Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 8/21/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) Democrats Seek GAO Study on EPA Hires' Ethics Compliance
Aug 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
Frustrated by EPA's alleged failure to respond to their oversight requests, top Democrats on the Senate environment committee are urging the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate Administrator Scott Pruitt's use of special legal authority... -
(ACC Mentioned) The Quest for Automotive Super Glue
Aug 21, 2017 | Automotive News
By Rhoda Miel
Ask an automotive engineer what the ideal material for the next vehicle would be — steel, aluminum or carbon fiber composite — and the likely answer would be "all of the above." -
(ACC Mentioned) Canada Begins Documenting Impact of China's Plastic Waste Ban
Aug 18, 2017 | Plastics News
By Michael Lauzon
The Canadian Plastic Industry Association has begun documenting market options for Canadian companies that have been exporting waste plastics to China. -
(ACC Mentioned) Groups Sue EPA For Weakening New Chemical Laws
Aug 18, 2017 | Chem.Info
By Meagan Parrish
A coalition of environmental groups have waged a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for its latest round of chemical regulations. -
TSCA Reporting Rule Panel Splits on Changes to Existing Exemptions
Aug 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
A panel convened to inform a future EPA rule for reducing reporting for certain chemicals' uses is split on whether to eliminate long-standing exemptions for certain uses, with industry calling the move contrary to the group's charge and environmentalists saying the exemptions... -
EPA Sends TSCA Mercury Inventory Rule Plan to White House
Aug 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
EPA has sent for White House review a draft proposed rule that seeks to implement new mandatory requirements in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) aimed at requiring the agency to create an inventory of mercury “supply, use and trade,”... -
Importers May Be Unaware of Coming EPA Mercury Reporting Rule
Aug 21, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Importers of industrial thermostats, vaccines, and other products that may contain mercury may not be prepared for a coming rule that could require them to report the metal's import to the EPA, an environmental attorney told Bloomberg BNA Aug. 18. -
E.P.A. Promised ‘a New Day’ for the Agriculture Industry, Documents Reveal
Aug 18, 2017 | New York Times
By Eric Lipton and Roni Caryn Robin
In the weeks before the Environmental Protection Agency decided to reject its own scientists’ advice to ban a potentially harmful pesticide, Scott Pruitt, the agency’s head, promised farming industry executives who wanted to keep using the pesticide... -
California Tightens Chlorpyrifos Use Restrictions
Aug 21, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
California growers will face tighter restrictions in applying Dow AgroSciences’ chlorpyrifos insecticide in September, state officials said Aug. 18. -
N.Y. Natural Gas Pipeline Denied Appeal by Federal Court
Aug 21, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
The natural gas industry suffered another loss in New York on Aug. 18 when a federal appeals court upheld the state's right to deny a water permit for the Constitution Pipeline project connecting production in northeastern Pennsylvania with the northeastern market. -
Feds Urge Judge Not to Shut Down Dakota Access Pipeline During Review
Aug 18, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
Government lawyers are urging a federal judge not to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline while regulators conduct a new environmental review of the project because there is a “serious possibility” the review will reaffirm the pipeline’s earlier permits. -
(ACC Mentioned) Hydrochloric Acid Spills at Momentive's Waterford Plant
Aug 18, 2017 | Albany Times Union
By Matthew Hamilton
State Department of Environmental Conservation crews were investigating a hydrochloric acid spill Friday afternoon at the Momentive Performance Materials plant. -
Ban on Toxic Acid May Test Californians’ Thirst for Cheap Fuel
Aug 21, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Hailey Waller and Robert Tuttle
Californians are used to paying more for gasoline, but that may be tested soon if a pair of Los Angeles-area refineries are forced to stop their use of a toxic chemical. -
The Trump Administration Just Disbanded a Federal Advisory Committee on Climate Change
Aug 20, 2017 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin
The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning. -
More GOP Lawmakers Bucking Their Party on Climate Change
Aug 19, 2017 | Politico
By Annie Snider
While President Donald Trump continues to dismantle Obama-era climate policies, an unlikely surge of Republican lawmakers has begun taking steps to distance themselves from the GOP’s hard line on climate change. -
Bannon's Exit Could Reshape Trump Energy Policies
Aug 21, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Michael Doyle
White House strategist Steve Bannon's abrupt but long-anticipated departure today from President Trump's inner circle removes a distinctive voice on energy and environmental issues and could give moderate voices more say. -
Filtering Lead Out of Chicago’s Drinking Water
Aug 21, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Alex Formuzis
Lead has been detected at high levels in Chicago’s tap water, but that doesn’t mean residents of the Windy City have to drink it.
Congressional Hearings - There are no hearings to report at this time.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Democrats Seek GAO Study on EPA Hires' Ethics Compliance
Aug 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
Frustrated by EPA's alleged failure to respond to their oversight requests, top Democrats on the Senate environment committee are urging the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate Administrator Scott Pruitt's use of special legal authority that has allowed him to hire political appointees who are exempt from some ethics requirements.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), ranking member on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW), and Sen Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), ranking member on EPW's air subcommittee, sent an Aug. 18 letter to GAO asking for an invitation of EPA's use of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to exempt some key appointees -- including top officials at the policy and toxics offices -- from ethics mandates that would otherwise forbid them from working on issues on which they advocated as lobbyists.
“Some of the appointees are in high-level positions, managing staff and making consequential decisions, yet they were hired in a manner that exempts them from compliance with Executive Order 13,770: Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees (otherwise known as the Trump Ethics Pledge). We are additionally concerned that the authorities are being abused and that non-confirmed political appointees may not be complying with the ethics requirements that do apply to them in a timely or complete manner,” Carper and Whitehouse write.
As first reported by Inside EPA, Pruitt has used special authority in SDWA that has allowed him to expedite hiring of a limited number of “administratively determined” (AD) hires to top slots, allowing those officials to avoid signing President Donald Trump's recent ethics pledge, among other exemptions from hiring policies.
While other administrations have used the authority, sources have expressed concern that Pruitt is utilizing the classification -- intended for technical experts -- to shoehorn into the agency political appointees even though they may have major “supervisory” or “managerial” roles.
For example, sources say among those that Pruitt has used the authority to bring in are Byron Brown, the deputy chief of staff for policy, as well as Nancy Beck, a former American Chemistry Council official who is now the deputy assistant administrator in the toxics office overseeing implementation of the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act.
As the top appointee in the toxics office, and one who did not require Senate confirmation, Beck's appointment has been a special concern for environmentalists and Democrats. They fear that without a broad recusal from many of the rules and regulatory decisions she is now overseeing, she will be able to favor her former industry employer. But her status as an AD exempt from Trump ethics requirements has made such a recusal less likely.
Carper and Whitehouse's letter does not name any of the officials they believe are violating ethics requirements, instead warning more generally that some AD personnel “are serving in supervisory positions and in roles that raise ethical questions.”
It continues that written questions to EPA about those appointees “have thus far gone almost entirely unanswered.” Carper and Whitehouse say that various White House offices including the Office of Government Ethics and the Office of Personnel Management, as well as EPA's own ethics officials, often telling legislators that whichever office they have reached out to “does not handle the particular aspect we asked about and get unclear answers about which entity does.”
They are asking GAO to prepare a report on “All authorities that can be used to hire political appointees at EPA and CEQ,” as well as the ethical and other requirements that each hiring authority carries.
Further, the report is to address “Historical and current use of the authorities to employ non-Senate-confirmed political employees, including the types of roles such employees have been hired to perform;” whether and when political appointees have been required the comply with the ethics pledge; and whether the White House required retrospective reviews of officials' ethics compliance when there has been “lag time” between their hiring dates and “ the date that written ethics analysis or recusal agreements are signed,” among other topics.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/democrats-seek-gao-study-epa-hires-ethics-compliance
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(ACC Mentioned) The Quest for Automotive Super Glue
Aug 21, 2017 | Automotive News
By Rhoda Miel
Ask an automotive engineer what the ideal material for the next vehicle would be — steel, aluminum or carbon fiber composite — and the likely answer would be "all of the above."
Although material suppliers compete aggressively for program real estate, even the most ardent sales rep would admit the future lies in multimaterial vehicles.
But a serious long-standing technical problem has held back mixed materials: the difficulty of joining different materials on an assembly line.
Now researchers at Michigan State University, supported by the American Chemistry Council's automotive group, believe they have hit on a new kind of adhesive that will enable manufacturers to join multiple materials, says Sandra McClelland, a member of the council and sales development manager for Solvay Specialty Polymers. The group is promoting a new compound — a kind of super glue that adapts to different surface properties and works at different material temperatures.
Just as important, McClelland says, the group believes the adhesive will allow mixed auto materials to be cleanly separated at the end of vehicle life — another growing concern as manufacturers move deeper into recycling campaigns.
The group intends to keep patenting fees low in hopes of encouraging mixed-material vehicle design.
"The vehicles of today and tomorrow will be manufactured with a combination of energy-saving materials," McClelland said this month during the Center for Automotive Research's Management Briefing Seminars here. "Multimaterial solutions are and will provide OEMs and consumers with the best possible choices for performance, safety, aesthetics and value. All materials are in play."
The industry wants to avoid being locked into all-or-nothing uses of materials for vehicles and components. The hope is to be able to join high-strength steel to aluminum alloys, aluminum to composite or composite to steel without adding weight or using adhesives that make it hard to separate the parts at the end of vehicle life.
Consulting group Ducker Worldwide has released a study of industry vehicle weight targets showing that passenger vehicles must drop more than 200 pounds by 2025, said Abey Abraham, Ducker Worldwide North America managing director. That means that a typical car or passenger truck will add, on average, 33 pounds of polymer materials in place of existing metals.
That weight-cutting demand will only increase the need for easier ways to join a variety of materials.
"It has to be a mixed-material approach to get to these standards," Abraham said.
The adhesive that has researchers enthusiastic is an enhanced thermoplastic with extremely tiny magnetic particles that would bond different kinds of plastic, different types of metals or metals and plastic without the need for more rivets or connectors.
Because the bond can be reversed, it would allow for easier recycling at the end of the product's life.
The research is in the laboratory testing phase, McClelland said. But signs are strong for its potential in real-world situations.
The joining method also would allow a component to be repaired in a way that will make that joint stronger, she said.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20170820/OEM01/170829972/quest-automotive-super-glue
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(ACC Mentioned) Canada Begins Documenting Impact of China's Plastic Waste Ban
Aug 18, 2017 | Plastics News
By Michael Lauzon
The Canadian Plastic Industry Association has begun documenting market options for Canadian companies that have been exporting waste plastics to China.
As much as 21 percent of recovered plastics in Canada has been shipped overseas, with China as a main destination, according to a 2015 study commissioned by CPIA.
Mississauga, Ontario-based CPIA is creating an online, confidential tool where companies can report information about plastic loads having no export market or loads rejected by China.
"Recyclers like to keep their marketing confidential," said Joe Hruska, CPIA vice president of sustainability, in a phone interview. "We want to know what's affected. The online tool will make it easier to organize efforts.
"Data is power," Hruska stressed. Data collected from the online tool should show the degree to which Canadian companies are affected and what domestic capacity is available to process waste plastics being rejected offshore.
Hruska said CPIA is working closely with the North American Plastics Recycling Alliance to coordinate its efforts. CPIA also is collaborating with the American Chemistry Council, Association of Plastic Recyclers and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20170818/NEWS/170819893/canada-begins-documenting-impact-of-chinas-plastic-waste-ban
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(ACC Mentioned) Groups Sue EPA For Weakening New Chemical Laws
Aug 18, 2017 | Chem.Info
By Meagan Parrish
A coalition of environmental groups have waged a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for its latest round of chemical regulations.
Last year, the EPA was given the task of stepping up risk evaluations for toxic substances under new chemical laws. Now that the agency is spelling out its exact plans for implementing those laws, several environmental groups say it has substantially weakened plans that were laid out under the Obama administration.
One of the rules in question has to do with how the EPA will decide which applications of a chemical will fall under its risk evaluations. According to a report in Scientific American, the Obama administration defined these “conditions of use” broadly so that the agency could cast a wider net with its analysis. Under the current EPA, however, the definition has become more stringent. Now, the agency does not have to consider “legacy uses” for chemicals, for example. This includes previous applications for chemicals that have since been banned. Several flame retardants fall into this category.
But critics charge that past exposure to certain chemicals can still have ramifications today.
“When you’re assessing a chemical, it’s important to look at all the uses to understand the actual risk in the real world,” Richard Denison, a lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said.
A senior director from the American Chemistry Council countered that the EPA isn’t skirting evaluations — it just decided that it did not need to “prioritize its resources” on legacy uses.
The groups also say that chemical companies will have too much input about which chemicals are given high priority for evaluations, and that there are too many “loopholes” for manufacturers.
“After Congress took bipartisan action to make desperately needed updates to our chemical safety laws, the Trump administration has turned back the clock, leaving families and workers at risk,” said Eve Gartner, an attorney for Earthjustice, one of the organizations involved the suit.
https://www.chem.info/news/2017/08/groups-sue-epa-weakening-new-chemical-laws
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TSCA Reporting Rule Panel Splits on Changes to Existing Exemptions
Aug 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
A panel convened to inform a future EPA rule for reducing reporting for certain chemicals' uses is split on whether to eliminate long-standing exemptions for certain uses, with industry calling the move contrary to the group's charge and environmentalists saying the exemptions lack scientific basis, though EPA is seeking compromise to continue the talks.
Section 8(a)(6) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) updated in June 2016 directs EPA to convene a negotiated rulemaking committee to address industry concerns about the agency's chemical data reporting rule (CDR) program and potentially craft a rule limiting reporting requirements for inorganic byproducts in some cases.
During an Aug. 16-17 meeting in Washington, D.C. the CDR Inorganic Byproducts Negotiated Rulemaking Committee narrowed down a series of options that could inform a future EPA burden reduction rule. But environmental and industry panelists reached an impasse on how to address existing reporting exemptions, a central facet of the best received option.
Panelists have until a final meeting in October to resolve the issue and provide EPA with a consensus recommendation for a future rule.
The best-received option, originally floated by EPA, calls for simplifying reporting by eliminating long-standing exemptions for certain chemical uses, creating categories of reportable substances while also requiring reporting of some processing and use information.
The change would eliminate current exemptions including for inorganic byproducts burned as fuel, disposed of as waste in landfills or to enrich soil.
Removing exemptions is expected to reduce confusion over whether companies are required to report, EPA officials said.
“The idea is to address the need to reduce the reporting burden and compliance associated with trying to identify if you need to report . . . while balancing our need for the data,” EPA's Susan Sharkey told the meeting.
But industry panelists argued that eliminating the reporting exemptions is contrary to the panel's charge of easing reporting burdens and would create regulatory confusion by creating different reporting requirements for certain uses of organic and inorganic byproducts.
“If you remove the exemption, you still have increased reporting by the manufacturer and that is a problem,” said Kathleen Roberts of the North American Metals Council.
Bret Bruhn, of TTM Technologies and the electronics industry trade group IPC, argued that regulated companies already comply with a host of other EPA and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations so preserving a TSCA exemption would not leave uses unregulated. “This is not an area where we are devoid of information regarding hazard,” Bruhn said.
He added that inorganic byproducts are often created under controlled processes that limit exposure. “To presume that TSCA and CDR is the only way to account [for potential exposure to inorganic byproducts] “ignores that there is an overlay of regulations from” EPA's Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, as well as various OSHA requirements.
'On The Table'
But environmentalists argued that the existing exemptions lack a scientific basis and fail to provide data on all potential exposures to inorganic byproducts. They argued that eliminating the exemptions should remain up for consideration as negotiations move forward.
“I think there's good reasons why EPA proposed this, and I'm certainly not prepared to take it off the table,” said David Lennett of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “For many of us that is the reason why we're willing to engage in” the broader approach to simplify reporting.
EPA officials suggested a compromise to prevent the talks from stalling. Lynn Vendinello, deputy director of the Chemical Control Division in EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, said EPA would consider maintaining but narrowing the reporting exemptions for certain uses of inorganic byproducts.
She also suggested other possible steps such as one time information collection to assess how many companies currently use the exemptions, narrowing the definitions of exempted uses or excluding producers of certain chemicals from using the exemption.
The TSCA reform law included a requirement for the rulemaking committee to limit existing CDR requirements on manufacturers of inorganic byproducts when those products are recycled, reused, or reprocessed. Lawmakers included the requirement for the rulemaking committee in the law to address industry's confusion and criticism resulting from past administrations' regulatory updates.
For example, the Bush EPA in 2006 made changes to the requirements in the CDR, requiring for the first time reporting on inorganic chemicals' use and disposal, including metals, in volumes greater than 25,000 pounds. In the rule, EPA subjected inorganic metals to the same reporting requirements as organic chemicals, failing to take into account what sources say are differences among the materials.
But the Obama administration may have exacerbated the problem in a subsequent CDR rule that requires a manufacturer to report the fate of any substance that has to be removed from a byproduct by a reaction -- chemicals simply extracted are exempt from reporting -- which EPA then considers the manufacturing of a new chemical.
During the Aug. 16-17 meeting the panel sought to narrow down a list of possible changes that could inform a future burden reduction rule in advance of a final recommendation that is expected after a final meeting in October.
The various options included adding an exemption for reporting of inorganic byproducts in certain situations, partially exempting reporting of processing and use data, and an environmentalist plan to improve data by eliminating exemptions and requiring reporting of processing and use information from processors instead of manufacturers of inorganic byproducts.
While resolving disagreement over whether to eliminate or narrow the long-standing reporting exemptions appears to be the group's primary challenge, the panel is also weighing the possibility of creating categories to ease reporting, and whether to advise EPA on technological innovations that could both simplify reporting and improve data availability.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/tsca-reporting-rule-panel-splits-changes-existing-exemptions
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EPA Sends TSCA Mercury Inventory Rule Plan to White House
Aug 18, 2017 | Inside EPA
EPA has sent for White House review a draft proposed rule that seeks to implement new mandatory requirements in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) aimed at requiring the agency to create an inventory of mercury “supply, use and trade,” as well as reporting deadlines and other requirements for relevant industries.
The White House received the draft proposed rule Aug. 17, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which will review the measure as part of an interagency process. Such reviews are usually intended to take 90 days, though they can take longer or shorter depending on the issues raised.
Once completed, the rule could help the United States comply with its international obligations to regulate mercury under the United Nations' Minamata Convention on Mercury, which took effect Aug. 16. The first meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the convention is scheduled for September in Switzerland.
The rulemaking is required by the new TSCA law, enacted in June 2016, which added section 8(b)(10)(D) language requiring EPA to issue a final rule no later than June 2018 “to establish reporting deadline(s) and information requirements for the purpose of assisting EPA's statutorily-mandated periodic update and publication of the inventory of mercury supply, use, and trade in the United States. As required under TSCA, the reporting requirements would apply to any person who manufactures mercury or mercury-added products or otherwise intentionally uses mercury in a manufacturing process,” according to OMB's website.
The provision is part of an extensive new section of TSCA section 8, which generally requires industry to report certain information to EPA, or to retain certain information so that it could be provided to EPA upon request.
Shortly after then-President Barack Obama signed the law, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the ranking Democrat on the Senate appropriations committee, highlighted provisions that he said will help EPA or states address specific chemicals, including mercury.
The mercury provisions in the final bill include creation of a mercury inventory and expansion of the export ban to certain mercury compounds. Leahy said the inventory will generate data to enhance EPA’s ability to reduce the health risks from mercury exposure. He said the second provision expands upon the Mercury Export Ban Act of 2008, broadening the ban currently in effect for elemental mercury to include certain mercury compounds that could be traded to produce elemental mercury in commercial quantities, thus undermining the existing export ban.
As a result, EPA in August 2016 published a list of five mercury compounds -- mercury (I) chloride or calomel; mercury (II) oxide; mercury (II) sulfate; mercury (II) nitrate; and cinnabar or mercury sulphide -- that will be illegal to export beginning in 2020, in accordance with the TSCA reform requirements.
Enactment of the requirements came after EPA in 2015 rejected a petition from environmentalists and some states urging EPA to collect information about uses of mercury produced, imported, or used in the U.S., also citing TSCA section 8 authority -- at that time, section 8(a).
The petitioners, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Northeast Waste Management Officials' Association (NEWMOA), which manages the Interstate Mercury Education and Reduction Clearinghouse (IMERC), the leading state agency-sponsored mercury tracking program, argued that Section 8(a) rules were warranted when data is not otherwise available, as they argued was the case.
In fact, the groups argued that IMERC no longer collects data on mercury use in electrical switches and relays, “the largest mercury use in products, and contains significant gaps due to non-reporting.”
But EPA rejected the petition in an October 2015 Federal Register notice, saying that although the general premise behind the petition is correct, the agency's then-voluntary strategy on reducing mercury use was more efficient and effective.
The groups, however, argued that EPA's voluntary approach “has not produced and is not likely to produce the comprehensive, reliable data set necessary to inform further risk-reduction activities,” the petition states.
And David Lennett, a senior attorney with NRDC, told Inside EPA in 2015 that the growing number of countries that have ratified the Minamata Convention placed a further hammer on the agency. When it takes effect, he said at the time, EPA and the federal government are “going to have international obligations which right now they cannot meet.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-sends-tsca-mercury-inventory-rule-plan-white-house
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Importers May Be Unaware of Coming EPA Mercury Reporting Rule
Aug 21, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Importers of industrial thermostats, vaccines, and other products that may contain mercury may not be prepared for a coming rule that could require them to report the metal's import to the EPA, an environmental attorney told Bloomberg BNA Aug. 18.
The scope of industries that would have to report their manufacture, recovery, use, or trade in mercury and the specific information they would have to provide won't be known until the Environmental Protection Agency proposes the rule, Steven Barringer, an attorney with the Washington office of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, told Bloomberg BNA.
The EPA aims to propose the rule by the end of October. Its proposal, under review at the Office of Management and Budget, is intended to help the agency inventory mercury in the U.S., which will help it comply with its obligations under the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
Many sectors, such as the gold mining industry where naturally occurring mercury often is mixed with the precious metal, or dental amalgam manufacturers that recover or intentionally add mercury it to products likely are prepared for the EPA's coming rule, he said. Regulators in other Western countries have been restricting mercury for years in an effort to keep the neurotoxic metal out of the global atmosphere. That has made domestic manufacturers and mining companies attuned to expected regulations, Barringer said.
Importers, however, could get confused between an existing Toxic Substances Control Act regulation—called the Chemical Data Reporting, or CDR, rule—that already requires them to report some mercury imports and this new rule, he said. The CDR rule requires chemical manufacturers and importers every four years to report their production and importation of chemicals regulated by TSCA. The CDR reports were most recently submitted in 2016.
The coming rule would require an additional submission to the agency, according to Barringer. The two reports might sound similar, but they're designed for different purposes, he said.
Which Companies?
The new rule stems from a congressional mandate in the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, which amended TSCA on June 22, 2016. Lawmakers directed the EPA to prepare an inventory of mercury supply, use, and trade in the U.S. The agency issued its first inventory March 29, 2017 (82 Fed. Reg. 15,522).
The coming reporting rule is designed to help the EPA update that initial inventory, Barringer said. The information will give the agency something it doesn't have: knowledge of the amount of mercury stored, the amount in commerce, and how that mercury is used, he said. The law required the agency to issue a final reporting rule no later than June 22, 2018—two years after the statute's effective date.
The types of manufacturers that could be subject to the EPA's coming rule can be illustrated by the types of uses the agency identified in its March report, Barringer said. These include precious metal miners and hazardous waste treatment facilities along with battery, lighting, measuring devices, and a dwindling number of chlorine manufacturers. Among the types of measuring devices that could contain mercury are thermostats with mercury switches that sense and control room temperature by communicating with heating, ventilating, and air conditioning equipment.
The names of companies that could be required to report their mercury use can be gleaned from the CDR reports that manufacturers have filed and a December 2016 Report to Congress on the Global Supply and Trade of Elemental Mercury.
For example, Advanced Lighting Technologies Inc., which makes energy-efficient lights, told the EPA in 2016 that it had made or imported mercury in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. A company spokesman could not be reached Aug. 18 to discuss whether it still uses mercury to make light bulbs and other products.
ASHTA Chemicals Inc., was among just two chlorine manufacturers that the EPA's 2016 report said still used mercury. ASHTA officials could not be reached Aug. 18 to discuss whether the company still uses mercury. Axiall Corp., which used to operate a chlorine manufacturing plant in West Virginia, has been purchased by the Westlake Chemical Corp., which did not return a call asking whether it still uses mercury.
Minamata Convention
Minamata Convention on Mercury, which the U.S. signed Nov. 6, 2013, entered into force Aug. 16.
The treaty seeks to protect human health and curb environmental contamination by obligating its parties to broadly limit the use and export of mercury and restrict mercury emissions into the air, soil, and water.
The treaty is expected to spur spur companies worldwide to continue to seek alternatives for mercury added products before governments extend existing limits on the uses, imports and exports of the metal.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=119217052&vname=dennotallissues&fn=119217052&jd=119217052
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E.P.A. Promised ‘a New Day’ for the Agriculture Industry, Documents Reveal
Aug 18, 2017 | New York Times
By Eric Lipton and Roni Caryn Robin
In the weeks before the Environmental Protection Agency decided to reject its own scientists’ advice to ban a potentially harmful pesticide, Scott Pruitt, the agency’s head, promised farming industry executives who wanted to keep using the pesticide that it is “a new day, and a new future,” and that he was listening to their pleas.
Details on this meeting and dozens of other meetings in the weeks leading up to the late March decision by Mr. Pruitt are contained in more than 700 pages of internal agency documents obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information request.
Though hundreds of pages describing the deliberations were redacted from the documents, the internal memos show how the E.P.A.’s new staff, appointed by President Trump, pushed the agency’s career staff to draft a ruling that would deny the decade-old petition by environmentalists to ban the pesticide, chlorpyrifos.
Chlorpyrifos is still widely used in agriculture — on apples, oranges, strawberries, almonds and many other fruits — though it was barred from residential use in 2000. The E.P.A.’s scientists have recommended it be banned from use on farms and produce because it has been linked to lower I.Q.s and developmental delays among agricultural workers and their children.
At a March 1 meeting at E.P.A. headquarters with members of the American Farm Bureau Federation from Washington State, industry representatives pressed the E.P.A. not to reduce the number of pesticides available. They said there were not enough alternative pesticides to chlorpyrifos. They also said there was a need for “a reasonable approach to regulate this pesticide,” which is widely used in Washington State, and that they wanted “the farming community to be more involved in the process.”Continue reading the main story
According to the documents, Mr. Pruitt “stressed that this is a new day, a new future, for a common-sense approach to environmental protection.” He said the new administration “is looking forward to working closely with the agricultural community.”
Three days before Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, Dow Chemical had separately submitted a request to the agency to reject the petition to ban chlorpyrifos, calling the scientific link between the childhood health issues and the pesticide unclear, agency records show.
Amy Graham, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, said the denial of the petition to ban chlorpyrifos was justified. “Taking emails out of context doesn’t change the fact that we continue to examine the science surrounding chlorpyrifos,” she said in a written statement. She added that the agency was examining “scientific concerns with the methodology used by the previous administration.”
The emails show that as late as March 7, Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, the acting head of the E.P.A.’s office of chemical safety, was presenting the top political staff with options for how to handle the decade-old petition from an environmental group requesting the ban.
“We would talk about impacts of different options in the briefing,” Ms. Cleland-Hamnett wrote in a March 7 email. The email raised the possibility of a meeting with Mr. Pruitt to discuss the pesticide, a decision that the E.P.A.’s political staff had called a “hot” regulatory item, given a court-ordered deadline of late March to rule on the petition.
The next day, Ryan Jackson, Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, wrote to another political appointee that he had “scared” the agency’s career staff, suggesting that he had made clear the direction that the political staff wanted to go — and given the career staff explicit verbal orders to prepare documents explaining why the agency had shifted its position.
“I think I did scare them or surprise them,” Mr. Jackson wrote to Samantha Dravis, Mr. Pruitt’s political appointee to oversee E.P.A. policy. “They are getting us information for Friday but they know where this is headed and they are documenting it well.”
As the draft of the order rejecting the ban of the petition was being written, political staff at the E.P.A. continued to organize meetings with agriculture industry officials. An email on March 10 said: “Basic info for meeting. Purpose is to reset relationship with ag leaders.”
When Ms. Cleland-Hamnett wrote back to the political appointees on March 16 to provide a draft of the order rejecting the ban of the pesticide, she told her bosses that “I think this version will allow you to see how we’re describing the basis for the denial.”
The emails indicate E.P.A. officials closely coordinated their decision on chlorpyrifos with the White House and the Department of Agriculture, which is more closely linked with the agriculture industry and had questioned the justification for the ban.
On March 29, as the E.P.A. was about to publicly announce Mr. Pruitt’s decision to forego the ban, an E.P.A. political employee asked in an email, “Did you run this by Ray Starling at the White House?” referring to the special assistant to the president for agriculture, trade and food assistance.
E.P.A. officials wanted to demonstrate in the news release that they had the support of the Agriculture Department and the White House, writing in one email, “Do you think we could add ‘With Support from USDA, Admin....’ Into the headline, to show it’s a joint release? Or is that too much?”
Environmental groups said the emails demonstrate that the E.P.A. under Mr. Pruitt is doing favors for the industry, even if it means compromising public health.
“What is clear from these documents is that Administrator Pruitt’s abrupt action to vacate the ban on chlorpyrifos was an ideological — not a health-based decision,” said Melanie Benesh, a legislative attorney at the Environmental Working Group. “In fact, the Pruitt E.P.A. has shown time and time again that it seems to only be willing to act quickly when it comes to dismantling health-protective rules like the proposed ban on chlorpyrifos at the behest of industry.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/politics/epa-agriculture-industry.html
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California Tightens Chlorpyrifos Use Restrictions
Aug 21, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
California growers will face tighter restrictions in applying Dow AgroSciences’ chlorpyrifos insecticide in September, state officials said Aug. 18.
Interim restrictions on the use of the insecticide, effective next month, will increase the distances between application sites and homes, schools, hospitals, streams, rivers, and other sensitive locations, Department of Pesticide Regulation spokeswoman Charlotte Fadipe said. In addition, the state is undertaking two new reviews of the chemical.
The state has launched a scientific review of chlorpyrifos that could lead to even stricter use requirements, Fadipe told Bloomberg BNA.
Meanwhile, California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has asked its scientific experts to determine if chlorpyrifos should be added to the Proposition 65 list of chemicals linked to birth defects and reproductive harm. Listing under Proposition 65, the state's landmark right-to-know law, would require warning notices when exposing the public to harmful levels of the chemical.
“While chlorpyrifos has been protecting crops for more than 50 years, new information in the scientific community leads us to believe the level of risk it poses is greater than previously known,” California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Matthew Rodriquez said in a statement announcing both actions. “We need to better understand the science to ensure our actions protect public health.”
Chlorpyrifos is used to control pests on a variety of California crops, including almonds, alfalfa, citrus, cotton and vegetables, as well as on turf, according to the Department of Pesticide Regulation website. While non-agricultural uses have been phased out in the state, the insecticide is still found in streams and rivers, the department said.
California's move to reassess risks of the Dow AgroSciences insecticide follows EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's decision to not revoke agricultural uses of the chemical as planned by the Obama administration.
Toxic Air Contaminant?
An updated draft risk assessment for chlorpyrifos by Department of Pesticide Regulation scientists, based on the latest studies, indicate chlorpyrifos “may pose a public health risk as a toxic air contaminant,” the department said. The assessment still must go through a public review process and evaluation by independent scientists.
A public workshop on the draft risk assessment is scheduled for Sept. 15 in Sacramento. The entire review process may not be be concluded until the end of 2018, the department said.
“Our growers will not be happy with us,” Fadipe said. Depending on the results of the risk assessment, application restrictions may be up to three times as strict, she said.
Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation and a grower of almonds and walnuts, told Bloomberg BNA in a written statement.
“We are confident that authorized uses of chlorpyrifos products, when applied under existing, strict state and federal regulations, offer wide margins of protection for human health and safety,” adding, “We expect the state agencies to conduct a thorough, open-minded review of the science involving chlorpyrifos.”
DowAgrosciences did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the state's review.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=119217051&vname=dennotallissues&fn=119217051&jd=119217051
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N.Y. Natural Gas Pipeline Denied Appeal by Federal Court
Aug 21, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
The natural gas industry suffered another loss in New York on Aug. 18 when a federal appeals court upheld the state's right to deny a water permit for the Constitution Pipeline project connecting production in northeastern Pennsylvania with the northeastern market.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied an appeal by Constitution Pipeline Co., which argued that the state's decision to deny a permit in April 2016 was arbitrary and capricious (Constitution Pipeline Co. v. New York State Dep't of Envtl. Conservation, 2d Cir., No. 16-1568, 8/18/17).
The court said it would defer to the expertise of the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which is “responsible for evaluating the environmental impacts of a proposed pipeline on New York water bodies in light of the state's water quality standards.”
The decision is the latest in a series of setbacks for the natural gas industry, which has been fighting New York since the state banned high-volume hydraulic fracturing in 2015. The project would deliver gas to the southern tier of New York.
Constitution Pipeline officials said in a statement that even though they “would have preferred an immediate path to construction,” they hope the project's fate rests with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
“The Constitution Pipeline represents a transformational opportunity for New York and New England to uplift their economies, create short- and long-term jobs, reduce energy costs for consumers and businesses and also address concerns about air quality,” it said.
The 125-mile Constitution Pipeline is proposed by Williams Partners LP., Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., Piedmont Natural Gas Co. and WGL Holdings Inc., four companies that own Constitution.
Another pipeline faces a critical decision by DEC this month, when the agency is expected to rule on whether to grant permits to Millennium Pipeline Co. LLC to build a pipeline connected to a 680-megawatt natural gas plant 75 miles north of New York City.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=119217050&vname=dennotallissues&fn=119217050&jd=119217050
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Feds Urge Judge Not to Shut Down Dakota Access Pipeline During Review
Aug 18, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
Government lawyers are urging a federal judge not to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline while regulators conduct a new environmental review of the project because there is a “serious possibility” the review will reaffirm the pipeline’s earlier permits.
In a court filing late Thursday, the Army Corps of Engineers said their new review of the controversial pipeline could maintain the conclusion that it poses no risk to North Dakota’s Lake Oahe, a lake bisected by the pipeline that local Native American tribes consider environmentally and culturally important.
“There is a serious possibility that the Corps will reaffirm its original conclusions based in part on its conclusion that the pipeline segment under Lake Oahe is highly unlikely to spill into the lake,” Corps lawyers said in their filing.
Shutting down the pipeline during the new review “could actually increase the risk of an oil spill if oil that would otherwise be transported in the pipeline was instead transported by rail.”
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in June ruled the government needs to reconsider parts of its environmental review of Dakota Access, a $3.8 billion pipeline that can carry up to 570,000 barrels of oil per day.
Oil began flowing through the pipeline before the judge’s decision, but he didn’t order Dakota Access shut down while the new environmental review moves forward. Government lawyers have said they could finish the review by December.
The Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes have asked Boasberg to order Dakota Access offline during the review. Lawyers told Boasberg earlier this month that the Army Corps will use the new review “as a paper exercise designed to generate additional explanation for decisions already made.”
Shutting down the project now, they argued, “is particularly compelled because the Court held that the Corps gave short shrift to the Tribes’ treaty rights and the integrity of the Standing Rock Reservation homeland, adding insult to the injuries caused by the long legacy of broken promises made by the United States to the Sioux Nation.”
Lawyers expect a decision on the pipeline's operation by next month.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/347072-feds-serious-possibility-new-dakota-access-review-reaches-same
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(ACC Mentioned) Hydrochloric Acid Spills at Momentive's Waterford Plant
Aug 18, 2017 | Albany Times Union
By Matthew Hamilton
State Department of Environmental Conservation crews were investigating a hydrochloric acid spill Friday afternoon at the Momentive Performance Materials plant.
According to the DEC, roughly 300 gallons of acid spilled from a pipe rack system over Schoolhouse Lane. DEC crews responded at about 3:30 p.m. Friday. The spill was stopped as of 6:45 p.m., according to a DEC press release on the incident.
DEC crews were collecting water samples along the Mudderkill Creek.
No water sources were affected by the spill and there is no threat to public health or the environment, according to the department.
Hydrochloric acid is highly corrosive, meaning it damages most things it comes in contact with, according to the American Chemistry Council.
It is used in industry to process steel and to produce batteries photoflash bulbs and fireworks, according to the council. It also is found in the human stomach, where it aids digestion.
http://www.timesunion.com/7dayarchive/article/Hydrochloric-acid-spills-at-Momentive-s-Waterford-11943443.php
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Ban on Toxic Acid May Test Californians’ Thirst for Cheap Fuel
Aug 21, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Hailey Waller and Robert Tuttle
Californians are used to paying more for gasoline, but that may be tested soon if a pair of Los Angeles-area refineries are forced to stop their use of a toxic chemical.
The local air-quality regulator indicated this month that it may ban hydrofluoric acid from both PBF Energy Inc.’s Torrance refinery and one owned by Valero Energy Corp. eight miles away. The chemical, used by 35 percent of all U.S. refineries, boosts octane to make cleaner-burning gasoline. But some residents fear that if it were ever released, it could form a poisonous cloud that would threaten a quarter-million area lives.
Phasing out the acid may cause a surge in pump prices that dwarfs one seen in 2015, when an explosion at the Torrance refinery, then owned by Exxon Mobil Corp., raised California's retail gasoline price by a dollar in three months. Fuel demand on the West Coast is near a 10-year high, government data show. And the price for regular gasoline at California's pumps is already pushing $3 a gallon, more than 60 cents above the U.S. national average, according to data from AAA, the largest U.S. motoring group.
“There's a more-than-passing chance that it could create a scarcity situation for octane,” said Vikas Dwivedi, senior analyst at Macquarie Capital Inc. in Houston. “A big pinch in octane could take prices way up. It would be pretty substantial and everybody would feel it in their wallets.”
The 150,000 barrel-a-day Torrance plant is the second-biggest in Southern California, producing a fifth of the area's gasoline. Only California's 19 refineries, plus a handful overseas, are able to produce gasoline that meets the state's strict environmental fuel standards.
The 2015 explosion spurred some of the concern about using the acid, which has been controversial since the 1980s. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board called the incident, which injured four workers and almost halted fuel production for more than a year, a “near miss” after the explosion hurled a piece of machinery toward a tank of the acid.
“There's a real crisis of confidence with the Torrance refinery,” state Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi said in a telephone interview, pointing to a series of mishaps including fires, power cuts and heavy flaring that have plagued the refinery since PBF took it over in June 2016. He has proposed legislation to phase out use of the acid in California by the end of the decade.
If limits on the acid create a scarcity in locally made fuel, Southern California would have to buy as much as 25 percent of its gasoline from places as far away as India and the U.K., driving prices higher, Dave Hackett, president of Irvine, California-based Stillwater Associates LLC, said in a report last month that was commissioned and reviewed by PBF. Gasoline imports could rival or surpass 2015 levels, when they rose more than 10-fold to almost 70,000 barrels a day, he said.
“This is not an end-of-the-world scenario,” said Sally Hayati, a community resident and president of the Torrance Refinery Action Alliance, the largest activist organization, who added that a short-term price increase would be a small price to pay. “It's an annoyance, an interruption in production, but it's not a game changer.”
Price fears may also be overblown, Patrick Dehaan, a senior analyst at pump-price monitor Gasbuddy, said by telephone. A switch away from hydrofluoric acid “is one of those things that refineries know in advance” and the market can plan for, unlike explosions, he said.
Safety Question
Breathing hydrogen fluoride can damage the lungs causing swelling and fluid accumulation and can cause severe burns to skin, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Breathing in high amounts can be fatal.
A phaseout would cost about $500 million per refinery, according to an estimate by Gordon Schremp, senior fuels analyst for the California Energy Commission. That's almost equal to the $538 million PBF agreed to pay for Torrance.
The acid at Torrance has been modified since 1997 with an additive that makes it less likely to spread through the air and making it safe to use, Mike Karlovich, a spokesman at PBF's headquarters in Parsippany, N.J., said by telephone.
The company's assurances haven't convinced the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the local regulator, which said in an Aug. 2 presentation that a phaseout would be a “preventative measure.” It stated that PBF “did not sufficiently demonstrate” that a hydrofluoric acid cloud could be prevented.
PBF expressed disappointment in the stance, and a Valero statement issued after it alleged the regulator was “seeking drastic changes when there have been no HF related safety issues.”
Dutch Fire
A late July fire at Royal Dutch Shell Plc's Pernis refinery in the Netherlands which released a hydrofluoric acid cloud heightened fears of a similar event in California, even though Shell said the cloud stayed within the refinery and wasn't in hazardous concentrations.
“The fire and acid release at the Shell refinery in Rotterdam is the latest sign that an accident could create a deadly acid plume,” Hayati said, while acknowledging there could be a “temporary impact on gasoline prices.”
Gasbuddy's Dehaan noted that while an acid phaseout might be reassuring for the refineries’ neighbors, others in the state may not be so happy.
“For Californians who aren't in the immediate proximity of the refiners, they want to fill their tanks with as cheap gasoline as possible,” he said. “Nobody likes spending money on gas.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=119217059&vname=dennotallissues&fn=119217059&jd=119217059
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The Trump Administration Just Disbanded a Federal Advisory Committee on Climate Change
Aug 20, 2017 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin
The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning.
The charter for the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment — which includes academics as well as local officials and corporate representatives — expires Sunday. On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting administrator, Ben Friedman, informed the committee’s chair that the agency would not renew the panel.
The National Climate Assessment is supposed to be issued every four years but has come out only three times since passage of the 1990 law calling for such analysis. The next one, due for release in 2018, already has become a contentious issue for the Trump administration.
Administration officials are currently reviewing a scientific report that is key to the final document. Known as the Climate Science Special Report, it was produced by scientists from 13 different federal agencies and estimates that human activities were responsible for an increase in global temperatures of 1.1 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1951 to 2010.
The committee was established to help translate findings from the National Climate Assessment into concrete guidance for both public and private-sector officials. Its members have been writing a report to inform federal officials on the data sets and approaches that would best be included, and chair Richard Moss said in an interview Saturday that ending the group’s work was shortsighted.
“It doesn’t seem to be the best course of action,” said Moss, an adjunct professor in the University of Maryland’s Department of Geographical Sciences, and he warned of consequences for the decisions that state and local authorities must make on a range of issues from building road projects to maintaining adequate hydropower supplies. “We’re going to be running huge risks here and possibly end up hurting the next generation’s economic prospects.”
But NOAA communications director Julie Roberts said in an email Saturday that “this action does not impact the completion of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which remains a key priority.”
While many state and local officials have pressed the federal government for more concrete guidance on how to factor climate change into future infrastructure, President Trump has moved in the opposite direction.
Last week, the president signed an executive order on infrastructure that included language overturning a federal requirement that projects built in coastal floodplains and receiving federal aid take projected sea-level rise into account. Some groups, such as the National Association of Home Builders, hailed the reversal of that standard from the Obama administration on the grounds that stricter flood requirements would raise the cost of development and “could make many projects infeasible.”
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D) said in an interview Saturday that the move to dissolve the climate advisory committee represents “an example of the president not leading, and the president stepping away from reality.” An official from Seattle Public Utilities has been serving on the panel; with its disbanding, Murray said it would now be “more difficult” for cities to participate in the climate assessment. On climate change, Trump “has left us all individually to figure it out.”
Richard Wright, the past chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate, has been working with the federal advisory panel to convey the importance of detailed climate projections in next year’s assessment. The society establishes guidelines that form the basis of building codes across the country, and these are based on a historical record that may no longer be an accurate predictor of future weather extremes.
“We need to work on updating our standards with good estimates on what future weather and climate extremes will be,” Wright said Saturday. “I think it’s going to be a serious handicap for us that the advisory committee is not functional.”
The committee was established in 2015, but its members were not appointed until last summer. They convened their first meeting in the fall. Moss said members of the group intend to keep working on their report, which is due out next spring, even though it now will lack the official imprimatur of the federal government. “It won’t have the same weight as if we were issuing it as a federal advisory committee,” he said.
Other Trump Cabinet officials have either altered the makeup of outside advisory boards or suspended these panels in recent months, though they have not abolished the groups outright. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt decided to replace dozens of members on one of the agency’s key scientific review boards, while Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is “reviewing the charter and charge” of more than 200 advisory boards for his department.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/08/20/the-trump-administration-just-disbanded-a-federal-advisory-committee-on-climate-change/?utm_term=.246fe664227c
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More GOP Lawmakers Bucking Their Party on Climate Change
Aug 19, 2017 | Politico
By Annie Snider
While President Donald Trump continues to dismantle Obama-era climate policies, an unlikely surge of Republican lawmakers has begun taking steps to distance themselves from the GOP’s hard line on climate change.
The House Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan backwater when it formed early last year, has more than tripled in size since January, driven in part by Trump’s decision in June to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord.
And last month, 46 Republicans joined Democrats to defeat an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill that would have deleted a requirement that the Defense Department prepare for the effects of climate change.
The willingness of some Republicans to buck their party on climate change could help burnish their moderate credentials ahead of the 2018 elections. Of the 26 Republican caucus members, all but five represent districts targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee next year.
But it has also buoyed activists who view the House members’ positioning as a rare sign of GOP movement on climate change.
“Strangely, President Trump helped us,” said Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman whose views on climate change contributed to his defeat in a South Carolina primary in 2010. “His withdrawal from Paris dramatically increased the number of [internet] searches about climate change and increased interest … People are getting more and more uncomfortable with the nuttiness of these positions.”
In a Republican-held Congress, Inglis said, voting to reject a Republican-backed amendment to the defense authorization bill was “a big step for these members … Members of Congress who are attuned to their districts apparently are picking up on the reality that Americans on both left and right are concerned about climate change.”
If the Republican Party is undergoing a shift on climate, it is at its earliest, most incremental stage. Rejection of mainstream climate science remains widespread within the GOP. Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and he infuriated environmentalists again this week when he repealed a flood standard for federally funded infrastructure projects.
of the most vulnerable Republicans in the House, said this week that the Climate Solutions Caucus has grown faster than he expected. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo Facebook Twitter Google + Email Comment Print POLITICO MAGAZINEWhat Black Jack Pershing Can Teach Us About Fighting Terrorists
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LOS ANGELES — While President Donald Trump continues to dismantle Obama-era climate policies, an unlikely surge of Republican lawmakers has begun taking steps to distance themselves from the GOP’s hard line on climate change.
The House Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan backwater when it formed early last year, has more than tripled in size since January, driven in part by Trump’s decision in June to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord.
And last month, 46 Republicans joined Democrats to defeat an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill that would have deleted a requirement that the Defense Department prepare for the effects of climate change.
The willingness of some Republicans to buck their party on climate change could help burnish their moderate credentials ahead of the 2018 elections. Of the 26 Republican caucus members, all but five represent districts targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee next year.
But it has also buoyed activists who view the House members’ positioning as a rare sign of GOP movement on climate change.
“Strangely, President Trump helped us,” said Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman whose views on climate change contributed to his defeat in a South Carolina primary in 2010. “His withdrawal from Paris dramatically increased the number of [internet] searches about climate change and increased interest … People are getting more and more uncomfortable with the nuttiness of these positions.”
In a Republican-held Congress, Inglis said, voting to reject a Republican-backed amendment to the defense authorization bill was “a big step for these members … Members of Congress who are attuned to their districts apparently are picking up on the reality that Americans on both left and right are concerned about climate change.”
If the Republican Party is undergoing a shift on climate, it is at its earliest, most incremental stage. Rejection of mainstream climate science remains widespread within the GOP. Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and he infuriated environmentalists again this week when he repealed a flood standard for federally funded infrastructure projects.
PLAYBOOK PLUSWhat establishment Republicans think about Trump's tirade
By ZACH MONTELLARO
The Climate Solutions Caucus itself represents only a minority of the Republican conference. And its members have been criticized by environmental activists for their records on issues ranging from oil drilling to climate research, some posting lifetime scores in single digits on the League of Conservation Voters’ environmental scorecard.
Rep. Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat who founded the climate caucus with fellow Floridian Carlos Curbelo, a Republican, said Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement was so jarring that “some of my colleagues were looking for ways to show that they actually do want to respond.” But at least two Republican members of the caucus — Reps. Tom Reed and Claudia Tenney of New York — supported Trump’s withdrawal from the accord.
“I tend to call it the ‘Climate Peacocks Caucus’ … people who express great concern and then vote the wrong way,” said R.L. Miller, founder of the super-PAC Climate Hawks Vote. “Obviously, the caucus is growing in popularity. But my overall sense is that it is being used as political cover. It is no coincidence that the Republicans who joined are on that red-to-blue flip-able list.”
Alex Taurel, deputy legislative director at the League of Conservation Voters, said “there is a wide variety of support for action on climate change, and not just sort of rhetorically accepting the science.”
Still, in their vote on the defense authorization bill, Republicans fought to keep language declaring “climate change is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and is impacting stability in areas of the world.”
Taurel said it is “still too early to know what that vote kind of signifies. But if it represents a harbinger that the caucus is going to start to support things together to reduce carbon pollution, then that’s a real development.”
Curbelo, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the House, said this week that the Climate Solutions Caucus has grown faster than he expected and that “two years ago, I don’t think you could find more than two or three Republicans in the House who were willing to go on record in a significant way” on climate change. He said the group is now focused on “blocking and tackling … opposing anti-climate legislation.”
“I think the next phase, and hopefully we can get to that this Congress, is to turn the caucus into an ideas factory, get behind proactive legislation,” Curbelo said. “I think the vast majority of House Republicans are shifting toward accepting the science and openness toward at least modest policy prescriptions.”
For Republicans, the most politically palatable opening on climate change appears to be on spending, not regulation. Rep. John Faso, a top target of Democrats in New York, said Republicans should push in their infrastructure talks for money to help local and state governments “harden their infrastructure” to gird against climate change. He also suggested including incentives for agriculture-friendly carbon sequestration programs in the farm bill.
“Yes, we can show that the climate is changing, yes we can attribute at least some of that change to human activity. The question, ultimately, is if you adopt certain measures, does this appreciably slow the climate change and at what cost are those measures to be implemented,” Faso said. “I do think that if we concentrate on things that are economically viable and scientifically sustainable and approvable and achievable, then we can address this issue.”
Deutch said he is “confident that we will come up with an agenda that the caucus as a whole can support.”
Few politicians or strategists of either major political party expect climate change to factor more significantly in 2018 than the economy, health care or myriad other issues. But public polling suggests increasing public concern about the changing climate, and Democrats are already hitting Republicans on the issue in competitive districts.
Doug Applegate, who nearly toppled Rep. Darrell Issa in 2016 and is among the Democrats challenging him again in his Southern California district, said that “on certain days of the week … [Issa] pops up and tries to sound like a moderate Republican.” And Andy Thorburn, one of several Democrats vying to unseat Rep. Ed Royce in California’s Orange County, called Royce’s membership in the climate caucus “sheep’s clothing for the wolf … because his record there is abysmal.”
Dave Gilliard, a strategist for four of California’s seven targeted Republicans, including Issa and Royce, said of Issa’s membership in the climate caucus, “We haven’t talked about it from the political side … We have had no discussions on the campaign side about climate change being something we need to jump on from a political issue next year.”
“I would say that it matters to a very narrow constituency, probably,” Gilliard said.
Issa, who was once given a “Climate Change Denier” award by the League of Conservation Voters, said this week that he stands by his controversial, 2009 statement about the “wide range of scientific opinion” on climate change. Issa, who called Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement “ill-advised,” said “long-term trends for warming are settled,” as is “the fact that we are producing human CO2 emissions that are going into the atmosphere.” But he said calculations about dangerous tipping points are not resolved, and he criticized Obama for disregarding Republicans on the issue.
“There wasn’t that opportunity to say, ‘What are the things we can do … how can we increase sustainability?” Issa said, adding that Republicans now have an opportunity to address “what is our glidepath to a sustainable ecology.”
Jill Sigal, a former energy official in George W. Bush’s administration and executive vice president of the Climate Leadership Council, a conservative group pushing for a carbon tax, said growth in the Climate Solutions Caucus has given her “increasing hope” in the ability of Congress to work on climate change.
Inglis, who once dismissed climate change as “a bunch of hooey” but now advocates on the subject, called it “very exciting.”
“I don’t want to say that all the folks in the caucus are ready to, you know, charge the barricades on climate change,” he said. “They’re not all signed up for that. But they are enlisting for inquiry into action on climate change … And that we will take and celebrate.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/19/more-gop-lawmakers-bucking-their-party-on-climate-change-241800
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Bannon's Exit Could Reshape Trump Energy Policies
Aug 21, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Michael Doyle
White House strategist Steve Bannon's abrupt but long-anticipated departure today from President Trump's inner circle removes a distinctive voice on energy and environmental issues and could give moderate voices more say.
Following a flurry of rumors and unusual interviews that Bannon granted in the last few days, the White House announced today that he was history.
"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a brief statement. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."
The free-floating, relatively unstructured nature of Bannon's job as chief strategist reportedly bothered Kelly, a buttoned-down former Marine Corps general brought in to discipline Trump's fractious White House. It also complicates efforts to pin down Bannon's influence on energy and the environment and the potential impact of his absence.
But along with U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, most notably, Bannon helped lead the forces opposed to U.S. participation in the Paris climate accord. Bannon won that fight when Trump announced June 1 that the United States would withdraw from the landmark agreement.
"So Steve Bannon is now the president of the United States, and that was more clear yesterday than ever before," MSNBC host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough declared following the decision.
Beyond climate issues, Bannon generally advocated dismantling the rules and regulations, many of them dealing with resource development and environmental protection, that together make up what some call the administrative state.
Bannon's sometimes mysterious influence on energy and environmental policy, in turn, prompted environmental groups today to quickly cheer his unceremonious exit.
"Good riddance to Steve Bannon, as his disgraceful brand of hate and vitriol deserves no place in the White House," Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement.
Broadening the indictment, Michelle Chan, vice president of Friends of the Earth, added, "White Supremacists like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump do not belong in the White House." The environmental organization had previously joined other groups in circulating petitions urging Trump not to hire Bannon.
A 63-year-old Navy veteran and graduate of Virginia Tech and Harvard Business School, the famously disheveled Bannon had done stints with Goldman Sachs, the Breitbart News Network and the earth science research venture called Biosphere 2 before Trump appointed him in August 2016 to serve as his campaign's chief executive officer.
"I like Mr. Bannon," Trump told reporters at a disjointed news conference Tuesday. "He's a friend of mine. But Mr. Bannon came on very late. You know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that."
Then, after downplaying Bannon's role in his campaign, Trump added an ominous coda when asked whether he retained faith in his chief strategist.
"We'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon," Trump said.
The climate fight was only one of many for Bannon, a former leader of the fiercely conservative website Breitbart, but it especially aggravated tensions with Trump's influential son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.
Bannon's exit now enhances the power of Kushner, who through White House leaks and other means has associated himself with gentler policies. Kushner and his wife, Trump's daughter Ivanka, were identified by The Wall Street Journal in February as "a moderating influence on the White House's position on climate change and environmental issues."
Bannon's departure could also boost the internal clout of National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who has been allied with Kushner and with whom Bannon also periodically clashed during the Trump administration's chaotic first six months.
While Cohn was still with Goldman Sachs, the company in a 2005 statement declared that climate change "is a reality and that human activities are largely responsible for increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere." And in 2015, when Cohn was president, Goldman Sachs joined five other banks in a statement acknowledging that government action was needed to address the problem.
Reporters Robin Bravender and Jean Chemnick contributed.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/08/18/stories/1060058963
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Filtering Lead Out of Chicago’s Drinking Water
Aug 21, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Alex Formuzis
Lead has been detected at high levels in Chicago’s tap water, but that doesn’t mean residents of the Windy City have to drink it.
Three separate tests conducted in the city in 2015 found lead at levels far above the legal limit of 15 parts per billion (ppb) set by the Environmental Protection Agency. One of the tests detected lead at 120 ppb – eight times higher than the legal limit under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
Fortunately, EWG just released its national Tap Water Database, which allows virtually every American, including everyone in Chicago, to learn about each potentially harmful chemical in their drinking water and what scientists say are the safe levels of those contaminants.
Lead is a highly potent neurotoxin that can cause serious, irreversible brain and nervous system damage in children. The EPA’s recent modeling suggests that lead concentrations in the 3.8 to 15 ppb range can put a formula-fed baby at risk of elevated blood lead levels.
In 2009, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment set a public health goal level of 0.2 ppb for lead in drinking water to protect against even subtle IQ loss in children. EWG has adopted California’s goal level as our standard for lead in tap water.
Chicagoans looking to protect their families from lead can take matters into their own hands and search EWG’s water filter guide to find a filter that will dramatically reduce this and many other contaminants. And here is a list of all filters shown to significantly reduce lead in drinking water.
If you live in the suburbs surrounding Chicago, you can go to EWG’s database page for Illinois and enter your zip code to learn much more about the quality of your tap water and find the best filter for it.
Note: the tests done for lead by Chicago’s utility are different that the ones for other contaminants. Lead testing must be done from water samples taken from the tap in homes, schools and other buildings that could have lead pipes. This means that lead tests performed in Chicago might not reflect specific lead risks in an individual home.
Ask your water provider if your tap water enters your home through a lead service line. Although most utilities stopped installing lead lines decades ago, more than 6 million American homes get still get water through lead pipes, according to a 2016 report from the American Water Works Association.
Buying a filter is not the only thing you can do – if you’re outraged that these contaminants are in your water in the first place, check out our seven questions to ask your local elected officials.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2017/08/filtering-lead-out-chicago-s-drinking-water#.WZqAGD4jGUk
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