Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 9/6/2017
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Trump Taps State Officials for Key EPA Slots
Sep 6, 2017 | Inside EPA
President Donald Trump Sept. 2 announced his intent to nominate two former state officials to key slots at EPA -- Matthew Leopold, a former Florida official for the general counsel spot, and David Ross, a current Wisconsin official to head the water office. -
TSCA Rule Suits Will Test EPA's Discretion on Interpreting 'Uses' Definition
Sep 5, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Lawsuits challenging EPA's initial rules implementing the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) will test the discretion courts are willing to give the agency on interpreting the law's definition of a chemical's “uses” that will determine when a substance... -
Panel Selects 4th, 9th Circuits to Hear Environmentalists' First TSCA Suits
Sep 6, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
A multidistrict litigation panel has randomly selected the U.S. appellate courts for the 9th and 4th Circuits to hear environmentalists' lawsuits challenging EPA rules for prioritizing and reviewing existing chemicals under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)... -
Plastic Fibers Are Found in 83% of the World's Tap Water, a New Study Reveals
Sep 6, 2017 | TIME
By Kevin Lui
Virtually all the world's tap water is contaminated by microscopic plastic fibers, a new study claims, raising fresh concerns about the implications of rampant plastic pollution on human and planetary health. -
EWG Standards Cut Through Compromises on Drinking Water Quality
Sep 5, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By David Andrews
When it comes to your drinking water, getting a passing grade from the federal government may not be good enough. -
EU Firms' ECHA Export Notifications Up, Agency Asks for More Resources
Sep 6, 2017 | ICIS
By Jonathan Lopez
EU chemical companies have increased their notifications with information on the export of hazardous chemicals by 74% in the last three years, according to new data from the European Chemical Agency (ECHA). -
Most PFASs in Consumer Products ‘From Unknown Sources’
Sep 6, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
Tests by the Nordic Council on a selection of consumer products show that more than 99% of per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFASs) found in them come from unknown sources. -
(ACC Mentioned) The Sudden Scarcity Of Ethylene — By The Numbers
Sep 6, 2017 | Chem.Info
By Meagan Parrish
Before Hurricane Harvey came along, the country was awash in ethylene with more production coming online along the Gulf Coast this year. Now it’s a different story. -
Natural Gas Factbox: Production Back to Near Pre-Harvey Levels
Sep 5, 2017 | Platts
By Jim Magill
Offshore US Gulf of Mexico natural gas production continued to return to pre-Hurricane Harvey levels as crews returned to platforms Tuesday, while onshore producers and midstream companies said they were seeing little long-term impact on their operations... -
Key Pipeline Restored After Harvey, but More Pain at the Pump Expected
Sep 5, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre
The key gasoline pipeline linking Houston's refineries to the East Coast came back on line Tuesday after Hurricane Harvey forced it to shut down last week, but the jump in fuel prices will still register a hit on the overall U.S. economy, energy experts said. -
Industrial Pollution Spikes in Harvey's Wake
Sep 6, 2017 | CNN
By Gregory Wallace
Tests by the NordicTexas' dominant energy industry has spewed millions of pounds of pollution into the air in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, documents show. -
Ohio Shale Oil/NatGas Output Climbs in 2Q2017
Sep 5, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Ohio’s unconventional oil and natural gas production continued to tick upward in the second quarter, as it has since the end of last year when operators began to shake off the downturn’s rust. -
Chevron, Encana Prepping for Methane Rule Without EPA Guidance
Sep 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
Major oil and gas companies like Encana and Chevron are working to meet an October deadline to report on their methane emissions despite a lack of guidance from the EPA and fears of legal challenges from environmental groups. -
(ACC Mentioned) Before Harvey, Trump Admin Halted Safety Rules for Burning Texas Plant
Sep 6, 2017 | Carbonated.TV
By Elaina Provencio
French-owned chemical plant Arkema in Crosby, Texas successfully lobbied against a safety overhaul earlier this year, that might have prevented explosions. -
(ACC Mentioned) GUEST COLUMN: 'Chemical Breakdown' in U.S.
Sep 6, 2017 | Sentinel & Enterprise
By Betty Gelinas
As if the hurricane in Houston isn't horrific enough, the Arkema chemical plant, about 25 miles northeast of Houston, in Crosby, was rocked by two explosions. -
High Levels of Carcinogen Found in Houston Area After Harvey
Sep 6, 2017 | New York Times
By Hiroko Tabuchi
High levels of the carcinogen benzene were detected in a Houston neighborhood close to a Valero Energy refinery, local health officials said Tuesday, heightening concerns over potentially hazardous leaks from oil and gas industry sites damaged by Hurricane Harvey. -
Crisis Is Over at Texas Plant, but Chemical Safety Flaws Remain
Sep 5, 2017 | New York Times
By Clifford Krauss, Hiroko Tabuchi and Henry Fountain
Residents have returned to their homes here in the shadow of the Arkema chemical plant now that the fires at the plant are out and the immediate safety hazard has passed. -
Don’t Be Surprised by the Explosion Near Houston. We’ve Cut Corners on Chemical Safety for Years.
Sep 5, 2017 | Fortune
By Nicholas A. Ashford
Chemical containers at an Arkema plant in Crosby, a Texas town outside of Houston, exploded last week after the facility flooded from Hurricane Harvey’s landfall. -
Five Top Energy and Environment Priorities as Congress Returns
Sep 6, 2017 | Roll Call
By Jeremy Dillon
With lawmakers returning to kick off the fall working session, energy and environment policies won’t be high on their to-do list, but their champions aim to fill any floor schedule gaps with measures that could provide some legislative accomplishments. -
EPA General Counsel Pick Criticized Agency's Rules
Sep 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
President Donald Trump's pick to be the EPA's top legal counsel is a staunch critic of the Obama-era regulations he could play a crucial role in unraveling. -
How Do You Shift Republicans on Climate? Be Nice
Sep 6, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Arianna Skibell
Hundreds of advocates from around the country are pressing their Republican lawmakers to take action on climate change through a rarely deployed, yet highly effective, tactic. -
A Two-Decade Crusade by Conservative Charities Fueled Trump’s Exit from Paris Climate Accord
Sep 5, 2017 | Washington Post
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Myron Ebell stood in bright sunlight as President Trump stepped into the Rose Garden and spoke.
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Environment News
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Trump Taps State Officials for Key EPA Slots
Sep 6, 2017 | Inside EPA
President Donald Trump Sept. 2 announced his intent to nominate two former state officials to key slots at EPA -- Matthew Leopold, a former Florida official for the general counsel spot, and David Ross, a current Wisconsin official to head the water office.
Both pending nominees are winning support from former Democratic officials, suggesting they are likely to eventually win Senate confirmation. But the officials' selections, which was widely expected, still leave open several key political slots at the agency, including the deputy administrator and assistant administrators for the air, waste and research offices.
Leopold previously served as general counsel for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and is now in private practice. He also worked at the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ's) Environment & Natural Resources Division (ENRD) and in Florida's Washington, D.C. office.
The White House announcement says Leopold has 10 years of combined federal and state government experience, and that his current practice at the law firm of Carlton Fields focuses exclusively on environmental law, policy and litigation.
It says he has represented state and federal governments in complex environmental litigation, including Florida's water resource dispute with Georgia and the enforcement against BP for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“He also represented Florida in the long-running Everglades case, and worked with policymakers to help move comprehensive restoration forward,” the announcement says.
Ross directs the Wisconsin DOJ Environmental Protection Unit and before that served as senior assistant attorney general for the Wyoming Water & Natural Resources Division, where he served on EPA's National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy & Technology.
Both have also taken position that appear to be in line with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who is putting the agency on a deregulatory pathway.
EPA issued separate statements touting “widespread praise” for both of the pending nominees, including a statement from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Leopold, saying his “experience and knowledge will serve EPA well, and I'm glad the president nominated a Floridian who understands the importance of our state's vast ecosystems to our economy and residents' quality of life."
Former ENRD chief during the Obama administration, John Cruden, also weighed in, calling Leopold “a valued colleague of mine [who] is committed to the rule of law and can be counted on to give sound and candid advice to EPA decision makers.”
Former Wyoming Gov. David Freudenthal (D-WY) called Ross “first and foremost an excellent, pragmatic lawyer,” while Elliott Laws, a former Clinton-era EPA waste office chief said he is “smart, innovative and practical in all of his professional dealings.”
In addition to the two EPA nominees, the White House Sept. 2 also announced a slate of other nominees worth noting.
These include Steven Winberg for Department of Energy (DOE) fossil fuels chief; Bruce Walker for DOE assistant secretary for electricity, delivery and energy reliability; and Timothy Gallaudet to serve as deputy administrator at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.
Winberg previously led research and development for CONSOL Energy and was a member of DOE's National Coal Council, as well as chairing the FutureGen Industrial Alliance. Walker did stints at National Grid and Consolidated Edison, and founded Modern Energy Insights, which assesses utilities' infrastructure risks.
Gallaudet is a 32-year Navy veteran who lead its Meteorology and Oceanography Command and also served as its climate change task force deputy director.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/trump-taps-state-officials-key-epa-slots
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TSCA Rule Suits Will Test EPA's Discretion on Interpreting 'Uses' Definition
Sep 5, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Lawsuits challenging EPA's initial rules implementing the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) will test the discretion courts are willing to give the agency on interpreting the law's definition of a chemical's “uses” that will determine when a substance is subject to the rules and must undergo a risk assessment, sources say.
The Trump EPA's approach to the contested rules takes far too narrow a view of what qualifies as a chemical use that could exclude potentially harmful uses from evaluation, says one worker safety attorney. The source argues that the text of the statute, backed by an analysis from Senate Democrats prior to its enactment, requires all reasonably foreseeable uses of a chemical to be reviewed for risk -- and that EPA's rules fall short of this mandate.
But one industry attorney says EPA and prospective industry intervenors in two pending suits where the “uses” issue is likely to be contested, may also argue that the agency has deference in implementing the laws it administers. “I really have to wonder, in terms of deference, what the agency has done so terribly wrong here that it would warrant overturning of the rule,” the source says.
EPA on June 22 issued several final rules to implement TSCA, including a rule outlining how it will prioritize chemicals as either high or low priority for review and a separate regulation detailing how it will evaluate high-profile substances. The rules followed earlier proposed versions that the Obama EPA floated last year as an initial step to implementing the updated TSCA, enacted June 2016 to revise the original 1976 toxics law.
Advocacy groups and Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) -- a lead architect of the Senate TSCA bill -- say the Trump EPA narrowed chemicals' conditions of use it will consider, violating the clear intent of the law and risking weaker federal rules until states step in with their own regulations, something the reform law sought to avoid.
The issue will likely be addressed in two pending suits, currently slated to be heard in separate appellate courts, though EPA and environmentalists may seek to consolidate the two suits into a single circuit.
While environmental groups initially challenged EPA's chemical prioritization and risk evaluation rules in several federal appeals courts, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation earlier this month consolidated the suits in the 4th and 9th Circuits.
A third suit, filed Sept. 5 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, challenges the confidential business information provisions in EPA's inventory update rule.
But in those cases addressing the “uses” issue, environmentalist and worker safety attorneys expect that environmentalist challenges to the two EPA framework rules will argue that the plain language of the updated TSCA broadly defines the conditions of a chemical's use that EPA must consider, and that the legislative history, as well Udall's recent opposition to the final rules, backs their claim that the agency should be forced to consider more uses of a substance and associated risks with those uses.
Pending Lawsuits
The worker safety attorney says petitioners in the various cases will likely target the EPA risk evaluation rule's exclusions for broad categories of uses, such as legacy uses or those already regulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or other agencies. And they may also point to Senate Democrats' analysis in the run up to the law's passage as backing consideration of all chemical uses.
“The statute specifically says that it covers all uses of a chemical substance, and that adds support for the environmentalists' side,” the attorney says. While advocates do not expect EPA to consider every imaginable use, the source adds, “They certainly can't exclude major categories like legacy uses” or ignore worker exposures.
But industry attorneys say that EPA, and chemical sector trade groups expected to intervene in support of agency rules, will counter that the law allows EPA to the define scope of chemical risk assessments in order to meet deadlines for reviews. And EPA will likely point to a 2016 colloquy between Republican senators as backing their claim that it has discretion on determining the scope of the uses that it must consider.
Industry sources have already noted that environmentalist petitioners sidestepped the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia Circuit, which hears most challenges to federal rules, by filing cases in the 2nd, 4th, and 9th Circuits, possibly fearing that the D.C. Circuit may grant the agency greater deference.
A major point of contention has been the Trump EPA's narrowing of the Obama administration's proposed risk evaluation rule to limit the range of chemical “uses” the agency will likely consider in its risk assessments, a move roundly criticized by Udall and the environmental groups now suing the agency.
In its final risk evaluation rule, the Trump EPA appears to anticipate the environmentalists' legal challenge. “EPA went back to the direction on risk evaluation provided in section 6(b) of the statute and legislative history, and developed an approach to the term, 'the conditions of use' that is firmly grounded in the law,” it said. “EPA’s final approach is informed in part by the legislative history of the amended TSCA, which explicitly states that the Agency is given the discretion to determine the conditions of use that the Agency will address in its evaluation of the priority chemical, in order to ensure that the Agency’s focus is on the conditions of use that raise the greatest potential for risk.”
Narrower 'Uses'
The worker safety attorney tells Inside EPA that the Trump EPA's narrowing of the uses it will consider undermines workers' expectations that the new TSCA would bolster protections for workers' chemical exposures that OSHA rules fail to adequately address.
The source notes that in the evaluation rule, EPA excludes several broad categories of chemical uses, including those where chemical risks are already addressed by another agency's rules, as well as risks from disposal. The source argues such broad exclusions are contrary to the plain language of the revised TSCA, and that Senate Democrats' analysis of the law entered in the Congressional Record June 7, 2016, backs that assertion.
Section 2602(4) of the revised law defines conditions of use as “the circumstances, as determined by the Administrator, under which a chemical substance is intended, known, or reasonably foreseen to be manufactured, processed, distributed in commerce, used, or disposed of."
The June 7, 2016 analysis signed by former Senate Environment & Public Works (EPW) Committee ranking member Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and fellow Senate Democrats Edward Markey (MA), Jeff Merkley (OR), and Udall says the law's definition of conditions of use “plainly covers all uses of a chemical substance.”
The source notes that the Democrats' statement refers to EPA's authority to assess a substance in a mixture, but says that definitions are generally expected to remain consistent throughout a statute.
Additionally, the source says that petitioners will also likely target EPA interpretations of terms such “reasonably foreseeable” uses, and chemicals “in commerce,” which the agency relied on in narrowing the uses it will consider.
In the risk evaluation rule, “EPA interprets the mandates under section 6(a)-(b) to conduct risk evaluations and
any corresponding risk management to focus on uses for which manufacturing, processing, or distribution in commerce is intended, known to be occurring, or reasonably foreseen to occur (i.e., is prospective or on-going), rather than reaching back to evaluate the risks associated with legacy uses, associated disposal, and legacy disposal, and interprets the definition of 'conditions of use' in that context.”
The worker advocate argues that “reasonably foreseeable” is not clearly defined in rule or statute, and EPA uses it to exclude legacy uses and disposal, which are major concerns for workers and environmental justice communities located near industrial facilities. “What's reasonably foreseeable, that will be a question,” in the pending lawsuits, the source says, faulting EPA's use of the language to exclude disposal as a weak argument. “Everyone can foresee that asbestos is going to be disposed of in the future.”
EPA's Discretion
A second industry attorney says EPA and industry intervenors will likely point to section 2605(b)(4)(d), which sets a deadline for the agency to “publish the scope of the risk evaluation to be conducted, including the hazards, exposures, conditions of use, and the potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations the Administrator expects to consider."
The source says, “Industry's view is that gives EPA discretion to consider less than everything."
Additionally the source argues that EPA's approach of determining what chemical uses it will consider on a case-by-case basis allows environmental groups to weigh in on the scope of the reviews in public comments.
“The statute does say that EPA can define the scope” of chemical reviews and the uses it considers, the source says. “And then you get the opportunity, if they miss something important, to call it out.”
The first industry source says a colloquy between former EPW Chairman James Inhofe (R-OK) and former Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), another lead author of TSCA reform legislation, backs EPA's discretion to set the scope of reviews to manage agency workload and meet the law's deadlines. The colloquy was entered in the Congressional Record June 7, 2016.
“The language of the compromise makes clear that EPA has to make a determination on all conditions of use considered in the scope but the Agency is given the discretion to determine the conditions of use that the Agency will address in its evaluation of the priority chemical,” Vitter said in the colloquy.
Additionally, the source says that environmentalist must show that EPA was arbitrary and capricious in issuing the framework rules, and that legislative history backing their discretion to set priorities will make that difficult.
“The environmentalists could point to just the plain language of the statute, but even there -- if you look at the proposed and final rules -- EPA was able to identify some language out of the statute giving itself the ability to prioritize.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/tsca-rule-suits-will-test-epas-discretion-interpreting-uses-definition
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Panel Selects 4th, 9th Circuits to Hear Environmentalists' First TSCA Suits
Sep 6, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
A multidistrict litigation panel has randomly selected the U.S. appellate courts for the 9th and 4th Circuits to hear environmentalists' lawsuits challenging EPA rules for prioritizing and reviewing existing chemicals under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), though one environmentalist is backing EPA calls that the two suits should be consolidated in a single circuit.
“The hope remains that the two sets of cases will end up in the same circuit,” the environmentalist says.
In orders filed in several appellate courts Sept. 1 and Sept. 5, the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidates in the 9th Circuit environmentalists' challenges to EPA's chemical prioritization rule, and consolidates challenges to the agency's risk evaluation rule in the 4th Circuit.
The panel's order appears to reject a request from EPA to consolidate the suits in a single court, though that option still appears open to the litigants.
A key issue the two cases will likely address is environmentalists' claim that Trump EPA revisions to the Obama administration's proposals significantly weakened the rules by limiting the chemical “uses” EPA must consider in reviewing substances subject to the new law.
Should the cases eventually be consolidated in a single circuit, it could limit prospects for a circuit split -- and a possible Supreme Court review -- on the uses issue, especially the question of how much discretion courts are willing to give the agency on interpreting the law's definition of a chemical's “uses.”
The two courts now slated to hear the two suits are among those where environmentalists filed the first set of lawsuits last month challenging two of three rules EPA announced June 22 for implementing the revised TSCA that former President Barack Obama signed last year.
In addition to the two previously filed suits, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) Sept. 5 launched a new lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, challenging the inventory reset rule. The rule, which was not published in the Federal Register until Aug. 11, is the third of the three EPA framework rules for addressing existing chemicals under the new law.
The suit will target what environmentalists say is the rule's overly broad claims of confidential business information (CBI) that will shield information from the public.
The rule “deviated from the law’s requirements and falls short of the desired goal to improve transparency about chemicals in use, by failing to ensure that CBI claims are appropriately asserted and reviewed,” EDF says in a Sept. 5 statement. “The rule would allow companies to assert and maintain claims that do not meet the law’s requirements.”
Framework Rules
The three EPA rules create a framework for agency review of existing chemicals, which have been in commerce for decades and were largely grandfathered under the old law. Risks from existing chemicals were a driver of TSCA reform.
On Aug. 11, groups including EDF, Natural Resources Defense Council and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families filed separate petitions for review challenging the prioritization and risk evaluation rules in the 2nd, 4th, and 9th Circuits.
Industry attorneys have noted that the groups appeared to sidestep at least on the “uses” issue, the D.C. Circuit, which hears challenges to many federal rules, and suggested advocates may fear the circuit would grant the agency greater deference than other circuits.
In an Aug. 31 filing, EPA notified the panel of the six lawsuits environmental groups filed in the 2nd, 4th and 9th circuits and asked the panel to consolidate all the suits in a single circuit.
“While EPA is filing a separate notice with this Panel regarding challenges to the Risk Evaluation Rule, EPA believes it would be in the interest of justice and judicial efficiency for challenges to both rules to be litigated in the same court,” EPA said in an Aug. 31 notice to the panel on the prioritization rule challenges.
But the court's consolidation orders select separate venues for challenges to the risk evaluation and prioritization rules, denying, for now, EPA's request to hear the litigation.
Groups have yet to detail arguments, but Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families in a petition for review filed in the 9th circuit argues that the Risk Evaluation Rule is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law; in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations; and without observance of procedure required by law." -
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/panel-selects-4th-9th-circuits-hear-environmentalists-first-tsca-suits
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Plastic Fibers Are Found in 83% of the World's Tap Water, a New Study Reveals
Sep 6, 2017 | TIME
By Kevin Lui
Virtually all the world's tap water is contaminated by microscopic plastic fibers, a new study claims, raising fresh concerns about the implications of rampant plastic pollution on human and planetary health.
Some 83% of tap water samples collected from over a dozen countries on five continents tested positive for microplastic, according to a study commissioned by data journalism outlet Orb. The specific rate of prevalence in different locales varied, but all tested locations — from Europe to Jakarta and Beirut — saw plastic found in over 70% of tap water samples.
In the U.S., researchers found that 94% of all water samples — including tap water from places like Trump Tower and the Environmental Protection Agency's headquarters — were contaminated by plastic.
These microscopic fragments enter the water system in multiple ways, reports Orb, from synthetic fiber clothing to tire dust and microbeads, as well as the fragmenting of larger pieces of plastic, which for the most part is non-biodegradable.
With about 300 million tons of plastic produced annually, the worseningcontamination problem it brings to oceans and rivers has attracted increasing concern.
Attention has previously focused on plastic pollution's effect on marine life, seabirds and the human food chain, but effects of microplastic's presence in the human body remain to be studied.
"There are certain commons that connect us all to each other, air, water, soil, and what we have universally found time and time again is if you contaminate any of those commons, it gets in everything," Sherri Mason, an expert on plastic pollution at the State University of New York in Freedonia, told Orb.
http://time.com/4928759/plastic-fiber-tap-water-study/
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EWG Standards Cut Through Compromises on Drinking Water Quality
Sep 5, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By David Andrews
When it comes to your drinking water, getting a passing grade from the federal government may not be good enough.
Legal limits for contaminants covered by the Safe Drinking Water Act are too often based on economic and political compromises that keep treatment costs down, but fail to address pesticide runoff from farmland, clean up industrial pollution or fix crumbling water pipes. What would drinking water standards look like without these compromises?
In July, EWG released the Tap Water Database, the most complete source available on the quality of U.S. drinking water. EWG scientists aggregated and analyzed data from almost 50,000 utilities that tested for contaminants from 2010 to 2015 to create the database. Alongside this data, we also introduced EWG Standards for more than 90 common drinking water contaminants.
EWG’s standards go beyond legal requirements, relying instead on the best and most current science from government and academic researchers to set goal posts that fully protect everyone’s health, especially that of fetuses, infants and children, and pregnant women. As a recent editorial in Florida’s TCPalm newspaper put it, EWG’s standards “expose the difference between what is legal and what is safe.”
Many federal standards are based on decades-old studies that have not been updated, often because of the chemical industry’s lobbying against tougher regulations. And for more than 160 contaminants detected in U.S. tap water, there are no federal legal limits at all. Some states have set standards that are tougher or restrict more contaminants, but even these standards generally do not focus solely on human health.
Providing safe drinking water can be costly, especially because rebuilding America’s drinking water infrastructure is long overdue. But basing discussions of safe water on legal limits that focus on costs or cave into polluters’ lobbying neither protects public health nor fosters a sense of stewardship for drinking water resources. Rather, it creates a sense of complacency that impedes much-needed drinking water protection measures.
The 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act were a big step forward. They required utilities to give their customers annual water quality reports. Annual reporting has driven greater transparency in water testing, but also sends an incorrect message that any contaminant detected below the legal limit is safe.
These so-called consumer confidence reports typically describe all water that meets federal standards as safe, and do little to clarify that legal limits are negotiated values that weigh health considerations against the costs and technical feasibility of removing a contaminant. They usually don’t report contaminants that lack legal limits, or report seasonal spikes that can exceed legal limits for weeks or months during the year.
After the 1996 amendments, to draft the regulations for water quality disclosure, the Environmental Protection Agency convened an expert panel that noted the discrepancy between “required by the regulations” and “safe.”
According to the EPA’s initial proposal for consumer confidence reports, the expert panel noted that the definitions for legal limits (Maximum Contaminant Levels, or MCLs) and for health-based guidelines (Maximum Contaminant Level Goals, or MCLGs) “do not provide any content for interpreting the health significance of a contaminant concentration above the MCLG but below the MCL.”
The panel recommended that the EPA define MCLs as “the level determined to provide the best protection to health, given cost and treatment feasibility.” But in the end, the expert panel and others advising the EPA were unable “to agree on any characterization of the MCL beyond a minimal description of its regulatory function. Some members wanted to stress the safety factors built into the MCL setting process while others believed strongly that whenever an MCL is set above an MCLG the best protection to health is not achieved.” (Emphasis added.)
The result of the unresolved debate is that Americans get ambiguous annual reports on their tap water with little explanation of what the reports mean. In addition, the reports fail to mention that many legal limits are based on outdated science or that the EPA has failed to regulate any new contaminants in over two decades. Chemicals such as the industrial solvent 1,4-dioxane, the “Erin Brockovich” chemical chromium-6, the Teflon chemical PFOA, and the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate are widespread in drinking water, but lack national legal limits.
EWG Standards define the level of contaminants that the best science, as of this year, considers safe. For carcinogens, most of our standards represent the levels scientists say should cause no more than one case of cancer in every 1 million people who consume the water for a lifetime.
It is important to recognize that science is always changing. Contaminant levels that at one time were considered safe may indeed harm health, as new research methods can detect subtle health changes not discernable with less sensitive tools.
More information about health guidelines for tap water contaminants is available here
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2017/09/ewg-standards-cut-through-compromises-drinking-water-quality#.Wa-9c7IjHIU
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EU Firms' ECHA Export Notifications Up, Agency Asks for More Resources
Sep 6, 2017 | ICIS
By Jonathan Lopez
EU chemical companies have increased their notifications with information on the export of hazardous chemicals by 74% in the last three years, according to new data from the European Chemical Agency (ECHA).
ECHA also launched on Wednesday a call for more financial resources as its workload increases, an issue it said it was seeking to discuss with the EU institutions and member states.
Under the EU chemical regulation Reach’s Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Regulation, companies have increased their “awareness and compliance” about export notifications, taking them from 4,500 in 2014 to nearly 8,000 in 2016.
“This increase is far beyond the originally estimated 10% yearly increase. The large number of notifications also implies that the EU gives an increasing amount of useful information to authorities in importing countries, which they can use for regulatory purposes and to identify the companies using these chemicals in their country,” said ECHA.
The Helsinki-based body also said the number of companies involved in PIC activities had risen from 390 in 2014 to 1,177 in 2016 on the back of new chemicals added to the list of products subject to export notification and “partly due to EHCA’s activity in raising awareness” about the regulation.
However, the larger workload also means ECHA is getting stretched, it said.
While more compliance with Reach would help “make the international trade of very hazardous chemicals transparent for the protection of human health and the environment worldwide”, according to ECHA director general Geert Dancet, the large workload is putting a strain on how much ECHA can do.
Another example of increased workload, for example, would be the requests it had received for technical or regulatory support from national authorities from EU and non-EU countries, which rose by 80% in the three-year period – from 1,000 to 1,800.
“We express our concern about the higher than planned workload, which continues to increase. Without adequate resources, the Agency cannot guarantee the same level of quality as we have achieved so far,” said Dancet.
The agency said it was seeking to discuss its allocated resources with both the European Commission (the EU’s executive body) and the 28 member countries.
“The report suggests further ways of improving cooperation with the Commission on topics such as distributing or reallocating certain tasks, planning workloads and managing amendments to the regulation,” said ECHA.
“It also proposes potential changes to the legal text to improve or resolve some of the workability issues that the Agency has faced.”
In related news, ECHA said on 4 September EU chemical companies “lack incentives” to update their Reach registrations and Classification and Labelling (CLP).
The EU’s chemical regulation came into force in 2007 and its latest phase of implementation is due in mid-2018, when chemicals produced in small quantities – from 1 to 100 tonnes – will have to be registered within ECHA’s systems.
The 2018 deadline is expected to mostly affect small and medium enterprises (SMEs), with some industry insiders fearing it will put a strain in costs and may put some of them out of business.
“As the main issues affecting companies responsible for updating their information, it [a report commissioned by ECHA] mentions the perception that registration is the end of the process and that no additional work is needed afterwards; obscurity of what needs to be updated, when and by whom; and limited resources, especially for SMEs,” ECHA said.
“The report proposes improvements structured around four steps: [1] A clear definition of what needs to be updated; A clear definition of who is responsible for the updates – clarifying the roles of the lead and co-registrants.
“[3] An improved understanding of why updates are important – that they have an impact on protecting the human health and the environment [and 4] An Implementing Act to clarify the update requirement of Article 22 of Reach, including clear circumstances and fixed intervals when dossiers need to be updated.”
Reach’s Article 22 specifies a number of “further duties of registrants”, which can be divided into those that registrants are expected to do spontaneously under their own initiative and those required by ECHA during the evaluation process.
“Around 64% of the registration dossiers submitted to ECHA since 2008 have never been updated,” concluded the Agency.
ECHA said this latest report on Reach has already been sent to the EU Commission to be taken into consideration within its Reach review expected to be finalised by the end of 2017.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2017/09/06/10140352/eu-firms-echa-export-notifications-up-agency-asks-for-more-resources/
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Most PFASs in Consumer Products ‘From Unknown Sources’
Sep 6, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Oziel
Tests by the Nordic Council on a selection of consumer products show that more than 99% of per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFASs) found in them come from unknown sources.
The inter-governmental cooperation body, which represents five European countries, analysed 44 samples of different household products that are known to contain, or are suspected of containing, PFASs.
The study concluded that, in most samples, those it specifically targeted constituted "only a very minor part" of the total organic fluorine (TOF) – below or far below 1%.
The large gap between the TOF and the sum of all targeted PFASs illustrates that "we lack knowledge of most used in the analysed products," Jenny Ivarsson, the study’s co-author from the Swedish Chemicals Agency, Kemi, says.
The study analysed 17 new samples for 19 individual PFASs and TOF. It also re-examined 27 samples out of 29 from a 2015 project, which showed that all products contained PFASs and 12 of the 22 it targeted were detected.
The new study analysed eight more textile samples than in 2015. The sampled products also comprised:
· food contact materials;
· waterproofing treatment sprays;
· waxes;
· polishes; and
· rinsing aids.
All were scrutinised for TOF, since the targeted analysis of individual PFASs was not likely to display the total PFAS content, the council said.
PFOA and PFOS
PFASs were detected at varying levels in 16 of the 17 new samples, which include clothes and shoes. All of them contained perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which was the most frequently detected PFAS.
The European Commission has imposed a restriction on the use of PFOA and its related substances in products at levels above 1,000 parts per billion (ppb). The restriction is expected to come into force in 2020.
The levels of PFOA detected in the study were below 1,000ppb in all products, the council says. However, it adds, it cannot be ruled out that other PFOA-related substances that were not analysed could be present in the products, given their higher levels of TOF.
The result of the targeted analysis of textiles showed that six out of eight products contained PFASs.
Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) was detected in one popcorn bag, possibly due to "some kind of background contamination", the study says, because the manufacturer "does not intentionally" add PFOS to its paper. There is no regulation prohibiting the use in food contact materials, but the council said the manufacturer has since changed to PFAS-free bags.
The highest TOF content was found in dental floss, one non-stick baking product and two jackets. Some samples had concentrations below the limit of detection, or none, indicating that these products may be free of PFASs.
The Nordic Council is now calling for better analytical methods to measure TOF. The method developed for paper and packaging is not applicable to liquid impregnation sprays and waxes – meaning comparisons were not possible, it says. It has also urged a follow-up study, once the EU restriction on PFOA has been implemented.
In July, it called for prompt regulatory action on PFASs and suggested the substances could be considered for REACH candidate list inclusion as substances of equivalent concern under Article 57(f), due to their extreme persistence and mobility.
https://chemicalwatch.com/58474/most-pfass-in-consumer-products-from-unknown-sources
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(ACC Mentioned) The Sudden Scarcity Of Ethylene — By The Numbers
Sep 6, 2017 | Chem.Info
By Meagan Parrish
Before Hurricane Harvey came along, the country was awash in ethylene with more production coming online along the Gulf Coast this year. Now it’s a different story.
Because many petrochemical plants have shut down in the wake of the storm and its aftermath, around half of the country’s supply has been knocked offline for an uncertain period of time.
As one of the most ubiquitous chemicals on the market, the sudden supply squeeze could have far-reaching consequences. Made from ethane, a byproduct of natural gas production, ethylene and its byproducts are used in a wide array of consumer products — from plastics and rubber to antifreeze and PVC.
According to a recent report in Bloomberg, much of the production capacity for ethylene could be offline for weeks or months — a situation that has turned the chemical into an increasingly rare commodity.
Here’s how the situation currently looks, by the numbers.
40 percent = Global chemical sales that are related to ethylene and its byproducts.
70 percent = The amount of ethylene made in the U.S. that comes from Texas.
2 weeks = The amount of time producers can typically be offline before using up their inventories.
61 percent = Ethylene production in the U.S. that went offline due to Harvey, according to Bloomberg. Other estimates in the days after the storm were between 40 and 50 percent.
300,000 tons = The cumulative loss of ethylene production lost due to Harvey, according to estimates from the American Chemical Council estimates released Friday.
90 percent = The drop in demand for the raw materials used to make ethylene — ethane and butane — since Harvey triggered plant closures.
10 percent = How much of the U.S.’s trucking capacity that has also been disrupted by Harvey. Recovering from transportation and supply chain issues could cause additional headaches for chemical manufacturers, even as production comes back online.
30 percent = U.S. capacity for benzene, propylene and butadiene that was also lost due to plant shutdowns.
https://www.chem.info/news/2017/09/sudden-scarcity-ethylene-numbers
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Natural Gas Factbox: Production Back to Near Pre-Harvey Levels
Sep 5, 2017 | Platts
By Jim Magill
Offshore US Gulf of Mexico natural gas production continued to return to pre-Hurricane Harvey levels as crews returned to platforms Tuesday, while onshore producers and midstream companies said they were seeing little long-term impact on their operations from the storm that slammed into the Texas coast late August 25.
In its final report on the impacts of Harvey, the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement on Monday estimated that about 259.19 MMcf/d, or about 8% of Gulf of Mexico gas production of 3.22 Bcf/d remained shut-in as a result of the storm.
BSEE estimates 121,000 b/d of oil remained shut-in, representing about 7% of current US Gulf production of 1.75 million b/d.
Based on the data from offshore operator reports submitted as of 11:30 CDT Monday, personnel remained evacuated from 14 production platforms, which represents about 2% of the 737 manned platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, BSEE said. In addition, personnel have returned to all five of the previously evacuated non-dynamically positioned (DP) rigs in the Gulf, BSEE said.
None of the 21 DP rigs currently operating in the Gulf moved off location out of the storm's path.
"Everything is coming back online," a BSEE spokeswoman said in an interview Tuesday.PIPELINES
* Williams reported 125 MMcf/d of gas from offshore Gulf producers feeding Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line remained shut-in Tuesday. The company is continuing to conduct facility assessments and no significant issues have been discovered, spokesman Christopher Stockton said in an email.
* Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America said Tuesday it continues to conduct repairs on Compressor Station 300, and is maintaining a force majeure declaration on its Gulf Coast system at the compressor in Victoria County, Texas, which is Segment 22 of NGPL's South Texas Zone, due to significant damage caused by Harvey.
* Tennessee Gas Pipeline said it is maintaining a force majeure declaration in South Texas and several operational flow orders, including a Critical Day 1 for all areas south of Station 25 for under-deliveries into the system and over-takes.
The pipeline company has also issued a daily action alert OFO for Zone 1, Zone 2, and Zone 3 for under-deliveries into the system and over-takes, and a Daily Critical Day 1 OFO for Zones 4, 5 and 6 for all balancing parties for over-deliveries into the system and undertakes out of the system.
MIDSTREAM* Pipeline and gas processing operator Enterprise Products Partners said Tuesday it had "made significant progress in restoring service at substantially all of its major assets impacted by Hurricane Harvey."
In a statement Enterprise said its Mont Belvieu, Texas, gas processing and petrochemical complex had resumed commercial service, including its eight natural gas liquids fractionators, six propylene splitters, isomerization facility and octane-enhancement unit.
While NGL storage remains operational and brine containment has stabilized, the company said it continues to carefully monitor the situation, adding it had not curtailed NGL fractionation or storage services.
* Enterprise said its marine terminals have largely returned to service, as port restrictions remain in place at certain facilities. Enterprise's two marine terminals on the Houston Ship Channel have resumed commercial service as loadings of ethane, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and polymer-grade propylene ships have resumed.
* In South Texas, the partnership's eight natural gas processing plants and two NGL fractionators have resumed full operations. In addition, Enterprise's gas, NGL and crude pipelines in South Texas are in commercial service.
* Seaway's marine terminals in Texas City and Freeport have resumed service. The partnership's Beaumont marine terminals are also operational, but are not currently receiving ships since the port remains closed to traffic.
ONSHORE E&P* Carrizo Oil and Gas on Tuesday said its oil and gas producing assets and facilities in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas sustained no damage as a result of Harvey.
The company had suspended its drilling and completions operations in the play prior to the storm, but its crews were able to return to the field last week and all of the company's operated Eagle Ford rigs have resumed operations.
Sales volumes from the play were temporarily reduced as a result of downtime at third-party midstream facilities and Gulf Coast refineries, however, the company said it was able to secure some storage capacity, which has partially mitigated the impact on its production.
OTHER IMPACTS* In light of widespread flooding and historic levels of rainfall in Houston, BP's US headquarters will be closed until further notice and reopen only when safe for employees to return to work, it said Tuesday.
The company said that despite disruptions from refinery outages on the Gulf Coast, BP has been able to meet the needs of its wholesale customers, but expects intermittent terminal supply outages to continue.https://www.platts.com/latest-news/natural-gas/houston/natural-gas-factbox-production-back-to-near-pre-21849386
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Key Pipeline Restored After Harvey, but More Pain at the Pump Expected
Sep 5, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre
The key gasoline pipeline linking Houston's refineries to the East Coast came back on line Tuesday after Hurricane Harvey forced it to shut down last week, but the jump in fuel prices will still register a hit on the overall U.S. economy, energy experts said.
Harvey brought more than 4 feet of rain to parts of the the Gulf Coast, prompting several refineries to close or ramp down production of gasoline and diesel fuel. The flooding prevented employees from entering many refining facilities for days, and curtailed oil production and pipeline deliveries.
“The energy industry has been devastated,” Guy Caruso, senior energy adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Energy Information Administration chief told reporters.
The Colonial Pipeline, which carries up to 2.5 million barrels a day of fuel from the Houston refining belt to the New York market, restarted gasoline deliveries Tuesday, the company said. Colonial had restored diesel deliveries on Monday after it was forced to shut down operations west of Lake Charles, La., on Aug. 30.
Eight refineries along the Gulf Coast remain shut a week after the storm made landfall on Aug. 25, according to the latest information from the Department of Energy. Eight other refineries that have been forced to close during Harvey have begun to restart, DOE said.
Those outages mean that 2.1 million barrels a day of fuel production, or 11 percent of the country’s total, is still off line. That's driven the average price of regular gasoline to $2.65 a gallon on Tuesday, up 30 cents since the storm, according to price tracking website GasBuddy.
Each one-cent increase in the cost of a gallon of gas equates to $1 billion shaved off consumer spending as portion of GDP, Ryan Sweet, Moody’s Analytics' director of real-time economics told reporters. In all, the cost of destroyed infrastructure and lost economic output due to Harvey could cost $108 billion, second only to 9/11 in disaster costs, Sweet said.
Those higher gasoline and diesel prices will be among Harvey’s biggest economic shocks, enough to likely cause an uptick in the inflation rate for the fiscal quarter, Sweet added.
“There is going to be some pain at the pump,” Sweet said.
The oil production and pipeline delivery outages prompted four refineries to seek more than 5 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a DOE spokeswoman said. Marathon Petroleum, which operates a massive refinery in Texas City, requested up to 3 million barrels of SPR oil. Valero, Phillips 66 and Placid Refining also requested crude from the reserves.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report incorrectly listed Colonial Pipeline’s capacity and what segment was shut down. Colonial Pipeline’s capacity is 2.5 million barrels per day, and that its segment west of Lake Charles was shut down.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2017/09/key-pipeline-restored-after-harvey-but-more-pain-at-the-pump-expected-161455
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Industrial Pollution Spikes in Harvey's Wake
Sep 6, 2017 | CNN
By Gregory Wallace
Tests by the NordicTexas' dominant energy industry has spewed millions of pounds of pollution into the air in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, documents show.
Since the storm made landfall August 25, more than 5 million pounds of air pollutants have been released beyond the normally permitted emissions, according to a review of industrial companies' filings with the state's environmental authority by Neil Carman, a scientist who spent 12 years in enforcement at the state agency and now works with the Sierra Club.
Experts say the quantities of pollution are massive and are steadily rising as the oil and gas industries perform the pollution-intensive process of restarting operations that were halted by the storm. That process requires a greater than normal amount of "flaring" -- the burning off of gas byproducts at the ends of long chimneys that look like candles.
Some of those noxious gases include carbon monoxide, ethylene, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, propylene, propane, ethane, benzene and other volatile organic compounds.
The documents, which are available on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's website, show other emissions were released when the lids on fuel storage tanks were compromised by the heavy loads of rainwater; the tank lids rise and fall with fuel levels, and the weight of the water pressed the lids beneath those levels, allowing chemical vapors to escape.
Experts note the scope of the discharges could be significantly larger than what has been reported.
"We're concerned about these (emissions), but also about what's not reported," said Cyrus Reed, the conservation director at the Sierra Club in Texas.
As Harvey hit Texas with devastating force, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state government to suspend some regulations, and signed off on relaxing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's requirements for "emissions event reporting."
That means many incidents may not have been reported, and "the numbers could really be much larger," Carman said.
"These are engineering estimates. I call these guesses," he told CNN.
Neither Abbott's nor Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner's offices responded to CNN's request for comment.
Carman's review of the filings found 74 emission releases at 40 plants. One reason he believes the numbers represent only a fraction of the actual emissions: There are more than 800 oil refineries and gas production facilities in the region of Texas hit by Harvey that have flaring technology, and Houston alone has more than 1,000 flares, he said.
Another reason: The estimates are typically made using the assumption that 98% of the noxious substances are burned in the flaring process, which Carman says is unrealistic.
A separate CNN review of the filings found companies reported emitting more than 80 gases.
But many reports provide a murky view of what was actually released, specifying only that they were volatile organic compounds. Carman said that is "a big catch-all term" and may mean the polluter does not know what it released.
Public health experts expressed concerns about the health implications for people in the region and say the affects are already being noticed.
Air quality monitoring in the region was largely impossible during the storm, but as systems come back online, they're seeing concentrations higher than anything recorded "in over a decade," said Elena Craft, a senior toxicologist at the Environmental Defense Fund.
The Houston area has seen "six months' worth of pollution in a few days," Craft told CNN.
For example, a meter in the Houston area recorded 200 parts per billion of ozone at one point on Friday, a level the Environmental Protection Agency classifies as "unhealthy."
Ozone, which can cause respiratory problems, is created by chemical reactions between nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the presence of sunlight, according to the EPA.
"We think a lot of it has to do with the excess VOC emissions that are coming from these facilities that are trying to come back online," Craft said. "People are complaining about noses burning, eyes watering, headaches, nausea."
The concern for people in the region hit by Harvey is not that any single carcinogen, like benzene or butadiene, has been released in large quantities, but that together these chemicals make "toxic cocktails" that hang in the air.
"It's not like someone is going to get cancer from the exposure yesterday," said Craft. "They're contributing to the long-term risk of cancer."Superfund sites
Authorities said they are monitoring an additional toxic concern in the region hit by Harvey: superfund sites.
These sites are considered the nation's most contaminated and are managed by a special federal cleanup program run by the Environmental Protection Agency. In the region hit by Harvey, the sites include former chemical and waste-disposal sites.
The EPA said its initial surveys at 41 superfund sites in the affected area shows "13 sites have been flooded and/or are experiencing possible damage due to the storm."
Two of those sites "do not require emergency cleanup" and reviews of the other 11 sites will take place "as soon flood waters recede, and personnel are able to safely access the sites," the EPA said in a statement.
Abbott said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday that the EPA was prepared to go into these damaged sites "as quickly as possible" and cautioned people further about toxic substances in the waters all over, not just near the sites.
"These waters are filled both with chemicals, with waste and things like that, that can pose real health hazards," Abbott said.
CNN's Rene Marsh and David Wright contributed to this report.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/05/politics/industrial-pollution-harvey/index.html
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Ohio Shale Oil/NatGas Output Climbs in 2Q2017
Sep 5, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Ohio’s unconventional oil and natural gas production continued to tick upward in the second quarter, as it has since the end of last year when operators began to shake off the downturn’s rust.
Year/year natural gas production increased about 16% to 388.6 Bcf from 334.4 Bcf in 2Q2016, according to data issued by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR). Volumes were also up from the 371.9 Bcf of natural gas reported in 1Q2017.
While year/year oil production decreased from about 4.9 million bbl to 4 million bbl during the period, operators once again reported a sequential production increase from 3.9 million bbl in 1Q2017.
Last year was marked by declining rig counts, less spending and a dwindling inventory of drilled but uncompleted wells in Ohio as it was across much of the Appalachian Basin. But as operators in the state began to rebound, 1Q2017 saw the first sequential oil productionincrease since 2015.
At the end of last week, 29 rigs were running in Ohio, compared to 13 at the same time last year. ODNR’s report, released last Friday, lists 1,691 horizontal shale wells, of which 1,659 reported production during the second quarter. That’s up from the year-ago period, when the state listed 1,415 shale wells, of which 1,362 were producing.
The average amount of oil produced by each well in 2Q2017 was 2,438 bbl, while the average amount of natural gas reported was 234.2 MMcf. Ohio law does not require the separate reporting of natural gas liquids or condensate. Oil and gas totals include those volumes.
As of Aug. 26, the state has issued 2,589 Utica Shale permits and 2,104 Utica wells have been drilled. The state also has issued 46 Marcellus Shale permits and 30 Marcellus wells have been drilled, according to ODNR.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/111631-ohio-shale-oilnatgas-output-climbs-in-2q2017
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Chevron, Encana Prepping for Methane Rule Without EPA Guidance
Sep 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
Major oil and gas companies like Encana and Chevron are working to meet an October deadline to report on their methane emissions despite a lack of guidance from the EPA and fears of legal challenges from environmental groups.
The industry must begin meeting federal standards for methane emissions after the Trump administration lost a bid to temporarily halt the rule for reconsideration. That means oil and gas drillers must comply with methane requirements they want the Environmental Protection Agency to either revise or eliminate outright.
“We're making every effort to comply and will be ready to report as required in October,” Doug Hock, a spokesman for Encana Corp., told Bloomberg BNA. Under the methane rule, companies are required to submit their first annual report, which includes information on all affected facilities constructed, modified, or reconstructed in the prior year.
Veronica Flores-Paniagua, a spokeswoman for Chevron Corp., told Bloomberg BNA in an email that the company “complies with all applicable rules and regulations. Chevron and the industry are reducing methane emissions through innovation, best practices, and new regulations.”
Though a federal appellate court blocked the agency's bid to delay the methane standards for 90 days, the EPA has also proposed to halt the requirements for two years while it reconsiders key monitoring requirements. Many oil and gas industry groups are urging the EPA to look broadly at the entire rule, with an eye toward substantial revisions.
The EPA did not say whether it will provide compliance guidance to industry but noted it is “working to prevent the regulated community from expending resources complying with a rule that is undergoing review,” according to agency spokeswoman Amy Graham.
“During this interim period, the agency will continue to work closely with the regulated community to ensure adequate health and environmental protections are in place as the agency expeditiously works to review and if/as appropriate address underlying legal and technical problems of the rule,” she told Bloomberg BNA in an email.
Lee Fuller, executive vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a group that represents small and independent oil and gas producers, told Bloomberg BNA his group is advising its members to come into compliance as quickly as possible, though he acknowledged there are some outstanding questions. For example, he said it's unclear whether wells drilled after September 2015 face a quicker timeline than other regulated wells before operators must perform an initial fugitive emissions test.
Industry Wary of Legal Challenges
Fuller said the EPA has the discretion to choose how it enforces the standards, but that opens the door to environmental groups suing the agency “to push them into enforcement.”
The oil and gas industry has a legal duty now to comply with the standards, Peter Zalzal of the Environmental Defense Fund told Bloomberg BNA, noting that companies have had a year-long lead time before the initial June 3 compliance deadline.
“We heard from companies that they were planning for this, and they are doing it now. That just underscores the feasibility and practicality of doing so,” Zalzal said.
Two Year Delay Could Bring Relief
Lacking guidance and fearing lawsuits, the oil and gas industry is pushing the EPA to move quickly on its plan to pause the regulations. Howard Feldman senior director of regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, told Bloomberg BNA his group is urging the EPA to move “expeditiously” to finalize the two-year stay within the next month or two.
Fuller, though, noted the agency will have to legally shore up proposal to stop the rules, which is sure to be challenged by environmental groups.
“One underlying question will be the basis for their action,” he said.
EDF's Zalzal said one of the “striking things” is there is “no legal authority cited in the proposed action to support” the two-year delay.
The oil and gas industry hopes the information it has given the EPA will “provide support” for plans to roll back the rule, Fuller said. Comments from the petroleum group provide the EPA several options under the Clean Air Act and the Administrative Procedure Act to back its action. One challenge, Fuller said, is that record will be rather large, given the EPA is “not only building a record about the new regulation” but also “a record as to why the justification for the prior regulation was incorrect.”
And Zalzal noted that the record underpinning the Obama-era methane limits is “extensive” and “built from standards that have been in place and effectively working in states” like Colorado, Wyoming, and others.
“It is important to underscore that what we have right now is based on an extensive and really complete record, and based on things we know will work,” Zalzal said. Any reconsideration the EPA conducts “has to account for those facts on the ground.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=120069549&vname=dennotallissues&fn=120069549&jd=120069549
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(ACC Mentioned) Before Harvey, Trump Admin Halted Safety Rules for Burning Texas Plant
Sep 6, 2017 | Carbonated.TV
By Elaina Provencio
French-owned chemical plant Arkema in Crosby, Texas successfully lobbied against a safety overhaul earlier this year, that might have prevented explosions.Billowing black clouds filled the air with noxious fumes Friday after two more containers exploded at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, northeast of Houston — which successfully lobbied against the implementation of safety regulations earlier this year.
In an attempt to quell the risk of more explosions, the company decided to burn the six leftover containers of organic peroxides, after three containers already burned. The United States Chemical Safety Board is investigating the fires at the plant.
In an executive order in 2013, the Obama administration planned to overhaul the EPA’s safety regulations in order “to improve chemical process safety, assist local emergency authorities in planning for and responding to accidents, and improve public awareness of chemical hazards at regulated source.”
These new rules would have gone into effect on March 14 and would have governed safety management at the French-owned chemical plant, but the Trump administration halted these plans in response to a strong lobbying campaign by Arkema and its affiliated trade association, the American Chemistry Council.
According to the International Business Times, a 2014 Risk Management Planadmitted that the Crosby facility would be at risk of equipment failure in cases of extreme flooding, yet they still lobbied against the implementation of safety rules because the regulations would have added “significant new costs and burdens to the corporate audit process.”
The American Chemistry Council has spent more than $100 million supporting federal lawmakers since 2008, 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).
Republican lawmakers that received funding from the industry were integral in supporting a bill that ended the EPA safety regulations — and now the Crosby plant is at risk of even more explosions, with the prospect of Arkema’s additional five plants in Texas facing risk of equipment failure due to flooding.
Daryl Roberts, vice president of manufacturing for Arkema’s American division said in a news conference Friday that about 500,000 pounds of organic peroxides, which are used in making plastics, were in the trailers — along with the corrosive chemical sulfur dioxide.
“We continue to advise everyone to avoid the smoke and seek medical attention if they are exposed,” said Richard Rowe, the chief executive of Arkema’s American unit.
The plant has yet to release the extensive list of chemicals located in the Crosby facility, or the amounts of chemicals that are there, but it is clear the situation could escalate soon. Residents in the area should stay clear of the fumes, but hopefully, the company will be held responsible for avoiding the responsibility to keep people safe.
This company put their business ahead of the safety of everyone involved, and it’s now provided serious consequences.
http://www.carbonated.tv/news/chemical-plant-hit-by-harvey-successfully-lobbied-against-safety-rules
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(ACC Mentioned) GUEST COLUMN: 'Chemical Breakdown' in U.S.
Sep 6, 2017 | Sentinel & Enterprise
By Betty Gelinas
As if the hurricane in Houston isn't horrific enough, the Arkema chemical plant, about 25 miles northeast of Houston, in Crosby, was rocked by two explosions.
The facility produces highly volatile chemicals known as organic peroxides, and at least 10 sheriff's deputies were hospitalized after inhaling fumes, yet the public cannot know exactly what chemicals are poisoning people.
Officials had already evacuated residents within a 1 1/2-mile radius of the plant in Crosby, after the plant lost primary and backup power to its coolant system. Federal Emergency Management Agency head Brock Long said a plume of chemicals leaking from the plant was "incredibly dangerous."
The Arkema facility in 2011 was cited for a fire that started with organic peroxides and later for not being able to control the temperature in a reactor. And then, last August, OSHA fined Arkema tens of thousands of dollars for mishandling process safety violations for hazardous materials.
Matt Dempsey, a data reporter with the Houston Chronicle and contributor to the investigative series called "Chemical Breakdown," warns of new explosions expected at the Crosby chemical plant:
"I can bug the company. I can send emails and make calls to the state and other agencies. But it's just very difficult to make any progress, because they've made it so that they can use the threat of terrorism as an excuse to shut down access to most chemical inventories.
My concern is there are tanks of sulfur dioxide and isobutylene that are very large tanks. In a worst-case scenario report that was filed with the EPA, if that stuff ruptures, then we have a really serious problem on our hands. The company has said they expect all eight of those freezer trailers, that each have 32,000 pounds of organic peroxides, to explode in the coming days. ... So, I keep asking Arkema, 'Where are the tanks'? 'Can you show me where the organic peroxides are and where the tanks are, so I can reassure people, more than just 'They're far away'? ... and they've refused to have done that at this point."
President Obama had issued an executive act called EPCRA (the Emergency Preparedness and Community Right-to-Know Act) referred to as Tier II, which is a chemical inventory requiring companies who have certain types of materials to send a list of what chemicals they have, the names of them, a chemical index code, the amounts of them, where they're located, what kind of containers they're in, to local law enforcement, to the state, and to local emergency planning committees. It's supposed to be used for emergency preparedness.
But since then top Republicans in Congress pushed forward a set of bills, both in the House and Senate, to basically delay and effectively kill that rule and to signal the Trump administration to do likewise. The American Chemistry Council, a big lobbying group in Washington, in which Arkema is a member, also made similar arguments. Other companies -- ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, SABIC, the Saudi Arabian part-government-owned chemical conglomerate -- also lobbied against these rules. And they were successful. Ultimately, Trump and Scott Pruitt, as the new EPA administrator, won out, and ultimately delayed those rules till 2019.
The other side of the argument was and is, of course, that the public should have a right to know about chemical compounds that infiltrate the air in their communities, especially when it comes to emergency situations.
"There's more than 2,500 chemical facilities in Houston. They're all shut down due to the flooding, and they're all going to start up soon," Dempsey said. "Startup and shutdowns is when most incidents occur. And so, I am genuinely worried, both from an environmental perspective and from a public safety. ... [W]hat's going to happen when all of these facilities all spin up all at the same time, after encountering, essentially, like biblical-proportion flood."
Betty Gelinas lives in Fitchburg
http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/letters/ci_31278564/guest-column-chemical-breakdown-u-s
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High Levels of Carcinogen Found in Houston Area After Harvey
Sep 6, 2017 | New York Times
By Hiroko Tabuchi
High levels of the carcinogen benzene were detected in a Houston neighborhood close to a Valero Energy refinery, local health officials said Tuesday, heightening concerns over potentially hazardous leaks from oil and gas industry sites damaged by Hurricane Harvey.
Preliminary air sampling in the Manchester district of Houston showed concentrations of up to 324 parts per billion of benzene, said Loren Raun, chief environmental science officer for the Houston Health Department. That is above the level at which federal safety officials recommend special breathing equipment for workers.
Health officials also detected high levels of volatile organic compounds, which have been linked to a variety of health problems, including liver damage and cancer.
Dr. Raun said that monitoring would continue, and that some readings showed far lower levels of the pollutants, depending on which way the wind was blowing. Still, “these are high numbers,” she said.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it was also focusing on “an area of potential concern” linked to emissions from a Valero facility. E.P.A. air monitoring buses would continue to test pollution levels around the Valero refinery and others in the area as they start back up, David Gray, an agency spokesman, said in a statement.
Manchester, a low-income neighborhood hemmed in by two freeways, a shipping lane and the Valero refinery, has long suffered from industrial pollution. Researchers have found elevated levels of childhood leukemia in several areas in Houston, including Manchester, a plight blamed on high levels of chemicals in the air.
Valero Energy, a refiner based in San Antonio, had told local regulators that a floating roof covering a tank at its Houston refinery sank on Aug. 27 in the heavy rains brought by Harvey, causing benzene to leak into the air. The leak lasted only until the next day, Valero had said in its filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Since Aug. 23, 31 facilities in 10 counties have reported an estimated 4.5 million pounds of excess emissions to the commission, an analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund and Environment Texas shows.
Lillian Riojas, a Valero spokeswoman, said that a “hurricane ride-out crew” of Valero workers had made sure that the oil that escaped from the roof was “quickly contained” and that “cleanup is well underway.” Valero was coordinating with both federal and local environmental regulators to monitor any emissions from the oil, she said.
Benzene, a toxic, flammable chemical found in crude oil and gasoline, is known to cause central nervous system damage and bone marrow damage, and is carcinogenic.
Elena Craft, a senior health scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said continued monitoring was essential; there were “a lot of unknowns” related to how long communities might have been exposed to the pollutants, and at what sustained concentrations.
The health risks were clear, she said.
“For the short term, the risks are dizziness, nausea, lightheadedness. But this could also play into your long-term cancer risks,” she said. “We’re very concerned about people’s long-term health in the area.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/us/harvey-houston-valero-benzene.html
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Crisis Is Over at Texas Plant, but Chemical Safety Flaws Remain
Sep 5, 2017 | New York Times
By Clifford Krauss, Hiroko Tabuchi and Henry Fountain
Residents have returned to their homes here in the shadow of the Arkema chemical plant now that the fires at the plant are out and the immediate safety hazard has passed.
The fires, a result of flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey that caused chemicals to become unstable, had little health impact beyond the 21 emergency workers who were treated for smoke exposure. The returning homeowners now face more common problems that follow a flood: crumbling plasterboard, ruined furnishings and, above all, mold.
Still, the accident at the plant has exposed large flaws in regulation of chemical safety, risk disclosure and emergency planning.
Because of a gap in federal environmental laws long criticized by chemical safety experts, Arkema was not even required to address, in the emergency plans it submits to federal regulators, the risk posed by the volatile chemicals that overheated and set off fires several times last week, sending dense black smoke billowing over this town near Houston.
The close call has raised doubts about the preparedness of the nation’s vast chemicals industry for potentially bigger disasters, both natural and man-made. The Environmental Protection Agency ignores a whole class of chemicals in regulating plant safety that experts say pose explosion hazards.
Other federal agencies responsible for inspecting and investigating safety at chemical facilities are poorly funded, leaving the industry to largely police itself. And now the Trump administration is rolling back Obama-era regulations aimed at preventing such accidents.
Arkema, the multinational French chemical company that owns the plant, identified hurricanes, flooding and power failures as risks to the site nearly a decade ago. But the company did little to address those hazards, its own risk-management plans show.
Flooding from Harvey knocked out electricity to the plant as well as backup systems meant to keep the chemicals, called organic peroxides, cool and stable, forcing an 11-person “ride-out” crew to move them around in trailers as the waters rose before abandoning the plant under the local authorities’ orders.
The workers’ actions most likely averted a wider catastrophe. The plant stores other hazardous chemicals, including sulfur dioxide and isobutylene. Release of those could have led to contamination of a far wider area. Under a worst-case scenario drawn up by Arkema, a leak of sulfur dioxide could affect more than a million residents over more than 1,600 square miles of East Texas.
On Monday, a day after Arkema deliberately burned the remaining chemicals, nearby residents who had been forced from their homes for nearly a week began trickling back.
But concerns over risks at the chemical plant in their midst were on their minds.
“I think they should have had a backup plan for when something like this happens,” said Phyllis Baker, 61, whose ranch home sits about 100 yards from the plant entrance.
In a written response to questions, Daryl Roberts, Arkema’s vice president of manufacturing, technology and regulatory affairs in the United States, said that the company had not reviewed its past risk management plans because its experts remained focused on the situation on the ground. He also said that Arkema had numerous safety protocols for handling organic peroxides.
In describing what happened at the plant, though, Arkema officials repeatedly cited the unprecedented nature of the storm, which dropped about 40 inches of rain in the area, and said that no one could have adequately prepared for it.
“It is not an industrial accident,” said Gilles Galinier, Arkema’s vice president of communications at its French headquarters. “The problems that arose resulted from the hurricane and the torrential rains that fell upon Texas and more particularly on Crosby.”A Warning Ignored
The Arkema site 30 miles northeast of downtown Houston was not considered particularly prone to flooding. One of about two dozen facilities in the United States run by the French company, which logged worldwide sales last year of 7.5 billion euros, or $8.9 billion, the Crosby facility is small by standards of the petrochemical industry. It employs about 50 workers to manufacture organic peroxides, used in the manufacture of plastics.
But in 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall over Galveston, killing 103 people and causing more than $50 billion in damage. The following year, Arkema identified floods and hurricanes — as well as power failure and loss of cooling — as threats to its Crosby site.
Still, Arkema did little to update its contingency plans. The plans, which the company must file with the E.P.A. every four years, did not include measures to raise critical equipment like backup generators above possible flood levels. Nor did the plans call for isolating hazardous materials from high wind or water.
“They identify new hazards but don’t change anything in their plans,” said Tom Neltner, chemicals policy director at the Environmental Defense Fund. “What should have happened in their revision is that when they considered floods and hurricanes, they should have considered would they have to evacuate because of flooding, for example.”
The United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said it was opening an investigation into the Arkema fires. The board, a federal agency charged with investigating chemical disasters, will focus on the site’s risk management plans, said Johnnie Banks, an investigator at the agency who worked on the inquiry into a deadly 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex.
The investigation will also look at whether unstable chemical, like organic peroxides, should have been addressed in Arkema’s risk management plans, Mr. Banks said.
Organic peroxides have previously caused problems for the plant. In 2006, the plant faced state penalties for improper storage of the chemicals, which triggered a fire at the site. And in 1999, the plant suffered an explosion that sent a ground-shaking boom across Crosby, an episode that was also attributed to organic peroxides. No one was injured, but residents were told to remain in their homes, according to news reports at the time.
Last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration also hit Arkema’s Crosby site with multiple serious violations relating to its management of highly hazardous chemicals. Arkema paid $91,000 to settle those violations.
“Facilities need to take a more proactive approach and learn from these past incidents,” said M. Sam Mannan, a professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University and the author of a study on Texas chemical plants, conducted with the Houston Chronicle, that listed the Arkema plant as one of the most hazardous in the state.
“We need to see what we can do to weather the next storm better.”Gaps in Regulation
The Arkema explosions point to gaping holes in federal chemical safety regulations.
For years, chemical safety experts, including the Chemical Safety Board, have urged the E.P.A. to regulate chemicals that may not be highly toxic, but may cause violent explosions or fires — like the organic peroxides that caused the explosions in Crosby.
The E.P.A.’s risk management program ignores this class of hazardous chemicals, instead only requiring companies to address about 150 chemicals selected for toxicity and flammability, but not their reactivity.
The 2013 blast at the fertilizer plant in West, which left 15 dead, has heightened calls for more chemicals to be regulated. The explosion was caused by ammonium nitrate, an unstable compound that is also behind the Takata airbag recalls. Ammonium nitrate is also not on E.P.A.’s list.
That regulatory gap is exacerbated by the lack of oversight from other agencies. OSHA has few inspectors trained to examine chemical facilities, and rarely inspects chemical facilities unless there is an accident or particular complaint. The Chemical Safety Board is hobbled by a tiny staff and budget, and its recommendations are often ignored by federal agencies.
Texas, meanwhile, has tightened chemical disclosure rules, citing terrorism fears. The state’s Homeland Security Act, passed in 2003, made government information that could potentially be used by terrorists confidential. In recent years, chemical companies have pointed to that law to withhold information on chemicals at their facilities, despite a federal rule that mandates their disclosure.
The Obama administration tried to strengthen the nation’s chemical safety laws, requiring companies to make information about dangerous chemicals at plants more easily available to the public, as well as to local emergency responders. It also would have given E.P.A. more regulatory oversight.
The chemical industry, including Arkema, fought the rule. In a letter to the E.P.A., Arkema’s senior process safety engineer, Susan Lee-Martin, said audits of the company’s safety plans by third parties would be costly, and require exposing proprietary information.
A number of states also opposed the rule, led by the current E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, who at the time was the attorney general of Oklahoma. In a letter dated July 27, 2016, to Gina McCarthy, who was then the E.P.A. administrator, Mr. Pruitt and 10 other Republican attorneys general said the rule itself would harm citizens.
“The safety of these manufacturing, processing and storage facilities should be a priority for us all, but safety encompasses more than preventing accidental releases of chemicals, it also encompasses preventing intentional releases caused by bad actors seeking to harm our citizens,” Mr. Pruitt and others wrote.
In June, Mr. Pruitt officially delayed the rule by 20 months, until February 2019. Eleven states, led by the New York Attorney General, Eric T. Schneiderman, have sued over the decision.
The E.P.A. has said that air samples taken at the Crosby plant during the fires showed no immediate health danger. It said in a statement last week that it would “consider using any authority we have to further address the situation to protect human health and the environment.”Loss and Return
Outside the plant’s locked gate on Monday there were no signs of the fires that consumed nine trailers full of chemicals over the previous several days.
There were also no signs of the drama that unfolded at the plant the weekend before, when a crew of 11 workers scrambled to move a half million pounds of liquid organic peroxides from an overheating warehouse to refrigerated truck trailers.
The trailers were moved to the highest ground on the property, and as far as possible from tanks of sulfur dioxide, a highly corrosive gas, and isobutylene, a highly flammable one.
Even that proved to be not enough, as backup refrigeration systems failed. With explosions inevitable, the workers were ordered to evacuate the area, as were residents within a mile and a half. Mr. Roberts, the Arkema vice president, said that with as much as six feet of water there was little else the crew could do.
“We’ve never experienced anything that would have given us any indication that we could have that much of water,” he said.
That explanation did not satisfy Janessa Zeiler, 28, who returned to her two-acre farm about a half-mile from the plant on Sunday afternoon.
She listed some of her losses: all 10 fish in her fish tank; a cat; a couple of chickens; and a cow, although she and her boyfriend hoped it had escaped to higher ground.
“We’re mostly angry we didn’t find out sooner that something was happening from the company,” she said.
Clifford Krauss reported from Crosby, Tex., and Hiroko Tabuchi and Henry Fountain from New York. Reporting was contributed by Aurelien Breeden from Paris; Stanley Reed from London; and Lisa Friedman from Washington.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/us/harvey-arkema-crosby-chemicals.html
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Don’t Be Surprised by the Explosion Near Houston. We’ve Cut Corners on Chemical Safety for Years.
Sep 5, 2017 | Fortune
By Nicholas A. Ashford
Chemical containers at an Arkema plant in Crosby, a Texas town outside of Houston, exploded last week after the facility flooded from Hurricane Harvey’s landfall. While we can’t prevent natural disasters like Harvey from occurring, we can mitigate their consequences. Inherently unsafe facilities and operations can be redesigned, retrofitted, and ultimately replaced by manufacturing and storage facility changes that are safer. Unfortunately, the U.S. has chosen to take a less expensive and comprehensive approach to chemical safety, leaving us vulnerable to disasters like the one at Arkema.
There are two main approaches to safety in chemical plants: “inherent safety” and “secondary prevention.” The Arkema plant followed secondary prevention, which involves the strengthening of reaction vessels and pipes, the use of neutralizing baths, and the venting of toxic or explosive chemicals. This approach focuses on minimizing, but not eliminating, the consequences once a facility has already been seriously damaged.
Inherent safety approaches, on the other hand, seek to prevent major damage from occurring in the first place. Organizations following this approach design production and storage facilities with significantly smaller probabilities of untoward human and commercial disasters. The European Union has adopted a chemical accident prevention approach focused on inherent safety over secondary prevention. The U.S. has taken the other route.
In 1996, 12 years after the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, exploded, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated its first requirement that certain high hazard industries issue a risk management plan (RMP) to prevent chemical accidents. While this was a positive step, environmental and some chemical industry advocates urged the EPA to prioritize inherent safety approaches over secondary prevention. Regardless, the EPA caved in to massive chemical industry pressure and decided not to mandate inherent safety procedures.
In the ensuing years, of course, chemical accidents continued to wreak havoc. According to an EPA analysis of the period from 2004 to 2013, 12,500 chemical facilities reported 1,500 accidents that led to property damage, injuries, and deaths.
In January 2017, the EPA published the Chemical Disaster Rule, a revised set of more stringent requirements than the 1996 RMP. The revised rule would have enhanced protection for local first responders, community members, and employees from death or injury due to chemical facility accidents. These were positive steps for chemical safety. Yet in June, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt ordered a 20-month delay in implementation of the rule. Once again, the EPA chose to avoid the safer approach.
The rule’s more stringent provisions did not mandate inherent safety approaches, but did require designated operations to assess whether safety improvements were practicable. These improvements included storing fewer chemicals, using better tanks, and improving backup power systems, in other words, feasible, effective, and immediately needed improvements. The rule also had more stringent requirements for data accessibility and emergency planning in case of disaster.
No one is expecting chemical production, manufacturing, and storage to magically transform into a completely safe process overnight. But government at all levels should hasten the adoption of common-sense, inherently safer rules to save lives, and to protect businesses and communities.
Nicholas A. Ashford is a professor of technology and policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former chair of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health.
http://fortune.com/2017/09/05/houston-chemical-plant-fire-explosion-arkema-crosby/
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Five Top Energy and Environment Priorities as Congress Returns
Sep 6, 2017 | Roll Call
By Jeremy Dillon
With lawmakers returning to kick off the fall working session, energy and environment policies won’t be high on their to-do list, but their champions aim to fill any floor schedule gaps with measures that could provide some legislative accomplishments.
Here are five priorities they will push this fall:Energy bill redux
The highest priority ready for the Senate floor is a wide-ranging and bipartisan energy and natural resources bill that builds off the stalled efforts in the previous Congress to update the nation’s energy policies for the first time in nearly a decade.
The lawmakers behind the bill — Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and ranking member Maria Cantwell of Washington — have been able to skip the committee process in favor of moving it directly to the floor’s pending business.
“The energy and natural resources bill has broad bipartisan support, and we hope it will be considered as early as possible this fall,” committee spokeswoman Nicole Daigle said in an email.
The 892-page bill includes measures to streamline permitting decisions for liquefied natural gas export facilities, bolster voluntary energy efficiency standards for manufacturing and home building, permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and increase cybersecurity coordination efforts, among other things.
Supporters will need to overcome a loss of urgency on a bill that barely missed out on becoming law. Questions about the need for the legislation after the Trump administration vowed to unleash “American energy dominance” will need to be addressed if lawmakers hope to get the bill to the president’s desk.Yucca Mountain rising
House Energy and Commerce members, meanwhile, are pushing legislation for floor consideration that aims to solve the more than 30 year partisan deadlock over where to dispose of the nation’s nuclear waste.
The site originally selected by Congress, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, was dropped in 2010 by the Obama administration, which deemed the site “unworkable” because of strident local opposition led by former Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. In its place, President Barack Obama’s Energy Department advocated the development of a temporary storage site until a permanent site with local support could be identified.
The decision led to a stalemate over what to do with the radioactive waste now stored at the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants. The Trump administration has indicated it wants to to resurrect Yucca Mountain, opening up a path for an Energy and Commerce bill to restart activities to prepare the site through infrastructure improvements and financial incentives to build local support.
The legislation, sponsored by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., improved its trajectory after Republicans reached a deal with committee Democrats that would authorize temporary storage sites to advance in conjunction with the Yucca licensing review. The bill moved out of committee with a 49-4 vote, where it now waits for floor time.
“We are actively working with leadership to get this legislation passed,” Energy and Commerce spokesman Dan Schneider said in an email.Drinking water
Another bipartisan bill from the House Energy and Commerce Committee would boost the authorization levels for grants to improve clean drinking water systems.
Inspired in part by the lead drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and similar contaminations across the country, the bill would authorize $8 billion in capitalization grants to the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund program from fiscal 2018 to fiscal 2022.
The EPA estimates that $384 billion is needed over the next 20 years to keep the nation’s water systems running, and the American Society of Civil Engineers recently issued a report card that gave the nation’s water infrastructure a “D.”
“As this measure heads to the House for a vote, I will continue working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure it passes and we do our part to make sure the water Americans drink is safe,” Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden said in an editorial in the East Oregonian.Nominations
Several energy- and environment-related nominations were left hanging before Congress set off for the August break as lawmakers and the White House moved at sluggish pace.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is set on Thursday to take up the nominations of Joseph Balash to be assistant secretary for land and minerals management, and Ryan Nelson, tapped to be solicitor, at the Interior Department. The panel will also consider Richard Glick and Kevin McIntyre to fill positions on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The Environment and Public Works Committee is also expected to consider the nomination of Michael Dourson to become EPA’s assistant administrator for toxic substances.
A number of nominees have already been cleared by their respective committees and now await a Senate vote, including:
Douglas W. Domenech and Susan Combs, as assistant Interior secretaries.
Paul Dabbar and Mark Wesley Menezes to be undersecretaries at the Energy Department.
Susan Parker Bodine, of Maryland, to be assistant EPA administrator.
Annie Caputo and David Wright to be members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Trump administration is expected to continue efforts to rescind the Obama administration’s rule that broadened the kinds of streams and wetlands that fall under federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act.
Fulfilling part of a February executive order by President Donald Trump, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in June released a proposal to rescind the rule, which is dubbed Waters of the United States or WOTUS. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has told lawmakers he wants to finalize a replacement rule by “the end of this year or by the first quarter of next year at the latest.”
Conservatives say the rule amounts to federal intrusion that criminalizes activities on private property and hampers economic development.
In Congress, riders in the House Energy-Water and Interior-Environment spending bills to ease repealing of WOTUS have become points of contention. Republicans included in both measures provisions that would authorize the Trump administration to dismantle the rule without undertaking statutory or regulatory reviews. Democrats say those riders would make support from the caucus almost impossible, warning that they would give too much power to the agencies and undercut the regulatory process.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/five-top-energy-environment-priorities-congress-returns
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EPA General Counsel Pick Criticized Agency's Rules
Sep 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
President Donald Trump's pick to be the EPA's top legal counsel is a staunch critic of the Obama-era regulations he could play a crucial role in unraveling.
Matt Leopold, the former Justice Department attorney in line to be general counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency, has accused the Obama administration of overstepping its bounds in issuing broad rulemakings like the Clean Power Plan and the 2015 Clean Water rule, commonly known as Waters of the U.S., or WOTUS.
If confirmed, Leopold, currently a partner in Carlton Fields Jorden Burt, P.A.'s Tallahassee, Fla, office, would lead EPA's team responsible for shoring up the legal underpinning for undoing, replacing, or revising those regulations.
Trump announced his intention to nominate Leopold late Sept. 2 alongside a number of other environment and energy picks, including a nominee to head the EPA's Office of Water.
Leopold would be no stranger to leading the legal team of an environmental agency. He served as the general counsel of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection from 2013 to 2015 under Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Before that, Leopold worked in the Justice Department's environment division from 2007 to 2013, during which he worked on the civil trial team for the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Push for State Authority
Leopold has been a critic of the Obama EPA, and has urged greater authority for states in environmental regulation—a view that is shared by Administrator Scott Pruitt.
“The question is: Where is the space that the states are supposed to occupy, and is the federal government stepping too far into that space?” Leopold said at a January 2016 Federalist Society event. As potential checks on the EPA's overreach, he suggested updates to the Administrative Procedure Act to include congressional ratification of major regulations from the EPA and other federal agencies, noting Florida's administrative law already provides such a check.
Leopold also appeared to suggest a re-examination of the Chevron doctrine, under which the court typically defers to a federal agency's interpretation of ambiguous statutory language. “It's very important to have agencies making complex scientific decisions in areas of their expertise, but the court is equally able to interpret a statute, sometimes better, than a federal agency,” he said then.
According to Jason Gonzalez, Florida chairman of the Federalist Society and an attorney with Shutts & Bowen LLP, Leopold was an “early favorite” for the EPA's general counsel. In an email to Bloomberg BNA, Gonzalez said Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally recommended Leopold to Pruitt.
“He is unique in that his intellect, experience, and balanced approach have drawn support from across the ideological spectrum. You rarely have someone like Matt who is supported by conservative leaders, as well as the likes of the Everglades Foundation and the Audubon Society,” Gonzalez said.
But other environmentalists are critical of Leopold, who they say will slow-walk environmental regulation to support industry interests.
Linda Young, executive director of Florida Clean Water Network, told Bloomberg BNA that Leopold is “very pro-industry, very unsympathetic to public interest and involvement,” and has “a flexible attitude about regulatory compliance.” Young, whose group has sued the Florida environment agency many times to prompt enforcement and updates of the state's environmental regulations, suggested Leopold would bring a similar attitude to the EPA ,if confirmed.
People like Leopold “don't change environmental law, they just ignore it. And when people try to enforce it, they stop them. They change as much as they need to change to quash any effort of citizen participation or enforcement with the law,” Young said.
Prior Experience
But Ethan Shenkman, who served during the Obama administration as the EPA's deputy general counsel and in the Justice Department's environment division, said Leopold's experience as both a career attorney and a political official would serve him well in the EPA's general counsel.
That dual experience “will help him understand the role of general counsel is not the same as the role of the policymaker,” Shenkman, now with the law firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, told Bloomberg BNA. A general counsel's role is “to provide advice on the array of options that are legally defensible” for policymakers to consider.
Shenkman said he crossed paths with Leopold during both his time in the Justice Department and in the Florida environment agency.
He worked closely with Leopold on legal and regulatory issues concerning Everglades restoration when Leopold was representing the state of Florida. Leopold “did a great job,” Shenkman said noting he led Florida “to some very successful collaborative approaches” with the federal government.
Shenkman also said he overlapped briefly with Leopold during his time at the Justice Department, where he was “well-respected.” During Leopold's time in the Justice Department, he worked on Endangered Species Act and Superfund litigation, as well as Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act citizen suits.
Broadly, Shenkman described Leopold as “very cooperative and team-oriented,” and he suggested his state experience could “lend a very important perspective” because “states are on the front lines of administering environmental laws.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=120069544&vname=dennotallissues&fn=120069544&jd=120069544
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How Do You Shift Republicans on Climate? Be Nice
Sep 6, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Arianna Skibell
Hundreds of advocates from around the country are pressing their Republican lawmakers to take action on climate change through a rarely deployed, yet highly effective, tactic.
They're asking nicely.
In June 2016, Ashley Hunt-Martorano, a member of the Citizens' Climate Lobby, met with Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) to request a favor: Would the Republican who vehemently opposed the Clean Power Plan please join the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus?
The caucus, which formed last year, is dedicated to studying market-friendly approaches to climate adaptation and mitigation.
The moment was captured on film for an episode of the eight-part documentary series "Years of Living Dangerously." In the installment, Zeldin leans against his desk, arms folded. A handful of climate lobbyists sit on the couch opposite him.
The camera pans to Hunt-Martorano. "So I'll throw our ask in here," she says timidly and entreats Zeldin to join the caucus. To everyone's surprise, he says yes.
In the year leading up to that moment, Hunt-Martorano met with Zeldin's office at least 40 times. Over that period, she developed a positive working relationship with both the congressman and his staff.
She has worked to support Zeldin in other environmental efforts, like preserving Plum Island in New York, and he has agreed to co-sponsor climate-related legislation. Eventually, she moved a conservative who had not touched the politically toxic issue of climate change to join a caucus that has "climate" in its name.
And she's not alone. Since the Climate Solutions Caucus' inception in 2016, CCL and others have had unprecedented success pushing Republican representatives to join. The grass-roots advocacy organization is angling for the caucus to take up a carbon fee and dividend approach to curb emissions.
While members of the "Noah's Ark" group, which adds Republicans and Democrats in pairs, have co-sponsored a number of climate-related bills, like renewable energy tax credits, they have yet to broach a carbon tax. Still, activists are encouraged by growing membership, which reached 52 this summer (E&E Daily, Aug. 3).
Through the combination of respect; building relationships; and consistent reminders through letters, visits and calls, advocates are successfully, albeit slowly, moving Republicans on climate action.
"There are times things don't get done because of partisan fighting," Zeldin says in the video after agreeing to join the caucus, "but I love your approach."R-E-S-P-E-C-T
During her first meeting with Zeldin after his election in 2015, Hunt-Martorano began with appreciation, as is CCL's custom. She thanked him for his public service as a member of the military and then as a New York state senator, where he supported legislation for peer-to-peer programs for veterans.
"Right away that had a huge impact on our relationship," Hunt-Martorano said. "And he literally said, 'Hold on a minute, I don't mean to interrupt you, but your approach thanking me and appreciating me is not normal.'"
She added, "He actually said 'not normal.' I remember that really well."
In a recent interview with E&E News, Zeldin said his experience with CCL has differed greatly from other environmental lobbyists.
"There are people who will come in lobbying on a particular issue and there's so much untapped potential of building a relationship because a particular individual or group may prefer the tactic of opening up a relationship by punching someone in the face, and it doesn't work well," he said.
"And you're really missing out on a lot of opportunities, and CCL's approach is one that maximizes all of that potential," the congressman added.
Tom Moyer, a CCL member who works with Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah), said it's impossible to convince anyone of anything if you fundamentally don't like them.
"If you walk in thinking they're an idiot and evil, you're done from the start, it doesn't matter how logical your position is," he said. "You have to put yourself in a place where you can find something to respect."
The Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker lobby group that has also been central to the mission of bipartisan congressional support on climate action, has similarly found success through respect.
"At FCNL, we emphasize constituent lobbying and relationship building across party lines," Emily Wirzba, a legislative representative with the group, said in an email. "We ultimately need both parties — not just half of the country — to be part of the solution."
Driven by these values, FCNL board member Bob Schultz successfully lobbied his lawmaker, Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), to join the caucus with Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.).
For Moyer, it was finding common ground and working from there. He first met Love at a "meet the candidates" night in Utah before she was elected.
The event was in a fairly liberal area, and constituents were clamoring to speak with the Democratic politicians. Moyer — noticing few were in line to meet with Love — seized the opportunity to chat with her.
"We found plenty of things to agree on," he said. "We talked about public lands and trail access and clean air and stuff like that, and I let her know I would love to see Republicans start taking climate change on as a topic."
After months of conversation, Love eventually joined the caucus last January.
"They come in and they say 'this is a problem that we have, and we're wondering if you can help us solve this problem' instead of 'you're the problem,'" Love said at the time.
"It not only changed my mind about my involvement," she said, "but really changed my heart about what we should be doing."
Beginning a meeting with appreciation does two things, Moyer said: It puts the lobbyist in the "right frame of mind" and creates a respectful note.
"The attention to building relationships and getting to know people as human beings is really, really important," he said. "They need to know that we're not environmental wackos."
The criticism from progressive activists and environmental groups, however, is that the caucus members are not taking action quickly enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Moyer insists that CCL and the caucus are taking the steps they can. He said that "certain things are doable now and certain things will be doable later."
Success will come when Republicans change their minds, and the way to change their minds is by talking respectfully as equals, he said.
Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, the Republican co-founder of the climate caucus, said CCL's commitment to kindness and respect is "certainly" a direct factor in persuading Republicans to join the group.
"Their approach is all constructive, all the time," Curbelo told E&E News in a recent interview.
"And while other groups prefer to threaten and use public shaming tactics that only further deteriorates the public discourse in our country, this group is the exact opposite," he said.
"And they're not just advancing the cause of sound environmental policy," he said, "they're also contributing to improving the nature of our politics in this country, which is sorely needed."
Hunt-Martorano stressed this point, noting that CCL leaders often say the group is dealing with the two most important issues of the day: "climate change and declining democracy."
"I've told our volunteers, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu," she said. "You don't know who that other person is and what their goals are unless you're talking with them."
Influence 101
Thomas Nelson, a professor of political psychology at Ohio State University, said appreciation and forging personal relationships is an effective strategy and "a standard influence tactic."
"It builds on a couple of things. One, people like to be flattered, there's no surprise there," he said. "We like people who like us, that automatically increases our positive feelings toward them and we tend to do things for those we like. This is straight out of Influence 101."
It also makes people feel as if the person has done their homework if they're coming in with some knowledge and background, he said, which increases trust.
And on another level, appreciation of a lawmaker's environmental record can adjust their "self-concept," or the way the person understands their own identity, he added.
"They may not come out of that exchange and say, 'Oh, I'm a tree hugger,' but they might see themselves as less hostile to the environment," he said.
Nelson claimed that very few people are actually anti-environment — "that's like hating mothers or puppies," he said — but rather are concerned about the cost of protecting it, which means there is room for flexibility.
"These people are more against environmentalism or environmentalists, in some ways. They think environmentalists go about it in the wrong way, they're too extreme, too strident," he said.
"So you can subtly suggest to them: 'You're the kind of person who can be depended on to provide sensible solutions to these kinds of issues,'" Nelson said.
Changing tides
Almost a decade ago, Jay Butera, CCL's top congressional liaison, left his life as a successful entrepreneur to volunteer his time and resources with CCL.
"Depolarizing the issue and bridging the dysfunction" were his initial objectives, he said in a recent interview in the cafeteria of the Rayburn Office Building. "Talking face to face, that's when we can start to find common ground and break down walls."
About four years ago, Butera was in line for sushi in the cafeteria when he started chatting with Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) about a bipartisan climate caucus (E&E Daily, April 19, 2016).
"I thought he would be a good Democrat to bring to this mythical table I was envisioning," Butera said.
Deutch was indeed receptive.
"When I met Jay in the Rayburn cafeteria and we talked about [CCL's] efforts in trying to make climate change a bipartisan issue, I was really encouraged," Deutch told E&E News.
"But what I've seen since is the success they've had not just in bringing members to the table," he said, "but what makes me so hopeful is the success they've had in really energizing citizen activists to engage with their members of Congress on climate."
Since 2010, when just 25 CCL volunteers lobbied on the Hill, the group has mobilized more and more people.
This year, a record 1,300 CCL volunteers from 49 states descended on the Capitol to urge members to toss partisan politics surrounding global warming and embrace a market-based solution (Greenwire, June 13).
In the initial stages, Butera would go door to door through the halls of Congress trying to gain support. He said in some cases people would laugh in his face; others said he could never have the word "climate" in the name of the caucus if Republicans were to join.
It took three years of searching, but Butera finally found Curbelo, a well-liked freshman who understood the realities of sea-level rise.
"For me this is not some exercise in theory, in South Florida the issue of sea-level rise as a direct result of climate change and a warming planet is a local concern that's already posing many challenges to local government," Curbelo said.
"So when this idea of the caucus was raised, I thought it was a wonderful way to start the process of depoliticizing the issue, of bringing Republicans and Democrats to the table, to start figuring it out," he said.
In February 2016, the group was a caucus of two. But it has grown rapidly, and more members are expected to join. Analysts are attributing the rapid growth to lay lobbyists on the left and the right pushing for action, many of whom have embraced the model of respect.
Increasingly conservative Americans are joining those on the left to urge their elected officials to take a stance on climate. There are emerging networks of young evangelicals, conservatives for clean energy and hard-line libertarians taking up the issue (Greenwire, June 16).
Wirzba of FCNL said that constituent lobbying is key to encouraging greater climate action from congressional Republicans. "My own lobbying work here in D.C. is made possible by the relationships our constituents are building around the country," she said.
As a result, it is no longer a given that speaking out on climate change revokes conservative credentials, Butera said.
"When you get past emotional politics, it's a conservative thing to do," he said. "Address risks head on, protect the economy. There's nothing inconsistent with conservative beliefs."
And although there are many congressional Republicans who continue to question the science of climate change, "the era of Bob Inglis is over," Butera said, referring to former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), who departed from his party's political stance on climate change and introduced the "Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act" in an attempt to "put a price on emissions so that we charge to dump" trash into the sky, he said at the time.
Butera said the tides are turning. As voter sentiment changes and more Americans demand climate action, inaction could cost GOP members their seats.
He speculated that Curbelo and Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) may have secured their positions in the last election because they are active on climate.
And the traditional division across party lines over environmental issues continues to blur. In the 2016 race, EDF Action, the political arm of the Environmental Defense Fund, gave money to Curbelo's campaign and released an ad that highlighted his work protecting the Everglades.
The center-right environmental group ClearPath Action also donated $50,000 to Curbelo's campaign. And in 2014, EDF Action spent $759,000 out of $2.9 million total supporting Republican candidates.
Still, the caucus has a way to go. Deutch said he was disappointed it failed to issue a joint statement when President Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord.
"I know some members individually did, but it's moments like that where we ought to be able to come together," he said.
"This isn't easy and ultimately my colleagues joining the caucus is an important statement, but speaking out on behalf of their constituents and supporting legislation that's consistent with what the caucus does is more powerful," he said, "and that's where the focus needs to be going forward."
Curbelo said for the caucus to accomplish its mission, it has to move at the pace of its members. He said he hopes in the next year they can become a "proactive force" for climate policy and legislation but that his members are not ready to support, for example, a carbon tax yet.
"I'm never going to get out ahead of the caucus," he said. "For this to work it has to be member-driven, it has to develop organically, and if an idea like that comes out of the caucus it's because the caucus has reached a general consensus, but I don't think we are close to [a carbon tax] yet."
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/09/06/stories/1060059785
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A Two-Decade Crusade by Conservative Charities Fueled Trump’s Exit from Paris Climate Accord
Sep 5, 2017 | Washington Post
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Myron Ebell stood in bright sunlight as President Trump stepped into the Rose Garden and spoke.
“In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens,” Trump said to rowdy applause, “the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord.”
Ebell was hot, sunburned and very pleased. He was witnessing history that he had helped make.
For nearly two decades, Ebell has led the Cooler Heads Coalition, an umbrella group of tax-exempt public charities and other nonprofit organizations in the vanguard of efforts to cast doubt on the gravity of climate change and thwart government efforts to address it.
Coalition members have called climate science a hoax and denounced environmentalists as “global-warming alarmists.” They have written letters, blasted out emails, pressured lawmakers, sponsored seminars, appeared on television and made a documentary movie.
It was all part of a wave that crested with Trump’s rejection on June 1 of the Paris agreement, a landmark accord by nearly 200 countries in 2015 to limit greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
“He made the decision. We helped create the circumstances,” Ebell told The Washington Post. “When you are persistent, good things can happen.”
The story behind the coalition illuminates the influential, little-known role that tax-exempt public charities play in modern campaigns to sway lawmakers and shape policy in the nation’s capital, while claiming to be nonpartisan educational organizations.
It also offers insight into the forces behind a Trump decision that infuriated scientists and environmentalists, mystified U.S. allies and went against the advice of some major corporations.
Ebell, a 64-year-old veteran of Washington’s policy wars, is director of energy and environmental policy for a libertarian nonprofit organization called the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which helped start the Cooler Heads Coalition in 1997. The coalition, with a rolling membership of more than three dozen groups over the years, describes itself on its website as “informal and ad-hoc,” and focused on education.
Interviews, tax filings, internal documents and news accounts show that its members are well funded and dedicated to advancing a conservative, free-market agenda.
The Post found that the coalition is part of a far larger network of tax-exempt nonprofit groups, linked by ideology and funding, that supported Trump while disparaging Democrat Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential campaign.
The Cooler Heads have received more than $11 million in donations over the years from coal and oil companies. They’ve taken in tens of millions more from nonprofit foundations, such as those controlled by the wealthy Koch brothers, and the Scaife and Mercer families, according to interviews and Internal Revenue Service filings.
Robert Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University, said that members of the Cooler Heads Coalition are allied with trade groups, public relations companies and lobbyists working to influence public debate about global warming.
“Public charities serve as so-called independent think tanks, providing analysis to create the appearance they are independent, third-party voices,” Brulle said. “It becomes so complicated and so sophisticated. This is how modern politics operates.”
Long dismissed as cranks by mainstream scientists and politicians in both parties, Ebell and his Cooler Heads colleagues were embraced last year by the Trump campaign. Ebell served as the transition director at the Environmental Protection Agency. This spring, he leveraged those connections to arrange a White House briefing in opposition to the Paris agreement, according to an email from Ebell to participants that was obtained by The Post.
“Thank you for agreeing to be part of the basket of deplorables,” he wrote in an April 18 email. “The purpose of the meeting is to present our views on why President Trump should keep his campaign commitment to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty.”
Such advocacy is in effect supported by American taxpayers, because contributors to groups organized under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code can deduct donations from their taxes, which means less revenue for the federal government. Under IRS rules, such organizations may not devote a substantial part of their work to lobbying. But the laws are vague and hard to enforce. And the IRS provides little oversight, because it is financially strapped and has too few auditors. Agency officials are also wary of enforcing prohibitions on political activity, after the conservative backlash triggered by the agency’s focus on tea party groups several years ago, according to knowledgeable officials.
In interviews, Ebell acknowledged that Cooler Heads advocacy “does bleed into political persuasion and lobbying.” But he said such activity is common in Washington and, in the case of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, does not violate IRS or lobbying restrictions, because it does not constitute a substantial portion of its work.
Ebell, who according to tax filings earned $115,000 in 2014, also played down the influence of the group’s funders, saying that CEI and other organizations choose their policy positions before seeking contributions. “Yes, we do talk to industry,” he told The Post. “No, there is no overarching direction from anyone.”
After long questioning global warming, Ebell now acknowledges that “climate change is occurring and human beings have a role in it.” But he said global warming still is not a crisis. He frames climate change as an ideological issue, saying that giving the government more authority to address it would stimulate a “regulatory onslaught,” damage the U.S. economy and subvert human freedom.
Ebell, who is not a scientist, said he and his colleagues respect the scientific process. But he said he thinks many climate researchers endorse prevailing views on global warming only to cash in on government grants.
“They are all in lock-step,” he said. “It has all the appearance of being a scam.”
Climate scientists said there is no doubt about the reality of climate change and its consequences, including melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and the intensification of storms. Benjamin Santer, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award for groundbreaking climate research, told The Post that Ebell and his Cooler Heads colleagues are attempting to turn back the clock on knowledge and science.
“He is not a climate scientist. He will never be a climate scientist. Mr. Ebell seems to believe that it’s possible to magically assimilate scientific understanding from thin air,” said Santer, speaking for himself.Free-market environmentalism
Ebell has long served as a leading voice of global-warming skepticism. He is tall and pale, with receding gray hair. He wears oval wire-rimmed glasses, speaks softly and exudes an air of diffidence that masks a fierce determination.
He was born in the rugged sagebrush country of eastern Oregon, the great-grandson of a homesteader who moved there from Germany in the late 1860s during a gold rush in the state. Growing up on a 3,000-acre cattle ranch, Ebell was steeped in western values that prized property rights and disdained government regulation. He embraced tenets of what a colleague would later call “free-market environmentalism.”
Ebell did not intend to get involved with science. He studied philosophy, history and politics at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, the University of California at San Diego, the London School of Economics and Cambridge University. He came to Washington, D.C., in the late 1980s and took a job with a nonprofit group that focused on property rights.
In 1995, Ebell went to Capitol Hill as a legislative aide to Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), but he moved on quickly. Later that year, he sharpened his advocacy skills with a job at a new tax-exempt group called Frontiers of Freedom started by former senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.). “Once upon a time, our government was a bulwark against domestic enemies,” Wallop said in his final floor address, in December 1994. “Now big government has become our chief domestic enemy.”
Frontiers worked to minimize government regulation of the tobacco industry, according to industry documents made public during litigation. In a funding proposal to Philip Morris, Frontiers suggested a complex influence campaign in support of tobacco. The plan foreshadowed some of the tactics that Cooler Heads members would soon employ.
Frontiers could “play a substantial role” in a campaign aimed at making it politically easier for lawmakers to thwart new tobacco taxes, the proposal said. It would “educate and motivate grassroots activists” to change the “political dynamics,” making it “politically possible for key legislators to block any legislative initiative.”
“The campaign proposed is, essentially, an issue-driven political campaign,” the document said.
Ebell told The Post that he did not know about the document at the time and that funding for the campaign never materialized. “I’ve never taken a position on anything to do with tobacco,” he said.
Frontiers would soon receive millions in contributions from other quarters, including the conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and ExxonMobil, IRS filings show.
The same array of donors would help finance charities behind the most audacious endeavor of Ebell’s career: the fight against climate science.Countering ‘myths’about global warming
The Cooler Heads Coalition was formed in the spring of 1997 by a group called Consumer Alert that drew funding from Chevron, Philip Morris and other large corporations. An allied public charity, the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, soon took over management of the coalition, a cross section of nonprofit groups already fighting policies promoted by progressives and a growing number of liberal public charities and nonprofit organizations.
Joining later were groups such as the Heartland Institute, a libertarian group in the Chicago area, and an influential nonprofit organization, Americans for Prosperity, begun by the Koch brothers to “mobilize citizens” to press for economic growth through “government restraint,” tax filings show.
The Cooler Heads members made common cause at a challenging time for conservatives and the energy industry. Evidence of climate change had been mounting rapidly in the decade since a NASA scientist named James Hansen rocked the world in 1988 with congressional testimony that the “greenhouse effect,” driven by human activity, was almost certainly warming the Earth’s atmosphere.
The phrase “global warming” was beginning to permeate the public consciousness. Most important, President Bill Clinton supported an international agreement called the Kyoto Protocol, which was aimed at reducing greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels.
The energy industry went on a spending spree to thwart Kyoto, devoting at least $13 million to public relations and information campaigns in 1997, according to a study by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute received a $95,000 donation from ExxonMobil to support a “Global Climate Change Program,” according to internal ExxonMobil documents obtained by the C limate Investigations Center, a nonprofit group that monitors individuals, corporations, political groups and others opposed to global-warming policies.
The Cooler Heads Coalition was in effect a loose confederation of groups with the declared mission of countering “the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis.” Among its first members was Ebell, who served as the representative to the coalition for Frontiers of Freedom. He would become the coalition’s guiding light.
The coalition soon had its own site, GlobalWarming.org, which is hosted by CEI. “Global Warming Is Good,” one of its headlines said.
From the start, the coalition was controversial. At the end of 1997, it was listed by Mother Jones magazine among alleged front “astroturf groups that are lobbying against the Kyoto global warming treaty.”
“Wingnuts in Sheep’s Clothing,” the magazine called them.A shift in corporate views
In early 1998, Ebell and others associated with Cooler Heads met with energy industry executives and lobbyists in closed-door meetings at the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association. Their goal was to convince the American people that climate science was purely speculative and that the scientists were “out of touch with reality,” according to a copy of an internal memo written by an API official who organized the meetings.
In an “action plan” for “Global Climate Science Communications,” the participants suggested creating a nonprofit educational group that could serve as a clearinghouse of information favorable to their cause. It would be headed by scientists and run by executives on loan from energy companies and trade associations.
But before the effort could take flight, an environmental group obtained the internal memo and shared it with the press. “Industrial Group Plans to Battle Climate Treaty,” said the headline of a New York Times story on April 26, 1998.
In 1999, Ebell left Frontiers and joined the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where he became the director of energy and environmental policy and assumed leadership of the Cooler Heads Coalition.
Members of the coalition independently raised money from energy companies and conservative nonprofit foundations, and each worked on issues unrelated to global warming, tax filings show.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute received $125,000 that year from the Scaife family foundations, $50,000 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, $55,000 from the John M. Olin Foundation and $50,000 from the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, along with hundreds of thousands more from corporate contributors, according to research by Brulle.
One former Cooler Heads member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of a punitive backlash, said the coalition’s mission under Ebell was to be a “Johnny-on-the-spot for climate denialism” and to simulate a “cacophony of voices” against climate-change science.
“There’s a whole web,” the former member said. “Their job was to make sure the hard right remained animated.”
It worked. Though Ebell was not a boldface name in the capital, he was soon in direct communication with officials in the new Bush administration, pressing the White House to reject Kyoto and other climate-related regulation, according to news reports at the time.
In 2003 and 2004, Ebell turned Cooler Heads’ sights on bipartisan climate legislation sponsored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). In emails and meetings, he urged his allies to pressure certain lawmakers.
“We have all been working against it for months, but I think it’s now time to increase our efforts,” Ebell wrote in a July 7, 2004, “Action Alert” emailed to his allies. “On the other side, the environmentalists are working this vote very hard and spending lots of money that our side doesn’t have.”
The legislation ultimately foundered.
Competitive Enterprise Institute general counsel Sam Kazman said CEI counts the Action Alerts as lobbying. But because lobbying does not make up a significant proportion of the group’s work, it has always been in compliance with IRS rules, Kazman said.
As Ebell and other coalition members worked to debunk global-warming science, a growing number of major corporations began to accept climate change as a reality that needed to be addressed. By the mid-2000s, General Electric, Walmart and other companies were pledging to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, according to Spencer Weart, author of “The Discovery of Global Warming” and former director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics.
At the same time, a large and growing proportion of scientists working the field agreed that industrial activity had contributed significantly to rising temperatures.
That was the finding of a landmark survey of climate research in 2004 by Naomi Oreskes, then a professor of history and science at the University of California at San Diego and now at Harvard.
“Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect,” Oreskes wrote in Science magazine.
In an interview with The Post, Oreskes recalled her surprise at being bombarded with criticism from global-warming skeptics. “That was my first clue there was something fishy going on.”
Among the critics was Ebell, a man she had never heard of. She said she was amazed when they appeared together on a radio program. “Ebell was on the radio telling everyone in the world that climate change was good for us,” she said.
By 2005, the campaign against the adoption of global-warming regulations was coming under more scrutiny. Greenpeace, the nonprofit environmental group, assembled a massive database of the millions of dollars in ExxonMobil contributions to nonprofit groups opposed to climate-change policies. An article that spring by Mother Jones reporter Chris Mooney, now at The Post, revealed that ExxonMobil had cultivated an intricate web of nonprofits, news media outlets, columnists and activists who “have sought to undermine mainstream scientific findings on global climate change.”
The ExxonMobil Foundation, which had given millions to Cooler Heads members, began to scale back its donations. The foundation’s contributions to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which had averaged more than $300,000 annually over the previous six years, dropped to nothing, documents show.
Spokesman Alan Jeffers recently told The Post that company officials felt some coalition members were making claims they could not support.
“Some of these groups were advocating on matters of science, not matters of policy. They weren’t qualified to do that,” Jeffers said. “Our position evolved as the science evolved.”Not just a couple ofrogue individuals’
When Barack Obama became president, Ebell and other global-warming skeptics faced their biggest challenge. Addressing climate change through regulations and international diplomacy was one of Obama’s key issues.
But the coalition kept up its fight — along with other nonprofits, trade groups and industry associations.
Supporters included one of the Obama administration’s prime targets: big coal. A 2009 IRS filing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute — inadvertently made public without redactions — disclosed funding from two coal mining companies. Ohio-based Murray Energy donated $90,000, and Richmond-based Massey Energy gave $100,000.
Contributions to CEI overall during the Obama administration rose to $7.6 million in 2014 from $4.1 million in 2009, tax filings show.
In a statement to The Post, a Murray Energy spokesman said the company provided annual support to CEI “in order to advance their principles of ‘limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty.’ ”
“Indeed, for eight years the Obama Administration severely undermined these principles, in its effort to completely destroy the United States coal industry,” the statement said. “The Competitive Enterprise Institute was effective in advocating against this destruction, and in supporting preservation of coal jobs and family livelihoods, and low-cost, reliable electricity for all Americans.”
Massey Energy was bought by another coal company following an explosion at a West Virginia coal mine in 2010 that killed 29 miners, the worst coal mining disaster in four decades.
CEI and the Cooler Heads were just the tip of the spear.
In 2013, Brulle completed a study showing that between 2003 and 2010, energy companies, corporations and conservative foundations contributed hundreds of millions to 91 nonprofit “think tanks,” educational groups and associations involved in the fight against global-warming regulations — more than three quarters of them tax-exempt charities whose donors were largely anonymous.
Brulle titled his study “Institutionalizing Delay.”
“It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this,” Brulle told the Guardian newspaper. “This is a large-scale political effort.”
In late November 2015, tens of thousands of negotiators, policy wonks and climate activists descended on Paris. The vast majority were there in the hopes of an international climate agreement to reduce the production of greenhouse gases.
Ebell and several coalition allies were also there, at a day-long “counter conference” held at a Paris hotel on Dec. 7 in opposition to the agreement. Their arguments were familiar: Government regulation, not global warming, was the true threat. They claimed scientific data supported their cause.
Ebell joked about how some Cooler Heads members worked to shape public debate.
“I’d say, Heartland does the science, CFACT [the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow] does the activism, and unfortunately it is left to CEI to do the politics in Washington, D.C.,” Ebell said, according to a video of the event.
Ebell added: “Thank God for Heartland. . .” Before he could finish, protesters in the audience drowned him out.
“Thank God for Heartland! Thank God for Heartland!” the protesters yelled sarcastically. “Thank God!”
Protesters also pasted “Wanted” posters of Ebell and at least three other Cooler Heads activists on city walls.
On Dec. 12, negotiators from almost 200 countries approved the landmark accord. The goal: to limit the rise of global temperatures to no more than two degrees above preindustrial averages.
“The world has come together behind an agreement that will empower us to chart a new path for our planet: a smart and responsible path, a sustainable path,” then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry said.
By all appearances, the Cooler Heads were irrelevant.To Trump:‘Keep your promise’
The call to Ebell from the Trump campaign came in late August 2016. Ron Nicol, a business consultant leading the team preparing for a possible transition, left a voice mail saying he wanted Ebell to consider serving as transition chief at the EPA.
Ebell told The Post he was mystified. He had never served in the federal bureaucracy and Trump was not his favored candidate.
“Why do you want me?” he asked when he returned Nicol’s call.
Ebell said the answer was direct. Trump wanted to abolish the EPA, and so did Ebell.
Ebell’s singular focus on the agency and global warming also was in tight alignment with the views of Scott Pruitt, the man who would soon lead the EPA.
Ebell signed on in September. His team included at least two other Cooler Heads members, along with at least one energy industry ally who shared Ebell’s views about the environment, regulation and the Paris accord.
The promotion of Ebell was startling to some. “Myron Ebell, the Climate Contrarian Now Plotting the EPA’s Precarious Future,” said the headline of a Nov. 16 story in InsideClimate News, a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit news site.
From September to Jan. 19, 2017, Ebell worked on an “action plan” for the president. It incorporated the promises Trump had made during the campaign, including the rejection of the Paris accord. Ebell also proposed gutting the agency by cutting thousands of EPA employees.
After stepping aside in January, Ebell said he was proud of his EPA work. But he was leaving nothing to chance. He and his coalition allies knew that Trump was receiving pressure from quarters inside the White House, as well as from a host of American corporations, to remain faithful to the Paris agreement.
When Trump delayed acting on his promise about the accord, Ebell went into action. In April, he organized a briefing through one of Trump’s legislative aides to shore up support among White House and Senate staffers for backing out of the climate agreement, according to an internal email.
The White House did not respond to requests for interviews.
In May, Ebell and others drafted a letter to Trump, reminding him of his campaign promise, and then rounded up coalition members and other groups to sign it.
“The undersigned organizations believe that withdrawing completely from Paris is a key part of your plan to protect U.S. energy producers and manufacturers from regulatory warfare not just for the next four years but also for decades to come,” said the May 8 letter, signed by Ebell, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and more than two dozen others.
The next day, ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods weighed in, writing a letter directly to Trump urging him to stand by the accord.
“By remaining a party to the Paris agreement, the United States will maintain a seat at the negotiating table to ensure a level playing field,” the letter said.
Days later, CEI aired a TV ad in the Washington area, urging Trump to leave the accord:
“Mr. President, don’t listen to the swamp. Keep your promise.”
On the morning of June 1, Ebell got an email from the White House. He was told that he and all those who signed the May 8 letter were invited to Trump’s Rose Garden announcement.
The speech took longer than Ebell expected, but the waiting was worth it.
“This was a very long fight,” he said. “And we have turned the corner.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-two-decade-crusade-by-conservative-charities-fueled-trumps-exit-from-paris-climate-accord/2017/09/05/fcb8d9fe-6726-11e7-9928-22d00a47778f_story.html?utm_term=.e7a117c55ffd
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