Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 9/12/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) N American Chem Groups Update NAFTA Recommendations
Sep 11, 2017 | ICIS
By By David Haydon
The Chemistry Industry Association of Canada (CIAC) along with its US and Mexican counterparts have updated the advice they are providing to the teams renegotiating the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), CIAC said on Monday. -
(ACC mentioned) ERJ Tire & Rubber Business Tracker
Sep 11, 2017 | European Rubber Journal
Global chemicals production rose 0.6% in July, according to the American Chemistry Council‘s Global Chemical Production Regional Index. -
NAFTA Talks Called Opportunity to ‘Lock In’ Mexican Energy Reforms, U.S. Gas Trade
Sep 11, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Peter de Montmollin
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations are an opportunity to update the 1994 treaty so that it reflects changes in Mexico’s oil and natural gas sector and deepened ties to Canada and U.S. energy markets, according to analysts. -
Environmentalists Urge EPA To Bolster CDR Rule To Inform TSCA Analyses
Sep 11, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Environmentalists are urging EPA to strengthen its Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule, charging that the measure -- which EPA uses to gather most of its domestic chemical production data -- will be essential as the agency will need to use the data to comply with statutory requirements to prioritize chemicals for assessment under the reformed toxics law. -
US EPA To Finalise Formaldehyde Deadline Extensions
Sep 12, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA will soon finalise deadline extensions for regulations on formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products. It will also publish a new rule correcting a misalignment in testing requirements between the federal regulations and the California standards they are based on. -
(ACC Mentioned) Bisphenol A (BPA): The FDA's Position
Sep 11, 2017 | News-Medical.net
Bisphenol A (BPA) is an industrial chemical and is a component in polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins. -
EU Consults On BPA Ban In Infant Product FCMs
Sep 12, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The European Commission has launched a consultation on a draft amending Regulation that proposes additional restrictions on bisphenol A (BPA) in inks and coatings and plastics that are intended to come into contact with food. -
Male Infertility Crisis In U.S. Has Experts Baffled
Sep 12, 2017 |
By Bryan Walsh
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Delaware River Basin Commission Considering Ban on NatGas Development, Fracking
Sep 11, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) will consider a resolution at its meeting on Wednesday calling for a rulemaking that ultimately could place a ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and related natural gas development activities in the river basin. -
Houston’s Floodwaters Are Tainted With Toxins, Testing Shows
Sep 11, 2017 | The New York Times
By Sheila Kaplan and Jack Healy
Floodwaters in two Houston neighborhoods have been contaminated with bacteria and toxins that can make people sick, testing organized by The New York Times has found. -
U.S. Coast Guard, EPA Cleaning Up a Dozen Texas Chemical Spills after Harvey
Sep 11, 2017 | Reuters
By Emily Flitter
The U.S. Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency are working with Texas state regulators to clean up oil and chemicals spilled from a dozen industrial facilities after flooding from Hurricane Harvey, authorities said. -
First Responders Sue Arkema
Sep 11, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Melody M. Bomgardner
One week after the first of nine trailers containing organic peroxides caught fire at an Arkema facility in Crosby, Texas, seven first responders have filed a lawsuit against the chemical company. -
Irma's Environmental Toll Could Be Less Than Harvey's
Sep 12, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
The environmental toll from Hurricane Irma in Florida may not be as harsh as the problems caused by Hurricane Harvey in Texas, according to scientists and water utility officials. -
Taking Climate Change 'Seriously,' But 'Not The Cause Of It'
Sep 11, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Christa Marshall
With the U.S. reeling from two major hurricanes in as many weeks, the White House said today it's taking climate change "seriously," even if it is not considering its cause. -
Northeast States Press Upwind Midwestern, Southern States For Haze Cuts
Sep 11, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states are calling on states as far away as Texas, Florida and Michigan to further reduce their emissions of haze-forming air pollutants in order to help them meet the emissions-reduction goals of EPA's regional haze program, issuing a formal “ask” for the haze cuts as part of their air pollution reduction planning. -
EPA Reiterates Defense Of Policy Finding NSR Violations To Be 'Ongoing'
Sep 11, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA in a new legal brief is reiterating the agency's long-running policy that says violations of Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) permit mandates are “ongoing” and not subject to the general five-year statute of limitations for enforcement actions, even as the Trump administration weighs a massive overhaul of the NSR program.
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(ACC Mentioned) N American Chem Groups Update NAFTA Recommendations
Sep 11, 2017 | ICIS
By By David Haydon
HOUSTON (ICIS)--The Chemistry Industry Association of Canada (CIAC) along with its US and Mexican counterparts have updated the advice they are providing to the teams renegotiating the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), CIAC said on Monday.
CIAC said that itself, along with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and Mexico’s Asociacion Nacional de la Industria Quimica (ANIQ), updated their statements made in March in regards to rules of origin and regulatory cooperation.
The statement for updated rules of origin includes specifics on methods for determining origin, duty drawback and minimal operations not sufficient to confer origin, among others.
The updated statements, which were issued on 7 September, will benefit all three NAFTA countries, the group said.
CIAC CEO Bob Masterson said that the recommendations made by the chemical groups will encourage regulatory harmonisation. This will protect people and the environment throughout the region without stopping innovation or competition in the chemical industry.
Trade in chemicals between NAFTA countries has increased from $20bn in 1994 to $63bn in 2014, the group noted.
CIAC added that representatives from all three trade groups will be meeting with the NAFTA negotiating teams on the margins of the upcoming third round of negotiations, scheduled to be held in Canada in late September.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2017/09/11/10142031/n-american-chem-groups-update-nafta-recommendations/
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(ACC mentioned) ERJ Tire & Rubber Business Tracker
Sep 11, 2017 | European Rubber Journal
Global chemicals production rose 0.6% in July, according to the American Chemistry Council‘s Global Chemical Production Regional Index. That rate is a quicker pace than in June and May, as measured on a three-month moving average basis, according to a release.
http://www.european-rubber-journal.com/2017/09/12/tracker-test-1/
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NAFTA Talks Called Opportunity to ‘Lock In’ Mexican Energy Reforms, U.S. Gas Trade
Sep 11, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Peter de Montmollin
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations are an opportunity to update the 1994 treaty so that it reflects changes in Mexico’s oil and natural gas sector and deepened ties to Canada and U.S. energy markets, according to analysts.
“North American energy markets have changed, and there are the new reforms in Mexico,” BDO Mexico’s Rita Mireya Valdivia Hernandez, a partner in the tax practice, told NGI. “We need to adapt or modify NAFTA so that it is aligned with what North America is today.”
Talks to hammer out the details of a new NAFTA began in mid-August with the first of seven negotiating rounds scheduled through December. Delegates from the United States, Mexico and Canada met again in early September, while the third round is scheduled for Sept. 23-27.
The Mexican energy industry was, and remains, exempt from certain clauses on oil and gas trade in Chapter 6 in the original NAFTA of the 1990s because constitutional constraints at that time restricted foreign investment.
After the 2013 energy reforms, “the constitution now allows for foreign companies to come in and exploit Mexico’s resources,” Valdivia Hernandez said. “That is not written into NAFTA.” A modernized NAFTA could remove those exemptions and also incorporate new environmental regulations enacted since the treaty came into force on January 1, 1994, she said.
Moreover, Mexico’s energy integration with its northern neighbors -- most of all, the United States -- has deepened considerably since NAFTA’s implementation. Mexico is becoming more dependent on imported U.S. natural gas. It also exports heavy oil for processing in U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast, which then sell the final products back to Mexico.
At the latest round of talks, which concluded in Mexico City earlier this month, the head of the Mexican delegation said negotiators were focusing on ways to incorporate the energy reforms into NAFTA, according to Reuters.
Writing the energy reforms into the treaty also would help the outgoing Mexican administration to protect it from any potential political blowback, according to speakers on a panel organized last week by the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. One of the leading candidates for the 2018 Mexican presidential elections, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is a vocal critic of the reforms.
“There obviously is a risk of reversal, but in NAFTA itself one of the ways you modernize is to try and lock in those reforms in terms of international obligations,” said senior fellow Jeffrey J. Schott of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “That is something that should be readily done, to the benefit of both the United States and Mexico.”
The energy sector is not at the center of the NAFTA’s most contentious talks, which include dispute arbitration mechanisms and rules of origin. Nevertheless, the industry has emerged as one of the treaty’s strongest defenders.
Leading North American oil and gas trade associations jointly issued a position paper last month that touted the successes of NAFTA and urged negotiators to “do no harm.” In July, a senior executive for Sempra Energy, which operates in Mexico as IEnova, testified before the U.S. Congress that the agreement had been a “big win” for the domestic energy sector.
The natural gas sector in particular has cemented the energy trade bonds between the United States and Mexico, at a time when their long-standing diplomatic relationship is being tested by the combative rhetoric of President Trump. Former Texas governor and now Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a Texas native who formerly was CEO of Irving, TX-based ExxonMobil Corp., still have strong ties to the state.
With its domestic gas supply on the decline, Mexican power plants and large industrial consumers are eager buyers of surplus gas from Texas producers. Under NAFTA, exporters in the United States do not pay tariffs on shipments to Mexico, which phased out its duty on natural gas imports in August 1999.
“Frankly, the survival of the U.S. gas industry depends on exports to Mexico,” said David L. Goldwyn, president of Goldwyn Global Strategies LLC, at the recent Atlantic Council meeting.
As a signatory to NAFTA, Mexico is granted free trade agreement (FTA) status under U.S. regulations, which has also facilitated expanding cross-border pipeline infrastructure. The U.S. Energy Department has automatically approved exports to FTA countries.
To date, companies along the U.S. border have built 17 pipelines, with a total installed capacity of 7.5 Bcf/d, to meet demand in Mexico. At least two more pipelines are under development.
“The uncertainty for Mexico is, will they continue to have that status?” Goldwyn asked. “And if you’re a gas buyer, how certain is that supply?”
More broadly, the biggest uncertainty for the energy sector is the fate of the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism in Chapter 11 of NAFTA, according to panel members at the Atlantic Council meeting. It is not clear whether Chapter 11 eventually would be targeted in the current negotiations, but both the U.S. and Canadian governments have indicated that they may seek to reform it.
In Mexico, the arbitration mechanisms under NAFTA have provided security for U.S. companies investing in pipelines and other energy infrastructure, and any signs of a breakdown in the system could cause investors to slow or even halt those projects, Schott said.
Goldwyn noted that Mexico’s deepwater oil and gas projects were particularly sensitive. “You’re talking about contracts where it is $100-200 million per well, and you’re waiting eight years to make money.
“You’re not going to make that investment, versus Brazil, versus sub-Saharan Africa, unless you are sure that if something goes wrong and things don’t work out with the government, that you have some third-party neutral source arbitrating that dispute, so that you don’t throw away $500 million and end up with nothing,” he said.
U.S. and Mexico authorities each have indicated they would like to finish NAFTA talks by early 2018. The Atlantic Council panel speakers, however, were skeptical the deadline would be attainable, citing the scope and ambitions of the negotiations.
Furthermore, “there are political constraints in pursuing compromises and negotiation strategies in an election year, both in the United States and in Mexico,” Schott said. “I think there’s a good chance that the negotiations will still be ongoing in 2019.”
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/111694-nafta-talks-called-opportunity-to-lock-in-mexican-energy-reforms-us-gas-trade
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Environmentalists Urge EPA To Bolster CDR Rule To Inform TSCA Analyses
Sep 11, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Environmentalists are urging EPA to strengthen its Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule, charging that the measure -- which EPA uses to gather most of its domestic chemical production data -- will be essential as the agency will need to use the data to comply with statutory requirements to prioritize chemicals for assessment under the reformed toxics law.
In response to requests for input from EPA, environmentalists recently sent a letter to toxics office director Jeff Morris suggesting a suite of possible steps the agency could take to overhaul the rule, including lowering reporting thresholds and expanding the rule's scope to require data from previously unregulated reporters, such as processors whose substances may be under consideration for assessments.
The letter said that the revised CDR rule will be critical as EPA faces a statutory deadline in the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to list by 2020 at least 20 chemicals as high-priority for risk evaluation and at least 20 chemicals as low-priority.
“The screening of chemicals for these prioritization activities will need to begin soon. The CDR database will provide essential production and use information to inform these decisions and subsequently will be critical in the scoping process for chemicals listed as high-priority,” the environmentalists' letter states.
And as the agency proceeds with a negotiated rulemaking process that is considering a relatively narrow reporting exemption under the current rule, the environmentalists urge EPA to proceed carefully before eliminating any current reporting requirements.
“Our experience has been that all the information captured by [CDR responses, contained in a form known as “Form U”] is useful and important. Thus, we oppose any proposal to delete current reporting elements without a compelling justification,” the letter says, though it acknowledges that the negotiated rulemaking is required by statute.
The letter is signed by Earthjustice, Environmental Health Strategy Center, Natural Resources Defense Council, Safer Chemicals Health Families, and Toxic-Free Future.
The CDR rule is the mechanism by which EPA receives most of its information on chemical production in the U.S. EPA's latest regulatory agenda, released earlier this year, indicates that the agency plans to revise the CDR sometime in Spring 2018.
“EPA has embarked on an effort to revise the rule,” says an environmentalist familiar with the letter. “They contacted us to get comments and feedback. . . . It all indicates a pretty serious effort.”
Negotiated Rulemaking
The environmentalist describes EPA's ongoing effort to update the CDR rule as in parallel with, but broader than, the ongoing negotiated rulemaking directed at one aspect of the CDR: Limiting existing requirements on manufacturers of inorganic byproducts when those products are recycled, reused, or reprocessed.
This ongoing process is briefly addressed in a footnote to the environmentalists' letter, stating, “While it is possible that the parties may consider some narrowing of the scope of use reporting, any such narrowing should be limited to this particular chemical category.”
While EPA launched the regulatory negotiation earlier this year, industry and environmentalists have been struggling to reach consensus. At its most recent meeting last month, participants narrowed options that could inform a future EPA burden reduction rule. But environmental and industry panelists reached an impasse on how to address existing reporting exemptions. Panelists are slated to resume discussions Sept. 13-14 and have until a final meeting in October to resolve the issue and provide EPA with a consensus recommendation for a future rule.
As the talks continue, environmentalists are urging the agency to consider broader changes to CDR that will capture more information for use in the TSCA program.
For example, the letter encourages EPA to require that processors report on chemicals “under consideration for high- or low-priority testing.” Currently, processors are not required to submit information to EPA on chemicals they utilize as part of CDR, which is limited to manufacturers and importers.
Similarly, environmentalists recommend that the general reporting threshold for CDR reporting be lowered to chemicals under consideration for prioritization. Generally, CDR reporting is required on those chemicals that manufacturers or importers manufacture or import in amounts greater than 25,000 pounds per year, with lower reporting thresholds for certain instances, such as the 2,500 pound per year threshold for chemicals regulated under certain sections of TSCA.
The environmentalists are recommending that EPA extend its 2,500 pound per year threshold to prioritization candidate chemicals. “In the case of candidates for low priority listing, EPA needs more complete and accurate production data so that is has 'sufficient information to establish' that the chemical lacks the potential for unreasonable risk under its conditions of use as required by TSCA section 6(b)(1)(B)(ii). In the case of of candidates for high-priority listing, EPA needs such data so it has a sound basis for scoping documents and then risk evaluations under section 6(b)(3)(D). In both cases, lowering the threshold for reporting will enable EPA to identify exposure and release pathways and uses that are critical for informed determinations of unreasonable risk that might not come to light under a higher reporting threshold,” the letter argues.
CDR Reporting
The environmentalists note that EPA's draft rule on how the agency will prioritize chemicals for risk evaluation, released by the Obama EPA, included steps for identifying candidate chemicals and seeking information on them. While the Trump EPA dropped this pre-prioritization process from the final rule, the environmentalists write “it is an exercise they will be going through,” adding that the suggested changes to CDR reporting would be a logical way to gather needed information.
The letter also requests changes that would further transparency to better inform the public, as well as EPA, its authors argue. They seek accelerated reviews of confidential business information (CBI) and enhanced online tools to allow the public to analyze CDR data. The letter notes that increasing transparency in chemical manufacture, use and regulation was a “top priority” for Congress in its 2016 reform of TSCA, with section 14(c)(3) of the reformed statute requiring substantiation of most CBI claims at submission to EPA. EPA did not immediately implement this new requirement, announcing in January, after companies had already begun reporting 2016 CDR data to EPA, that companies must comply with the new section 14 CBI requirements.
Environmentalists note that companies have a Sept. 18 deadline to substantiate their CBI claims for all CDR responses submitted between June 22, 2016, and March 20, 2017. The letter notes that EPA has indicated it will contact those companies that do not meet the deadline to offer a further 30 days to substantiate their CBI claim. After that date. “we believe that EPA needs to undertake an expedited process for making unsubstantiated data public and reviewing all substantiated CBI claims to determine whether they are legally supportable,” the letter states. “We would recommend that EPA set a firm deadline, (such as 60 days) for including in the CDR database From Us from which unsubstantiated material is no longer redacted.”
The group also encourages EPA to clarify in guidance or rule changes for CDR reporting in 2020 that “general descriptions of processes used in manufacture and processing, as well as of industrial, commercial and consumer function and applications of chemicals” cannot be claimed as CBI, per section 14(b)(3).
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/environmentalists-urge-epa-bolster-cdr-rule-inform-tsca-analyses
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US EPA To Finalise Formaldehyde Deadline Extensions
Sep 12, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA will soon finalise deadline extensions for regulations on formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products. It will also publish a new rule correcting a misalignment in testing requirements between the federal regulations and the California standards they are based on.
The federal rule, first proposed in 2013, spread the California Air Resources Board (CARB) formaldehyde standards, applicable to plywood, fibreboard, particleboard and finished goods containing these products, nationwide.
While the rules are closely aligned, speakers at a 7 September EPA workshop warned manufacturers and importers to be careful about how they label products during the coming transition period.
The EPA proposed a deadline extension on 24 May. Because the agency received critical comments, it had to withdraw the expedited direct final rule and proceed with a formal rulemaking process. The rule about to be published will finalise extensions of:the 12 December date for emission standards, record-keeping and labelling provisions, to 22 March 2018;the 12 December 2018 date for import certification provisions, to 22 March 2019; andthe 12 December 2023 date for provisions applicable to producers of laminated products, to 22 March 2024.
A rule allowing materials that meet the new standards to be labelled as such immediately went into effecton 25 August without adverse comment.Testing alignment
The EPA plans to publish another rule, updating references to voluntary consensus standards on emission testing methods and product construction characteristics that were incorporated into the formaldehyde regulations. This is largely administrative and would allow two testing methods approved by CARB rather than one. The EPA is publishing this proposal as both a proposed rule and a direct final rule, anticipating that there will be no adverse comments.
"While we are sorting this out, it's probably a great idea to hold off labelling anything," Erik Winchester, chief of the EPA's Fibers and Organics Branch, said at the workshop. "You can't assume at this time that a CARB-approved exemption will work under TSCA."
The pending deadline extension rule also extends the transitional period, during which CARB TSPs may certify composite wood products under TSCA. Mr Winchester said the EPA has recognised 30 TSPs, but a third of those approved under CARB have not yet received EPA recognition.
"In most cases, the two certifications are one and the same," Mr. Winchester said, but "if a certifier has applied to the EPA and not CARB you couldn't sell stuff certified by them in California."
A few differences remain, said Lynn Baker, an air pollution specialist at CARB. California requires that laminators keep three years of records while the EPA will require two. Items less than 144 square inches are exempt from EPA labelling, but still must be for sale in California.
Ms Baker said California will not withdraw the CARB rules and will maintain enforcement authority. She said the state will probably make some conforming amendments in 2018 or 2019.
Mark Duvall, a principal at the law firm Beveridge and Diamond, said companies should ensure contracts specify that imported materials are compliant. "If you use a distributor, you need to know who the producer is," he said.
"We've seen some cases in California where importers received goods from overseas that did not meet CARB requirements, although they were labelled [as such] and bad things happened," Mr Duvall said. "I can project the same thing happening with the EPA rule."
Mr Duvall also suggested that manufacturers "start thinking about how to avoid the laminator deadline". He said that "burdensome" section of the federal rules is clearly intended "to encourage laminators to find other sources of resin that don't have formaldehyde".
https://chemicalwatch.com/58602/us-epa-to-finalise-formaldehyde-deadline-extensions
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(ACC Mentioned) Bisphenol A (BPA): The FDA's Position
Sep 11, 2017 | News-Medical.net
Bisphenol A (BPA) is an industrial chemical and is a component in polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins. Almost all inner plastic linings of food cans and beverage containers are manufactured using BPA. Usually, plastic bottles that contain BPA are clear and tough.
Some studies have proven that the bisphenol A can migrate into the beverages or food from the containers that are made up of plastic manufactured using this compound. Exposure to BPA may cause harmful health effects in adults and infants. People should be aware of the effects of BPA because even a very little quantity of BPA leached from food containers can be dangerous.
FDA Evaluation
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a government agency regulated by the US Department of Health and Human Services. It works to ensure the effectiveness and safety of human and veterinary vaccines, drugs, medical equipment, and biological products.
Chemical substances (like BPA) that may leach out of food containers into food require premarket approval from FDA. Regulatory changes may be made by the FDA based on the usage and safety of the product.
Factors that are considered during the FDA’s safety evaluation include safe exposure levels, the nature of the chemical substances used for food packaging, and exposure to chemical substances in food containers that migrate into foods and beverages.Historical FDA view of BPA In 1960, BPA received its original approval, under the food additive rules and regulation of the FDA. In 2008, a documentation named “Draft Assessment of Bisphenol A for Use in Food Contact Applications” was released by the FDA. In October 2008, the FDA’s Science Board Subcommittee reviewed this documentation and released a report on it. In the same year, a monograph dealing with the potential human reproductive and developmental effects of BPA was released as part of the assessment of risk factors to human reproduction, by the National Toxicology Program Centre (NTPC). In 2009, reassessments by various researchers who were referred to in the NTPC paper were released by the FDA. Their relevance was evaluated to generate a risk analysis. In addition, five federal government scientific experts submitted independent reviews of these research studies in the same year. In April 2010, the independent evaluation results were released, followed by the report of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). All relevant information was made available for public knowledge through the FDA.
BPA in Biology and Metabolism
Rising consumer interest in the safety of BPA has led the FDA to support various research trials and to provide additional information and correct inconsistencies in technical literature with respect to BPA. Many studies have provided information about the migration and metabolism of BPA in the human body.
The FDA’s regulatory center and the National Center for Toxicological Research (NTCR) continues their research on further issues that might arise from BPA through different avenues of exposure of the human body to this chemical.
NCTR Findings Under FDA Rodent studies conducted by the National Centre for Toxicological Research indicated that the level of BPA that is carried from the mother to the fetus was too low to be measured. In this research study, pregnant rodents were dosed with 100 to 1000 times the amount of BPA that humans may expect to be exposed to from food. No detectable BPA was present in unborn offspring even eight hours after exposing the pregnant rodent to BPA. Results demonstrated that the oral administration of BPA led to rapid metabolism of it into an inactive form. It has been observed that the metabolism and excretion of BPA in humans occurs more efficiently and rapidly than in rodents.
Prohibiting BPA-Based Materials for Infant Feeding
BPA-based polycarbonate resins: Amendments have been made in the FDA regulations to ban baby sippers and bottles that are made of BPA-based polycarbonate resins. This amendment was made in response to the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) food additive petition.
BPA-based epoxy resins: The FDA has revised its regulations in order to stop the use of infant formula packaging that was made up of BPA-based epoxy resins. This revision was made in 2013 in response to Congressman Edward Markey’s food additive petition.
Current Situation
Based on the hazard assessment of BPA conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), it has been concluded that the BPA exposure due to food contact does not cause harm in humans. This conclusion was made based on the internal review of FDA’s most recent research data.
Reviewed by Liji Thomas, MD.
References: https://www.fda.gov/newsevents/publichealthfocus/ucm064437.htm http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy/promoting-scientific-integrity/bisphenol-a.html#.WYlyRFV97IU https://iaomt.org/fda-finds-dose-effect-bpa-critics-dispute-findings/ https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/risk-management-bisphenol-bpa https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/sya-bpa/index.cfm https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3702012/ https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/sites/default/files/HHW_EnvEpi_Bisphenol-A-%28BPA%29-How-to-Reduce-Exposure_0.pdf http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/bpa/faq-20058331
https://www.news-medical.net/health/Bisphenol-A-(BPA)-The-FDAs-Position.aspx
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EU Consults On BPA Ban In Infant Product FCMs
Sep 12, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The European Commission has launched a consultation on a draft amending Regulation that proposes additional restrictions on bisphenol A (BPA) in inks and coatings and plastics that are intended to come into contact with food.
It comprises:a ban on BPA migration from varnishes or coatings applied to materials and articles intended to come into contact with infant formula, follow-on formula, processed cereal-based food, baby food or food for special medical purposes for infants and young children; anda migration limit into or onto food of BPA from varnishes or coatings applied to materials and articles of 0.05mg of BPA/kg of food.
The deadline for comments is 20 September.
Separately, the European Food Safety Authority has recently proposed a fresh hazard assessment of BPA, which focuses on whether scientific evidence published since 2013 still supports a temporary tolerable daily intake for BPA of 4µg/kg of body weight/day.
Efsa will present and discuss its protocol at a public scientific meeting in Brussels on 14 September.
https://chemicalwatch.com/58612/eu-consults-on-bpa-ban-in-infant-product-fcms
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Male Infertility Crisis In U.S. Has Experts Baffled
Sep 12, 2017 |
By Bryan Walsh
Hagai Levine doesn’t scare easily. The Hebrew University public health researcher is the former chief epidemiologist for the Israel Defense Forces, which means he’s acquainted with danger and risk in a way most of his academic counterparts aren’t. So when he raises doubts about the future of the human race, it’s worth listening. Together with Shanna Swan, a professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Levine authored a major new analysis that tracked male sperm levels over the past few decades, and what he found frightened him. “Reproduction may be the most important function of any species,” says Levine. “Something is very wrong with men.”
That’s something you may not be used to hearing. It may take a man and a woman—or at least a sperm and an egg—to form new life, but it is women who bear the medical and psychological burden of trying to get—and stay—pregnant. It is women whose lifestyle choices are endlessly dissected for their supposed impact on fertility, and women who hear the ominous tick of the biological clock. Women are bombarded with countless fertility diets, special fertility-boosting yoga practices and all the fertility apps they can fit on their phone. They are the targets of a fertility industry expected to be valued at more than $21 billion globally by 2020. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fixates on women, tracking infertility in the U.S. by tallying the number of supposedly infertile women. “It is as if the entire medical realm is shaped to cater to women’s infertility and women’s bodies,” says Liberty Barnes, a sociologist and the author of Conceiving Masculinity: Male Infertility, Medicine, and Identity. “For men, there’s just nothing there.”
Although there have reports of declining sperm counts before, they were easy to ignore. Research on sperm levels has been spotty, using different methodologies and drawing from varying groups, making it difficult to know that the declines some scientists observed were real, and not a function of miscounting. Skeptics of the latest conclusions countered that the new report was a study of many studies—it could only be as good as the work from which it drew. And even if the conclusions of the meta-analysis are accurate, the average sperm count still leaves most men on the normal side of fertile. Just barely.
Yet fertility rates—the number of live births per woman—have drastically declined in the same countries with falling sperm counts. That includes the U.S., where fertility rates hit a record low this year, and where women are no longer bearing enough children to replace the existing population. Women need to average roughly 2.1 children—enough to replace themselves and their partner, with a spare bit to offset kids who don’t survive to reproductive age—to keep a country’s population stable through birth alone. The U.S. is at 1.8 and dependent on continued immigration to keep the population growing. Sociological and economic factors play a role in the changing size of the American family. Fertility rates were above the replacement level until the 2007 recession, then they plunged. And despite a years-long economic recovery and low unemployment, they’re still falling. Pair that with studies showing that nearly one in six couples in the U.S. trying to get pregnant can’t do so over the course of a year of unprotected sex—the medical definition of infertility—and it’s clear that something beyond economic insecurity is preventing Americans from having as many babies as they want. “When I see birth rates going down, I worry as a fertility doctor that men’s sperm counts are declining,” says Harry Fisch, a urologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTERSIGN UP
Update your preferences »This would seem to be the moment for the medical world to throw everything it can at understanding what is happening to male fertility. Yet researchers on male reproduction are forced to rely on less-than-perfect data because the kind of comprehensive, longitudinal studies that might conclusively tell us what is happening to sperm counts have never been done. The irony is that the medical establishment has been accused—with reason—of ignoring the particular needs of women over the years, yet in reproduction it is men whose problems are poorly studied and often misunderstood. Some experts even wonder whether an unconscious desire to ignore threats to male fertility may be tied up in fears over the future of masculinity itself. “Here is direct evidence that that function of reproduction is failing,” says Michael Eisenberg, a urologist and an associate professor at Stanford University, referring to the latest sperm-level research. “We should try to figure out why that is.”
What we do know about declining sperm counts tells us a great deal about not only reproduction but also the overall health of men—and what it tells us isn’t good. Young men may think themselves invincible, but the male reproductive system is a surprisingly temperamental machine. Obesity, inactivity, smoking—your basic poor modern lifestyle choices—can dramatically reduce sperm counts, as can exposure to some environmental toxins. Low sperm counts may presage a premature death, even among men in the prime of their lives who might seem otherwise healthy. “Sperm count decline is the canary in the coal mine,” says Levine. “There is something very wrong in the environment.” Which means there may be something very wrong with men.
Why Johnny Can’t Breed
The study of sperm has always been murky. In 1677, the Dutch draper and amateur scientist Antony van Leeuwenhoek collected his semen immediately after having sex with his wife, examined it under a microscope of his own creation and saw millions of wriggling, tiny “animalcules” swimming in the seminal fluid. The Dutchman was the first person to observe human sperm cells, though he insisted that the sperm alone made an embryo that was merely nourished by the female egg and ovaries. Van Leeuwenhoek was simply following the example of classical thinkers like Aristotle, who believed female partners at most provided a fertile bed of soil in which the seed provided by a man could germinate and flower into a child. It wouldn’t be until the 19th century that the true roles of the sperm and the egg were finally sorted out.
All those wriggling “swimmers” van Leeuwenhoek saw are what you would see if you magnified the sample of a healthy fertile man. A sperm cell is built for one thing: motion. Its torpedo-like head is a nugget of DNA containing the 23 chromosomes the male partner contributes to his future child, connected to a long tail or flagellum that propels the sperm to the egg, all running on the cellular rocket fuel of fructose, which is in the semen. Most sperm will never come close to an egg—while a fertile man ejaculates 20 million to 300 million sperm per milliliter of semen, only a few dozen might reach their destination, and only one can drill through the egg’s membrane and achieve conception. The chemical makeup of the vagina is actively hostile to sperm, which can only survive because semen contains alkaline substances that offset the acidic environment. That’s the paradox of sperm counts—although one healthy sperm is enough to make a baby, it takes tens of millions of sperm to beat the odds, which means that significant declines in sperm counts will eventually degrade overall male fertility. Notes Swan: “Even a relatively small change in the mean sperm count has a big impact on the percentage of men who will be classified as infertile or subfertile”—meaning a reduced level of fertility that makes it harder to conceive.RELATED STORIES
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The fears about male infertility go beyond the stuff of dry science. “It’s the virility and fertility dilemma,” says Sharon Covington, an infertility therapist in Maryland. “How a man sees himself, and how the world sees him as a man, is often tied to his ability to impregnate a woman.” So perhaps it’s not surprising that the argument over how much sperm counts are declining—if they are declining—has been less a courteous scientific debate than a ferocious battle that has gone on for more than two decades.
This war began in Denmark, in 1990, when Danish pediatric endocrinologist Niels Skakkebaek began looking into male reproductive health. For years, he had been troubled by the rise in testicular cancer, as well as an increase in the number of boys with malformed testes. He thought assessing sperm quality and quantity might give him a clue to what was happening to his patients.
In 1992, Skakkebaek and colleagues reviewed all the published studies of sperm counts from around the world. (Sperm counts are done by tallying the number of sperm cells in one microliter of semen and then multiplying by 10,000 to estimate the total sperm in a milliliter—not dissimilar from the way police try to estimate the size of a large crowd from a geographic sample.) They calculated that the average sperm count in 1940 was about 113 million per milliliter of semen, and that by 1990 it had fallen to 66 million. In addition, they saw a threefold increase in the number of men with a sperm count below 20 million, the point at which infertility becomes a serious risk.
Skakkebaek’s 1992 paper raised concern about the ability of the human species to continue reproducing itself, but skeptics immediately attacked, questioning the reliability of the original sperm studies the analysis was based on. The studies drew from very different groups of men of varying age and fertility. (Sperm count tends to decline with age, and men who gave a semen sample in a visit to a fertility clinic can reasonably be expected to have a lower count than, say, healthy men selected as donors for a sperm bank.) Some scientists believe older and less precise techniques for sperm counting may have artificially inflated the sperm levels of our fathers and grandfathers, which would make the drop to current counts appear steeper than it is.
That’s why the new meta-analysis is so important. Swan, Levine and their international colleagues carefully sorted through more than 7,500 peer-reviewed papers before narrowing their search to 185 papers involving 43,000 men from around the world. By excluding studies before 1973, they cut out some of the less reliable older measurements, and they discarded any studies of men with known fertility complications or who were smokers, since smoking lowers sperm count. It’s not perfect—no meta-analysis is—but this evidence is the best we currently have, and the conclusions are disturbing. “The community is coming around on this,” says Eisenberg. “There have been some good counterarguments about sperm-level decline, but this paper really puts a lot of those arguments to bed.”
Environmental Castration
Proving that sperm levels are dropping has been difficult enough, and teasing out the cause is even tougher. Obesity, which has risen dramatically in Western countries while sperm counts have supposedly dropped, is linked to poor semen quality, as is physical inactivity. A 2013 study of American college students found that men who exercised more than 15 hours a week had sperm counts 73 percent higher than men who exercised less than five hours a week. And men who watched 20 or more hours of TV a week had much lower sperm counts than those who watched little to no TV. Stress is also a risk factor, as is alcohol use, which is on an upswing in the U.S., and drug use, which is increasing thanks to the opioid epidemic. Some scientists have theorized that electromagnetic fields from devices like cellphones could degrade semen quality, leading to weak and immobile sperm. Even heat can play a role. We know for certain that high temperatures can kill sperm, which is why the testicles are outside the body, keeping them up to 5.4 degrees cooler. Researchers know that birth rates decline nine months after a heat wave, leading some infertility experts to believe that climate change may actually be a factor in sperm count decline.
Age also matters. In a recent study, Laura Dodge of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center looked at thousands of attempts at in vitro fertilization (IVF) performed in the Boston area and tried to gauge the impact of both male and female age on success. Female age remained the dominant factor, but male age factored in as well—women under the age of 30 with a male partner between 40 and 42 were significantly less likely to give birth than those whose male partner was between 30 and 35. That dovetails with other research showing that as men age, their sperm suffers increasing numbers of mutations, which in turn can make it slightly more likely that their children will be born with disorders like autism and schizophrenia. Older mothers may get the blame for infertility, but a new study found that new fathers in the U.S. are on average nearly four years older than they were in 1972, while almost 9 percent of new American fathers are over 40, double the percentage from 45 years ago. “We tell men that age is not an issue, but now we know that the male biological clock is real,” says Fisch.
So is it simply modern life itself—obesity, inactivity, stress, cellphones, even older parenthood—that’s driving down sperm levels? It’s the beginning of an answer, but not the full one. Tobacco use definitely hurts sperm counts, yet smoking has fallen significantly in the U.S. That’s one reason a growing band of researchers have come to suspect the influence of toxins in the environment—specifically, endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in compounds like bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates.
The theory is straightforward enough: These chemicals mimic the effect of the feminizing hormone estrogen and can interfere with masculinizing hormones like testosterone. The chemicals, which are found in many plastics throughout the environment, may be rewiring the sensitive male reproductive system, eroding sperm quality and quantity and even contributing to the sort of testicular disorders that first alarmed Skakkebaek years ago. The production of sperm is tightly regulated by the body’s hormones, and so any interference with those hormones—say, through exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals—could make itself felt first through damage to sperm quantity or quality. “You could still have sperm, but [levels] might be significantly lower than your father’s,” says Germaine Louis, the director and senior investigator at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Most of the evidence for how these chemicals affect sperm comes from animal studies. A 2011 study found that mice who received daily BPA injections had lower sperm counts and testosterone levels than mice who received saline injections. A startling study from 2016 of fish in U.S. wildlife refuges in the Northeast found that 60 to 100 percent of all the male smallmouth bass studied had eggs growing in their testes—a startling feminization—which researchers linked to endocrine disrupters in the waters. Other studies have shown that phthalates appear to disrupt the masculinization of young lab rats. Animal models aren’t perfect, but as University of Texas toxicologist Andrea Gore notes, “the biology of reproduction is incredibly similar in all mammals. We are all vertebrates, and we have the same reproductive organs and processes that develop similarly with the same hormones.”
Scientists can’t expose humans to endocrine disrupters in a controlled experiment, but some recent research has found associations between exposure to BPA and phthalates in the world, and declining sperm counts and male infertility in adults. A 2010 study of Chinese factory workers by De-Kun Li at Kaiser Permanente found that increasing levels of BPA in urine were significantly linked with decreased sperm count and quality, even among men who were exposed to levels of BPA comparable to men in the general American population. Another study from 2014 followed about 500 couples trying to conceive and found that phthalate exposure among men was tied to reduced fertility. These findings are all associations, which means that while exposure to endocrine disrupters is more likely to be found in men suffering from reduced fertility, it doesn’t mean that the chemicals themselves are definitively the cause. But the studies are stacking up. “For some of the endocrine disrupters like phthalates, the basic evidence is strong that they affect reproductive health,” says Louis, who carried out the phthalates study.
Even more concerning, but harder to prove, is the damage endocrine disrupters may be doing in utero. As a fetus develops in a mother’s uterus, it is barraged by hormones and other chemicals that sculpt development. That includes the male reproductive system—testicles are formed in the womb, and although sperm levels can be altered in adulthood, they seem to be largely set before a boy is born. That means we could see sperm levels continue to decline for years, as boys who were exposed to endocrine disrupters before birth reach reproductive age and run into problems trying to have children of their own. “This trend hasn’t turned around, and it’s not going to turn around on its own,” says Swan, who has been studying the effects of endocrine disrupters for decades. “We don’t have a lot of time to lose.”
The Baby Un-Boom
If this is a crisis, why is the medical establishment still arguing over the accuracy of statistical methods that approximate sperm levels from a variety pack of studies? Trying to figure out what is happening to sperm levels isn’t like trying to create an HIV vaccine. Researchers could follow a cohort of representative men from early adulthood through their reproductive years, taking regular semen samples under the same conditions and tracking lifestyle and environmental factors, including exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Such long-term studies aren’t easy or cheap, but somehow we’ve managed to pull them off for certain illnesses, like cardiovascular disease and cancer. The future of the human race—whether it has one—would seem to qualify as an important topic to explore in depth. “Why are we messing about with this?” says professor Allan Pacey, a male fertility expert at the University of Sheffield. “Let’s just answer the question.”
A major, comprehensive study of semen quality has never been funded, however. Doctors are reluctant to even ask men for semen samples, and most men seem reluctant to give one—even though, as Eisenberg wryly notes, “it’s a lot more pleasant for the patient than a blood draw.”
“Male infertility has been ignored for 30 years,” says Christopher Barratt, a professor of reproductive medicine at the University of Dundee in Scotland. “What we understand can be written on a postage stamp.”
The average man knows much, much less. Few men could even name the medical specialty that covers male reproductive health—it’s urology—and fewer still have ever seen a urologist, given that there are fewer than 12,000 of them in the U.S., about one-third the number of OB-GYNs in the country. Aside from a few online forums, there are no real support systems for men with infertility issues. Many men lack basic knowledge about risk factors for infertility. A 2016 Canadian study found that men could identify only about 50 percent of the potential risks to sperm production, largely missing out on known threats like obesity and frequent bicycling. “Most men just assume that when they want to have children they’ll be able to,” says Phyllis Zelkowitz, the director of research at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and the lead author on the study. “But that isn’t the case for a certain number of people.”
The continued ignorance of male infertility is, in its way, another form of male privilege. Pretending that pregnancy is almost entirely a female responsibility means that women are forced to carry the burden and the blame when it goes wrong, while men, who are just as vital to healthy conception, rarely worry about how their lifestyles impact their own fertility or their possible children. “Women will often be sent to invasive, expensive procedures for fertility before a sperm test is ever done,” says Resolve’s Collura.
So men are getting off free while their female partners put themselves through painful and expensive fertility treatments. Well, not exactly. The constant production of new sperm cells makes semen highly sensitive to toxins and disease, making it an ideal surrogate for male health—“like blood pressure,” as Louis puts it—beyond what it might signal for fertility. Poor sperm levels and infertility are a clear sign that men’s health is failing. One 2015 study found that men diagnosed with infertility have a higher risk of developing health issues like heart disease, diabetes and alcohol abuse, while another connected infertility to cancer. “Semen quality isn’t just about a couple getting pregnant,” says Louis. “There is increasing evidence at the population level that men with diminished semen quality die earlier and have more chronic diseases. This is as important to health as any disease state.”
That male reproductive health goes mostly ignored in the face of those concerns is a striking example of what Cynthia Daniels, a political scientist at Rutgers University and the author of Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction , calls the “paradox of male privilege.” A society that values men over women would presumably pour money and resources into determining exactly what is happening to sperm counts and reproductive health. But that would risk confirming that men, who are socially conditioned to think of themselves as indestructible, are in fact vulnerable—and vulnerable in that part of themselves most vital to manhood. At a moment when other talismans of masculinity, like the ability to financially support a family, are under assault, acknowledging the risk to reproduction may feel even more threatening to men. “Recognizing the male reproductive health problem unravels the notion of who men are and how they achieve masculinity,” says Daniels. “It seems to be more important to protect our norms of masculinity and traditional gender relations than it is to address the real health needs of men.”
One way to accomplish that goal is to enable men to take responsibility for their reproductive health. That’s what Greg Sommer, the chief scientific officer of Sandstone Diagnostics, is trying to do with Trak, a kit men can use to evaluate their sperm levels. It’s one of several similar do-it-yourself sperm testing services that offer men the chance to assess their own fertility without stepping inside a doctor’s office. That approach is more than a mere convenience because men are significantly less likely to go to the doctor than women, especially men in their prime reproductive years, when their health is otherwise likely to be good.
Real, substantive change is needed from the medical and funding communities to address the male infertility crisis. It may be true, as skeptics countered after the publication of Swan and Levine’s meta-analysis, that we’re a long way from declining sperm counts heralding the end of the human race, at least as portrayed in works of pop art like The Children of Men and The Handmaid’s Tale . Millions of men and women are having children every day—even if an increasing number need artificial help like IVF. Yet more and more countries find themselves unable to raise their fertility rates above the level needed to replace their population, leading one prominent demographer to prophesy that the world has already reached “peak child.”
It’s difficult not to wonder and worry about what will come next. “It’s an inconvenient message, but the species is under threat, and that should be a wake-up call to all of us,” says Skakkebaek. “If this doesn’t change in a generation, it is going to be an enormously different society for our grandchildren and their children.”
Assuming, of course, they can have them.
http://www.newsweek.com/2017/09/22/male-infertility-crisis-experts-663074.html
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Delaware River Basin Commission Considering Ban on NatGas Development, Fracking
Sep 11, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) will consider a resolution at its meeting on Wednesday calling for a rulemaking that ultimately could place a ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and related natural gas development activities in the river basin.
The DRBC said Monday the resolution is a procedural measure that, if adopted, would direct its executive director to prepare and publish a revised set of draft regulations governing natural gas development activities within the basin by Nov. 30. The agency emphasized that commissioners would not adopt any draft regulations at Wednesday's meeting, which is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. EDT at Linksz Pavilion, on the campus of Bucks County Community College in Newtown, PA.
"If the proposed resolution is approved by the commission on [Wednesday], the revised draft rules to be published on a later date would include prohibitions related to the production of natural gas utilizing horizontal drilling and fracking within the Delaware River Basin," the DRBC said.
"The revised draft regulations would also include provisions for ensuring the safe and protective storage, treatment, disposal or discharge of fracking-related wastewater where permitted and provide for the regulation of inter-basin transfers of water and wastewater for purposes of natural gas development where permitted."
The DRBC said it plans to hold public hearings on the draft regulations and provide "ample opportunity for written comments."
Environmental groups have been lobbying the DRBC for years for prohibitions or an outright permanent ban on fracking and other activities in the basin. Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, told the Associated Press (AP) last week that the organization supports a permanent ban.
"The water resources of the Delaware River watershed would be inevitably and indelibly degraded should oil and gas drilling be allowed to commence,” Carluccio said.
Conversely, supporters of oil and gas development and some landowners oppose a ban.
"Banning the safe, tightly-regulated development of American natural gas is great news” for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, “but it's bad news for working families," Marcellus Shale Coalition President David Spigelmyer told the AP. "We strongly encourage DRBC to make sound policy based on facts and science, not politically charged hyperbole."
The DRBC decided in 2009 that all gas drilling in the basin needed to be reviewed, and said it would not approve any development until it adopted rules governing the industry. The agency postponed the natural gas development review in 2010 and failed to act on adopting rules in 2011, leaving in place the de facto moratorium.
Last March, the DRBC said it had no plans to lift the moratorium on natural gas drilling within the 13,539-square mile watershed. Also in March, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania dismissed a lawsuit filed by a small exploration and production company that challenged the authority of the DRBC to review and approve gas drilling in the watershed.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/111698-delaware-river-basin-commission-considering-ban-on-natgas-development-fracking
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Houston’s Floodwaters Are Tainted With Toxins, Testing Shows
Sep 11, 2017 | The New York Times
By Sheila Kaplan and Jack Healy
Floodwaters in two Houston neighborhoods have been contaminated with bacteria and toxins that can make people sick, testing organized by The New York Times has found. Residents will need to take precautions to return safely to their homes, public health experts said.
It is not clear how far the toxic waters have spread. But Fire Chief Samuel Peña of Houston said over the weekend that there had been breaches at numerous waste treatment plants. The Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday that 40 of 1,219 such plants in the area were not working.
The results of The Times’s testing were troubling. Water flowing down Briarhills Parkway in the Houston Energy Corridor contained Escherichia coli, a measure of fecal contamination, at a level more than four times that considered safe.
In the Clayton Homes public housing development downtown, along the Buffalo Bayou, scientists found what they considered astonishingly high levels of E. coli in standing water in one family’s living room — levels 135 times those considered safe — as well as elevated levels of lead, arsenic and other heavy metals in sediment from the floodwaters in the kitchen.Continue reading the main story
“There’s pretty clearly sewage contamination, and it’s more concentrated inside the home than outside the home,” said Lauren Stadler, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University who participated in The Times’s research.Continue reading the main storyPhotoHealth department workers collected water samples in a flooded Houston home. The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday said that 40 of 1,219 area wastewater treatment plants were not working.CreditEric Thayer for The New York Times
“It suggests to me that conditions inside the home are more ideal for bacteria to grow and concentrate. It’s warmer and the water has stagnated for days and days. I know some kids were playing in the floodwater outside those places. That’s concerning to me.”
The Associated Press and CNN last week reported high levels of E. coli contamination, but did not specify where the samples were taken.
The E.P.A. and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality have expressed concern about toxic floodwaters, but have not made public the results of sampling they may have done.GRAPHICMore Than 40 Sites Released Hazardous Pollutants Because of Hurricane Harvey
In the Houston area, air pollution, flooded toxic waste sites and reports of oil spills after the storm have residents and environmental groups concerned. OPEN GRAPHIC
Residents and medical professionals said they are seeing infections that likely resulted from exposure to the dirty floodwaters.
Dr. Beau Briese, an emergency room physician at Houston Methodist Hospital, said he had seen a doubling in the number of cases of cellulitis — reddened skin infections — since the storm. He said it was a more modest increase than he had expected, and that the infections had been successfully treated with antibiotics.
Dr. David Persse, the chief medical officer of Houston, said residents caring for children, the elderly and those with immune disorders should try to keep them out of homes until they have been cleaned.
Lake
Houston
TEXAS
San Jacinto
River
Houston
BRIARHILLS PKWY.
Clayton Homes
public housing
Nottingham Forest
10
Buffalo Bayou
West Oaks
/Eldridge
Clear Lake
10 Miles
By The New York Times
“Everybody has to consider the floodwater contaminated,” Dr. Persse said. He also warned residents to avoid letting cuts and scrapes come into contact with the floodwaters, which can cause infection.
Brad Greer, 49, developed two scabby infections on each of his legs where rain boots had irritated his skin. He took antibiotics, but on Saturday, he said, he started feeling lightheaded and weak as he and his brother-in-law tried to move possessions from Mr. Greer’s flooded home.
He went to the emergency room at Houston Methodist, where he was put on an intravenous drip and given another antibiotic prescription. Mr. Greer said swimming pools around his neighborhood are rank.
“All the pools are just giant toilets you’re unable to flush,” he said.
The lab analysis was paid for by The Times. The sampling was conducted by a team from Baylor Medical College and Rice University, working with the Houston health department’s Bureau of Pollution Control and Prevention.
The group, accompanied by Times reporters, took water and sediment samples last week by boat, truck and on foot. The samples were analyzed by A & B Labs, a state-certified service that often works with federal agencies.
The dearth of information about the safety of the water has upset many residents, including Maria Sotolongo, who lives with her husband and three children on Briarhills Parkway, an upscale development in Houston’s West Oaks/Eldridge neighborhood.PhotoFlooded homes on Briarhills Parkway, an upscale development in Houston’s West Oaks/Eldridge neighborhood. E. coli, a sign of fecal contamination, was detected in the water there.CreditEric Thayer for The New York Times
“Nobody has told us not to come,” Mrs. Sotolongo said on Sunday, the first day she was able to get back into her house.
Earlier in the week, she had helped The Times’s team reach her home by boat in order to take water and sediment samples on what had been her front lawn.
“It’s a horrific smell and full of gunk,” she said. “We’ve seen fish in parts of the kitchen.”
Floodwaters in two Houston neighborhoods have been contaminated with bacteria and toxins that can make people sick, testing organized by The New York Times has found. Residents will need to take precautions to return safely to their homes, public health experts said.
It is not clear how far the toxic waters have spread. But Fire Chief Samuel Peña of Houston said over the weekend that there had been breaches at numerous waste treatment plants. The Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday that 40 of 1,219 such plants in the area were not working.
The results of The Times’s testing were troubling. Water flowing down Briarhills Parkway in the Houston Energy Corridor contained Escherichia coli, a measure of fecal contamination, at a level more than four times that considered safe.
In the Clayton Homes public housing development downtown, along the Buffalo Bayou, scientists found what they considered astonishingly high levels of E. coli in standing water in one family’s living room — levels 135 times those considered safe — as well as elevated levels of lead, arsenic and other heavy metals in sediment from the floodwaters in the kitchen.Continue reading the main story
“There’s pretty clearly sewage contamination, and it’s more concentrated inside the home than outside the home,” said Lauren Stadler, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University who participated in The Times’s research.Continue reading the main storyPhotoHealth department workers collected water samples in a flooded Houston home. The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday said that 40 of 1,219 area wastewater treatment plants were not working.CreditEric Thayer for The New York Times
“It suggests to me that conditions inside the home are more ideal for bacteria to grow and concentrate. It’s warmer and the water has stagnated for days and days. I know some kids were playing in the floodwater outside those places. That’s concerning to me.”
The Associated Press and CNN last week reported high levels of E. coli contamination, but did not specify where the samples were taken.
The E.P.A. and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality have expressed concern about toxic floodwaters, but have not made public the results of sampling they may have done.GRAPHICMore Than 40 Sites Released Hazardous Pollutants Because of Hurricane Harvey
In the Houston area, air pollution, flooded toxic waste sites and reports of oil spills after the storm have residents and environmental groups concerned. OPEN GRAPHIC
Residents and medical professionals said they are seeing infections that likely resulted from exposure to the dirty floodwaters.
Dr. Beau Briese, an emergency room physician at Houston Methodist Hospital, said he had seen a doubling in the number of cases of cellulitis — reddened skin infections — since the storm. He said it was a more modest increase than he had expected, and that the infections had been successfully treated with antibiotics.
Dr. David Persse, the chief medical officer of Houston, said residents caring for children, the elderly and those with immune disorders should try to keep them out of homes until they have been cleaned.
Lake
Houston
TEXAS
San Jacinto
River
Houston
BRIARHILLS PKWY.
Clayton Homes
public housing
Nottingham Forest
10
Buffalo Bayou
West Oaks
/Eldridge
Clear Lake
10 Miles
By The New York Times
“Everybody has to consider the floodwater contaminated,” Dr. Persse said. He also warned residents to avoid letting cuts and scrapes come into contact with the floodwaters, which can cause infection.
Brad Greer, 49, developed two scabby infections on each of his legs where rain boots had irritated his skin. He took antibiotics, but on Saturday, he said, he started feeling lightheaded and weak as he and his brother-in-law tried to move possessions from Mr. Greer’s flooded home.
He went to the emergency room at Houston Methodist, where he was put on an intravenous drip and given another antibiotic prescription. Mr. Greer said swimming pools around his neighborhood are rank.
“All the pools are just giant toilets you’re unable to flush,” he said.
The lab analysis was paid for by The Times. The sampling was conducted by a team from Baylor Medical College and Rice University, working with the Houston health department’s Bureau of Pollution Control and Prevention.
The group, accompanied by Times reporters, took water and sediment samples last week by boat, truck and on foot. The samples were analyzed by A & B Labs, a state-certified service that often works with federal agencies.
The dearth of information about the safety of the water has upset many residents, including Maria Sotolongo, who lives with her husband and three children on Briarhills Parkway, an upscale development in Houston’s West Oaks/Eldridge neighborhood.PhotoFlooded homes on Briarhills Parkway, an upscale development in Houston’s West Oaks/Eldridge neighborhood. E. coli, a sign of fecal contamination, was detected in the water there.CreditEric Thayer for The New York Times
“Nobody has told us not to come,” Mrs. Sotolongo said on Sunday, the first day she was able to get back into her house.
Earlier in the week, she had helped The Times’s team reach her home by boat in order to take water and sediment samples on what had been her front lawn.
“It’s a horrific smell and full of gunk,” she said. “We’ve seen fish in parts of the kitchen.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/health/houston-flood-contamination.html?mcubz=0&_r=0
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U.S. Coast Guard, EPA Cleaning Up a Dozen Texas Chemical Spills after Harvey
Sep 11, 2017 | Reuters
By Emily Flitter
The U.S. Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency are working with Texas state regulators to clean up oil and chemicals spilled from a dozen industrial facilities after flooding from Hurricane Harvey, authorities said.
The spills came from oil refineries, fuel terminals and other businesses, but EPA spokeswoman Terri White said it was not possible to provide an estimate for the amounts spilled.
“Initial reports were based on observation,” White said. “Some spills were already being cleaned up by the time EPA or other officials arrived to assess them and others had already migrated offsite.”
Refineries owned by Valero Energy Corp in Houston, Motiva Inc in Port Arthur, and Exxon Mobile Corp in Baytown, were among the facilities that had reported spills, according to White. Representatives for those companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Officials also reported spills at Kinder Morgan Inc’s Pasadena fuel storage terminal and at an oil terminal in Texas City owned by NuStar Energy LP.
Kinder Morgan spokeswoman Lexey Long said on Monday the company reported a spill of 500 barrels of gasoline on Aug. 27. Workers covered the spill with a foam blanket and set up a barrier to keep the public away.
“The spill has been fully remediated,” she said.
NuStar spokesman Chris Cho said a small amount of petroleum contact water spilled out of a storage tank into a containment area and was quickly cleaned up. “There were no injuries and no environmental impact,” he said.
Two wastewater treatment plants - Integrity Golden Triangle Marine Services of Port Arthur and San Jacinto River and Rail in Beaumont - also appeared on the list of spill response locations that EPA provided to Reuters.
A San Jacinto River and Rail spokesman said the plant had spilled a “foamy emulsion” when floodwaters overtopped the berms around its facility but its operators did not expect any health or environmental impacts.
Integrity Golden Triangle President Robert Goolsby said a wastewater pit at his plant overflowed into a concrete moat designed to contain such spills, and plant workers were already cleaning it up when state regulators and the Coast Guard arrived.
The liquid spills come in addition to more than a million pounds of toxic emissions above legal limits that spewed from industrial facilities following Harvey, according to reports from companies filed with the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality.
The EPA and other authorities had warned people affected by the flood that waters could contain bacteria and toxic chemicals, but have said little yet about the specific origins or quantities of substances.
Residents in Baytown, where houses sit along the Houston Ship Channel next to several major refineries and chemical plants, said they were concerned about the impact of the spills and releases on health.
“I‘m against the sword and the wall, what can I do?” said Carlos Caban, one of the residents, whose son had taken pictures of contaminated-looking floodwaters in nearby refinery site.
Several residents reported seeing a metallic sheen on water flowing near the plants during the heaviest flooding, posting videos to YouTube.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-storm-harvey-arkema-probe/u-s-regulator-probes-arkemas-safety-practices-after-texas-fires-idUSKCN1BM2SB
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Sep 11, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Melody M. Bomgardner
Seven emergency personnel claim Texas chemical fire resulted in injury from toxic fumes
One week after the first of nine trailers containing organic peroxides caught fire at an Arkema facility in Crosby, Texas, seven first responders have filed a lawsuit against the chemical company.
The Sept. 7 suit alleges that Arkema was negligent in failing to properly prepare for a power outage, which created dangerous conditions for storing flammable organic peroxides. Lack of refrigeration at the site, which was inundated with nearly 2 meters of water from Tropical Storm Harvey, caused the chemicals to degrade and explode. The suit alleges the first responders were exposed to unspecified “toxic fumes” early on Thursday, Aug. 31.
According to the Houston Chronicle, 15 Harris County deputies and eight emergency medical services personnel were hospitalized due to exposure to fumes. One of the plaintiffs in the case, Christy Graves, is the director of Harris County Emergency Services District 5, based in Crosby.
The first responders were guarding a 2.4 km perimeter around the Crosby site by taking up a position on a nearby road to prevent traffic from entering an evacuation zone set up by local safety officials, according to Kimberley M. Spurlock, the attorney representing the seven responders.
At roughly 2 AM, Spurlock tells C&EN, the responders became overwhelmed by fumes. They used emergency radios to ask about the status of the chemical plant but were told that no incident was reported. According to the suit, “one by one, the police officers and first responders began to fall ill in the middle of the road.” Medical personnel who responded to the scene, the suit continues, also became overwhelmed and began to vomit and gasp for air.
Around the same time that the first responders reported the effects of the fumes, the first of nine nonfunctioning refrigerated trailers containing organic peroxides caught fire. But Spurlock says it is not yet clear whether the alleged toxic fumes were emitted before or after the trailer ignited. Two additional trailers ignited on Sept. 1.
Spurlock says the first responders were not given personal protective equipment such as respirators and were not instructed to obtain any. The suit faults Arkema for “failing to provide accurate information” about hazards. The plaintiffs remain under doctors’ care. At least one was diagnosed with “chemical bronchitis,” Spurlock says.
In a statement, Arkema says it will “vigorously defend a lawsuit that we believe is gravely mistaken.” The company says its employees “did everything they could to protect the public” while fighting fast-rising flood waters. “We totally cooperated with all first responders and the numerous regulatory agencies working with us to keep the public safe,” Arkema says.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports it flew aircraft to test smoke from the Arkema fires from Aug. 30 to Sept. 7, using instruments that can measure 78 chemicals, including peroxides. The agency says it found no chemicals that exceeded short-term air quality values.
The incident at the Crosby site is under investigation by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, and EPA. On Sept. 7, EPA ordered Arkema to provide a detailed timeline of events and respond to questions about handling of organic peroxides, the amount of the chemicals, and the measures the company took to guard against flooding and power outage. Arkema must respond to the request within 10 days.
https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/web/2017/09/First-responders-sue-Arkema.html
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Irma's Environmental Toll Could Be Less Than Harvey's
Sep 12, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
The environmental toll from Hurricane Irma in Florida may not be as harsh as the problems caused by Hurricane Harvey in Texas, according to scientists and water utility officials.
Though emergency managers are still assessing the situation in the Sunshine State, it's becoming clear that the hazards the two recent storms posed are very different and, as a result, the response to the two storms will be different as well.
Gary Williams, director of the Florida Rural Water Association, said wind damage is the primary concern after Hurricane Irma, rather than the widespread flooding seen after Hurricane Harvey. This makes the response effort in Florida easier, Williams told Bloomberg BNA, because water treatment facilities affected by the storm have roads that are still passable, unlike in Texas.
“It makes it easier for us to respond immediately,” Williams said as he drove a semitruck full of power generators to the small, rural water systems his group represents. “We can get access. You can't get access to flooded facilities.”
Chuck Carden, chief operating officer of Tampa Bay Water, said another factor that mitigated Irma's impact was the relatively long period of time Floridians had to prepare. This allowed his organization, which supplies water to communities throughout the Tampa Bay region, to go through the area and make sure the facilities had power generators that were functioning, fully fueled, and properly located.
As a result of this preparation, drinking water systems in Tampa were able to keep their pumps running and maintain water pressure despite widespread electric power outages across the state, Carden told Bloomberg BNA. He said that as of the afternoon of Sept. 11, no boil-water notices had been issued in Tampa. Notices were issued in other parts of the state, however.
Less Industrial Waste
Areas of Florida that are experiencing flooding likely won't have to grapple with the level of contamination that Texans faced, according to Charles Haas, a professor of environmental engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Haas and his colleagues scrutinized the environmental problems triggered by Hurricane Katrina in a 2008 study. Florida doesn't have the same concentration of industrial sites that Louisiana had back then or that the Houston area has now. That means there is less opportunity for harmful chemicals to seep into flood waters there, he said.
“There may very well be localized industry, but not to the sense that the petrochemical industry is very widespread in the Gulf,” Haas told Bloomberg BNA.
But Haas said he expects both Florida and Texas will be struggling with mold remediation in flooded properties for a long time. Managing indoor environmental quality is an often overlooked challenge that federal, state, and local officials will have to keep an eye on, he said.
“Properly remediating all the water-logged properties there is going to be a challenge,” Haas said.
Environmental Waivers
An estimated 6.5 million homes and businesses in Florida lost electricity, according to the governor's office, and some were expected to remain without power for weeks.
A statement from Gov. Rick Scott's (R) office said the state's Department of Environmental Protection was forming a team with the Environmental Protection Agency to begin assessing and responding to any potential environmental hazards. At the same time, the state and the EPA issued waivers from environmental regulations in response to the storm to help Florida restock its supplies of motor fuel and maintain electric power.
The EPA announced Sept. 11 that it granted waivers from air pollution emissions limits and related requirements for all electricity generators in Florida through Sept. 26. The move was to ensure that the facilities could provide enough power after the storm.
Dee Ann Miller, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said the state would check air quality despite the power plant waivers. Monitoring and reporting requirements remained in effect, and the reports would be submitted to the department and publicly available, she told Bloomberg BNA Sept. 11.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=120579087&vname=dennotallissues&fn=120579087&jd=120579087
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Taking Climate Change 'Seriously,' But 'Not The Cause Of It'
Sep 11, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Christa Marshall
With the U.S. reeling from two major hurricanes in as many weeks, the White House said today it's taking climate change "seriously," even if it is not considering its cause.
Asked by reporters whether Hurricanes Harvey and Irma had given the White House pause about its positions on global warming, Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert answered that "causality" of climate change was beyond his area of expertise.
"I will tell you that we continue to take seriously the climate change, not the cause of it, but the things that we observe," Bossert said.
He then cited statistics on rising sea levels in Tampa, Fla., which was struck late last night by a weakening Irma. He said rising seas would require mitigation efforts.
"I think what's prudent for us right now is to make sure those response capabilities are there," he said.
President Trump and his administration are dedicated to making sure that federal dollars aren't used to rebuild things that will get in harm's way later, he said.
When pressed again about the hurricane and climate link, Bossert said hurricane seasons are cyclical.
"We'll have to do a larger trend analysis at a later date," he said.
Later in the briefing, another reporter asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether the president has thought about reviewing his decision to leave the Paris climate pact, considering the recent storms.
Sanders said she wasn't sure on the Paris deal, adding that the administration's goal is to take care of the environment and take "proper steps." As to whether the storms have changed the president's views on humans driving climate change, she said she didn’t think Trump's opinion has changed over the last several weeks.
"And again, he's addressed his opinion on that several times since," Sanders said.
Trump has come under fire for multiple environmental and climate rule rollbacks, including announced withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement and earlier comments that climate change is a "hoax." He also canceled an Obama-era flood standard that would have required additional protections for roads and infrastructure (Climatewire, Sept. 8).
More than 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists say humans are driving warming temperatures, according to NASA. Since the hurricane, some local officials have been challenging Trump to acknowledge scientific data tying warmer temperatures to stronger storms.
"If this isn't climate change, I don't know what is. This is a truly, truly poster child for what is to come," Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado told the Miami Herald.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/09/11/stories/1060060313
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Northeast States Press Upwind Midwestern, Southern States For Haze Cuts
Sep 11, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states are calling on states as far away as Texas, Florida and Michigan to further reduce their emissions of haze-forming air pollutants in order to help them meet the emissions-reduction goals of EPA's regional haze program, issuing a formal “ask” for the haze cuts as part of their air pollution reduction planning.
Upwind states could achieve the request by imposing strict year-round controls on nitrogen oxides (NOx) from power plants, said New York air regulator Rob Sliwinski at a Sept. 8 meeting of the Ozone Transport Commission (OTC) in Washington, D.C. OTC represents 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states as well as the District of Columbia, and they have long sought additional out-of-state cuts in ozone to help attain EPA's ozone standard.
Similarly, the states are now formally asking upwind states to impose the NOx controls on utilities in order to reduce haze-forming emissions, with Sliwinski calling it a “cost-effective, reasonable approach.”
EPA's regional haze program requires states to craft a series of state implementation plans (SIPs) that will return visibility to natural conditions in “Class I” areas -- national parks and wilderness areas -- by 2064. The first round of SIPs covered 2008 through 2018 and were focused on installation of best available retrofit technology (BART) to reduce haze-forming emissions at eligible sources, a one-time requirement.
The second phase of the haze program covers 2018 through 2028 and will focus on the emissions reduction measures states will include in SIPs to ensure “reasonable further progress” in meeting the haze program's goals. NOx and sulfur dioxide (SO2) are among the air pollutants that contribute to formation of haze.
EPA in a recent revision to its regional haze rule extended the deadline for states to submit second-round haze SIPs from 2018 to 2021, but Mid-Atlantic/Northeast Visibility Union (MANE-VU) states have already conducted extensive computer modeling and other preparatory work and will proceed to submit their SIPs in 2018, Sliwinksi confirmed. MANE-VU coordinates regional haze planning in most of the OTC area.
Sliwinski at a June OTC meeting said MANE-VU member states plan on meeting the original 2018 SIP submission deadline so that their plans can serve as a model for other states in crafting their haze SIPs.
As part of the SIP development process, MANE-VU, which is asking for upwind pollution cuts to help comply with EPA's revised haze rule. The updated regulation requires enhanced cooperation and consultation between states and federal land managers (FLMs) responsible for Class I areas they pollute, and also interstate cooperation to mitigate emissions from more than one state that affect the same Class I area.
States' 'Asks'
MANE-VU Aug. 25 formally issued the “ask” for upwind pollution cuts alongside other “asks” to satisfy the interstate and federal consultation requirements of the regional haze rule.
The group issued three asks, the first dealing with requirements for other states in the MANE-VU area, which includes Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont.
The second document outlines requests to FLMs.
But the third addresses states outside the region, asking them to take a series of steps to curb both NOx and SO2 emissions. Those states include: Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
MANE-VU asks these states to “ensure the most effective use of control technologies on a year-round basis to consistently minimize emissions of haze precursors, or obtain equivalent alternative emission reductions” for electric generating units with a capacity of at least 25 megawatts that have installed NOx or SO2 controls.
The group further asks that emissions sources modeled by MANE-VU that have the potential to impact visibility in their region perform a “four factor analysis” of reasonable progress goals, including costs of controls, time necessary for compliance, energy and other impacts and remaining equipment life.
MANE-VU also asks that the upwind states implement a ultra-low sulfur fuel oil standard similar to that adopted by MANE-VU in 2007 “as expeditiously as possible and before 2028.” MANE-VU's fuel sulfur standard limits sulfur in distillate oil to 15 parts per million by weight; and #4 and #6 residual oil to 0.5 percent sulfur by weight.
For power plants and other large emission sources that have already switched fuels to lower-emitting fuels -- typically natural gas -- MANE-VU asks that upwind states “pursue updating permits, enforceable agreements, and/or rules to lock-in lower emission rates” for SO2, NOx and particulate matter.
Finally, MANE-VU says upwind states “should consider and report in their SIP measures or programs” to boost energy efficiency and increase use of combined heat and power and “other clean Distributed Generation technologies including fuel cells, wind and solar."
Haze Planning
Whether upwind states will respond favorably to the ask is uncertain at best, particularly given ongoing ambiguity about the status of haze planning in some of those states.
For example, lengthy litigation over Texas' efforts to craft a haze plan continues and the Trump EPA is expected to be more favorable to haze SIPs that might impose weaker controls on NOx and SO2 emissions from power plants than the OTC/MANE-VU states would advocate. That case, State of Texas, et al. v. EPA, et al., is in abeyance, while EPA conducts a voluntary remand of the plan to address alleged shortcomings.
And the 10th Circuit in a Sept. 11 order indefinitely stayed litigation filed by electric company PacifiCorp over the Obama EPA's final rule partially approving and partially disapproving Utah's haze SIP. The decision, granted while the Trump EPA reconsiders the final rule, prolongs uncertainty over the final status of that air plan.
Many upwind states have previously resisted EPA efforts to force them to reduce emissions in order to mitigate interstate air pollution. And several states outside the OTC/MANE-VU region will also take until 2021 to craft their own haze SIPs, so their approach to the new haze rule may not be apparent for some time.
MANE-VU's “ask” for its own member states is similar to its ask for upwind state pollution cuts, but adds a requirement for states to reduce emissions on high electric demand days (HEDD), typically hot summer days already conducive to ozone formation when sometimes uncontrolled “peaking plants” operate.
Meanwhile, MANE-VU has already engaged in significant outreach to FLMs with respect to the Class I sites within its region, Sliwinksi says. The group asks FLMs to consult with MANE-VU Class I area states when scheduling “prescribed burns” and ensure such deliberate burning of forests or other ground cover does not impact visibility. Also, EPA should develop measures that will further reduce emissions from heavy-duty vehicles, and that Class I area states' asks are addressed in contributing states' SIPs prior to the plans' approval by EPA.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/northeast-states-press-upwind-midwestern-southern-states-haze-cuts
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EPA Reiterates Defense Of Policy Finding NSR Violations To Be 'Ongoing'
Sep 11, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA in a new legal brief is reiterating the agency's long-running policy that says violations of Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) permit mandates are “ongoing” and not subject to the general five-year statute of limitations for enforcement actions, even as the Trump administration weighs a massive overhaul of the NSR program.
In a Sept. 9 reply brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit suit USA, et al. v. Luminant Generation, Inc. et al., the Department of Justice (DOJ) on behalf of EPA maintains the position that years-old violations are ongoing, not singular, events. DOJ says the violations are subject to enforcement action and eligible for injunctive relief, which in practice results in courts mandating NSR permit reviews that in turn can lead to requirements for expensive new emissions controls.
DOJ's arguments largely echo its position outlined in a June 6 filing in the case, where power company Luminant is trying to get an NSR enforcement scrapped for being time-barred.
Sierra Club is intervening in the case on EPA's behalf, backing the agency's appeal of the district court ruling that largely rejected an EPA enforcement action against Luminant for years-old alleged violations of NSR mandates that the lower court found fell under the air law's statute of limitations.
Federal appeals court have adopted differing opinions on the issuing of whether NSR violations are singular events subject to the statute of limitations or are ongoing and not subject to that limit.
In two appellate cases from 2013, courts found that NSR violations are subject to the statute of limitations, including a 3rd Circuit decision from in United States v. EME Homer City Generation, and a 7th Circuit decision in United States v. Midwest Generation, LLC.
Both the 5th and 6th Circuits have ruled in favor of the federal government and environmentalists in cases involving NSR violations that the courts deemed “ongoing,” but in those cases state regulations in Louisiana and Tennessee explicitly created ongoing liability. The cases are United States v. Marine Shale Processors, decided by the 5th Circuit in 1996, and National Parks Conservation Association v. Tennessee Valley Authority, decided by the 6th Circuit in 2007.
EPA's appeal in Luminant challenges the findings of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which ruled that EPA's enforcement action against electric utility Luminant was largely impermissible because the alleged failures of the company to conduct NSR review were in most cases more than five years old, and hence EPA's claims are time-barred under the statute of limitations.
EPA claims that Luminant operated its power plants without meeting best available control technology (BACT) emissions control requirements in breach of the prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) permit program, closely related to NSR. PSD permits are required in areas attaining national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS), while nonattainment NSR permits are required in areas violating NAAQS.
'Mixed' Case Law
DOJ in the new brief says, “Because operating a modified source without complying with BACT emission limitations and without a PSD permit violates the Clean Air Act, the statute of limitations does not bar the United States’ claims” -- thought the department concedes that case law on the issue is “mixed.”
The statute of limitations “does not bar any of the United States’ claims, either for per diem statutory penalties or for a remedial injunction,” but the “statute of limitations does not apply to the claims for injunctive relief,” even if the court were to find that claims for air law penalties are time-barred.
The district court disagreed, finding that NSR violations apply to the time a “modification” to a facility is made without the proper NSR review, and injunctive is relief also barred, under the “concurrent remedy” doctrine. The concurrent remedy doctrine provides that when legal and equitable relief are available “concurrently,” based on the same facts, then “equity will withhold its relief in such a case where the applicable statute of limitations would bar the concurrent legal remedy,” under the 1947 Supreme Court ruling in Cope v. Anderson.
EPA's decision to stick with the Obama-era view of its authority under NSR comes as the agency is under intense pressure from industry to overhaul the NSR program as part of the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda.
Critics say that NSR review can stymie necessary maintenance and upgrades that would actually make plants more efficient and less-polluting and also limit economic growth.
Meanwhile, another key principle of the NSR program is being tested in the Supreme Court case DTE Energy Co., et al. v. United States, et al., where Michigan utility DTE is petitioning the court to hear its appeal against a 6th Circuit decision upholding EPA's view that compliance with NSR be determined before construction on a new project begins, using projected emissions increases. DTE argues that this cannot hold if actual emissions resulting from a project do not exceed statutory thresholds to trigger NSR.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-reiterates-defense-policy-finding-nsr-violations-be-ongoing
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