accrue to other industries that use high-end, ethane-derived feedstock such as polypropylenes and elastomers such as butyl rubber that, as with plastics, we all use in consumer products.
Indeed, it could be the foundation for “$35.8 billion in new chemical and plastics industry investment (based on) 5 ethane crackers” by 2025, according to the American Chemistry Council.
Howard Swint is a commercial property broker in Charleston.
http://www.wvgazettemail.com/gazette-op-ed-commentaries/20170722/howard-swint-theres-a-better-way-than-just-burning-off-excess-natural-gas-liquids-
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Republicans Brewing Russian Scandal To Target Greens
Jul 22, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre
Republicans are trying to conjure up a Russian scandal they can get behind.
GOP House members and at least one Trump Cabinet member are pushing yearsold allegations from conservative activists that Russia has funneled money to U.S. environmental groups to oppose fracking. The story has reappeared in conservative circles in recent weeks — a respite, perhaps, from the steady drip-drip of news reports about dealings between Russians and President Donald Trump’s inner circle.
Allegations have circulated for years that Moscow has sought to discourage European countries from developing their own natural gas supplies as an alternative to Russian fuel. And conservatives have sought to extend those concerns to the U.S. — though there's little but innuendo to base them on.
But the rumors got new life in late June, when House Science Chairman Lamar Smith and fellow Texas Republican Rep. Randy Weber asked Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to investigate whether the Kremlin is bankrolling green campaigns against the fracking technology that helped the U.S. overtake Russia in gas production.
Among other material, Smith and Weber cited articles in conservative news publications and an alleged Hillary Clinton speech published by WikiLeaks — part of a trove of stolen Clinton campaign documents that U.S. intelligence agencies have linked to Russia’s election-meddling efforts.
The reports, the Republican lawmakers wrote in the letter to Mnuchin, suggest “that Russia is also behind the radical statements and vitriol directed at the U.S. fossil fuel sector.”
Green groups dismissed Smith’s allegations as an attempt to divert attention from all the news surrounding Trump and Russia.
“If Congressional Republicans are so concerned about Russian influence, they should start seriously investigating that country's interference in our election, not attacking long-standing environmental organizations," said Melinda Pierce, legislative director for the Sierra Club, one of the groups Smith and conservatives have accused of potentially taking Russian money.
The League of Conservation Voters, another group named in Smith’s letter, also blasted the Science Committee’s allegations.
“This is false," LCV spokesman David Willett said. "We have no connections to Russia and have been an effective advocate for environmental protection for over 45 years. This seems like nothing more than an attempt at distraction away from the Trump campaign’s well-publicized interactions with Russian interests to influence the election.”
Still, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal op-ed page have both run items about the committee’s letter, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry lent his voice to the effort when a Fox Business anchor asked whether he supported an investigation.
“Absolutely," Perry said in the July 11 broadcast. "Steve is a very capable and very focused business individual who knows that this type of activity has to be investigated, has to be halted.”
Spokespeople for the Energy Department and Treasury Department did not respond to questions. A White House spokesperson did not reply to questions about whether the allegations had made their way to Trump.
Anti-fracking sentiment in the U.S. started bubbling up among U.S. environmental groups as soon as the oil and gas production method started surging in the late 2000s, with the documentary "Gasland" appearing in theaters in 2010 after a year and a half in production. Much of that opposition was driven by local activists in new gas hot spots like Pennsylvania who complained about threats to their drinking water, while major national environmental groups like the Sierra Club were slower to take up the cry.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who oversees an economy almost totally dependent on oil and gas exports, has also slagged fracking technology. He once said that fracking makes "black stuff" come out of people's water faucets, according to a New Yorker report.
Still, there is no evidence that Russian money has gone to U.S. green groups, at least on the national level, said Brenda Shaffer, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Eurasian, Russian and Eastern European Studies. And there is even less evidence that any money would have been well spent, given how hard it would be to push widespread fracking bans through the myriad of local, state and federal governments involved in permitting, she added.
"It would be almost impossible to prevent fracking in the United States," Shaffer told POLITICO.
The evidence the committee cites includes comments that former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made at a London-based think tank in 2014, when he said he believed Russia was working with environmental groups in Europe to oppose shale gas development.
“Other officials have indicated the same scheme is unfolding in the U.S.,” Smith's letter goes on to say — though from there the trail becomes murkier.
The letter also cites a speech that Clinton allegedly delivered in Canada in 2014, according to Clinton campaign emails published by WikiLeaks, in which the former secretary of State supposedly said she had encountered "phony environmental groups” that opposed pipelines and fracking. The emails were part of a cache of Democratic documents that U.S. intelligence officials believe were originally pilfered by Kremlin-linked hackers.
“I'm a big environmentalist, but these were funded by Russians," Clinton says in the alleged transcript.
But the text does not indicate whether Clinton — who promoted shale gas drilling in Europe — was referring to environmental groups in Europe or the United States. A Clinton campaign aide did not answer questions about the veracity and the context of the speech. The campaign has refused to confirm or deny the content of any of the leaked materials.
Still, the alleged Clinton quotes have taken off in conservative news outlets, with The Daily Caller and Washington Times including them in articles published in the past year. Smith, in turn, cited those articles in the footnotes of his letter to Treasury.
"It’s a theory, but the reasoning behind it makes sense," said a committee aide, who requested anonymity. “The chairman is saying there’s data points pointing to this theory, and he’s saying the Treasury secretary can shine some light on this. This isn’t out of left field and crazy.”
Science Committee aides also argued that last year’s national intelligence report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election supports the concerns raised in Smith’s letter. However, the intelligence report doesn’t allege any Kremlin outreach to U.S. environmental groups.
The intelligence report’s non-classified, 14-page version makes reference to anti-fracking programming broadcast by Kremlin-controlled news channel RT. “This is likely reflective of the Russian Government's concern about the impact of fracking and U.S. natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom's profitability,” the report says.
Much of the rest of the case that Russia funneled money to U.S. green groups comes from a 2014 report created by the Environmental Policy Alliance, which describes itself as "devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups."
The group shares a Washington, D.C., address and a phone number with a public relations firm run by Richard Berman, a lawyer and former lobbyist who has also created issue groups such as the Center for Union Facts and Center for Consumer Freedom — prompting liberal critics to nickname him “the astroturf kingpin.” CBS News once called him "Dr. Evil" in a 2011 piece focusing on his lobbying efforts on unpopular issues, including a campaign against Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
A representative of the Environmental Policy Alliance confirmed that Berman's firm manages the group.
The group’s report and Smith’s letter focus on $23 million that a Bermuda-based philanthropic firm, Klein Ltd., donated in 2010 and 2011 to the San Francisco-based Sea Change Foundation, according to information disclosed in Sea Change's IRS tax forms. Sea Change then awarded around $55 million in each of those years to the Sierra Club Foundation, U.S. Climate Action Network, Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups to promote energy efficiency and climate change-related operations, according to its IRS tax filings.
“Although the source of Klein’s capital has not been documented,” the Science Committee’s letter says, the panel alleged that various corporate and personal connections “strongly suggest” that the money originated with “the Russian government and energy sector.”
But a lawyer representing Klein told POLITICO that none of the money came from sources connected to Russia. And a Sea Change spokesperson said none of its donations to environmental groups were earmarked for opposition to fracking.
"The Klein Foundation grants were given as general support and no requirement was made that the funds be used for specific projects, programs, or activities of the Sea Change Foundation," the spokesperson said.
Berman’s report draws on a court case filed in the British Virgin Islands in the mid-2000s that resulted in a money laundering conviction against IPOC Group, an entity owned by Leonid Reiman, Russia's former telecommunications minister and adviser to Putin, according to an outline of the case maintained by the World Bank. Roderick Forrest, a lawyer for Wakefield Quin, a law firm representing Klein Ltd., was one of IPOC's directors, according to case documents.
The House committee did not contact Klein as part of its fact-finding, a committee aide said. But Forrest railed against the accusations and said the company was considering legal action following the committee’s letter.
“The allegations are completely false and irresponsible,” Forrest told POLITICO. “We can state categorically that at no point did this philanthropic organization receive or expend funds from Russian sources or Russian-connected sources and Klein has no Russian connection whatsoever.”
The Sierra Club’s Pierce also denied that any of the money it received from Sea Change ultimately came from Moscow.
"We have confirmed that the origin of these funds is a private U.S. donor who cares about climate change and has invested in the work the Sierra Club does to tackle the climate crisis and advance the clean energy economy — not from Russia," she said.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2017/07/republicans-brewing-russian-scandal-of-their-own-to-target-environmental-groups-159632
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White House Plan Would Scrap Hundreds of Regulations, Including Clean Power Plan, NSPS Updates
Jul 21, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
The Trump administration, following through on a promise to cut regulations, including many made during the Obama era, unveiled plans to repeal or scuttle hundreds of existing or planned rules across the federal government, including many that affect the oil and natural gas industry.
On Thursday, the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a Unified Agenda (UA) requiring long-term actions by numerous government departments and agencies, including FERC, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Interior and Energy departments.
Altogether, the UA calls for the elimination of 860 pending regulations -- 469 through an outright withdrawal and 391 through reconsideration.
"By amending and eliminating regulations that are ineffective, duplicative, and obsolete, the administration can promote economic growth and innovation and protect individual liberty," the OMB said.
Clean Power Plan, NSPS updates targeted
Among the 63 long-term actions required of the EPA, the Trump administration proposed that the agency withdraw the Clean Power Plan "on the grounds that it exceeds the statutory authority provided under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act." A separate action calls for the EPA to review its 2016 New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), which were designed to reduce methane, volatile organic compounds and toxic air pollutants.
The UA did not specify a timeline for either action to be taken.
A 21-page inactive action list, released in tandem with the UA, shows that a proposed rule to add natural gas processing facilities to the list of industrial sectors currently required to send information annually for the agency's Toxics Release Inventory public database has also been mothballed. The GPA Midstream Association had opposed the rule.
"This proposed rule was duplicative, unnecessarily administratively burdensome, costly, and based on bad data," GPA Midstream CEO Mark Sutton said in a statement Thursday. "We are thrilled with EPA's decision to move this rule to the inactive list and grateful that they listened to our concerns."
Additionally, the UA calls for EPA to issue a final rule to update specific elements of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System regulations by December 2018. The agency will also update the codifying programs for the Underground Injection Control program used by the states. The latter is being performed to ensure the EPA is prepared to bring a direct enforcement action against a regulated entity, either at the request of a state or if EPA determines a state has failed to bring an enforcement action on its own.
EPA first unveiledthe 2016 NSPS during the Obama administration. The rules were designed to reduce methane, volatile organic compounds and toxic air pollutants, and cover the fugitive emissions, pneumatic pump and professional engineer certification requirements.
Last April, the EPA said it would reconsider the rules to comply with an executive order (EO) signed by President Trump on March 28. The EO included a directive for EPA to immediately review regulations on energy sources, and then to either suspend, revise or rescind them.
The EPA issued a 90-day administrative stay of the rules on May 31. In order to ensure against a gap in the stay during the reconsideration process, the agency proposed an additional three-month stay, followed by another lasting two years. A federal appeals court removed the stay earlier this month, prompting the EPA to take the unusual step of asking the court to recall its mandate, thereby giving the agency more time to weigh its options.
At the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the inactive action list also shows the Trump administration has mothballed a rule [RIN 1902-AE30] governing capacity transfers on intrastate natural gas pipelines, and a separate rule [1902-AE48] covering revised public utility filing requirements for electric quarterly reports.
None of the 10 long-term actions required of the Interior Department appear to directly affect the oil and gas industry. Nor do an additional 14 long-term actions placed by the UA on the Energy Department.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/111178-white-house-plan-would-scrap-hundreds-of-regulations-including-clean-power-plan-nsps-updates
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Trump's America-First Pipeline Plan Draws Ire of American Oil
Jul 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Donald Trump's allies in the oil industry are warning the president that his bid to boost U.S. steelmakers could backfire against their efforts to achieve his goal of “American energy dominance.”
The intense lobbying effort comes as the Commerce Department faces a July 23 deadline to give the president a plan to require oil and gas pipelines use American-made steel, an idea Trump embraced in the initial days of his presidency. While the U.S. has imposed “Buy American” rules on government purchases for decades, it would be unprecedented to force those obligations on privately funded, commercial projects.
The blueprint from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will set the stage for further protests from the oil industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and developers, including The Williams Companies Inc. and Energy Transfer Partners.
“A core feature of the U.S. free enterprise system” is that “private businesses should be free to make purchasing decisions on their own,” the Chamber of Commerce, the biggest-spending business lobby in Washington, said in its comments to Ross.
The effort illustrates how Trump's “America-first” agenda pits his allies against one another and underscores the challenges of fulfilling the president's protectionist stance. As with Trump's promises to restrict immigration from Muslim-majority nations, rework former President Barack Obama's health care law and overhaul the tax code, the reality of implementing this idea has been more difficult than the president initially posited.
Trump kicked off the pipeline-focused effort during his fourth day in office, by issuing a presidential memorandum compelling the Commerce Department to determine how to require American material in all, retrofitted, repaired or expanded U.S. pipelines “to the extent permitted by law.” Under Trump's directive, iron and steel only qualifies as American-made if it is fully produced in the United States, from its initial melting to the later application of coatings. The memo was hastily produced, not subject to lengthy administration debate or scrutiny.
Separately, the Trump administration is investigating whether foreign steel threatens U.S. national security—a probe that could lead to tariffs or quotas on those imports.
While pipeline developers have praised Trump's approval of projects that stalled under Obama, including TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL and Energy Transfer's Dakota Access, they warn America-made requirements could undercut that progress. More than three quarters of pipe used in oil and gas projects begins as imported steel, according to one industry study.
“Fewer new pipeline projects would run counter to the Trump administration's goal of expanding U.S. energy production and infrastructure to support the economy, job growth and national security,” said a coalition of oil industry trade groups, including the American Petroleum Institute and the American Gas Association. Relying solely on U.S.-produced pipeline-quality steel and components “could lead to long construction delays and higher costs, potentially canceling planned pipeline projects or blocking new pipeline projects.“
Energy Transfer said that when it purchased pipe for three U.S. projects simultaneously, it effectively consumed the entire domestic capacity.
It's not clear how the U.S. government could enforce the mandate, though multiple federal agencies can play a role permitting pipeline projects and scrutinizing their operations.
Steel Dynamics Inc., one of the largest domestic steel producers, recommended the Trump administration impose an American-made requirement through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which reviews proposals to build interstate pipelines to ensure they comply with safety, security and environmental standards.
“Pipeline applications not using domestic pipe from domestic steel should be rejected unless an applicant proves that there is no available domestic pipe made from domestic steel that meets the pipeline's specifications,” Steel Dynamics told the Commerce Department in written comments.
Many steel producers, including ArcelorMittal USA LLC, Nucor Corp., and U.S. Steel Corp., say Trump's plans could help revive the industry, which is struggling to compete amid a worldwide glut of the product.
“At a time when the domestic steel industry faces unprecedented challenges resulting from massive global overcapacity and surges of unfairly traded imports, domestic preference provisions are even more critical to stimulating domestic production and employment throughout the steelmaking supply chain,” Nucor said in comments to Commerce.
But pipeline builders argue many steel mills have elected not to invest in producing a specialized pipe that meets industry standards for integrity and strength that make it usable in oil and gas pipelines. Fewer still produce large pipe with very thick walls—the kind typically used for long-distance projects. About 77 percent of steel used in U.S. pipelines today begins abroad—with roughly half of the pipe foreign sourced and the remaining half made in the U.S., using imported steel, according to a study from ICF International Inc. cited by the American Petroleum Institute.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing told the Trump administration it shouldn't be swayed by arguments there isn't enough capacity to churn out the steel pipe the oil and gas industry requires. Supporters point to Philadelphia-based Sunoco Logistics’ plans to fully source its 350-mile Mariner East 2 pipeline with 75,000 tons of domestically produced steel. That project is evidence that U.S. companies can meet the oil industry's needs, the manufacturing alliance said.
Buy America
“Buy America” preferences are now set for government-funded projects, such as highways and passenger-rail systems. But trade lawyers say putting similar requirements on commercial endeavors would be difficult—and might be illegal.
“Current law does not authorize the U.S. government to impose domestic-origin requirements on privately owned, operated and funded pipelines,” said Scott Lincicome, a trade attorney with White & Case LLP. It also is inconsistent with the rules of the World Trade Organization—the same forum the U.S. has used to object to other countries’ local-content requirements.
“The United States is one of the top complainants when it comes to local-content requirements around the world, so it would be quite a reversal of policy for the United States itself to institute such measures for pipelines,” Lincicome said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=117189906&vname=dennotallissues&fn=117189906&jd=117189906
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Dominion, Duke Get Environmental OK on Atlantic Pipeline Project
Jul 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew M. Ballard
Four domestic energy companies—Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, Southern Company Gas—scored a victory with a federal pipeline regulatory agency's assertion that a planned 600-mile natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to North Carolina would have minimal environmental impacts.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's favorable environmental impact statement, released July 21, will allow the Atlantic Pipeline Project to move forward. Developers aim to begin delivering fuel through the pipeline in late 2019.
But the Southern Environmental Law Center called the project unnecessary and said regulators were ignoring important, permanent environmental impacts and vowed to continue fighting it.
Project Partners
The developers say the project will create thousands of jobs and result in $377 million in annual energy cost savings.
According to FERC, the construction and operation of the pipeline “would result in some adverse effects” on bodies of water, aquatic resources, wildlife and other natural resources. But the agency said mitigation measures planned by the project developers would minimize the bulk of those impacts.
Erosion control efforts, horizontal drill crossing of waterways, and wildlife conservation measures were among the mitigating efforts planned for the project.
FERC said in releasing its findings that inspection and monitoring programs would ensure adherence to the impact avoidance plans and that the U.S. Forest Service may use its the assessment in considering a permit to cross national forests.
Approval Seen
The FERC report “concludes that the project can be built safely and with minimal long-term impacts to the environment,” according to Leslie Hartz, Dominion Energy's vice president for engineering and construction. It “provides a clear path for final approval of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline this fall,” Hartz said in a July 21 statement.
Gudrun Thompson, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center's offices in Chapel Hill, N.C., said FERC was ignoring important and permanent environmental harm.
“The impact of this pipeline is going to be felt from the steep slopes of the Allegheny and Blue Ridge mountains to the wetlands and rivers of Eastern North Carolina,” Thompson said in a statement to Bloomberg BNA. “FERC has once again glossed over important environmental impacts in favor of green-lighting another unneeded natural gas pipeline.”
The center said it plans to submit formal objections to a draft permit the Forest Service is likely to issue shortly to allow the pipeline to be built through national forest land.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=117189896&vname=dennotallissues&fn=117189896&jd=117189896
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Energy Transfer Faces Fresh Pipeline Woes as New Spill Probed
Jul 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Naureen S. Malik
Energy Transfer Partners LP, whose drilling practices have already drawn scrutiny in Ohio, is facing fresh controversy following spills related to a separate pipeline project under construction in Pennsylvania.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has issued four notices of violation over the Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids project after “inadvertent returns” associated with horizontal directional drilling, the agency said in a release July 21.
Pennsylvania's DEP announced the citations after horizontal drilling punctured an aquifer in Chester County, impacting a number of drinking water wells.
The investigation in Pennsylvania is another setback for Energy Transfer after it was forced to push back the start of the first phase of its $4.2 billion Rover gas pipeline after drilling fluids spilled into Ohio wetlands. Delays threaten to prolong bottlenecks in delivering supplies out of shale formations in the eastern U.S. It's also likely to further galvanize opposition to such projects from environmental groups. Energy Transfer was also behind the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline.
Holding Operator Accountable
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said he had directed the environmental agency to “do what they are legally able and feel is appropriate to ensure the operator is held accountable to addressing these incidents and taking additional steps to prevent similar incidents from occurring,” according to the statement.
Energy Transfer, which has merged with Sunoco Logistics, the company behind the project, said it is continually evaluating its drilling plans.
“While construction continues throughout the rest of the state, we are working to ensure that the concerns expressed by Gov. Wolf are addressed,” Jeff Shields, a spokesman, said by email.
The agency said the pipeline developer is required to monitor the ground surface while drilling is taking place and operations are supposed to cease immediately in the event of any spills. It said there's no evidence to date that the company hasn't complied with this permit condition.
Mariner East 2 is an expansion of the Sunoco Mariner East 1 pipeline to transport gas liquids, such as ethane, from the Ohio and Pittsburgh area to an export terminal in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, according to the DEP's website. The first export of ethane from that terminal began in early 2016. The company has said it expects to finish the second phase in the third quarter of this year.
The state, which is investigating existing and potential violations at Mariner East 2, has already issued a penalty of $87,600 for a violation related to a wetland area in Cumberland County.
The department has issued four Clean Streams Law violations: on May 9 for a discharge into a creek in Brookhaven Borough, Delaware County; May 17 and June 5 for a discharges in Middlesex Township, Cumberland County; and June 20 for a discharge into a creek in Middletown Township, Delaware County.
With ongoing investigations, “further decisions on enforcement actions have not been made,” Neil Shader, a press secretary for the agency, said by email on Friday.
—With assistance from Leslie Pappas
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=117189897&vname=dennotallissues&fn=117189897&jd=117189897
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Environmentalists Push Back Against EPA Defense Of RMP Rule Delay
Jul 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Environmental and labor groups are renewing their arguments aimed at vacating the Trump administration's lengthy delay of an Obama-era update to the agency's Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility safety rule, charging the delay violates the Clean Air Act and faulting EPA's claim that seeking public input allows for lengthy reconsideration of final rules.
“EPA may not flout the clear three-month restriction in [Clean Air Act section 307(d)(7)(B)] by characterizing its action as a revision rule that changes only the effective date,” petitioners say in a July 20 filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
“The ability to consider changing a policy does not allow EPA to put a final rule embodying that policy in purgatory for however long a reconsideration process may take.”
In the case, Air Alliance Houston, et al., v. EPA and E. Scott Pruitt, environmental and labor groups are urging the D.C. Circuit to vacate, or alternatively stay, pending review, Pruitt's Jan. 14 final rule delaying by 20 months the Obama administration's Jan. 12 update to the agency's RMP facility safety rule.
The advocates' June 15 lawsuit appeared to get a boost from a July 3 D.C. Circuit ruling that rejected the agency's claim that a stay of a different Obama-era rule was valid under air law section 307(d)(7)(B), which authorizes the agency to delay a rule three months for a reconsideration process.
In that litigation, Clean Air Council, et al., v. EPA, environmentalists challenged EPA's stay of an Obama-era rule setting limits on methane emissions from new oil and gas drilling.
The divided court agreed with environmentalists that EPA's 90-day stay of the rule while it reconsiders some provisions of the regulation was invalid because it failed to meet one part of a two-pronged test: that the provisions at issue were “impracticable” to raise during the original methane rulemaking's comment period.
Environmentalists say the ruling provides a valuable marker for groups hoping to prove that the agency is conducting an “end run” around its duty to enforce rulemakings that Trump administration officials oppose. They say the ruling could help at least three pending suits challenging administration efforts to delay the Obama administration's Clean Water Act power plant effluent limits, the RMP rule, a landfill methane rule, the national ambient air quality standard for ozone and worker protection standards for pesticide handlers.
While the D.C. Circuit recently granted an EPA request to recall the mandate in the case for 14 days, sources say that any potential EPA appeal of the ruling based on a dissenting judge's view that courts lack jurisdiction to review the case may not impact related suits over other paused rules.
Given such views, the Justice Department has sought to differentiate EPA's delay of the RMP rule from the methane suit, arguing that the agency sought public input on its proposed 20-month delay of the RMP rule.
The agency and industry intervenors also have argued that nothing in Clean Air Act section 307(d)(7)(B), which authorizes the agency to delay a rule three months for a reconsideration process, precludes the agency from issuing a longer delay under section 112(r) of the air law after taking public comment on a proposed delay.
'Removes Compliance Obligations'
But in their July 20 filing, groups including Sierra Club, Earthjustice and union intervenors United Steelworkers reiterate calls to vacate or stay the delay rule, arguing that postponing the regulation violates the Clean Air Act and is arbitrary and capricious because the delay disregards the agency's past findings of ongoing risks from industrial accidents.
The groups also fault EPA's claim that section 112(r) grants broad authority over rules' effective dates, saying that provision seeks to assure compliance while Pruitt's delay seeks to avoid a compliance obligation altogether. “The Delay Rule is not authorized by [112(r)] when it removes compliance obligations rather than assuring compliance.”
The groups also counter EPA claims they lack standing, saying that delaying the Obama-era rule would harm workers and the environment through chemical facility accidents that continue to occur “like clockwork” at a pace of at least eight per month.
While the Trump EPA has argued that the existing RMP regulation offers protection during the agency's stay and reconsideration of the update rule, petitioners contend that assertion disregards the Obama EPA's findings of risks of facility accidents and a need for further protections.
“EPA cannot abandon its prior determinations in favor of speculation about regulatory uncertainty, costs or risks not shown to be present and, regardless, that EPA already rejected,” they say. “'Suspension' of a regulation 'until the agency completes a full notice and comment rulemaking proceeding' is 'a paradigm of a revocation' and requires scrutiny now, as well as in the future if EPA indeed makes further changes.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/environmentalists-push-back-against-epa-defense-rmp-rule-delay
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Trump Plan To Expedite Permitting Comes Under Review
Jul 24, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Camille von Kaenel
President Trump's push to remove governmental red tape and speed the development of infrastructure projects will be under the microscope in a Senate panel this week.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' permanent subcommittee on investigations will seek to clarify Trump's vision and how it fits with existing laws by questioning top staff and advocates at a hearing this week.
Both Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), the chairman of the subcommittee, and Tom Carper (D-Del.), the ranking member, have criticized Trump's approach to infrastructure as confusing and counterproductive, and urged his administration to fully implement previously passed legislation on streamlining first.
Senators will get to question top officials from the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Army Corps of Engineers, and Fish and Wildlife Service.
Trump has vowed to slash the time required for projects to get through the environmental review process and promised a flourish of new initiatives, like getting the Council on Environmental Quality to fast-track select projects through permits. But efforts so far have largely piggybacked on existing initiatives, which have been slowly gathering steam.
Portman and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) in a June letter warned Trump that delays in appointing agency directors and implementing existing streamlining law were "significantly impairing" the goal of greater coordination (E&E News PM, June 9). They also called Trump's executive orders "confusing" and duplicative.
Carper has said that piling on additional legislation to streamline the environmental review process could make the process longer and eventually come at the price of environmental protection.
This week, the council says the goal is primarily to check in on the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, an interagency body created by the 2015 Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, whose goal is to shorten and coordinate the permitting process.
The council tracks the progress of projects through the government bureaucracy on an online dashboard that lists dozens of projects including pipelines, transmission lines, roads, bridges and public transit. Portman and McCaskill set it up as part of their efforts for broader permitting reform.
The Obama administration had just gotten the council off the ground, but Trump's White House aides vowed to overhaul it to hold agencies accountable to deadlines and further smooth the process.
The White House has hired permanent staff for the council and started working with a contractor to upgrade the website, a senior administration official told reporters last month.
Trump has yet to appoint a director to the council. Janet Pfleeger, the acting executive director, is set to testify.
Other government officials set to testify are also career staffers because their agencies lack Trump-appointed leaders.
Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, July 26, at 2:30 p.m. in 342 Dirksen.
Witnesses: Scott Slesinger, legislative director, Natural Resources Defense Council; William Kovacs, senior vice president for the environment, technology and regulatory affairs, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Marc Gerken, CEO, American Municipal Power; Janet Pfleeger, acting executive director, Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council; Jacqueline Holmes, associate general counsel, energy projects, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Robyn Colosimo, assistant for water resources policy, Army Corps of Engineers; and Gary Frazer, assistant director, ecological services, Fish and Wildlife Service.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/07/24/stories/1060057770
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(ACC Mentioned) Stefanik Again Votes To Keep Clean Air Regulations
Jul 21, 2017 | The Adirondack Daily Enterprise
By Antonio Olivero
The U.S. House of Representatives voted Tuesday to delay the implementation of Obama-era reductions in smog-causing air pollutants, but north country Congresswoman Elise Stefanik was one of only two New York Republicans who voted against the legislation.
Stefanik, R-Willsboro, cast one of 199 total votes against the Ozone Standards Implementation Act of 2017, while 229 representatives voted for the legislation. The Senate received it Wednesday and referred it to committee.
The bill’s primary sponsor, Republican Rep. Pete Olson of Texas, has said the bill will help alleviate pressure on job creators as stricter standards approved by former President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency force American companies to spend billions of dollars on reducing pollution.
The votes in favor and against the bill fell largely on party lines. Of the 229 votes for it, 225 (98 percent) were by Republicans. Of the 199 votes against, 188 (94 percent) came from Democrats. Stefanik was one of only 11 Republicans to vote against the legislation as she and fellow New York Rep. John Faso, R-Kinderhook, were the only two New York Republicans to vote against the bill.
The bill has been derided as the “Smoggy Skies Act” by many Democrats who vehemently oppose the bill. Stefanik voted in June 2016 against a previous version of the legislation, which passed the House but not the Senate.
“Ozone pollution has been linked to adverse effects on the health of forests and wildlife which we, in the North Country, have seen in the Adirondack State Park and other upstate forests,” Stefanik said in a statement last year. “Additionally, ozone pollution has been linked to a variety of adverse health effects that are especially harmful to the elderly, children, and those suffering from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.”
The legislation would further delay, by eight more years, implementation of air pollution standards the EPA issued in 2015. It would also make several changes to the Clean Air Act, including changing the EPA’s mandated review of air quality standards from every five years to every 10.
More than a dozen major health organizations oppose the bill, including the National Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association. Several pro-business groups support the bill, including the American Petroleum Institute, the American Chemistry Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which the EPA adopted in 2015, reduced the allowed amount of ground-level ozone from 75 to 70 parts per billion. The EPA estimated that year that it would cost the economy $1.4 billion to meet the stricter standards, but the agency maintained the benefits of cleaner air would save Americans billions of dollars due to fewer emergency room visits and other public health improvements.
Environmental Advocates of New York was part of a coalition of 32 environmental groups that pressured members of Congress to vote against the legislation. In a letter last month addressed to New York’s congressional delegation — one co-signed by the Adirondack Council and Protect the Adirondacks, among others — the coalition wrote that it believed the bill “represents a sweeping attack on the public health underpinnings of the Clean Air Act.
“When it was enacted,” the letter continues, “the Clean Air Act promised healthful air for all to breathe. More than forty five years later, this promise remains unfulfilled. The Clean Air Act is a highly successful public health law that directs the EPA on many air pollution matters, but most importantly it requires the setting of standards for air pollutants. Specifically, it directs EPA to set all health standards based solely on the best available science. This bill systematically weakens EPA’s ability to do that.
“This bill forces (the) EPA to wait a decade before it can consider new science and set new standards to protect public health,” the letter adds. “This jeopardizes progress toward cleaner air and delays health protections for millions of New Yorkers, especially those more susceptible to the effects of pollution — children, older adults, and people with asthma. These health impacts pose significant costs on New York families that we cannot afford to exacerbate by ignoring science and delaying new standards.”
https://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/local-news/2017/07/stefanik-again-votes-to-keep-clean-air-regs/
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House Science Dems Call For Details On Pruitt's Climate Debate
Jul 21, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
Top Democrats on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee want details from U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on his plans to formally challenge climate science.
"Despite our deep skepticism about the legitimacy of your planned efforts, it is not possible to evaluate such a review based solely on your vague public statements," ranking member Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas and two other lawmakers said in a letter to Pruitt released this afternoon. They asked him to spell out the format for his "red team, blue team" exercise; the timetable; and the selection criteria for members of both teams.
In a recent interview with Reuters, Pruitt confirmed his interest in pitting scientific teams against each other — possibly on television — "and having a robust discussion about [climate science] for all the world to see."
"There are lots of questions that have not been asked and answered," he told Reuters.
He added, "I think the American people would be very interested in consuming that. I think they deserve it."
E&E News first reported in June that Pruitt planned to set up a "back-and-forth critique" by government-recruited experts. So far, however, EPA has released no further information on how the mechanics of the review would work.
In today's letter, Johnson said Pruitt's efforts seemed "divorced from reality" in light of the "overwhelming" scientific agreement "on the basic fact of human-caused climate change." Also signing the letter were Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, the Science Committee's vice ranking member, and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Environment Subcommittee.
They asked Pruitt to provide the information by Aug. 11. EPA representatives did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/07/21/stories/1060057760
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Environmentalists Protest Further Delay Of SO2 NAAQS Suit
Jul 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
Environmental groups are protesting EPA's request to further delay litigation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit over the agency's 2016 rule defining which areas attain or not federal sulfur dioxide (SO2) standards, as EPA tries to consolidate suits in the D.C. Circuit.
Fresh from a recent victory in the 7th Circuit, in which the court agreed to transfer an Illinois electric utilities' challenge to the SO2 designations rule to the D.C. Circuit, EPA is now also seeking to transfer a suit brought by Texas and electric utility Luminant from the 5th Circuit to the D.C. Circuit, which hears rules of “national applicability” or “nationwide scope or effect."
The 5th Circuit will hold oral argument July 26 on EPA's motion to dismiss Texas' suit, State of Texas, et al, v. EPA, et al,, or transfer it to the D.C. Circuit.
EPA in the 7th Circuit case, Southern Illinois Power Cooperative, v. EPA, et al., successfully argued that its rule, which set designations for 61 areas across many states, was national in scope, against the company's claims that designations pertaining to designations for specific areas should be heard in regional appeals courts.
In its July 18 filing in the D.C. Circuit suit, Samuel Masias, et al. v. EPA, et al., Sierra Club says EPA cannot delay briefing any longer while the 5th Circuit decides if it will hear Texas' challenge to the designations rule.
In the litigation, states and industry are challenging designations of areas as nonattainment, because such status brings with it costly pollution control requirements, while environmentalists seek tougher designations to control SO2.
“Given the extensive and numerous delays of the litigation and the critical public health safeguards provided by the rules in question, no further delay is warranted,” Sierra Club says.
The rule at issue is one of several that EPA will issue to complete designations for the 2010 SO2 national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS). The process fell years behind the Clean Air Act- mandated schedule because of a lack of adequate air quality monitors to ensure compliance, but is now on a schedule for completion by the end of 2020 under a settlement agreement with environmentalists.
Sierra Club says, “all of the petitions regarding the Texas counties are properly before this Court. There is no reason to wait for the Fifth Circuit to rule on EPA’s motions when this Court has venue and all of the petitions (including those filed in this Court by the State of Texas and Luminant) are already consolidated in one proceeding ready for briefing and resolution.”
Also, if the D.C. Circuit again delays setting a briefing schedule and the 5th Circuit in the meantime denies EPA's motion to dismiss or transfer the case, “Sierra Club would risk potentially adverse Fifth Circuit precedent impacting its affirmative claims,” the group says.
Meanwhile, EPA in a letter to the 5th Circuit advising of additional authorities bolstering its case for a transfer to the D.C. Circuit, cites the 7th Circuit's July 12 ruling in Southern Illinois Power.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/environmentalists-protest-further-delay-so2-naaqs-suit
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