Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 1/9/17
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Questions Remain as Dow and DuPont Become DowDuPont
Sep 1, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Cara Lombardo
Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co. completed their merger and debuted Friday on the New York Stock Exchange as DowDuPont as questions remain about the $150 billion chemicals giant’s next steps. -
Flame Retardant Chemicals Harm Conception and Pregnancy
Sep 1, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Olga Naldenko
Flame retardants found in everyday consumer products such as furniture could decrease a woman’s fertility, and ability to conceive and have a healthy delivery, new research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health suggests. -
Stakeholders Await Canadian Government Response to Cepa Recommendations
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
For NGOs and industry, the possibility that Canada may revise its regime for regulating chemicals poses, respectively, a rare opportunity or a significant threat. -
Orgalime Calls for Clarity on EEE Exemption to REACH Restriction Proposal
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
The European Engineering Industries Association, Orgalime, has called on Echa to amend text concerning an exemption for electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) in its draft proposal to restrict the use of lead compounds to stabilise PVC and on the marketing of such articles. -
EU Commission Issues Regulation Adding CMRs to REACH Annex XVII
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The European Commission has published its Regulation amending Annex XVII of REACH to include more than 20 substances recently classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic and reproductive (CMR) category 1A and 1B. -
Sweden Identifies 37 Bisphenols as Potential EDCs
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
An investigation by the Swedish Chemicals Agency has found that 37 of 39 bisphenols surveyed on the European market could have potential endocrine disrupting properties. -
Energy Dept. Wants to Speed 'Small-Scale' Natural Gas Exports
Sep 1, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Energy Department is proposing to streamline the approval process for companies who want carry out “small-scale” exports of liquefied natural gas. -
Storm Knocks out Production of Gas Crucial to Consumer Goods
Sep 1, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
Hurricane Harvey knocked out more than half of U.S. production of ethylene, a significant chemical with widespread applications. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Delayed Chemical Safety Rule After Industry Complaints
Sep 1, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)
The Trump administration delayed an Obama-era rule that would have tightened safety requirements for companies that store large quantities of dangerous chemicals such as the chemical plant near Houston that exploded early Thursday. -
(ACC Mentioned) INSIGHT: Companies Will Have to Learn from the Cost of Harvey
Sep 1, 2017 | ICIS
By Nigel Davis
Refineries and chemical plants remain shut but will resume operations as infrastructure returns to some semblance of normality. -
(ACC Mentioned) Ewire: Harvey's Effects Turn Focus to EPA's Delay of RMP Rule
Sep 1, 2017 | Inside EPA
Inside EPA's Dave Reynolds has a blockbuster on how environmentalists are citing the chemical fire at the Arkema, Inc. facility in Texas due to flooding from Hurricane Harvey to make the case that EPA should continue to implement the Obama-era facility safety rule updating Risk Management Plan (RMP) requirements. -
(ACC Mentioned) Kathryn Z. Klaber: Harvey Highlights Over-Reliance on Gulf
Sep 1, 2017 | Pittsburgh Business Times
As companies strategize in the aftermath of the storm, they would be well-advised to geographically diversify their operations by investing capital in the safe haven of Appalachia. -
Arkema Backtracks, Refuses to Provide Chemical Inventory to the Public
Sep 1, 2017 | Chron
By Matt Dempsey
Arkema, the company that owns the chemical plant in Crosby on the verge of more explosions, is refusing to provide a chemical inventory and facility map to the public, one day after promising to provide the information. -
Embattled Chemical Company Defends Record, Planning
Sep 1, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Mike Lee
A Houston-area chemical company whose plant caught fire in the wake of Hurricane Harvey defended its response to the storm today, saying no one could have predicted the extent of the flooding. -
In Texas Chemical-Plant Fire, Failure of Backup Measures Raises New Fears
Sep 1, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Steven Mufson, Brady Dennis and Joel Achenbach
When the hurricane blew in, workers at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Tex., faced the problem of keeping the plant’s volatile chemicals cold. -
Houston Left with a Toxic Mess as Trump Relaxes Rules
Sep 1, 2017 | Politico Pro
By Ben Lefbvre and Alex Guillen
Explosions and fires at a Houston-area chemical plant triggered an evacuation Thursday in a region still in chaos from Hurricane Harvey — and generated new criticism of President Donald Trump’s efforts to repeal the industry’s safety rules. -
After Harvey, Texas Faces Massive Cleanup
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical and Engineering News
By Melody M Bomgardner
Five days of devastating rain from Tropical Storm Harvey left its mark on the Gulf Coast of Texas, home to more than 6 million people and a significant portion of the U.S. fuel and chemical industries. -
Tropical Storm Harvey Causes Disruptions, Emissions, and Explosions in Houston Area
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical and Engineering News
By Melody M. Bomgardner
As flood waters continue to rise, Storage facilities holding highly flammable organic peroxides at an Arkema plant in Crosby, Texas, began to explode early this morning, sending black smoke into the air. -
Chemical Blaze Offers Lifeline for Beleaguered Agency
Sep 1, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
A federal investigative agency that President Trump sought to eliminate is now looking into a fire and explosions at a facility northwest of Houston that is owned by a well-connected French chemical company. -
Texas, Utility Push 5th Circuit as Venue for SO2 Designations Suit
Sep 1, 2017 | Inside EPA
Texas and electric utility Luminant are seeking to ensure arguments over EPA's designation of four areas in Texas as “nonattainment” for federal sulfur dioxide (SO2) national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) are heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, and not in the D.C. Circuit as EPA wants. -
Court Rebuffs EPA Bid to Shelve Texas Haze Plan
Sep 1, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
U.S. EPA cannot sidestep a court-approved deal to address air pollution from coal-fired power plants in Texas, a federal court has ruled.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
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Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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Questions Remain as Dow and DuPont Become DowDuPont
Sep 1, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Cara Lombardo
Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co. completed their merger and debuted Friday on the New York Stock Exchange as DowDuPont as questions remain about the $150 billion chemicals giant’s next steps.
DowDuPont will take DuPont’s spot in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Shares in the new company were up less than 1% Friday morning after opening at $66.65, Dow’s previous closing price.
Executives plan to carve the combined companies’ three segments—agriculture, materials science and specialty products—into separate publicly traded entities within the next 18 months. But several well-known investors have levied concerns that could derail the timeline.
A handful of major investors want to shrink the materials company expected to emerge, which the company said would be the first spinoff postmerger. They also take issue with Dow Chief Executive Andrew Liveris’s plan to stick around as chairman of DowDuPont until July.
Third Point LLC, Glenview Capital Management LLC, Jana Partners LLC and Trian Fund Management LP have all privately voiced concerns that Mr. Liveris could impede efforts to sufficiently retool the company’s units. But Mr. Liveris has questioned such assumptions.
“Our teams have been working for more than a year on integration planning, and—as of today—we will hit the ground running on executing those plans with an intention to complete the separations as quickly as possible,” he said in prepared remarks Friday.
Glenview Capital Management LLC also said in a July letter it supports a plan from Daniel Loeb’s Third Point that calls for shifting nearly a third of the earnings from the proposed materials business to the specialty-products operation to form a specialty company with units that could be separated or sold off.
Dow and DuPont executives at the time said they would review the plan and consult with investors.
DowDuPont will be overseen by former DuPont Chief Executive Ed Breen. The company says the merger will generate cost savings of $3 billion within two years.
Under the terms of the merger, Dow shareholders received one DowDuPont share for each of their shares in the merger while DuPont shareholders received 1.282 shares in the new company for each of their shares. DowDuPont’s 16-member board now includes eight members from each of the companies’ former boards.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/questions-remain-as-dow-and-dupont-become-dowdupont-1504269341
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Flame Retardant Chemicals Harm Conception and Pregnancy
Sep 1, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Olga Naldenko
Flame retardants found in everyday consumer products such as furniture could decrease a woman’s fertility, and ability to conceive and have a healthy delivery, new research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health suggests.
Infertility is on the rise in America and worldwide. Data from the National Institutes of Health indicate that about 7 percent of men, or 4.7 million, and about 11 percent of women, or 6.7 million, of reproductive age in the U.S. have experienced fertility problems.
Many factors contribute to infertility, including age of the mother and father, diet, stress, body mass index, and exposures to toxic chemicals. Air pollution, and hormone-disrupting pesticides and plastic additives can impair fertility, studies of laboratory animals and people show. The new study adds a particular class of flame retardants, known as organophosphates, to the list.
Researchers from Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital studied 211 women undergoing in vitro fertilization treatments between 2005 and 2015.
Women with higher levels of flame retardants in their bodies were less likely to have successful fertilization or implantation during that treatment cycle compared to women with lower levels of flame retardants. Those with higher levels of the chemicals were also approximately 40 percent less likely to become pregnant or have a live birth.
The new publication adds to the body of science indicating that couples trying to conceive or undergoing fertilization therapy could improve their chances of success by reducing their exposure to toxic environmental chemicals. Given the variety of chemicals associated with hormone disruption, this can be difficult to do.
Earlier research by Harvard scientists also found associations between smoking, diet, and several other environmental contaminants and reproductive success. One previous study reported a relationship between these same flame retardant chemicals and male fertility.
“These findings suggest that exposure to organophosphate flame retardants may be one of many risk factors for lower reproductive success,” said Courtney Carignan, the study’s lead author, formerly a research fellow in Harvard’s Department of Environmental Health, now at Michigan State University. “They also add to the body of evidence indicating a need to reduce the use of these flame retardants and identify safer alternatives.”
For more than a decade EWG has worked to reduce the use of unnecessary and toxic chemicals in household products. Recently we’ve seen some success, as manufacturers have largely stopped adding flame retardants to foam couches, padded chairs, office furniture and baby products. When shopping for new products make sure to look at tags and pick those that are free of these toxic additives. Yet, so long as these toxic flame retardants are used, they can pop even in the most unexpected places, such as nail polish, as EWG reported in 2015.
Here’s another tip: Studies have shown that people who wash their hands more frequently have lower levels of these flame retardant chemicals in their bodies. This is because flame retardants used in furniture foam migrate into the air and dust of our indoor environments, and enter our bodies primarily through accidental dust ingestion as small amounts of dust stick to our hands throughout the day.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2017/08/flame-retardant-chemicals-harm-conception-and-pregnancy#.Wal9uD4jHIU
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Stakeholders Await Canadian Government Response to Cepa Recommendations
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
For NGOs and industry, the possibility that Canada may revise its regime for regulating chemicals poses, respectively, a rare opportunity or a significant threat. All parties await the government's response, due by 15 October, to sweeping recommendations from the House Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
The committee released a report on 15 June urging revisions to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (Cepa) and the Chemicals Management Plan (CMP). Among its 87 recommendations is reversing the burden of proof onto industry for demonstrating the safety of 'substances of very high concern' – a hazard-based approach borrowed from the EU's REACH regime.
And the NGO Environmental Defence has seized on the 24 August release of the fourth Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) of chemical exposure to argue for strengthening Cepa. This report "found that the majority of Canadians continue to be exposed to toxic chemicals, like BPA and parabens," the NGO said.
For example, Environmental Defence said, nine of ten Canadians still showed evidence of exposure tobisphenol A (BPA). The ongoing survey by the government's Health Statistics Division showed that the average BPA concentration was 1.0 micrograms per litre (mg/l) in testing done in 2014 and 2015. This is down from 1.2 and 1.1 micrograms in two earlier surveys.
"In 2013 we had around 92% showing BPA in their urine, in 2015 it's the same," despite a 2010 ban on the use of BPA in baby bottles, Environmental Defence's Muhannad Malas told Chemical Watch. "This raises the question of whether the current risk management strategy is working."
"We should regulate based on the assumption that there is no safe level of exposure," said Mr Malas, the NGO's toxics programme manager.'Our worst fears'
From industry's point of view, however, the Cepa recommendations represent an unusually transparent effort by NGOs and their allies to seize the opportunity presented by a Liberal majority in parliament.
"Our worst fears have been realised, especially in a majority government situation where the majority views of the committee could get immediate traction in the government’s official response," J Gary LeRoux, president of the Canadian Paint and Coatings Association, wrote in the organisation's June newsletter. "Industry groups must do everything they can to ensure cooler heads prevail and Canada does not take a step backwards."
His views are consistent with those from the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada. Its president and CEO Bob Masterson said in the wake of the report’s release that wholesale adoption of its recommendations "could irrevocably undermine the science and risk-based foundation which underpins Cepa 1999 and the CMP".
Mr LeRoux told Chemical Watch that the committee's process was biased in a way that he contends is unusual in Canadian policy making. He pointed to the "opposition report" written by Conservative members of the committee, noting that NGOs were not only over-represented in giving testimony and even more so in "evidence" cited by the majority report, and were the only witnesses allowed to present additional information.
A regulatory endeavour of this magnitude "is generally done much more antiseptically" in Canada, Mr LeRoux said.
"Why didn't they take a lot of this and give it to their science committee?" he asked. "If there had been more rigour and more time taken, those recommendations would not have seen the light of day."
Mr Malas countered that there was agreement from MPs, including from different parties, that Cepa needs updating, even if there was not agreement on all proposals.
The committee report "is comprehensive and offers a meaningful way forward to fix Canada's regulatory approach," Mr Malas said.
The government's required response will come from the Ministers of Health and Environment and Climate Change. Mr LeRoux said that response "will provide signals as to the legislative approach to be taken".
But Mr Malas said parliament is not guaranteed to follow through with strong revisions.
"Although there is broad support for Cepa reform, it may not be something that is prioritised," he said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/58434/stakeholders-await-canadian-government-response-to-cepa-recommendations
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Orgalime Calls for Clarity on EEE Exemption to REACH Restriction Proposal
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
The European Engineering Industries Association, Orgalime, has called on Echa to amend text concerning an exemption for electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) in its draft proposal to restrict the use of lead compounds to stabilise PVC and on the marketing of such articles.
The text, which is subject to public consultation, excludes EEE from the scope. This is because the restriction on the use of lead in such equipment with a maximum 0.1% concentration already applies under the RoHS Directive. However, Orgalime is asking Echa to specify that components of EEE would also be excluded from the restriction.
It says this amendment is necessary to "ensure a level playing field and fair treatment" of EEE components placed on the EU market before being assembled in final electrical and electronic equipment. Otherwise, the association says, the lead restriction "risks market distortions" between EEE manufactured goods and imported equipment.
Echa says that depending on the outcome of the assessment, the scope of the restriction "might be broad or targeted specifically" to articles or article groups that are the main contributors to the risks targeted by the proposal.
PVC is used as electrical cable and wire covers, and has many other uses including as rigid building and construction materials.'Double' regulation
In comments to Chemical Watch, Orgalime director general Adrian Harris says he wants to ensure consistency for manufacturers and avoid 'double regulation'. This would occur where an exemption for a component is granted under RoHS, but a REACH restriction applies in parallel.
"The EEE component, for which an exemption under RoHS applies, could be incorporated in an EEE outside the EU, which could then be lawfully sold on the EU market", he says. Meanwhile, assembly in Europe of the same equipment with the same component "would no longer be possible because the component cannot be found on the EU market".
Restrictions will help tackle lead emissions, around 90% of which are attributable to PVC articles imported into the EU during 2016, Echa says.
Data from Eurostat (2016) indicates that imports of relevant PVC articles have progressively increased and are likely to continue. This highlights the need, the agency says, for EU-wide action to lower lead emissions to the environment and reduce human exposure to the metal.
The proposed restriction aims to make existing voluntary action by the European PVC industry – the Vinyl Plus agreement – more effective in phasing out lead-based PVC stabilisers in the EU.
The public consultation on the proposed restriction started on 22 March and is due to end on 22 September.
https://chemicalwatch.com/58430/orgalime-calls-for-clarity-on-eee-exemption-to-reach-restriction-proposal
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EU Commission Issues Regulation Adding CMRs to REACH Annex XVII
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The European Commission has published its Regulation amending Annex XVII of REACH to include more than 20 substances recently classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic and reproductive (CMR) category 1A and 1B.
This Regulation will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the EU's Official Journal.
Earlier this month, the Commission notified the WTO of different draft amendments that propose adding CMRs –including cadmium compounds and formaldehyde reaction products – to the same Annex. The final date for comments is the end of September.
https://chemicalwatch.com/58433/eu-commission-issues-regulation-adding-cmrs-to-reach-annex-xvii
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Sweden Identifies 37 Bisphenols as Potential EDCs
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
An investigation by the Swedish Chemicals Agency has found that 37 of 39 bisphenols surveyed on the European market could have potential endocrine disrupting properties.
At the end of last year, the European Commission adopted arestriction on bisphenol A (BPA) in thermal paper and it was added to the candidate listbecause of its toxic reproductive properties.
Using a new screening method [see box] Kemi has identified more than 200 substances potentially on the market with a chemical structure similar to BPA. This means, the agency says, there are far more than "those roughly 15 substances we generally mean when we talk about the 'alphabet soup' of bisphenols".
The following six, it says, have properties and uses that should be the focus of regulatory action because they "could be problematic from a risk perspective":
· bisphenol A;
· bisphenol F;
· bisphenol M;
· bisphenol S;
· 2,2-bis(4´-hydroxyphenyl)-4-methylpentane; and
· benzophenone-2.
The EU has initiated risk management option analyses (RMOA) under the REACH regulation for these and two others: bisphenol AF and tertramethyl bisphenol F.
Meanwhile, tetrabromobisphenol A, 6,6-Di-tert-butyl-4,4´-butylidenedi-m-cresol and 6,6-Di-tert-butyl-4,4´-thiodi-m-cresol are undergoing substance evaluation; and phenolphtalein is on the candidate list.
Industry is considering bisphenol S (BPS) as an alternative to BPA. In mid-2016, the Commission asked Echa to carry out a survey of BPS in thermal paper. The results should be delivered by the end of the year and the conclusion made public in January 2018, the Commission said.Missing information
Information on the toxicological effects for half of the 39 analysed substances is "inadequate or entirely lacking", Kemi says. "This in itself is problematic because, according to the data simulations, all bisphenols selected for the survey can have endocrine disrupting properties like BPA."
However, the agency says, compared with BPA, other bisphenols are used in small volumes and in niche applications where exposure is likely to be limited.
Nineteen have been pre-registered for the REACH 2018 deadline, which means it is not yet known if they are on the EU market. Kemi says further information on the extent and manner in which they are used should be available after the deadline of 31 May next year.
Kemi says it intends to share the results of its investigation with the research community and other government agencies in Sweden and the EU. It will also carry out a review of the bisphenols it has identified.
It will not, however, propose any new national rules restricting the use of bisphenols in Sweden while they are currently being handled by EU legislation, it says.Screening method
Kemi's new screening method groups substances based on their chemical structure, their possible use in different applications, and their potential endocrine disrupting properties according to data simulations.
The agency says the methodology is "universally applicable" and can be applied to other groups of substances. It is also possible, Kemi says, to group substances based on information about other potential inherent properties, such as reproductive toxicity or long-term adverse effects in the environment.
https://chemicalwatch.com/58436/sweden-identifies-37-bisphenols-as-potential-edcs
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Energy Dept. Wants to Speed 'Small-Scale' Natural Gas Exports
Sep 1, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Energy Department is proposing to streamline the approval process for companies who want carry out “small-scale” exports of liquefied natural gas.
Under a proposal published Friday in the Federal Register, companies would get automatic approval of gas export applications as long as the proposed exports are 140 million cubic feet per day or less and the Energy Department does not need to do an extensive environmental review.
The proposal comes as the Trump administration is seeking to ramp up exports of fossil fuels produced in the United States, under President Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda.
“The United States has an abundant supply of affordable natural gas that studies have shown will significantly exceed domestic demand. Meanwhile, foreign demand for natural gas imports from the United States has increased as many countries, such as those in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, seek to import cleaner sources of energy,” the department wrote in its proposal.
“DOE believes that facilitating small-scale natural gas exports will allow for greater diversity and competition in the natural gas market.”
The Energy Department is obligated to review requests to export natural gas from the contiguous United States to countries without U.S. free-trade agreements and determine whether such exports would be in the “public interest.”
Most of the applications to date have been for large-scale export projects, much larger than the small-scale definition the department is proposing.
But official say there is a significant market for small-scale exports, particularly to other Western Hemisphere countries, and that they can be assumed to be in the public interest.
“Many of these countries do not generate enough natural gas demand to support the economies of scale required to justify large volumes of LNG imports from large-scale LNG terminals via conventional LNG tankers,” the department wrote.
The Friday proposal is open for public comment through Oct. 16.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/348847-energy-dept-wants-to-speed-small-scale-natural-gas-exports
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Storm Knocks out Production of Gas Crucial to Consumer Goods
Sep 1, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
Hurricane Harvey knocked out more than half of U.S. production of ethylene, a significant chemical with widespread applications.
Ethylene is a colorless, flammable gas essential for plastics production and used to make products including car parts, milk jugs, paint and mattresses.
Texas, where Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, produces nearly three-quarters of the country's supply of the chemical.
While many Americans probably haven't heard of ethylene, analysts say it's a crucial part of the U.S. manufacturing industry.
"Ethylene really is the major petrochemical that impacts the entire industry," said Chirag Kothari, an analyst at Nexant (Jack Kaskey, Bloomberg, Sept. 1). — MJ
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/09/01/stories/1060059565
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Delayed Chemical Safety Rule After Industry Complaints
Sep 1, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)
The Trump administration delayed an Obama-era rule that would have tightened safety requirements for companies that store large quantities of dangerous chemicals such as the chemical plant near Houston that exploded early Thursday.
The Environmental Protection Agency rule would have required chemical plants, including the now-destroyed Arkema Inc., plant outside Houston, to make public the types and quantities of chemicals stored on site. The rule was developed after a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, exploded in 2013, killing 15 people.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt prevented the safety rule from taking effect until 2019 to allow the agency time to reconsider industry objections. Chemical companies, including Arkema, said the rule could make it easier for terrorists and other criminals to target refineries, chemical plants and other facilities.
Environmental groups and 11 states are fighting the delay in court.
Arkema has not released a full list of chemicals stored at the plant, although officials said the substances that caught fire were organic peroxides, a family of volatile compounds used for making a variety of products, including pharmaceuticals and construction materials.
Mathy Stanislaus, a former EPA assistant administrator who helped draft the rule for the Obama administration, said it probably would not have prevented the explosion but could have greatly reduced the risk to first responders. The Harris County sheriff says 15 deputies sought medical attention for eye irritation after the fire, although most were quickly treated and released.
"There was a gap in specific knowledge. People need to know what chemicals (are being stored) and what kind of precautions are in place," Stanislaus said in an interview Thursday.
Stanislaus, who led the EPA's Office of Land and Emergency Management during the Obama administration, disputed critics who said the rule would have made it easier for terrorists to gain information about hazardous chemicals.
The rule "struck a balance" between the public's right to know important safety information and national security concerns, he said.
An EPA spokeswoman said the agency's Risk Management Program rule continues to be in effect and requires facilities that use extremely hazardous substances to develop plans that identify potential effects of a chemical accident, steps to prevent an accident and emergency response procedures.
"The agency's recent action to delay the effectiveness of the 2017 amendments had no effect on the major safety requirements that applied to the Arkema Crosby plant at the time of the fire," spokeswoman Amy Graham said.
EPA is providing assistance and resources to the first responders in Harris County and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Pruitt said in a statement. Data received from an aircraft that surveyed the scene early Thursday "indicates that there are no concentrations of concern for toxic materials reported at this time," he said.
The EPA issued a final rule in January, seven days before President Barack Obama left office. The EPA said at the time that the rule would help prevent accidents and improve emergency preparedness by allowing first responders better data on chemical storage.
A coalition of business groups opposed the rule, saying it would impose significant new costs without specific safety benefits. The rule "may actually compromise the security of our facilities, emergency responders and our communities," groups including the American Chemistry Council, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and American Petroleum Institute said.
Arkema also lobbied against the rule, telling the EPA in a May 2016 letter that the proposal "will likely add significant new costs and burdens" and "could create a risk to our sites and to the communities surrounding them."
Stanislaus called the rule "a modest first step" to address safety for first responders and localities. The rule came after a three-year process that included eight public hearings and more than 44,000 public comments, he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/08/31/us/politics/ap-us-harvey-chemical-plants-epa.html
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(ACC Mentioned) INSIGHT: Companies Will Have to Learn from the Cost of Harvey
Sep 1, 2017 | ICIS
By Nigel Davis
The photograph is from a US Coastguard flyover of the Texas ports of Houston, Freeport and Galveston this week looking for spills. Now, seven days after Hurricane Harvey came ashore and slowly dumped unprecedented volumes of water onto the Houston area and along the coastline into Louisiana, the ports are beginning to open.
Refineries and chemical plants remain shut but will resume operations as infrastructure returns to some semblance of normality. Unexpected incidents – such as the explosions and fires at the Arkema organic peroxides plant in Crosby, northeast of Houston – notwithstanding, production and output will be ramped up.
It is still a question of when and it remains difficult to determine the time needed for rail and road connections to clear. Employees have to be in a position too, to get to work. Many have been deeply affected even stranded by floods.
Terminals at Port Houston are expected to be re-open on Friday. Railroad companies are restoring services hit by the hurricane and tropical storm.
In an update on Thursday, ExxonMobil said impact assessments were underway at its Baytown complex, which had been shut down. The nearby Mont Belvieu plastics plant was also shut down; the company’s Beaumont refinery and chemicals plants had completed safe and systematic shutdowns while the company’s refining and chemicals plants in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were operating as normal.
It is clear that it will not be possible to assess market conditions for a myriad of products until it is known whether plants were damaged by the storm and subsequent flooding or whether they have just been affected by restricted logistics.
The flooding in certain locations was severe and as the waters recede, the damage will become clearer. The construction of new facilities across the US Gulf Coast region are certainly expected to be hit.
Companies rightly put their employees’ safety and well-being first. Those firms operating in the affected areas have sought to track the whereabouts of workers.
Shell’s CEO Ben van Beurden heaped praise on staff who helped ensure the safe evacuations and shutdowns of rigs and refining and chemical operations, those who stayed behind to keep the plants safe and those who stepped out to help others.
It is good practice to give praise where praise is due, particularly after a natural disaster such as a hurricane. “Planning for hurricanes, tropical storms and floods is one thing,” van Beurden said. “The last few days have been something else.”
It is that “something else” which will be need to be assessed over the coming days and weeks.
The US Department of Energy said that, as of 12:30 EDT on Thursday, 13.5% of US Gulf of Mexico oil production and 17.6% of natural gas production in federally administered areas was shut in.
At 15:00 EDT the same day, ten refineries in the US Gulf Coast region were shut down according to public reports. Their combined capacity is equivalent 31.7% of US Gulf Coast capacity and 17.6% of total US refining capacity.
ICIS analysis indicates that 47% of US ethylene capacity was affected, 37% of US benzene and 31% of US polyethylene (PE). It tracked outages as the impact of the storm became significantly worse than any could have expected.
“And even now with the sun coming back out and freeways beginning to emerge again from the water, the challenges keep on coming,” van Beurden said, referring to the resilience of Shell’s workforce in Mumbai as the city was hit by devastating monsoon floods.
Texas is the largest chemicals producing state in the US and Louisiana the fourth largest, although the proportions of petrochemicals produced in that part of the world are much greater.
According to the American Chemistry Council (ACC), Texas chemicals shipments – the value of products leaving the factory gate – are $129bn and Louisiana chemicals shipments are $51bn. Harvey has affected a total of $155bn of chemical shipments, about 20% of the US total.
The ACC’s CEO, Cal Dooley, on Thursday highlighted some of the issues that could come to dog the industry in the wake of the storm given the perceived vulnerability of some if not all chemical and refining facilities.
“Chemical facilities are designed and built with major storms in mind,” he said. A shutdown in the face of an approaching storm brings into play special regulations and emission limits that apply during shutdowns, start-ups and malfunctions. Flaring is an approved way to safely relieve pressure and considered as industry ‘best practice’," he added.
Nevertheless, the extreme and unique challenges presented by Harvey have warranted an unprecedented response effort, including that by local industry.
“The top priority in any situation is the safety and well-being of employees and the surrounding residents,” Dooley said. “An abundance of caution has been and will continue to be taken in these instances to minimise any potential risks.”
As the recovery continues in Texas and Louisiana, companies will have to monitor and evaluate the developing situation. They will also have to see what additional measures might be required to deal with extreme weather events in future.
Their ‘licence to operate’ is governed by local acceptance as well as local, state and federal rules.
“In the coming weeks we will evaluate all learnings from this unprecedented hurricane and the resulting flooding, to assess if there are additional procedures and process safety efforts that could further inform and enhance the safety performance of our operations in the future.” Dooley said.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2017/09/01/10139457/insight-companies-will-have-to-learn-from-the-cost-of-harvey/
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(ACC Mentioned) Ewire: Harvey's Effects Turn Focus to EPA's Delay of RMP Rule
Sep 1, 2017 | Inside EPA
Inside EPA's Dave Reynolds has a blockbuster on how environmentalists are citing the chemical fire at the Arkema, Inc. facility in Texas due to flooding from Hurricane Harvey to make the case that EPA should continue to implement the Obama-era facility safety rule updating Risk Management Plan (RMP) requirements.
“This kind of thing will continue to happen as long as we delay taking steps to make these facilities safer, and the steps in the rule would make facilities safer,” one environmentalist attorney told Inside EPA. “This is not the last hurricane that Texas is going to see."
Others are focusing on who helped make the case that the Obama-era rule should be delayed so the Trump administration can overhaul it.
The International Business Times reports that the Trump administration halted the Obama rule “after a furious lobbying campaign by plant owner Arkema and its affiliated trade association, the American Chemistry Council, which represents a chemical industry that has poured tens of millions of dollars into federal elections.”
And the report notes, “The effort to stop the chemical plant safety rules was backed by top Texas Republican lawmakers, who have received big campaign donations from chemical industry donors,” including Sen. John Cornyn (R), Rep. Joe Barton (R), Rep. Pete Olson (R), Rep. Gene Green (D), Rep. Pete Sessions (R) and Rep. Kevin Brady (R).
The report cites Arkema's 2016 comments on a proposed version of the RMP rule, which criticized its requirement for independent risk management audits, charging they “will likely add significant new costs and burdens to the corporate audit process."
The company also took issue with the rule’s “Safer Technology and Alternatives Analysis” (STAA) requirements, charging it would be “burdensome because there is no consensus methodology, definitions or standards for STAA,” the company told the agency.
“Knowledge of ‘inherently safer technologies’ can vary greatly depending on the process being examined and the knowledge and expertise of the team performing the analysis. As a result, implementation of STAA would likely be inconsistent across companies.”
But in a statement to CNN, EPA downplayed any potential benefits that may have resulted had the Obama-era rule remained in effect. "None of the major amendments would have been effective until March 2018 and most well after that. The agency's recent action to delay the effectiveness of the 2017 amendments had no effect on the major safety requirements that applied to the Arkema Crosby plant at the time of the fire," the agency said.
Don't miss our other coverage of Hurricane Harvey and its impacts including a report on the storm's effects on EPA's budget and the effects of releases from smaller, unregulated facilities.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-harveys-effects-turn-focus-epas-delay-rmp-rule
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(ACC Mentioned) Kathryn Z. Klaber: Harvey Highlights Over-Reliance on Gulf
Sep 1, 2017 | Pittsburgh Business Times
As companies strategize in the aftermath of the storm, they would be well-advised to geographically diversify their operations by investing capital in the safe haven of Appalachia.
Access to full text unavailable – subscription required.
Story can be found here: https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2017/09/01/kathryn-z-klaber-harvey-highlights-over-reliance.html
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Arkema Backtracks, Refuses to Provide Chemical Inventory to the Public
Sep 1, 2017 | Chron
By Matt Dempsey
Arkema, the company that owns the chemical plant in Crosby on the verge of more explosions, is refusing to provide a chemical inventory and facility map to the public, one day after promising to provide the information.
Speaking to reporters this morning, Arkema CEO Richard Rowe said the company was balancing "the public's right to know and the public's right to be secure."
Late Thursday night, the company provided a list, detailing the names of the chemicals on the site. It did not provide the amounts of the chemicals, where those chemicals were located or in what types of containers the chemicals were stored in.
It also refused to specify where even more potentially dangerous chemicals are located on site.
Melissa Wren, a company spokesperson, said the company was advised by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to refer all requests for the detailed chemical inventory, called a Tier Two, to the state agency.
"She's mistaken," said Andrea Morrow, spokesperson for TCEQ. "TCEQ has told Arkema they are free to release the Tier Two if they so choose."
Morrow said if someone requests the Tier Two from TCEQ, it will have to be through a formal public information request and it would be sent to the Texas Attorney General's Office.
That office, under Greg Abbott and now Ken Paxton, has blocked inventories from the public citing a state law that restricts information that might be useful to terrorists.
The Texas Homeland Security Act, passed in 2003, made government information confidential if it could be used to plot terror attacks. For more than a decade, the law was never invoked to block release of chemical inventories. The state reversed course after widespread media interest in the data following the 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas.
Then-Attorney General Abbott, quoting the 2003 law, issued a ruling that allows state and local agencies to withhold inventories.
Abbott told reporters in 2014 that private companies were still required to release them to the public.
"You know where they are if you drive around," Abbott said. "You can ask every facility whether or not they have chemicals ... and if they do, they tell which ones they have."
Former New Jersey congressman James Florio, helped craft the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, which requires companies to file the Tier Two inventories if they hold more than a certain amount of a long list oc chemicals.
In a 2016 interview with the Chronicle, Florio called the Texas approach "totally irrational" and said security concerns should be addressed by individual companies. The goal of the federal law "was to hold everyone to a minimal standard of disclosure," he said. "Can you imagine if we relieved nuclear facilities of their security responsibilities, and we just tried to hide where they are?"
Darryl Roberts, a safety official for Arkema, said two chemicals contained on its government mandated worst case scenario report, sulfur dioxide and isobutylene. were located hundreds of yards from the organic peroxides exploding on the site.
"There's no issues with any of those materials," Roberts said. "No fire or water damage. No degradation in any of the systems that you're asking about."
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Arkema-backtracks-refuses-to-provide-public-12167110.php
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Embattled Chemical Company Defends Record, Planning
Sep 1, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Mike Lee
A Houston-area chemical company whose plant caught fire in the wake of Hurricane Harvey defended its response to the storm today, saying no one could have predicted the extent of the flooding.
Arkema Inc.'s plant, which is in a floodplain and has a history of safety violations, has become a flashpoint for residents and environmentalists concerned about the toxic impact of the storm.
Residents have been evacuated for 1.5 miles around the plant, and many are concerned that they cannot return to check on horses and livestock. Millions of pounds of toxic chemicals have been released from refineries and factories along the Texas Coast since the storm hit last Friday, and concerns have been mounting about leaks from the area's toxic waste dumps, sewer plants and other sources (Greenwire, Aug. 30) .
Arkema President Rich Rowe apologized yesterday to neighbors who have been affected but said on a conference call with reporters that the company had done the best it could.
"It is something I don't think anyone in this area, including professionals, would ever have predicted," he said.
The plant is in Crosby, a rural area about 25 miles east of Houston that's dotted with small homes. The Houston Chronicle listed it as one of the most dangerous sites in the region in 2016, because of the highly reactive chemicals it handles and its proximity to houses.
Arkema produces organic peroxides that are used in plastics and other products. Some of the chemicals can catch fire unless they're kept cold. The company was cited by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in 2006 for a fire that burned 3,200 pounds of those same materials, and in 2011 for failing to maintain a piece of equipment.
As the storm approached, the company brought in backup generators to maintain its refrigeration. But the site flooded 6 feet deep, knocking out the backup generators and damaging a liquid nitrogen system that also could have been used to cool the chemicals.
At the peak of the flood, the 11 workers who stayed at the plant were using a boat to move around the site.
The peroxides — 500,000 pounds of them — were already stored in small containers of 1 to 5 gallons, which were stacked in boxes on pallets. That made it impractical for the company to neutralize the products by mixing them with other chemicals, Rowe said. By the time the size of the storm was apparent, it was too late to move the trailers to higher ground without risking a fire in a public area.
Workers moved the products to nine refrigerated containers and rolled the containers to remote areas of the 120-acre site, to prevent them from damaging the plant's buildings or igniting raw materials stored at the plant.
The first of the containers caught fire at about 2 a.m. local time yesterday. Fifteen sheriff's deputies were treated at a hospital after breathing smoke from the blaze.
The floodwaters have begun to recede, but Rowe said it's too dangerous for workers to get on the site and try to restart the cooling units on the remaining containers. They could begin to ignite today.
"We think the only plausible scenario is to let those materials burn out," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/09/01/stories/1060059605
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In Texas Chemical-Plant Fire, Failure of Backup Measures Raises New Fears
Sep 1, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Steven Mufson, Brady Dennis and Joel Achenbach
When the hurricane blew in, workers at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Tex., faced the problem of keeping the plant’s volatile chemicals cold. The plant had 19.5 tons of organic peroxides of various strengths, all of them requiring refrigeration to prevent ignition.
But the power went out, and then the floodwaters came and knocked out the plant’s generators. A liquid nitrogen system faltered. In a last-ditch move, the workers transferred the chemicals to nine huge refrigerated trucks, each with its own generator, and moved the vehicles to a remote section of the plant.
That was doomed to fail, too. Six feet of water swamped the trucks, and the final 11 workers gave up. At 2 a.m. Tuesday, they called for a water evacuation and left the plant to its fate.
Early Thursday, two loud pops signaled an explosive combustion in one of the trucks, and a black plume of smoke spread from the plant, sending 15 police officers and paramedics to the hospital. All eight remaining vehicles are now likely to burn, said Robert W. Royall Jr., assistant chief of emergency operations for the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office.
We are “watching physics at work,” Arkema spokesman Jeff Carr said Thursday. “Probably a couple more tonight.”
While the crisis has not yet equaled the severity of explosions suffered by other Texas chemical plants, the crisis at Crosby has exposed the vulnerability of hundreds of chemical plants in low-lying areas across the U.S. Gulf Coast.
“The Crosby plant’s dangerous situation is a symptom of a bigger problem involving the oil and chemical industry in the gulf region,” said Bill Hoyle, a former senior investigator for the Chemical Safety Board and now an independent safety consultant. “The Crosby plant is a wake-up call for an industry and their safety regulators who have not adequately taken action on lessons from Hurricane Katrina as well as the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.”
Texas has more than 1,300 chemical plants, a large number of them in low-lying areas near the coast that are vulnerable to flooding. Arkema’s Crosby plant was built decades ago, but access to gulf ports and the surge in shale gas operations in Texas and Louisiana have lured scores of new chemical plants to the Gulf Coast region.
Although the fire and blasts have so far not been as dire as many feared, the loss of control of dangerous materials and the igniting of volatile chemicals spread anxiety and triggered an investigation by the Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency.
The plant produced organic peroxides, which are used in a variety of products including pipes, plastics, acrylic paints, countertops and pharmaceuticals. A company spokesman estimated that 19.5 tons of chemicals were at the site. Small amounts can irritate the skin or damage corneas, and in larger amounts could cause liver damage, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). But the company spokesman said “the issue is a combustion event, not a chemical release.”
The Arkema emergency raises anew a host of concerns for chemical manufacturers. After the 1984 tragedy in Bhopal, India, in which a chemical leak from a Union Carbide plant killed more than 2,000 people and injured many thousands more, then-Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) pressed for legislation requiring chemical companies to describe their own worst-case scenarios.
Arkema, whose slogan is “Innovative Chemistry,” filed one of those reports in June 2014 for its plant in Crosby, warning that in the most catastrophic scenario, 1.1 million people within a 23-mile radius would be affected. In Texas alone, 32 other plants also warned that more than a million people could be affected by a chemical catastrophe, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
But Arkema stressed that “multiple layers of preventive and mitigation measures in use at the Crosby facility make it very unlikely” that a worst-case scenario would occur. And “in the unlikely event that such a release occurs, Arkema, Inc. has mitigation measures in place to reduce any potential impacts.”
This week, however, some layers of preventive measures failed.
“Certainly, we didn’t anticipate having six feet of water in our plant,” Richard Rennard, president of Arkema’s acrylic monomers division, told reporters Thursday.
Hundreds of plants have been shut down since Hurricane Harvey approached Texas last week, posing environmental dangers as they restart their waterlogged facilities.
About 5 percent of Texas facilities registered in the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory Program were plotted in or adjacent to flooded areas observed from satellite imagery through Wednesday, according to a Washington Post analysis. They included factories that produce petroleum, plastics and rubber, and deal with hazardous waste. Of those, 23 deal specifically with chemicals.
Arkema, a spinoff of the French oil giant Total, has more than 30 sites in the United States, and like other operators in the industry, has lobbied federal regulators to delay new regulations designed to improve safety and disclosure at chemical plants.
The company has also run afoul of OSHA regulations.
In February, Arkema’s Crosby plant was initially fined $107,918 for 10 OSHA violations, federal records show. The violations were marked as “serious,” meaning they could cause serious physical injury or worker deaths if not remedied. One included a violation of inspection procedures that were supposed to “follow recognized and generally accepted good engineering practices.”
The government later reduced the fines to about $91,000.
Arkema also agreed to a settlement with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) in January stemming from a leak of a toxic and flammable compound in June 2016, state records show. The plant released 4,800 pounds of isoamylene after workers left a valve partially open for 62 hours, allowing the chemical to drain from a storage tank, according to enforcement records.
A state inspection of the facility months earlier also found seven violations. The TCEQ lists the company’s overall compliance history as “satisfactory,” however. For the June leak, commission imposed a modest fine after concluding that residents and the environment had been exposed to “insignificant amounts” of pollutants.
Even in the current crisis at Crosby, Royall, the Harris County emergency operations official, said that the danger from the Arkema plant was “really relative.”
“If you’re standing right next to something and you had a chemical release, it would probably be pretty dangerous, I think you’d agree,” Royall said. “But we have a mile-and-a-half safety radius, and there’s nobody in that plant.”
The events at the plant cause more worries for residents already dealing with inundated homes. But for some residents, the threat is not extraordinary.
There have been so many plant explosions in the Houston area that resident Robin Boethin cannot keep them straight. She recalled the Texas City refinery explosion in March 2005 — not to be confused with the Texas City disaster of 1947, one of the deadliest industrial accidents in U.S. history. Then there was the Pasadena incident in October 1989, in which gases ignited a series of explosions, killing 23 workers and injuring 300.
“It was a ka-boom type of thing,” she said from the counter of the Rusty Bucket, her antiques shop in Crosby, a few miles from the chemical plant. “It shook the house so bad I called 911. I thought someone was breaking in.”
Boethin and others in Crosby discussed chemical plant explosions and environmental disasters as a way of life in the Houston area, describing the risk of sprawling chemical sites as Californians might discuss the inevitability of the next earthquake.
“There’s danger and everyone knows it,” she said.
In the emergency response plan filed with the EPA in 2014, Arkema sketched out the possible disaster that would follow from the failure of one of its tanks of 2-methylpropene. It wouldn’t exactly be a fire or an explosion, but a fiery combination known in the chemical industry as a “bleve,” short for “boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion.”
In that grave scenario, the sudden release of flammable, toxic vapor could ignite in a fireball with a lethal “thermal radiation dose” that could extend over 1,000 feet — “approaching the yard of the residence nearest to the site.”
At a news conference Thursday, Arkema’s Rennard repeatedly and evenly walked reporters through the steps taken at the plant and the outlook for the coming days.
“We anticipate that all this product is going to degrade,” he said. “Whether it’s today, tomorrow, we just don’t know. It’s impossible to predict that.”
One reporter shouted, “Do you understand people are worried?”
“Of course we understand that,” Rennard said, “and that’s why we want to make sure people respect this one-and-a-half-mile radius. We don’t want people returning back to their homes thinking it’s over. It’s not over.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-texas-chemical-plant-fire-failure-of-backup-measures-raises-new-fears/2017/08/31/91c91098-8e7a-11e7-8df5-c2e5cf46c1e2_story.html?utm_term=.8c2a8d8d06e5
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Houston Left with a Toxic Mess as Trump Relaxes Rules
Sep 1, 2017 | Politico Pro
By Ben Lefbvre and Alex Guillen
Explosions and fires at a Houston-area chemical plant triggered an evacuation Thursday in a region still in chaos from Hurricane Harvey — and generated new criticism of President Donald Trump’s efforts to repeal the industry’s safety rules.
Thursday morning’s blasts at the plant came just a day after a federal court refused to force the Environmental Protection Agency to implement an Obama-era chemical safety regulation that the Trump administration has delayed until 2019. The site's owner, Arkema, has complained about the burdens of the rule, which the EPA created after a 2015 explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant killed 15 people, injured about 200 others and destroyed hundreds of homes.
The rule in question probably wouldn’t have prevented Thursday’s explosions, but it's aimed at reducing the likelihood of future accidents — and ensuring that emergency responders and the public know what types of dangerous substances they might be exposed to. Firefighters and other emergency crews lack much of that crucial information about the plants and factories now awash with floodwater.
“It’s extremely frustrating, it’s disheartening, it’s unfair to the communities that face these risks,” Bakeyah Nelson, executive director of Air Alliance Houston, said of the regulatory rollbacks the administration is pushing. “Not just in a natural disaster-type situation, but on a daily basis.”
Collapsed chemical tank roofs, machinery malfunctions and other accidents in the Houston area have sent more than 1,000 tons of dangerous chemicals into the air following days of pummeling from Harvey, according to a POLITICO analysis of incident filings with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Sometimes, toxic chemicals sit in huge storage tanks that border residents’ backyards.
Refiners said they won’t know the extent of the damage until the waters recede and they can get back into the plants. But emergency crews will have to perform their duties in toxic surroundings, said James Norton, a former deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.
“I’d put it on the scale of 9/11 health risk,” said Norton, now the head of the consulting group Play-Action Strategies. “There was a similar challenge in Katrina, as the standing water around the city kind of became a chemical sludge. The risk in Houston is greater."
The swath of the Gulf Coast that Harvey tore apart is home to more than 300 hazardous chemical sites, according to data from the Sierra Club, including more than 230 chemical plants and over 30 refineries. And just clearing the damage will pose health problems. Texas’ famously lax site regulations and inspection rates will make normally straightforward emergency response problematic, as firefighters and others may not know whether a storage site's equipment is up to date or even what chemicals it's storing, said Elena Craft, a senior health scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin.
“Emergency responders don’t have the information they need about what’s being stored at the facilities,” Craft said. “And because these facilities have flooded, and underground tank contents are coming up, all of that will magnify what we had with Katrina.”
Another worry is air pollution worsened by the volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxide that refineries and chemical plants are spewing, which Craft said may endanger flood victims who suffer from asthma and other respiratory or cardiac problems. The Texas environmental commission has forecast that air quality in Houston will be “unhealthy for sensitive groups” at least through the weekend.
Thursday’s fires broke out in the early morning at the plant in Crosby, about 20 miles northeast of Houston, according to county officials. Arkema has blamed the incident on power outages and backup systems failures caused by the historic flooding triggered by the storm, which made landfall on Friday as a Category 4 hurricane.
The Arkema plant produces organic peroxides, which are used to make plastics and fiberglass but must be kept refrigerated.
Harris County evacuated everyone in a 1.5-mile radius, and several sheriff’s deputies who had breathed the smoke were sent to the hospital before being cleared, county Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a news conference. Gonzalez downplayed the incident, saying the officers were “basically standing over a barbecue pit and getting smoke in our eyes. That’s basically what occurred.”
Two raw materials stored on site and covered by EPA's risk management rules, sulfur dioxide and a chemical called 2-methylpropene, are stored safely and are not considered at risk, Arkema executive Richard Rennard said.
EPA dispatched a sniffer plane equipped with sensors to detect chemical and radiological materials. It found “no concentrations of concern for toxic materials” as of Thursday morning, Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement.
Separately, the federal Chemical Safety Board is investigating the fire, board Chairwoman Vanessa Sutherland said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. CSB investigators will not visit the site until it is deemed safe, but they are obtaining documents about what types of chemicals were used and stored at the plant.
Trump's proposed budget for next year would eliminate all funding for the board, which issues safety recommendations but cannot directly enforce regulations.
Meanwhile, county emergency workers acknowledged they have no idea what other chemical plants in the area might pose an immediate risk.
“We are personally not monitoring” the status of chemicals kept in other plants in Harvey’s path, said Bob Royall, the county's assistant chief of emergency operations. “That is industry’s responsibility.”
Public health advocates say the incident adds to the need for carrying out the Obama administration rule, which would require companies to provide more public information about the chemicals they’re storing, encourage them to look for safer alternatives and mandate third-party safety audits.
“The longer EPA delays the chemical disaster rule, the longer those types of assessments and investments will be delayed,” Nelson said. “We’re in a crisis situation here, and making policies or creating policies or buckling to industry pressure has real everyday life-or-death impacts to people.”
Nelson’s group has led a lawsuit trying to overturn Pruitt’s delay of the safety rule, which was finalized in the last days of the Obama administration but never took effect.
Arkema criticized the rule last year, telling EPA that the independent audits would "add significant new costs and burdens" but "may not necessarily provide new or additional safety benefits." It also raised security-related concerns about sharing some information with responders and the public.
The Trump administration placed the regulation on ice shortly after taking office. EPA said in June that it would delay the rule until 2019 at the earliest while it reviews the program and potentially revises it.
In a statement, EPA noted that previous risk management rules are still in effect, and said Arkema's Crosby plant updated its emergency plan in 2014. EPA also noted that no major updates would have taken effect until next year anyway.
"The Agency’s recent action to delay the effectiveness of the 2017 Amendments had no effect on the major safety requirements that applied to the Arkema Crosby plant at the time of the fire," EPA said.
The Obama administration rule allowed between one and four years for facilities to meet various requirements under the update — meaning that the Arkema plant probably wouldn't have been affected even if the regulation were in place.
“Realistically, it probably wouldn’t have prevented anything right now in this instance,” said Gordon Sommers, an Earthjustice attorney working on the lawsuit against Pruitt’s stay. "But we’re seeing more and more of these massive weather events, and this certainly illustrates the need for that rule."
Royall said the explosions reported at the plant were more like “small container ruptures that may have a sound of a pop or something of that nature. This is not a massive explosion.”
He said the burning peroxides, which are stored in refrigerated 18-wheel truck trailers, emit gases that expand and rupture the trailers’ relief valves before eventually burning.
Arkema’s Rennard said the company expects another eight trailers to similarly go up in flames in the coming days, although he warned that the high oxygen content of the peroxides could still lead to an explosion.
“We don’t want people returning back to their homes thinking it’s over. It’s not over,” Rennard said, adding: “I think we’ve been a responsible neighbor, and I think we’re responding to this the best way we can.”
While the rule remains on ice, the lawsuit over Pruitt’s delay is ongoing.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday that public health groups had failed to meet the high bar for reinstating the rule, which would have relied in part on showing both a public interest and a threat of irreparable harm. But the judges placed the lawsuit on a fast track that could see a decision by late this year or in early 2018.
“We will certainly use this as an opportunity to continue to highlight the necessity and the critical nature of having this rule in place,” Nelson said.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2017/08/houston-left-with-a-toxic-mess-as-trump-relaxes-rules-161294
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After Harvey, Texas Faces Massive Cleanup
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical and Engineering News
By Melody M Bomgardner
Five days of devastating rain from Tropical Storm Harvey left its mark on the Gulf Coast of Texas, home to more than 6 million people and a significant portion of the U.S. fuel and chemical industries.
As flood water recedes, residents, state and federal officials, and refinery and chemical plant managers are assessing the damage left in Harvey’s wake.
Dozens of major manufacturing facilities were taken off-line before and during the storm. Experts say it is too early to clearly assess the amount of damage sustained by industry in the region and forecast it will take several weeks to restart the plants.
“The combination of Harvey’s path, duration, and rainfall total is wreaking havoc with the supply side of the U.S. chemicals industry on an unprecedented scale,” says Kevin W. McCarthy, analyst at Vertical Research Partners, an equities research firm.
One chemical plant that has sustained significant damage is Arkema’s polymer additives site in Crosby, Texas, 43 km northeast of Houston. On Aug. 31, storage facilities holding highly flammable organic peroxides began to explode, sending black smoke into the air. The facility and the rural neighborhood around it had been evacuated and no serious injuries were reported. However, several first responders were treated for symptoms of respiratory irritation. Two senators have asked the U.S. Chemical Safety Board to investigate the circumstances that led up to the explosions at the plant.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reviewed data from aircraft shortly after the explosion at the plant. In an Aug. 31 statement, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said, “This information indicates that there are no concentrations of concern for toxic materials reported at this time.”
Organic peroxides are used in manufacturing plastic resins, polystyrene, polyethylene, polypropylene, and acrylic resins. Arkema has not specified what peroxides are stored at the site or the amounts.
Safe storage of organic peroxides requires refrigeration. At Arkema they are normally kept in cold-storage warehouses, but after electric service and backup generators both failed, the chemicals were transferred to refrigerated trailers run by diesel engines. Close to 2 meters of flooding caused some of the trailers’ power supplies to fail.
Arkema had stopped operations in Crosby in advance of the storm. Harvey first made landfall near Corpus Christi as a category 4 hurricane late on Aug. 25 before weakening into a tropical storm and moving east, soaking the Houston area with as much as 132 cm of rain.
The Gulf Coast is home to 25% of U.S. refinery capacity and more than half the country’s production of a number of downstream chemicals. Many of those plants were taken off-line because of the storm. The two largest refineries in the country—Saudi Aramco in Port Arthur and ExxonMobil in Baytown—were shut down. Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Valero Energy, Citgo Petroleum, and Flint Hills Resources also powered down refineries, including some with on-site chemical units.
Closures affected a wide swath of the Gulf Coast’s basic and intermediate chemical plants from Corpus Christi northeast to the Louisiana border. Dow Chemical, Ineos, Invista, Ascend Performance Materials, OxyChem, and Formosa Plastics were among those reporting site shutdowns. LyondellBasell and Huntsman each temporarily shuttered six sites. Covestro, Linde, and TPC Group also reported taking plants off-line.
Starting this week, Houston and surrounding towns will confront the need for repairs to critical infrastructure, including electric power, water and sewage treatment, rail lines, and port terminals. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has received numerous wastewater overflow notices from petrochemical plants and sewage-treatment plants.
In a note to investors, analyst McCarthy writes that the infrastructure challenge is a “wild card” making it difficult to forecast the overall recovery.
Although closing down a refinery or chemical plant is a safe move in the face of a massive storm, it is not without side effects. Even when plant operators receive a few days’ warning, unplanned shutdowns lead facilities to emit volatile chemicals in amounts that far exceed air pollution permit levels. During unplanned shutdown activities, emissions control equipment is not fully functional. In some cases, flaring is used to reduce the amount of hazardous chemicals that go into the air.
Filings with TCEQ show massive, but temporary, emissions of such hazardous chemicals as benzene, butadiene, nitrogen oxides, and miscellaneous volatile organic compounds. At the giant ExxonMobil complex in Baytown, an estimated 100,000 kg of sulfur dioxide was released over the course of five days.
ExxonMobil also reported additional air releases at its Baytown and Beaumont complexes due to damage to outdoor storage tanks, as did Shell Oil at its Deer Park facility.
“The contaminants each pose acute health threats as well as more chronic health effects,” says Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a senior scientist for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.
Residents who took shelter near the plants could experience respiratory or neurological effects. Most vulnerable are people who have lung conditions like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she points out. In particular, sulfur-containing emissions can cause respiratory irritation at very low levels.
“It’s just a big mess right now,” says Andrew Keese, spokesperson for TCEQ. He says 24 state-operated air quality monitors in the Houston area were taken off-line before the storm to prevent damage and won’t be turned back on until conditions are safe.
Also before the storm, TCEQ worked with EPA officials to secure a number of Superfund sites in the Houston area by removing hazardous-waste-containing drums.
The storm’s impact on local residents will be long lasting. In contrast, the chemical industry’s recovery is likely to be faster, according to Vertical’s McCarthy. It will be some weeks before plants come back on-line, but he does not anticipate that shortages will significantly harm the supply chain.
In the short term, McCarthy estimates that over half of the U.S. ethylene and polyethylene capacity has been shut down, along with 40% of chlor-alkali and polyvinyl chloride. Supply interruptions could cause short-term price spikes, he predicts. In addition, industrial gas and catalyst suppliers will see weakened demand until their customers’ operations pick up again.
The National Weather Service downgraded Harvey to a tropical depression late last week as C&EN went to press. Hurricane season is not over—meteorologists warn that conditions are still ripe for severe storms to form in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, a new hurricane, called Irma, has formed in the Caribbean and may reach the Southeast U.S. coast.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i35/Harvey-Texas-faces-massive-cleanup.html
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Tropical Storm Harvey Causes Disruptions, Emissions, and Explosions in Houston Area
Sep 1, 2017 | Chemical and Engineering News
By Melody M. Bomgardner
As flood waters continue to rise, Storage facilities holding highly flammable organic peroxides at an Arkema plant in Crosby, Texas, began to explode early this morning, sending black smoke into the air. The facility and area around it had been evacuated and no serious injuries were reported. However, several first responders were treated for symptoms of respiratory irritation.
The explosion was another setback for the storm-ravaged region of the Texas Gulf coast. By Aug. 30, Houston residents finally caught a glimpse of sunlight after nearly five days of record-breaking rain from Tropical Storm Harvey. But dangers still lurk in areas that remain underwater, as the Crosby explosion shows.
Tens of millions of people in the Houston area have moved from their flooded homes to shelters. As the water recedes, state and federal officials, as well as refinery and chemical plant managers, will assess the damage.
Many refineries and petrochemical facilities closed in advance of the storm, with workers following procedures for unplanned shutdowns. However, Arkema executives reported an imminent threat of explosions and fires from degraded organic peroxides starting on Aug. 29. The facility was plagued with heavy flooding and power outages after it was shut down.
The Arkema site manufactures polymer additives for plastic resins, polystyrene, polyethylene, polypropylene, and acrylic resins. The company has not specified what chemicals are stored at the site, or the amounts.
Arkema evacuated its employees from the plant. About 300 residents living within a 2.5 km radius of the site, which is in a rural area, voluntarily evacuated. The company is working with public officials, who have determined that “the best course of action is to let the fire burn itself out,” according to an Arkema statement.
Safe storage of the organic peroxides requires refrigeration. At Arkema they are normally kept in cold-storage warehouses, but after electric service and backup generators both failed, the chemicals were transferred to refrigerated trailers with diesel generators. An undisclosed number of those trailers have also lost power and some cannot be remotely monitored, according to Rich Rowe. chief executive officer of Arkema’s North American operation.
In a call on Aug. 30 prior to the explosion, Rowe said flood waters at the plant site reached 1.8 meters above the ground and were still rising. He added it could take three to six days for the water to subside.
Harvey first made landfall near Corpus Christi as a category 4 hurricane late on Aug. 25 before moving east, soaking the Houston area with as much as 132 cm of rain. Five days later it picked up more water from the Gulf of Mexico and headed to Louisiana.
The Gulf Coast is home to 25% of U.S. refinery capacity and more than half the country’s production of a number of downstream chemicals. Many of those plants were taken off-line due to the storm. The two largest refineries in the country – Saudi Aramco in Port Arthur and Exxon Mobil in Baytown were shut down. Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Valero Energy, Citgo Petroleum, and Flint Hills Resources also shut refineries, including some with on-site chemical units.
Closures affected a wide swath of the Gulf’s basic and intermediate chemical plants from Corpus Christi to the Louisiana border. Dow Chemical, Ineos, Invista, Ascend Performance Materials, Oxychem, and Formosa Plastics were among those reporting site shutdowns. LyondellBasell and Huntsman each shut down six sites. As the week wore on, Covestro, Linde, and TPC group also reported taking plants off-line.
“Our primary concern at this time is for the safety and well-being of our employees, their families and our plant communities,” said Anne M. Knisely, Huntsman’s director of communications.
As Harvey’s rains move in on Louisiana, the number of outages could grow, says Kevin W. McCarthy, analyst at Vertical Research Partners, an equities research firm. But already, “the combination of Harvey’s path, duration and rainfall total is wreaking havoc with the supply side of the U.S. chemicals industry on an unprecedented scale,” he says.
While shutting down a refinery or chemical plant is a safe move in the face of a massive storm, it is not without side effects. Even when plant operators receive a few days warning, unplanned shutdowns lead facilities to emit volatile chemicals in amounts that far exceed air pollution permit levels. During unplanned shut down activities, emissions control equipment is not fully functional. In some cases, flaring is used to reduce the amount of hazardous chemicals that go into the air.
Filings with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) show massive, but temporary, emissions of such hazardous chemicals as benzene, butadiene, nitrogen oxides, and miscellaneous volatile organic compounds. At the giant Exxon Mobil complex in Baytown, an estimated 100,000 kg of sulfur dioxide was released over the course of five days.
Exxon Mobil also reported additional air releases at its Baytown and Beaumont complexes due to damage to outdoor storage tanks, as did Shell Oil at its Deer Park facility.
“The contaminants each pose acute health threats as well as more chronic health effects,” says Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a senior scientist for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. “The expectation is that there will be bursts of emissions. How long, intense, and frequent they will be is hard to predict.”
The priority is to secure facilities to prevent explosions and major releases, Rotkin-Ellman says. But residents who took shelter near the plants could experience respiratory or neurological effects. Most vulnerable are people who have lung conditions like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she points out. In particular, sulfur-containing emissions can cause respiratory irritation at very low levels.
It may be difficult to track the amount and types of air emissions after Aug. 28. At the behest of TCEQ, Governor Greg Abbot (R) lifted requirements for facilities to report emissions beyond permit levels if those releases are a result of disaster response efforts.
“It’s just a big mess right now,” says Andrew Keese, spokesperson for TCEQ. He says 24 state-operated air quality monitors in the Houston area were taken off line before the storm to prevent damage and won’t be turned back on until conditions are safe.
Also before the storm, TCEQ worked with EPA officials to secure a number of Superfund sites in the Houston area by removing hazardous waste-containing drums and shutting down systems.
Water pollution remains a significant concern. The Texas agency has received numerous wastewater overflow notices from petrochemical plants and sewage-treatment plants.
The storm’s impact on local residents will be long lasting. In contrast, the chemical industry’s recovery is likely to be faster, according to Vertical’s McCarthy. It will be some weeks before plants come back online, but he does not anticipate that shortages will significantly impact the supply chain.
In the short-term, McCarthy estimate that over half of the U.S. ethylene and polyethylene capacity has been shut down and along with 40% of chlor-alkali and polyvinyl chloride. Supply interruptions could cause short term price spikes, he predicts. In addition, industrial gas and catalyst suppliers will see weakened demand until their customers’ operations pick up again.
“This too shall pass – don’t mess with Texas!” McCarthy wrote in a note to investors. “As disruptive as it is, even Hurricane Harvey will prove to be a transitory event as it relates to chemical stocks.”
http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i35/Tropical-Storm-Harvey-causes-disruptions.html
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Chemical Blaze Offers Lifeline for Beleaguered Agency
Sep 1, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
A federal investigative agency that President Trump sought to eliminate is now looking into a fire and explosions at a facility northwest of Houston that is owned by a well-connected French chemical company.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) yesterday asked Arkema Inc.'s U.S. subsidiary for documents related to its chemical processing procedures, the chemicals it used at the Crosby, Texas, facility, and its emergency preparations.
"The full scope of our investigation will be determined as more information becomes available from the company," CSB Chairwoman Vanessa Allen Sutherland said in a statement.
In a press conference this morning, Arkema North America President and CEO Rich Rowe acknowledged that people who live near the Crosby plant want more information about the dangers from the burning materials and said the company has shared that information with emergency responders.
Arkema has posted a list of the Crosby plant's chemicals on its website but withheld some information such as the quantities of various chemicals. That information, which is provided to regulators annually in so-called Tier II reports, was once available to anyone who requested it.
"We need to keep the more detailed information — for example, the precise quantities and the location of these chemicals — from those that would do us harm," Rowe said without citing any specific instances when the plant has been threatened.
Likewise, Rowe defended U.S. EPA's decision a few years ago to begin withholding chemical plants' emergency response plans from the public.
"The regulations were changed to balance the public's right to know with the public's right to be secure," he said. "The balance between these two strong interests were set after considerable public debate."
But some experts believe that more transparency about chemical risks and emergency plans could have better protected first responders and residents in the wake of the plant explosion earlier this week (Greenwire, Aug. 31).
Despite Trump's call earlier this year to eliminate CSB, the agency is taking on the Crosby plant probe because it appears likely to receive operating funds for the next fiscal year.
The White House budget urged lawmakers to provide CSB with over $9 million in the next fiscal year but only for the purpose of closing down the agency (Greenwire, May 23).
House lawmakers, however, are poised to approve an omnibus spending bill next week that offers a lifeline to the agency and keeps its funding at $11 million, the same as the current fiscal year.
"The Board has the important responsibility of independently investigating industrial chemical accidents and collaborating with industry and professional organizations to share safety lessons that can prevent catastrophic incidents and the Committee expects this work to continue," House appropriators said in a report accompanying the bill.
Sutherland's Crosby plant announcement came the same day as Democratic Sens. Tom Carper of Delaware, the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Cory Booker of New Jersey sent a letter to her calling for a probe of the circumstances surrounding the disaster, which began after floodwaters knocked out power to the facility (Greenwire, Aug. 31).
"The failure of not just one, but two, sources of emergency back-up power raises questions about whether best practices associated with installing and maintaining such systems at facilities located in hurricane- or flood-prone areas were followed and whether these practices need to be improved," the senators said.
Few other lawmakers are expected to press the Trump administration to investigate or punish Arkema, which has donated generously over the years to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
Since the 2006 election cycle, the company, its political action committee and employees have given more than $255,000 to U.S. lawmakers, according to data compiled by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. Republican candidates and groups received 63 percent of that total with the rest going to Democrats.
Some of the top recipients of Arkema's largess are Reps. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) and Tim Walz (D-Minn.), who have both taken in $6,000 from the chemical maker. Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Pennsylvania's Brian Fitzpatrick (R) and Brendan Boyle (D) have all received at least $4,000 from Arkema, which has its North American headquarters in King of Prussia, Pa.
Arkema has also spent more than $7.4 million on federal lobbying since 2005, according to CRP.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/09/01/stories/1060059603
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Texas, Utility Push 5th Circuit as Venue for SO2 Designations Suit
Sep 1, 2017 | Inside EPA
Texas and electric utility Luminant are seeking to ensure arguments over EPA's designation of four areas in Texas as “nonattainment” for federal sulfur dioxide (SO2) national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) are heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, and not in the D.C. Circuit as EPA wants.
The State of Texas and Luminant are challenging the four designations as part of a larger lawsuit, Samuel Masias, et al. v. EPA, et al., that tests many SO2 designations for areas across the country in the D.C. Circuit. However, the Texas designations are also being litigated in the 5th Circuit in State of Texas v. EPA, which in an initial ruling has retained jurisdiction over the issue and will proceed to merits briefing.
EPA opposes hearing the case in the 5th Circuit court, arguing that the designations are part of a single designation “action” that covered multiple areas in two separate Federal Register notices, and that designations are “nationally applicable” and of “nationwide cause or effect.”
But in an Aug. 30 filing in Samuel Masias, the Texas petitioners say the D.C. Circuit should grant the Texas petitioners' motion to sever their D.C. Circuit issues and hold them in abeyance pending the ruling from the 5th Circuit. This is necessary to avoid conflicting or duplicative decisions on the same issues, Texas and Luminant argue.
“The Fifth Circuit has now fully considered the issue of proper venue for petitions challenging the separate Texas Final Rule and determined that those petitions should proceed on the merits in the Fifth Circuit,” they say.
“Severance and abeyance remains appropriate for an orderly and efficient disposition of these three petitions for review. Texas Petitioners intend to file with this Court a motion to transfer the three petitions for review to the Fifth Circuit, in light of the Fifth Circuit’s venue ruling,” the state and Luminant argue.
The state and utility insist that the 5th Circuit's ruling was definitive that venue can lie only in that court -- contrary to environmentalists' interpretation that the court reserved judgment on the venue question until after merits briefing.
But the 5th Circuit in State of Texas does leave open the possibility that the merits panel could reach a different conclusion if EPA provides further justification for its position.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/texas-utility-push-5th-circuit-venue-so2-designations-suit
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Court Rebuffs EPA Bid to Shelve Texas Haze Plan
Sep 1, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
U.S. EPA cannot sidestep a court-approved deal to address air pollution from coal-fired power plants in Texas, a federal court has ruled.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia yesterday rejected an eleventh-hour bid by the Trump administration to set aside an upcoming deadline to submit a cleanup plan for Texas to meet haze reduction requirements.
The plan is required under a 2012 consent decree reached after environmentalists challenged EPA for dragging its feet on addressing Texas pollution when the state failed to submit its own cleanup plan under the agency's regional haze program.
The Clean Air Act program, which aims to restore visibility to national parks and wilderness areas across the country, requires EPA to craft a federal implementation plan if a state declines to create its own. After a series of delays and extensions, EPA's plan for Texas was due Sept. 9.
In an about-face last Friday, government lawyers asked the district court to push back the deadline. EPA wanted to give Texas more time to come up with its own approach to meeting the haze standards.
In court filings, the agency said state officials have a better working relationship with the current administration and should be given the chance to work on their own approach — an intrastate trading program — to reduce pollution (Greenwire, Aug. 21).
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, was unpersuaded.
"This is not the sort of significant change in circumstance that would warrant relief," she wrote. "Texas has been under the statutory obligation to comply with the Clean Air Act since at least 2007, and it has been on notice of EPA's finding that it had failed to comply with the requirement to submit a state implementation plan since 2009.
"So there has been quite a period of time during which 'cooperative federalism' could take hold," she added.
She also noted that Texas regulators' proposal of an intrastate trading program appeared to be merely "conceptual" at this time.
"These bare bones of a schedule leave the Court with little assurance that the work will be accomplished," Jackson wrote.
Environmental groups that sued over EPA's inaction in 2011 celebrated the court's decision.
"Today's decision is a win for the region's population, national parks, public health and wildlife that for too long have been put at risk from the capricious and utterly unnecessary delay in reducing Texas's air pollution," National Parks Conservation Association Clean Air Program Director Stephanie Kodish said in a statement.
An EPA spokeswoman said the agency is "reviewing the decision to determine next steps."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/09/01/stories/1060059577
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