Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 10/24/17
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(ACC Mentioned) The E.P.A. vs. The Environment
Oct 23, 2017 | The New York Times
... The chemical industry, led by the American Chemistry Council, has led a long effort to improve the public perception of chemistry, for instance via its “Responsible Care” program. -
(ACC Mentioned) Beck, Controversial Trump Toxics Chief, Leads Push For Implementing TSCA
Oct 23, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Nancy Beck, for now the top Trump toxics appointee at EPA, is leading the administration's efforts to implement the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), detailing in an exclusive interview with Inside EPA the challenges she sees even as the former industry lobbyist faces new criticisms for rewriting TSCA rules based on industry comments. -
(ACC Mentioned) Report Raises Questions About EPA's Rule Revisions
Oct 23, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Corbin Hiar
The Trump administration's push to revise chemical safety regulations — and the official behind them — are attracting fresh scrutiny in the wake of a New York Times investigation of U.S. EPA's chemicals program. -
(ACC Mentioned) Top 5 Takeaways From This Weekend’s NY Times Investigation Into Industry Influence In EPA’s Toxics Program
Oct 23, 2017 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
The lead article in Sunday’s print edition of the New York Times, titled “Why Has the E.P.A. Shifted on Toxic Chemicals? An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots,” presents an 8000-word exposé of the Trump Administration’s takeover of the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety program. -
(ACC Mentioned) ’Tis The Election Season
Oct 23, 2017 | Newsday
By Michael Dobie
The Newsday editorial board is deep into endorsement season leading up to Election Day on Nov. 7. Each day, we are interviewing as many as four sets of candidates, as well as individuals, who are running for 63 local offices, not including judicial races. We learn a lot from these interviews, and we’ll share interesting tidbits here in The Point. -
(ACC Mentioned) Daily Reads: Is Public Health at Risk with Chemical Industry Insider at the EPA?
Oct 23, 2017 | BillMoyers.com
The swamp is toxic –> Eric Lipton reports for The New York Times that Donald Trump’s appointee as the top deputy in the EPA’s toxic chemical unit had previously “been an executive at the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main trade association,” and is now rewriting a number of rules in a way that’s raising fears “that public health is at risk.” -
House Readies 'Sue-And-Settle' Bill As Pruitt Adopts Policy
Oct 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
The House is preparing to vote on legislation that would limit EPA and other agencies' ability to settle suits alleging violations of statutory deadlines -- and to increase state and industry participation in such settlements -- even as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced steps last week to implement such a policy. -
The Senate Must Protect Families And Reject The Nomination Of Scientist Dr. Michael Dourson
Oct 24, 2017 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Sen. Tammy Duckworth
One of the important constitutional responsibilities I have to the people of Illinois is to carefully review the qualifications of every individual who requires Senate confirmation. I am very familiar with how the Senate carries out its responsibility to provide advice and consent because, not long ago, I went through it myself when President Obama nominated me to serve as an Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). -
Practitioner Insights: Protecting Stakeholders Under the New TSCA
Oct 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Mark Duvall
The recent amendments to section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) mean that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate, is regulating, and will regulate chemical substances as never before. The amendments present challenges to stakeholders, but also opportunities to influence potential EPA decisions that may determine the future commercial viability of those substances. -
Institute Calls For Comments On More RoHS Lead Exemptions
Oct 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The Oeko-Institut has called for comments on seven requests for lead exemptions from the RoHS Directive, which restricts the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE). -
(ACC Mentioned) NatGas Industry Calls DOE’s Reform NOPR ‘Fatally Flawed’ as Comment Period Closes
Oct 23, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By David Bradley
The floodgates opened wide as the public comment period for the Department of Energy's (DOE) notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) to implement reforms on the reliability and resiliency of the electricity grid came to an end on Monday, with hundreds of filings submitted by states, cities, corporations, environmental groups, labor unions and individuals. -
(ACC Mentioned) How One MLP Benefits From The Shale Gas Boom
Oct 24, 2017 | Investing Daily
By Robert Rapier
The U.S. shale oil boom gave us lower fuel prices at the pump, and the shale gas boom brought cheaper heating and electricity bills. But most people are unaware of the impact of cheap shale gas on the chemical manufacturing industry. -
Rise in Texas Earthquakes Near Oilfields Prompts New Monitoring
Oct 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Wethe
Texas, home to two of the nation's busiest oilfields, now has a new way for the public to track in real time how many earthquakes are rattling the Lone Star State since the expanded use of new drilling techniques. -
Lawmakers Press DOJ On Pipeline Sabotage
Oct 24, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sam Mintz
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers wants to know whether efforts to sabotage oil and gas pipelines might qualify as domestic terrorism. -
U.S. Warns Public About Attacks On Energy, Industrial Firms
Oct 21, 2017 | Reuters
By Jim Finkle
The U.S government issued a rare public warning that sophisticated hackers are targeting energy and industrial firms, the latest sign that cyber attacks present an increasing threat to the power industry and other public infrastructure. -
Former EPA Chief Reilly Slams House For 'Full Retreat' On Environment
Oct 23, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Former EPA Administrator William Reilly is harshly criticizing the House-passed spending bill that includes major cuts to “core” EPA programs, saying that the provisions as written signal a “full retreat” from decades of efforts to achieve environmental improvement and urging the Senate to reconsider. -
Bill Would Toughen Permitting, Ease Litigation
Oct 24, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Arianna Skibell
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) have introduced legislation to ensure marginalized communities do not bear the brunt of environmental degradation.
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(ACC Mentioned) The E.P.A. vs. The Environment
Oct 23, 2017 | The New York Times
To the Editor:
Re “E.P.A. Bars 3 of Its Scientists From a Conference to Discuss Climate Change” (news article, Oct. 23):
History may be written by the victors, but thankfully science is not so subjective. However hard Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, tries to censor his own scientists, he cannot alter the laws of physics. Nor can he magic away climate change by removing it from his agency’s website.
Nevertheless, it’s clear we can no longer expect the E.P.A. to provide rational answers to our climate problem. The task now falls to Congress, and the logical solution is to ensure that fossil fuel prices accurately reflect their cost to society.
By placing a fee on carbon pollution and returning the revenue to households, we can recoup the economic damages of climate change while weaning ourselves off the fossil fuels that drive it. In passing such legislation, Congress would be on the right side of history, as well as science.
LEILA Z. HADJ-CHIKH, BALTIMORE
To the Editor:
The chemical industry, led by the American Chemistry Council, has led a long effort to improve the public perception of chemistry, for instance via its “Responsible Care” program. There is much to be positive about, as the chemical industry has made tremendous additions to the quality of life.
“Chemical Industry Insider Now Shapes E.P.A. Policy” (“Trump Rules” series, front page, Oct. 22) reports that a former American Chemistry Council executive, Nancy Beck, has been personally and quietly revising Environmental Protection Agency rules and participating in issues that she worked on with the council.Continue reading the main story
I hereby call on the American Chemistry Council to publicly call for more transparency on the changes being made at the E.P.A., and to be more transparent about its own role. Otherwise, efforts to improve chemistry’s standing will be viewed as a sham.
JAMES MAYER, HAMDEN, CONN.
The writer is a professor of chemistry at Yale University.
To the Editor:
With all of the turmoil in the Trump administration, it is easy to overlook how efficient and effective Scott Pruitt has been at dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency. Industry insiders are shaping policy. Coal is back as a primary energy source. The proposed budget for the E.P.A. would mark a 40-year low, adjusted for inflation.
The objective seems to be returning to the environment of my youth. Polluted streams and rivers where nothing could live, lakes so polluted that they caught fire, air thick with smog, acid rain, toxic waste dumps and carcinogenic building materials.
If you think Mr. Pruitt is on the right track, please write and tell him so. However, if you have a different vision of the world for your children and grandchildren, please at least tell your members of Congress. And don’t wait too long.
BARRY LURIE, BALA CYNWYD, PA.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/opinion/epa-environment.html?_r=0
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(ACC Mentioned) Beck, Controversial Trump Toxics Chief, Leads Push For Implementing TSCA
Oct 23, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Nancy Beck, for now the top Trump toxics appointee at EPA, is leading the administration's efforts to implement the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), detailing in an exclusive interview with Inside EPA the challenges she sees even as the former industry lobbyist faces new criticisms for rewriting TSCA rules based on industry comments.
“Our biggest challenge will be implementing TSCA,” Beck, the principal deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), told Inside EPA in written responses to questions.
Beck's responses came days before current and former agency staff and career officials pointed to the former American Chemistry Council (ACC) toxicologist as leading the Trump administration's re-write of the Obama administration's proposed “framework rules” necessary to implement the new TSCA.
According to their accounts in the New York Times, her single-handed reworking of the proposed rules -- based on comments she helped write while at ACC -- led EPA to determine it has greater discretion to narrow the range of chemical “uses” that the agency will consider when assessing and regulating industrial chemicals than the draft rules did, an issue that is already being litigated.
The report includes broad criticisms from former top officials, who charge that the changes Beck made to the Obama administration's proposed version of the rules ruffled feathers across the agency. “Everyone was furious . . . Nancy was just rewriting the rule herself. And it was a huge change,” Betsy Southerland, formerly with EPA's water office, told the Times.
EPA staff were also reportedly concerned about changes Beck made by adding definitions of scientific terms “best available science” and “weight of evidence,” to the final rules. Staff fear defining the terms will undermine future agency efforts to regulate harmful substances, by inviting litigation.
Since her appointment earlier this year, environmentalists and others have sought a broad recusal for Beck, concerned that her past work as a chemical industry lobbyist posed a significant conflict of interest.
But her hiring under a special statutory provision for “administratively determined” (AD) selections provided Beck with waivers from the Trump administration's ethics requirements.
For now, Beck remains the top political appointee within OCSPP. President Donald Trump has nominated Michael Dourson, a former EPA risk assessor and consultant to the role, but his confirmation process has been stalled amid similar concern from environmentalists, Democrats and even some Republicans that he is also too closely aligned with industry.
Still, the new report has reignited criticisms of Beck and the Trump administration's efforts to roll back EPA oversight of chemicals. “Nancy Beck rewrote chemical regs at EPA to make it easier to harm Americans. Are you a mother, Beck?” Save the U.S. EPA, a national campaign being conducted by the National Council of EPA Locals #238 and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), wrote on Twitter.
Beck declined to comment for the Times' story, and she and the agency have been similarly reticent to address concerns over her status at the agency as an AD position. But Beck last summer agreed to an interview with Inside EPA. It was conducted via written questions submitted through EPA's press office over the summer, and recently returned.
Biggest Challenges
Asked what she sees as the biggest challenge for OCSPP, Beck said: “We are learning while doing, and working very hard to make the new processes transparent to the public while ensuring the high quality of the assessments. A lot of work has been done to implement the provisions of the new law, but there is still a great deal to do.”
Beck also pointed to the “pretty strict and relatively short deadlines for chemical evaluation” as another challenge for the office.
Beck says the new law has already changed the way the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), the office responsible for implementing TSCA, “does a number of activities related to chemical review and management.”
To address such challenges, Beck and other top officials have been leading an effort to reorganize OPPT. As previously reported by Inside EPA, current reorganization plans call for collapsing OPPT's existing seven divisions into five, with just the Risk Assessment Division largely unchanged.
OPPT Director Jeff Morris, a career staffer, said in a September email to staff that Beck and the acting OCSPP chief Louise Wise, another career staffer, have endorsed the plan.
Beck did not discuss the planned reorganization in her comments to Inside EPA but she describes the next steps of implementing TSCA reform, among them launching a pre-prioritization process that will precede the time-limited prioritization process for existing chemicals when they are screened for whether they should be a priority for risk assessment.
The Obama EPA's draft rule outlined a pre-prioritization process, but the Trump administration dropped it from the final rule, with OPPT officials saying that comments on the proposal indicated that more dialogue was necessary.
Now, Beck says that “we are in the initial stages of developing a process to assist in the choosing of candidate chemicals for Prioritization. This . . . process will involve stakeholder input and we are working to have our first outreach activities later this year.”
It is unclear why pre-prioritization process was dropped from the final rule.
Beck also points to the ongoing process to improve the new chemicals premanufacture review program, which is struggling to meet deadlines under new TSCA requirements, and the ongoing process to complete the first 10 existing chemicals' risk assessments within the three-year statutory deadline.
Another deadline the agency faces is the law's June 2018 deadline for the agency to craft a strategic plan for advancing the use of 21st century risk assessment methodologies, and to reduce traditional toxicology animal testing.
Beck says that staff has started working on the strategic plan. “The goal is to have an opportunity for public input this fall/early winter. I believe there is a need and place for alternative testing methods and they will be an important component to prioritizing and evaluating chemicals.”
'Mature Program'
While Beck details much work ahead for OPPT implementing TSCA, she says OCSPP's pesticides program does not face the same challenges -- although the program has faced its share of controversies since Administrator Scott Pruitt rolled back a planned ban on chlorpyrifos.
OCSPP's “two main programs . . . are in very different states of evolution,” Beck told Inside EPA.
Beck describes OPP as “a mature program that has been conducting high quality risk evaluations for human and environmental risks for many years. Generally speaking, the procedures and methodologies are well developed and have been vetted through public comment and peer review.”
By contrast, OPPT “is in the very early stages of implementing a significantly revised statute that sets high quality standards for every aspect of the program. The statute also sets forth rigorous timelines for the conduct of risk evaluations.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/beck-controversial-trump-toxics-chief-leads-push-implementing-tsca
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(ACC Mentioned) Report Raises Questions About EPA's Rule Revisions
Oct 23, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Corbin Hiar
The Trump administration's push to revise chemical safety regulations — and the official behind them — are attracting fresh scrutiny in the wake of a New York Times investigation of U.S. EPA's chemicals program.
At issue are two rules the Trump EPA finalized earlier this year that will guide how the agency chooses the riskiest chemicals for testing or evaluation and how their hazards will be judged.
Citing interviews with current and former officials and internal agency documents, the Timesfound Nancy Beck, a former chemical industry trade group official, played a key role in revising rules to industry's liking.
But conservatives and liberals who are closely following the implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act overhaul that required those rules are divided on the significance of the changes the Times documented. President Obama signed the TSCA bill into law in June 2016.
Michael Shapiro, EPA's acting assistant administrator for water, warned in a memo obtained by the Times that one revision could result in "underestimation of the potential risks to human health and the environment" caused by pollutant perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and other so-called legacy chemicals no longer sold on the market.
"Different people interpret things differently, and I don't think it should be a shock to people that the Trump administration — or any Republican administration — interprets things differently than the Obama administration," said Dimitrios Karakitsos, Senate Republicans' principal drafter and negotiator of the TSCA reform bill.
Karakitsos, a partner at the law firm Holland & Knight who now lobbies for companies that previously produced PFOA, argued the changes Beck helped push through simply preserved the flexibility Congress intended to give the agency as it reconsiders its chemicals workload.
"If a chemical is not being manufactured anymore and not being put into commerce, is that at the top of EPA's list? Probably not," he said. "Nothing in the law and nothing in the rule prohibit EPA from going after that."
Progressives see the revisions as undercutting the law's focus on more holistically evaluating the threat posed by chemicals in the environment.
"How do you assess the risk if you're not looking at what the background level of exposure is?" asked Rena Steinzor, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law.
"EPA is being very coquettish," she said. "They're not admitting what they're going to do ... but I think that clearly the intent is to allow chemicals to come in and only look at the specific applications."
Steinzor also predicted some of the internal memos featured in the story could find their way into legal challenges environmentalists have brought against the rules (E&E News PM, Aug. 14).Spotlight on Beck
Karakitsos also defended Beck, a Ph.D. in environmental health and George W. Bush White House veteran who left the American Chemistry Council to become the deputy assistant administrator at the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (Greenwire, Aug. 8).
"It bothers me this steady drumbeat on the left that if you have any sort of ties or have had any to industry that everyone should just discount your opinion," he said. "The stuff that they're saying and doing to Nancy is over the line to me. You look at her credentials and her record, how could anybody in the world argue that she isn't highly qualified for what she's doing?"
Karakitsos, who also lobbies for Beck's former employer, suggested environmentalists' opposition to her and the policies she's pushing isn't entirely selfless.
"These environmentalists are raising a lot of money fighting this," he said. "So the idea that only one side has a financial interest is disingenuous as well. It's a business. They're lobbying a side of an issue."
EPA didn't provide much of a defense to Beck or the regulatory changes. Although the Times sent the agency two dozen detailed, written questions about her role and activities there, the press office offered only a two-line response.
"No matter how much information we give you, you would never write a fair piece," EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman told the Times. "The only thing inappropriate and biased is your continued fixation on writing elitist clickbait trying to attack qualified professionals committed to serving their country."
Experts who often disagree with Beck would have liked the agency to offer a more detailed defense of her role at EPA.
"I thought those questions were very good and not insulting and worth an answer," said Adam Finkel, who led the health standards program at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during the Obama years and is now a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
For Steinzor, who has previously described the TSCA reform deal as "one step forward, two steps back," the investigation confirmed many of her fears about the vaguely crafted law. She believes the reporting could also serve as a lesson for lawmakers.
"It should make Democrats more hesitant to craft bipartisan agreements that aren't spelled out clearly," Steinzor said.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/10/23/stories/1060064389
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Oct 23, 2017 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison
The lead article in Sunday’s print edition of the New York Times, titled “Why Has the E.P.A. Shifted on Toxic Chemicals? An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots,” presents an 8000-word exposé of the Trump Administration’s takeover of the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety program. It focuses on the outsized role played by Dr. Nancy Beck, who arrived at the Agency on May 1 fresh from her job as a senior official at the chemical industry’s main trade association, the American Chemistry Council (ACC).
For those who have not had the chance to read the article, I provide here my take on some of its most compelling and disturbing findings:Immediately upon her arrival at EPA as a political appointee, Dr. Beck made extensive changes to the near-final “framework rules” implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act.Dr. Beck’s changes were objected to by career staff in multiple offices across the Agency.Dr. Beck is actively working to jettison proposed rules that would ban high-risk uses of trichloroethylene and methylene chloride.Dr. Beck has been cleared to work on issues directly relating to her prior employer’s interests.While at ACC, Dr. Beck frequently worked with Michael Dourson, the industry toxicologist-for-hire that President Trump nominated to head the EPA chemical safety office and who is facing stiff opposition from many Senators.
For a bit more detail on each of these, keep reading.
1. Immediately upon her arrival at EPA as a political appointee, Dr. Beck made extensive changes to the near-final chemical safety “framework rules” implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act. These rules specify how core provisions of the reformed TSCA are to be implemented for many years to come. The changes Beck made closely mirror those called for by ACC, some of which Beck herself had authored while with the industry’s lobbying arm. (Full disclosure: EDF and other groups have filed lawsuits challenging these rules as contrary to the law.)
2. Dr. Beck’s changes were objected to by career staff in multiple offices across the Agency. The offices objected, among other things to the exclusion from risk evaluations of so-called “legacy uses,” where a chemical is no longer manufactured for a specific use in the U.S. but has continued use and disposal; the inclusion of precise definitions of certain terms like “best available science;” allowance for EPA only to examine a subset of uses of a chemical in its risk evaluation; and a lack of opportunity for public comment on the extensive changes made relative to the proposed rules.
Notably, the Times reported that staff were told by EPA’s political leadership that they could not file “nonconcurrences,” which would have triggered further review of the changes being made.
3. Dr. Beck is actively working to jettison proposed rules that would ban high-risk uses of trichloroethylene and methylene chloride. These rules, proposed in December and January, represented the first effort by EPA to use its TSCA authority to restrict use of a chemical in 28 years. EPA’s work on these rules began prior to TSCA reform and was specifically grandfathered in under the reforms, but the chemical industry’s opposition to the rules is holding sway. ACC members make and use both of these chemicals, and Beck herself co-authored ACC’s comments on EPA’s risk assessments of these chemicals.
While paint strippers containing methylene chloride are responsible for dozens of deaths in recent years, the Times reported that Beck specifically questioned whether the number of deaths was sufficient to warrant a ban.
4. Dr. Beck has been cleared to work on issues directly relating to her prior employer’s interests. Beck was appointed using a relatively rare authority usually reserved for technical experts who are not in decision-making positions. As such she was exempted from the Trump ethics pledge. Indeed, her ethics agreement is jaw-dropping, and gives her wide latitude to work on issues in which ACC has financial interests in order to ensure those interests are taken into account.
Also of note is the date of Beck’s ethics agreement: June 8, 2017. Final drafts of the two TSCA framework rules she had worked feverishly to change went over to the White House for final sign-off on May 23 and June 1. In other words, it appears that her work on these rules occurred prior to even this limited ethics agreement being in place.
5. While at ACC, Dr. Beck frequently worked with Michael Dourson, the industry toxicologist-for-hire that President Trump nominated to head the EPA chemical safety office and who is facing stiff opposition from many Senators. The Times article notes that the two co-authored a paper funded by ACC; that is one of at least two such papers. Last week it was reported that Dourson is already working at EPA as a special advisor to Administrator Pruitt even though his nomination has yet to be confirmed.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2017/10/23/top-5-takeaways-from-this-weekends-ny-times-investigation-into-industry-influence-in-epas-toxics-program/
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(ACC Mentioned) ’Tis The Election Season
Oct 23, 2017 | Newsday
By Michael Dobie
Candidates have a lot to sayThe Newsday editorial board is deep into endorsement season leading up to Election Day on Nov. 7. Each day, we are interviewing as many as four sets of candidates, as well as individuals, who are running for 63 local offices, not including judicial races. We learn a lot from these interviews, and we’ll share interesting tidbits here in The Point.
Suffolk County candidates have been coming in with some creative ideas for water conservation.
Legis. Al Krupski, whose 1st District spans the North Fork and Riverhead, said he’s seeing many more “second career” residents who want to start agricultural businesses. They’re making cheese, raising small poultry, brewing beer and growing barley to supply independent breweries.
Krupski, who says he’s the first farmer to serve on the Suffolk legislature, is working on a plan to re-use the water from these operations. Instead of being flushed into the sewer system to be treated as wastewater, this relatively clean “gray water” can be used to irrigate crops. Because it’s rich in nitrogen, it might reduce the need for fertilizers.
The Riverhead Sewer District has been similarly recycling nitrogen-rich water — in this case, treated wastewater — to irrigate the county-owned Indian Island Golf Course that abuts the treatment plant.
Southampton Supervisor Jay Schneiderman told the editorial board that the Indian Island “fertigation” has worked well enough that he’s inspired to recommend it for The Hills at Southampton, a controversial proposed golf and residential community in East Quogue.
Making America great again
· The Environmental Protection Agency has removed dozens of resources from its website that help local governments fight climate change, as well as the words “climate change.” Perhaps the Defense Department should remove all online references to war to see whether that goes away.
· The borough hall in Madison, N.J., discovered recently that the bust of Napoleon in a second-floor corner was a genuine Rodin. The Nassau and Suffolk county legislative buildings don’t have any Rodins, but they do have their share of busts.
· The five living former presidents gathered over the weekend to raise money for hurricane victims in Texas, Florida and, yes, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Now there’s an example of trying to make part of America great again.
· President Donald Trump will have lunch with House Republicans on Tuesday to talk about policy. We’ll have to see whether whatever Trump tells them lasts until dinner.
· The World Health Organization appointed Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe as goodwill ambassador. Then the WHO rescinded the appointment. Gee, it couldn’t be because Mugabe presided over the collapse of his country’s health care system and as ambassador would be in position to spread his brand of corruption and human rights abuses?
· With a proposed GOP tax cut without corresponding cuts in spending ready to explode the deficit, White House Office of Management and Budget Director and budget hawk Mick Mulvaney said, “It’s difficult I think to cut spending in Washington.” What a difference it makes when you’re the one in charge.
· The new director of the EPA’s toxic chemical unit forced a rewrite of a rule that will make it more difficult to track perflourooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a possible carcinogen found in some wells in Yaphank. So what’s the bigger surprise: That Nancy Beck’s former job was at the American Chemistry Council, the main trade association of the chemical industry, or that she’s from Oyster Bay?
· GOP Sen. Lindsay Graham says the Trump administration has “a blind spot on Russia I still can’t figure out.” That’s OK, Lindsay. Bob Mueller is working on it.
Michael Dobie
https://www.newsday.com/opinion/tis-the-election-season-1.14589558
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(ACC Mentioned) Daily Reads: Is Public Health at Risk with Chemical Industry Insider at the EPA?
Oct 23, 2017 | BillMoyers.com
The swamp is toxic –> Eric Lipton reports for The New York Times that Donald Trump’s appointee as the top deputy in the EPA’s toxic chemical unit had previously “been an executive at the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main trade association,” and is now rewriting a number of rules in a way that’s raising fears “that public health is at risk.”
He said/he said –> Last week, we pointed to a story by The Intercept about an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo urging agency officials to portray immigrants as criminals. On Thursday, a senior ICE official blamed Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano for refusing to hold an undocumented immigrant whom he said had been responsible for starting one of the fires that have decimated California’s Wine Country, but the sheriff told Jason Green at The San Jose Mercury News that “there is no indication that [the undocumented man] had anything to do with these fires and it appears highly unlikely.”
#MeToo –> Thirty-eight women have come forward — 31 of them on the record — to accuse Hollywood writer-director James Toback of sexual harassment or worse. Toback claims they’re all lying, according to Glenn Whipp at the Los Angeles Times.
And in the wake of a New York Times report that Bill O’Reilly had settled a sexual harassment claim for $32 million shortly before Fox renewed his contract, Jim Rutenberg writes that “a national reckoning is underway,” but it is “a reckoning long delayed. And a big reason for the delay has to do with the out-of-court settlements and the nondisclosure agreements that go with them.”
Meanwhile, Harvey Weinstein appears to have worked through his issues in record time: Reports indicate he completed a 1-week outpatient program.
After criticism on the one week stint, Weinstein announced he would stay for another month.
It gets worse –> Two Brooklyn South narcotics detectives accused of brutally raping a young woman they’d detained after a vehicle stop — before leaving her on a street corner — are claiming that the encounter was consensual. Natasha Lennard writes at The Intercept that consent in such circumstances is by definition impossible — the woman says she was in handcuffs — and “the fact that consent seems to be on offer as a defense at all speaks to how the police themselves view rape.”
And Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani reports for Think Progress that the alleged perpetrators are now “smearing the victim’s credibility over her social media posts and ideas of how a rape victim should behave.”
“A history of fraud” –> Robert Pear reports for The New York Times that the inexpensive and more “flexible” insurance plans Donald Trump said his executive order would create “have a long history of fraud and abuse that have left employers and employees with hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid medical bills.”
And Moriah Balingit reports for The Washington Post that under the leadership of Betsy DeVos, “the Education Department has rescinded 72 policy documents that outline the rights of students with disabilities as part of the Trump administration’s effort to eliminate regulations it deems superfluous.”
Trump TV, coming everywhere soon –> Andy Kroll reports for Mother Jones that Sinclair Broadcasting’s “mix of terrorism alerts, right-wing commentary and ‘classic propaganda’ could soon reach three-quarters of US households,” thanks in large part to Donald Trump’s appointee to run the FCC.
“Moscow has a habit of using Interpol against its enemies” –> Russia put a prominent British critic of the Kremlin on an Interpol list of individuals wanted for arrest, reports Mark Townsend for The Guardian. “President Vladimir Putin is understood to have sanctioned the move against Bill Browder, who has led an international campaign against Russia over the killing of the jailed Moscow lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.”
Robert Mueller’s team is now looking into whether Tony Podesta and his lobbying firm violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act in their work with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, according to NBC’s Tom Winter and Julia Ainsley. Tony is the brother of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager.
And according to Axios, all three congressional committees probing Russia’s influence campaign are hobbled by insufficient staffing and partisan wrangling, and ultimately “going nowhere.”
Grifter-in-Chief? –> An investigation by The Toronto Star reveals that shortly after the lead developer of a Trump-branded highrise was exposed “as a fugitive fraudster on the run from US justice,” Donald Trump “told the world he was investing his own money in the project — claims that would prove false — and gushed about its spectacular promise, knowing his profits were guaranteed.” But “in the end, every investor lost money on Toronto’s Trump Tower… except Trump, who walked away with millions.”
Shady front group –> Last week, we mentioned a 60 Minutes story about how Big Pharma crafted legislation that effectively let drug manufacturers flood the country with opioids. Lee Fang reports for The Intercept that some legislatures are pushing back on the story, citing a letter of support for the law by a “patient advocacy and health professional” organization that enjoys “support from drug companies involved in the opioid industry.” The letter itself appears to have been written by “one of the drug industry lobbyists working to influence lawmakers in support of the bill.”
“Dangerous moral calculus” –> Ryan Lizza writes for The New Yorker that until “he was dragged into the sordid spectacle of Trump’s fight with a congresswoman and the grieving family of La David Johnson, the Army sergeant who was killed in Niger earlier this month,” White House chief of staff John Kelly, a former four-star general, had “been viewed as a force for good,” having helped to “defactionalize the West Wing.” But that changed last week when “he held a press conference and told a lie that smeared one of Trump’s political opponents.”
And Slate’s Phillip Carter argues that when Kelly suggested it was unpatriotic to question the president and the military — and implied that those who never served don’t give enough to their country — he risked aggravating “America’s military-civilian divide.”
Miss him yet? Don’t. –> At Jacobin Magazine, Corey Robin laments how the disastrous legacy of George W. Bush’s presidency has been “rehabilitated” in the public discourse since Trump came to power.
Budget-busters –> Stan “The Budget Guy” Collender reports for Bloomberg that “the spending and taxing policies about to be put in place by the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress will balloon the federal deficit to $1 trillion or more every year going forward.”
An antidote for depressing news? –> It’s a Monday full of unpleasant news, so we’ll leave you with some of the best costumes from New York’s annual Halloween Dog Parade, courtesy of Hilary Hanson at HuffPost.
http://billmoyers.com/story/daily-reads-public-health-risk-chemical-industry-insider-epa-trump-tv-coming-everywhere-soon/
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House Readies 'Sue-And-Settle' Bill As Pruitt Adopts Policy
Oct 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
The House is preparing to vote on legislation that would limit EPA and other agencies' ability to settle suits alleging violations of statutory deadlines -- and to increase state and industry participation in such settlements -- even as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced steps last week to implement such a policy.
The House Rules Committee is slated to vote later today on H.R. 469, a bill that would codify a series of required steps for agencies to reach such settlements, including increasing notification of potential suits, expanding the number of parties in settlement discussions and other restrictions.
The bill's supporters and others argue that such measures are needed to end the so-called “sue-and-settle” approach, in which agencies settle environmentalists' complaints alleging violations of statutory deadlines. Critics charge that such a process is unfair because state and industry parties are barred from intervening. They also say that the process allows environmentalists to dictate the agency's regulatory agenda.
But environmentalists and others say agencies are unlikely to reach settlements under the new approach, increasing litigation and related uncertainty and risking courts imposing steeper deadlines on agencies than they might otherwise be able to negotiate.
But even as the House prepares to vote on the bill, Pruitt issued a directive that adopts many of the same approaches, laying out a 10-step process EPA must follow when considering a settlement agreement or consent decree for complying with statutory deadlines.
Pruitt's new policy drew criticism from environmentalists and some industry officials, who say it could increase litigation and regulatory uncertainty.
But it has drawn praise from many conservatives and GOP lawmakers, even as some have argued that more aggressive measures may still be needed to prevent the practice. For example, Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), the sponsor of H.R. 469, welcomed Pruitt's efforts but said he would continue pushing for more. “I will continue working to snuff out back-room litigation that unfairly impacts our citizens,” he said in a statement from the Congressional Western Caucus.
“No government agency should collude with special interest groups to redefine its priorities through covert consent decrees,” he said. “The EPA’s decision to crack down on this practice will give Americans back their right to know about and respond to federal rulemaking and I applaud Secretary Pruitt for taking this step today,” Collins added.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/house-readies-sue-and-settle-bill-pruitt-adopts-policy
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The Senate Must Protect Families And Reject The Nomination Of Scientist Dr. Michael Dourson
Oct 24, 2017 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Sen. Tammy Duckworth
One of the important constitutional responsibilities I have to the people of Illinois is to carefully review the qualifications of every individual who requires Senate confirmation. I am very familiar with how the Senate carries out its responsibility to provide advice and consent because, not long ago, I went through it myself when President Obama nominated me to serve as an Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA).
In that job, and in the United States Senate, I have spent every day trying to honor the courage and the sacrifice of the servicemembers who saved me in Iraq. Since I woke up at Walter Reed, fighting for those who serve our country has been my life’s work and it is a privilege to advocate for servicemembers, veterans and their families. That is why I was so alarmed that President Trump could nominate someone like Dr. Michael Dourson – who has defended the use of chemicals that have been linked to high cancer rates in servicemembers and veterans – to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.Dr. Dourson has a long track record of manipulating scientific research for profit to benefit corporate interests at the expense of public safety. He has been paid by companies like Koch Industries to falsely claim that dozens of dangerous chemicals are safe for common usage, most alarmingly chemicals like Perchlorate, Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), Trichloroethylene (TCE), and 1,4,-Dioxane.
Each are dangerous in their own way and all have been associated with causing adverse health effects like cancer, birth defects and developmental problems in children, and the EPA office Dourson has been nominated to lead actively tries to prevent humans from coming in contact with them. Unfortunately, industry research from people like Dourson has prevented the EPA from achieving its goal and endangered servicemembers in places like Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where TCE contamination in drinking water has been linked to high rates of cancers like Leukemia.
How skewed in favor of industry has Dourson’s research been? PFOA, for instance, has been linked to prostate, kidney and testicular cancer. Dr. Dourson recommended a level of 150 parts per billion (ppb) was safe. By contrast, the chemical manufacturer DuPont, which manufactures the chemical, set an internal safety level of 1 ppb and the EPA set a health advisory level even lower at 0.07 ppb, which is 2000 times less protective.
That’s why, after PFOA was discovered in drinking water at a Navy base in Chesapeake, Va., the Navy began handing out bottled water to its personnel – and it’s why the military has been so concerned to discover PFOA contamination at eleven different bases like Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho and Brunswick Air Force Base in Maine. The U.S. Department of Defense recently announced they are examining nearly 700 sites nationwide to investigate whether the water our servicemembers drink is safe, which is why it would be so alarming to put Dr. Dourson in any position of power.
Dr. Dourson’s reckless work hasn’t just been limited to these chemicals either – his work has frequently and consistently produced results that are far less protective than EPA’s standards, the agency for which he is now seeking a job.
When he appeared before the Environment and Public Works Committee last month, I confronted Dr. Dourson on how his pseudoscience helped push dirty air polluted by petroleum coke – another harmful chemical – into the lungs of my constituents in the South Side of Chicago. I expected remorse, or at least an acknowledgement of wrong doing. Instead, what my constituents and I heard was an arrogant and unapologetic stubborn refusal to take responsibility for the lives he helped harm.
Simply put, Dr. Dourson lacks the commitment to protecting public health, objectivity and impartiality my constituents need and rightfully expect from our civil servants. I am not alone in this view, which may be why not a single credible public health organization endorsed the Dourson nomination. Protecting our families, servicemembers and veterans should not be a partisan issue. I hope all of my colleagues join me in fighting to block Dr. Dourson’s confirmation to be in charge of chemical and toxic safety.Duckworth is a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/356804-the-senate-must-protect-families-and-reject-the
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Practitioner Insights: Protecting Stakeholders Under the New TSCA
Oct 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Mark Duvall
The recent amendments to section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) mean that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate, is regulating, and will regulate chemical substances as never before. The amendments present challenges to stakeholders, but also opportunities to influence potential EPA decisions that may determine the future commercial viability of those substances.
This paper explores those challenges and opportunities. It suggests answers to the following stakeholder questions:
• Why should I care if EPA reviews my chemical substance?
• When will EPA take actions for additional chemical substances?
• How does EPA decide which chemical substances to address?
• How can I influence whether EPA designates my chemical substance as a low-priority substance?
• How can I influence whether EPA conducts a risk evaluation for my chemical substance?
• How can I influence EPA's risk evaluation for my chemical substance?
• How can I influence EPA's risk management rulemaking for my chemical?
1. The New Section 6
Section 6 now directs EPA to take three key steps while meeting deadlines for completing action. The first step is for EPA to designate chemical substances as high or low priorities for risk evaluation.
The second step is for EPA to conduct risk evaluations. Through the risk evaluation, EPA must: “determine whether a chemical substance presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, without consideration of costs or other nonrisk factors, including an unreasonable risk to a potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation identified as relevant to the risk evaluation by the Administrator, under the conditions of use.”
The third step is for EPA to regulate any chemical substance that it determines presents an unreasonable risk. It must adopt a rule to ban, restrict, or otherwise regulate the substance to ensure it no longer presents such risk.
EPA has published procedural rules for implementing the prioritization and risk evaluation steps: the prioritization rule, 40 C.F.R. Part 702, Subpart A, and the risk evaluation rule, 40 C.F.R. Part 702, Subpart B.
2. Why Should I Care if EPA Reviews My Chemical Substance?
If EPA decides to take action under section 6 with respect to a chemical substance, that decision will significantly impact the manufacturers, processors, and end users of that substance, as well as other stakeholders. The decision could add costs; hurt or help commercial and public acceptance of the substance; support or hinder related tort litigation; and ultimately determine whether the substance may continue on the market and, if so, under what restrictions. The impacts could come throughout the section 6 process:
• EPA may require testing of the chemical substance to close data gaps before making a prioritization decision. EPA now may order manufacturers and processors of a substance to develop “new information for the purposes of prioritizing a chemical substance under section 6(b).” Such testing could cost millions of dollars.
• EPA may designate a chemical substance as one which “may present an unreasonable risk.” That is the standard for qualifying as a high-priority substance. The marketplace may react negatively to a substance so designated, since EPA has placed it on the track toward possible regulation. Under section 5, EPA has extensively relied on a “may present” finding to restrict chemical substances.
• EPA may designate the chemical substance as a low-priority substance. To do so, it must find that the substance does not meet the “may present” standard. Having a low-priority designation may help in the marketplace and with tort suits for manufacturers, processors, and end users of the substance.
• EPA may determine that a chemical substance “presents an unreasonable risk.” That determination may be commercially devastating, at least for the conditions of use determined by EPA to present the unreasonable risk. In addition, plaintiffs’ lawyers may argue that the determination is evidence of negligence by those who manufacture, process, or use that substance, at least for the conditions of use for which EPA makes that determination.
• EPA may determine that the chemical substance does not present an unreasonable risk, either under any of the conditions of use within the scope of the risk evaluation, or under the conditions of use of importance to a stakeholder. That determination may be important both commercially and for its significance in tort suits.
• EPA may ban or restrict future manufacturing, processing, distribution, use, and disposal of a chemical substance. Once it has made a determination that a chemical substance presents an unreasonable risk, EPA must regulate it “to the extent necessary so that the chemical substance or mixture no longer presents such a risk.”
• EPA may adopt a reasonable risk management rule that preempts state regulatory requirements for the chemical substance. Compliance with the restrictions may be evidence that a manufacturer, processor, or end user of the substance acted reasonably for purposes of tort litigation.
In short, there may be compelling reasons why a stakeholder may want, or not want, EPA to take action under section 6 with respect to a particular substance.3. When Will EPA Take Actions for Additional Chemical Substances?
EPA has begun section 6 actions for multiple chemical substances: ten chemical substances or categories slated to receive risk evaluations; five chemical substances or categories designated as persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic; and two substances for which a manufacturer requested EPA to conduct risk evaluations.
EPA is probably already at work identifying candidates for prioritization. During this pre-prioritization step, EPA expects to consider the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of the available information. It may also determine whether or not information can be developed and collected, reviewed, and incorporated into analyses and decisions in a timely manner; if so, it may order testing.
EPA must begin the official prioritization process no later than March 22, 2019, by announcing candidates for prioritization. Nine months later, by Dec. 22, 2019, EPA must have designated at least 20 high-priority substances and at least 20 low-priority substances. Of course, EPA may begin the process earlier.
4. How Does EPA Decide Which Chemical Substances to Address?
Stakeholders should check whether or not their chemical substances of interest are included in the 2014 update to the TSCA Work Plan list. At least 10 of the initial 20 high-priority substances must come from this list. It includes 90 chemical substances or categories. The 17 substances or categories which EPA has already set for action under section 6 came from this list. That leaves 73 remaining to be designated for risk evaluations.
How will EPA choose among these 73? Section 6 directs EPA to give preference to those on the list that have a Persistence and Bioaccumulation Score of 3 (as indicated on that list) and to those that are known human carcinogens and have high acute and chronic toxicity (as indicated on that list).
The entries on the list meeting those criteria not already designated for risk evaluations are the following:
• Arsenic and arsenic compounds;
• Cadmium and cadmium compounds;
• Chromium and chromium compounds;
• Cobalt and cobalt compounds;
• Lead and lead compounds;
• Long-chain chlorinated paraffins (C18-20);
• Medium-chain chlorinated paraffins (C14-17);
• Molybdenum and molybdenum compounds;
• Nickel and nickel compound;
• Octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane; and
• Pigment Yellow 83
Another factor in EPA's decisions may be whether other federal agencies are regulating those substances. For example, eight of the phthalates on the list are being addressed by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration regulates most uses of bisphenol A, also on the list.EPA may select up to 10 of the initial 20 high-priority substances from those not on the TSCA Work Plan list. How will it select these? Its general objective is to select those substances with the greatest hazard and exposure potential first, considering reasonably available information on the relative hazard and exposure of potential candidates. It must also consider these factors:
• The chemical substance's hazard and exposure potential;
• The chemical substance's persistence and bioaccumulation;
• Potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations;
• Storage of the chemical substance near significant sources of drinking water;
• The chemical substance's conditions of use or significant changes in conditions of use;
• The chemical substance's production volume or significant changes in production volume; and
• Other risk-based criteria that EPA determines to be relevant to the designation of the chemical substance's priority.
Another important factor is the availability of information on the chemical substance or category. Stakeholders may want to evaluate the extent of the information available on their chemicals of interest. An EPA request or requirement for additional information on a chemical substance may be an indication of EPA's interest in the substance during the current pre-prioritization activities.5. How Can I Influence Whether EPA Designates My Chemical Substance as a Low-priority Substance?
A low-priority substance is one for which “the Administrator concludes, based on information sufficient to establish, without consideration of costs or other nonrisk factors, that such substance does not meet the standard…for designating a chemical substance a high-priority substance.” In other words, EPA must have sufficient information to conclude that the substance does not qualify for a “may present an unreasonable risk” finding.
EPA has advised that its Safer Chemicals Ingredients List “will be a good starting point for identifying potential candidates for Low-Priority Substance designations.” A stakeholder may advocate that a substance should be designated as low-priority by doing the following:
• Checking the Safer Chemicals Ingredients List to see if the substance is listed there;
• Reviewing the available hazard and exposure information to see if a “may present” finding is unlikely for any condition of use for the substance;
• Assessing the completeness of the information available to EPA on the substance;
• Supplementing that information with submissions to EPA if appropriate; and
• Advocating to EPA that it should select the chemical as a candidate for low-priority designation.
6. How Can I Influence Whether EPA Conducts a Risk Evaluation for My Chemical Substance?
There are two routes to an EPA risk evaluation on a chemical substance: through a manufacturer request and through the prioritization process. Both provide opportunities for stakeholder advocacy which may influence EPA's decision.
a. Manufacturer requests
A manufacturer may request EPA to conduct a risk evaluation on its chemical substance. In most circumstances, a manufacturer would only make such a request if it expected EPA to conclude that the substance does not present an unreasonable risk, at least for the conditions of use of interest to the manufacturer.
There will probably be few manufacturer requests. The up-front information requirements for manufacturer requests are substantial. So is the associated fee. A requesting manufacturer must agree to pay 50 percent of EPA's cost of conducting the requested risk evaluation if the substance is on the TSCA Work Plan and 100 percent of the cost if it is not. EPA has estimated that cost at $3.7 million.
Manufacturer requests will be subject to at least a 45-day comment period. Stakeholders may want to supplement the information provided in the request or focus on different conditions of use.
b. Using the Prioritization Process
The most effective time for influencing whether EPA takes action on a chemical substance may be during the pre-prioritization step. Accordingly, stakeholders may want to submit information and advocacy about a substance to EPA proactively, prior to EPA formally identifying the substance as a candidate for prioritization. Developing that information may take months or years, so planning ahead can be critical. Planning often involves development of a coordinated strategy that identifies potential allies in the process, allocates sufficient budget, identifies information needs, and establishes a timetable for information development.
Exposure information is likely to be particularly important to EPA. For occupational exposure, information about engineering controls and personal protective equipment used to prevent or limit exposure may be helpful. Industrial hygiene monitoring results and measurements of concentrations in environmental media can provide real-world data on actual exposure conditions. In some cases, stakeholders may want to conduct exposure monitoring to develop the exposure data that EPA needs to make section 6 decisions.
Hazard data may also be important. For example, ecotoxicity studies can supplant modeling for ecotoxicity endpoints on which EPA might otherwise rely. Measured factors such as log KOW can replace a modeled environmental fate result with actual data. If a flawed study indicating a significant hazard is available to EPA, stakeholders may want to point out those flaws, since EPA must regulate on the basis of the best available science and the weight of the scientific evidence. Even better would be conducting a more reliable study on that endpoint and submitting it to EPA.
Stakeholders should plan to submit full studies wherever possible, because brief summaries are unlikely to be convincing to EPA.
Once EPA selects candidates for a high-priority designation, stakeholders will have opportunities for additional input. Publication of the list of candidates for high- or low-priority designation will trigger a 90-day comment period. After further review, EPA will publish a list of proposed designations of high- and low-priority substances, triggering a second 90-day comment period. Stakeholders should take advantage of these opportunities, if only to reiterate previous comments and to respond to comments by EPA and other stakeholders.
7. How Can I influence EPA's Risk Evaluation for My Chemical Substance?
Once EPA designates a chemical substance or category as high priority, or accepts a manufacturer request, it will conduct a risk evaluation for that substance or category. The risk evaluation process offers opportunities for comment. EPA will publish a draft scope for the risk evaluation, with at least a 45-day comment period. EPA will publish a draft risk evaluation for comment, with at least a 60-day comment period.
Stakeholder comments on the proposed scope of a risk evaluation may be critical, since the scope determines which conditions of use (potentially, less than all) will be evaluated. Stakeholder comments on the draft risk evaluation may have less impact, since by then EPA will have completed virtually the entire risk evaluation process and may be up against a statutory deadline.
Stakeholder comments should react to EPA drafts, but also provide additional information not cited by EPA that may help provide a more balanced assessment. In addition, stakeholders may want to act proactively by submitting a risk evaluation of their own. EPA has published guidance for developing such risk evaluations. Preparation of a stakeholder risk evaluation will require a significant investment of time and resources.
Stakeholders may want to focus their comments on the conditions of use of importance to them. EPA will determine that a chemical substance presents an unreasonable risk if a single condition of use merits that determination, but it will also make determinations for the other conditions of use within the scope of the risk evaluation as well, and those may be of greater importance to the stakeholder.
8. How Can I Influence EPA's Risk Management Rulemaking for My Chemical?
EPA must publish a proposed risk management rule banning or restricting a chemical substance that it determines presents an unreasonable risk. Stakeholders will have an opportunity to comment on the proposed rule. In addition, they may want to submit information and arguments before then in an effort to influence the proposed rule. Stakeholders will have a variety of important issues to address in their advocacy to EPA.
A critical issue may be which risk management measures EPA will impose. Its selection may determine whether or not the chemical substance will remain commercially viable. A risk management rule must ban, restrict, or otherwise regulate a chemical substance “to the extent necessary so that the chemical substance or mixture no longer presents such risk.” Stakeholders will want to comment on which restrictions are necessary and the impact of restrictions on conditions of use not determined to present an unreasonable risk.
In selecting risk management measures, EPA must consider some non-risk factors that were excluded from the prioritization and risk evaluation steps. These include the benefits of the chemical substance for various uses; the reasonably ascertainable economic consequences of the rule, such as the likely effect of the rule on the national economy, small business, and technological innovation; the costs and benefits of the rule and at least one alternative regulatory action; and the cost-effectiveness of the rule and at least one alternative. Stakeholders will want to present their views on these issues to EPA, since its selection of risk management measures must consider these factors to the extent practicable.
In addition, stakeholders may want to address other issues that EPA may have to consider, such as possible exemptions for replacement parts and articles containing the chemical substance being restricted. Also, if EPA plans to propose restrictions that would effectively preclude a condition of use, it must also consider, to the extent practicable, whether technically and economically feasible alternatives that benefit health or the environment, compared to the use so proposed to be prohibited or restricted will be reasonably available as a substitute when the restrictions take effect. Stakeholder information and advocacy will be important.
Compliance dates may also be issues for comment. EPA must adopt compliance dates that are as soon as practicable and no more than five years after promulgation of the rule, but they may vary for different persons. The timing can be crucial to stakeholders.
Conclusion
The 2016 amendments to section 6 of TSCA mean that EPA will be much more active than previously in identifying, evaluating, and regulating chemical substances. Its actions since enactment of the amendments demonstrate that new reality. Stakeholders have many opportunities to take part in the different steps of the section 6 process and even more incentives to be involved.
Stakeholder involvement will be more effective the earlier it occurs in the section 6 process. Stakeholders are encouraged to develop and implement far-sighted strategies concerning the chemical substances of importance to them, without waiting for EPA to make critical decisions that may influence the remainder of the process. Once EPA does initiate actions on those substances, stakeholders should plan to stay involved until the entire process is completed.
Mark Duvall is a principal at Beveridge & Diamond, where he heads the TSCA practice and advises clients on all aspects of TSCA. Ryan Carra is an associate who uses his extensive technical background to counsel clients in the chemicals and products sectors regarding environmental regulatory issues. Tim Serie is an associate at the firm where he focuses his practice on chemicals, product, and environmental regulatory matters, including TSCA reform implementation.
The opinions expressed here do not represent those of Bloomberg BNA, which welcomes other points of view.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=122858084&vname=dennotallissues&fn=122858084&jd=122858084
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Institute Calls For Comments On More RoHS Lead Exemptions
Oct 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The Oeko-Institut has called for comments on seven requests for lead exemptions from the RoHS Directive, which restricts the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE).
These are for lead:
in solders and termination finishes of electrical and electronic components and finishes of printed circuit boards used in ignition modules and other electrical and electronic engine control systems, which for technical reasons must be mounted directly on or in the crankcase or cylinder of hand-held combustion engines;
in platinised platinum electrodes, used for conductivity measurements where conditions apply;
as a thermal stabiliser in PVC used as base material in amperometric, potentiometric and conductometric electrochemical sensors, which are used in in-vitro diagnostic medical devices for the analysis of blood and other body fluids and body gases;
in solder and hexavalent chromium in parts used to make RF detectors in mass spectrometers, to be added to Annex IV;
in thermal cut-off fuses overmoulded into solenoid coils used in industrial monitoring and control instruments (category 9) and EEE, falling under category 11;
in solders of sensors, actuators and engine control units that are used to monitor and control engine systems, including turbochargers and exhaust emission controls of internal combustion engines, used in equipment that is not intended to be used solely by consumers; and
in solders of alpha spectrometers, pulse-processing electronics, scintillation detectors and spectroscopy systems used in equipment to identify radiation, expiring on 23 July 2024.
The institute is also seeking views on a proposed exemption for bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate in rubber parts, such as O-rings, seals and cap-plugs, that are used in engine systems including exhausts and turbochargers designed for use in equipment that is not designed solely for consumer use.
The consultation will run until 1 December.
Earlier this month, the Oeko-Institut called for views on proposed exemptions for lead and mercury.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60461/institute-calls-for-comments-on-more-rohs-lead-exemptions
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(ACC Mentioned) NatGas Industry Calls DOE’s Reform NOPR ‘Fatally Flawed’ as Comment Period Closes
Oct 23, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By David Bradley
The floodgates opened wide as the public comment period for the Department of Energy's (DOE) notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) to implement reforms on the reliability and resiliency of the electricity grid came to an end on Monday, with hundreds of filings submitted by states, cities, corporations, environmental groups, labor unions and individuals.
FERC began accepting comments on DOE's proposal on Oct. 3 [RM18-1].
Analysts initially said the NOPR might not be completed in the timeline requested -- DOE Secretary Rick Perry directed FERC to issue a final rulemaking or interim final rule within 60 days of publication of the NOPR in the Federal Register -- nor exactly as DOE prescribed.
But FERC rejected calls from the oil and gas industry and others, including environmental groups, to extend the public comment period, reaffirming that comments were due by Oct. 23, and reply comments are due by Nov. 7.
FERC Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur said commissioners didn't believe they had the authority to extend the public comment period.
Under DOE's NOPR, FERC would impose rules on independent system operators and regional transmission organizations (RTO) "to ensure that certain reliability and resilience attributes of electric generation resources are fully valued." The rule would allow "for the recovery of costs of fuel-secure generation units that make our grid reliable and resilient," according to Perry.
Eligible units would have to "be able to provide essential energy and ancillary reliability service and have a 90-day fuel supply on site in the event of supply disruptions caused by emergencies, extreme weather, or natural or man-made disasters."
Critics charge that changes detailed in the NOPR would benefit the shrinking number of nuclear and coal generation plants at the expense of natural gas.
Coal and electricity organizations have shown support for the NOPR, while natural gas industry groups have vehemently opposed it. A bipartisan group of eight former FERC commissioners, including five former chairmen, last week joined the chorus of voices speaking out against the NOPR to implement reforms on the reliability and resiliency of the electricity grid.
A review of the hundreds of comments filed at FERC through mid-afternoon Monday found those battle lines still firmly in place. Opposition to the NOPR came in a wide range of comments.
The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) called the NOPR's technical foundation "fatally flawed." If adopted, the proposal would "imperil the benefits of innovation and efficiency spurred by competition," INGAA said in its filing. "The proposal provides no basis for the Commission to alter its market-based rate regime fundamentally by turning back the clock on competition."
"There are numerous problems with this proposal, beginning with its underlying premise and ending with the preferential treatment it recommends, which is harmful, undermines competitive markets, lacks legal basis and would not contribute to resiliency or reliability in the power markets," said Natural Gas Supply Association CEO Dena Wiggins. "Natural gas is a reliability asset in the power sector, as proven repeatedly by its excellent performance during the recent hurricanes and the 2014 polar vortex. By tilting the scales away from natural gas, DOE’s proposal could lead to less reliability in the markets, not more. We urge FERC not to adopt DOE’s proposal."
A group of a dozen large industrial users of electricity, including the Electricity Consumers Resource Council and American Chemistry Council, called the NOPR a "radical departure from competitive markets" that would result in "substantial loss of U.S. manufacturing capacity and jobs."
In a joint filing, the Public Service Commissions (PSC) of Louisiana and Mississippi said DOE's proposed rule "harms ratepayers, intrudes upon rights traditionally and properly reserved to states, is based on false conclusions unsupported by sufficient evidence, conflicts with the Commission's fuel technology neutral policy, and is contrary to the Commission's policies favoring competition."
The North Dakota PSC said in its filing that it shares Perry's concerns about "the early retirement of baseload generation," but the NOPR "needs to be further refined to appropriately compensate baseload facilities and prevent early retirement while maintaining affordable rates for customers." State regulators requested that FERC investigate the extent to which baseload provides value to adequately compensate for its benefits.
Sunrise Coal LLC, which produces more than 10 million tons of coal annually, went further, saying the NOPR is only a first step that would be inadequate to achieve Perry's objectives. Among other things, Sunrise said, "the NOPR does not address the primary reasons for coal generation being at risk, namely wind production tax credits, artificially low natural gas prices, and out-of-date regulatory rate making practices that focus on return on investment rather than the actual price of power."
In the closing days of public comment, labor unions including the AFL-CIO and Utility Workers of America, which represent coal and nuclear plant workers, came on board in support of the NOPR as well.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/112188
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(ACC Mentioned) How One MLP Benefits From The Shale Gas Boom
Oct 24, 2017 | Investing Daily
By Robert Rapier
The U.S. shale oil boom gave us lower fuel prices at the pump, and the shale gas boom brought cheaper heating and electricity bills. But most people are unaware of the impact of cheap shale gas on the chemical manufacturing industry.
Chemical manufacturing utilizes natural gas both as a raw material and as a source of fuel. The constituents of natural gas — methane, ethane, propane, etc. — can be separated out, with each being used as a raw material for different chemical processes.
The $768 billion U.S. chemical industry is the second largest in the world, with 15% of the global market. The industry provided 811,000 U.S. jobs and accounted for $174 billion of U.S. exports in 2016 — 14% of all U.S. exports.
According to the American Chemistry Council (ACC), as of July 2017, there are 310 completed, started or potential chemical industry projects chemical industry projects due to shale gas.
The ACC estimates that these projects represent $185 billion in new capital investment and will create 464,000 direct & indirect jobs by 2025, $310 billion in new economic output, and will bring in $26 billion in new tax revenue by 2025.
Shale Boom Creates Ethane Glut
Ethane is the second most abundant constituent of natural gas (behind methane) and is primarily used to produce ethylene, which is the world’s most widely used petrochemical. The flood of new shale gas supplies has overwhelmed the market for ethane, sending the price plummeting. This, in turn, has made the economics of producing ethane derivatives like ethylene and polyethylene extremely attractive in the U.S.
One company benefiting from cheap ethane is Westlake Chemical Partners (NYSE: WLKP), which went public in 2014. Westlake Chemical Partners is a master limited partnership (MLP) formed by Westlake Chemical (NYSE: WLK) to operate, acquire and develop ethylene production facilities, and related assets.
WKLP owns a 200-mile ethylene pipeline and three ethylene production facilities in Kentucky and Louisiana, with an annual capacity of approximately 3.7 billion pounds. It is the only MLP engaged primarily in ethylene production.
Since going public in 2014, Westlake Chemical Partners has managed to grow its quarterly per unit distribution by 32%. But the unit price (unlike corporations, MLPs are priced by unit) has fallen by 22%.
The primary reason for this decline is that in May 2015, the IRS issued a ruling that would disqualify income from ethylene production from benefiting from MLP status. This status is important for tax reasons. More on that below. When the IRS issued its ruling, WKLP’s unit price dropped by more than 30%.
However, in January of this year, the IRS reversed this ruling (reiterating an initial private letter ruling for WKLP that granted MLP status), declaring that ethylene production, transportation, storage, and marketing does constitute “qualifying income” for the purpose of obtaining MLP status. The unit price moved 25% higher on the news, but the price has yet to recover to the level it was before the earlier negative ruling.
MLP Basics
Before investing in an MLP like Westlake Chemical Partners, it is important to understand how MLPs work.
The big advantage of MLPs is they aren’t taxed at the corporate level. MLPs pass profits directly to unitholders in the form of quarterly distributions. This arrangement avoids the double taxation of corporate income and dividends affecting traditional corporations and their shareholders and, all things being equal, should deliver more money to unitholders.
But the distributions aren’t fully taxed either. Because of the depreciation allowance, 80% to 90% of the distribution is considered a “return of capital” and thus not taxable when received. Instead, returns of capital reduce the cost basis of an investment in the MLP.
The rest of the distribution—typically 10% to 20% —is taxed at the recipient’s income tax rate. But being able to defer the rest of the tax until the investment is sold is an advantage since the income can be reinvested to generate compound returns that could more than pay for the eventual tax bill.
MLPs issue Schedule K-1 forms instead of the 1099 forms you may receive from a corporation, and the K-1 will reflect your share of the taxable income. Most K-1s are issued between late February and early April, which could delay your tax return.
The K-1 package will also include a state schedule. This schedule details the MLP’s share of income or loss attributed to each state in which it operates.
For example, a pipeline may cut across five states and have reportable income in each state. You may be required to file state tax returns for each of these states, which means your tax reporting may be more complicated and costlier, though most individual investors fall well under the threshold for having to do so.
https://www.investingdaily.com/39959/how-one-mlp-benefits-from-the-shale-gas-boom
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Rise in Texas Earthquakes Near Oilfields Prompts New Monitoring
Oct 24, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Wethe
Texas, home to two of the nation's busiest oilfields, now has a new way for the public to track in real time how many earthquakes are rattling the Lone Star State since the expanded use of new drilling techniques.
TexNet, which the University of Texas said is the nation's most advanced state-run seismic monitoring system, includes 22 permanent monitoring stations and another 40 that are portable. The system was formed in 2015 thanks to $4.47 million in state funding.
The Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico and the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas continue to see some of the nation's strongest drilling activity. Those regions, along with the Dallas-Fort Worth area, have all seen an increase in earthquakes, according to a statement earlier this month from the University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology.
“Small earthquake events have become more common in Texas recently,” Scott Tinker, director of the bureau, said in the statement. “We are now positioned to learn more about them and, hopefully, to understand how to mitigate their impacts in the future.”
The U.S. shale boom over the past decade has benefited from a rise in hydraulic fracturing, which blasts water, sand and chemicals underground to release trapped hydrocarbons. That dirty fracking water in the well later returns to the surface, along with water that is naturally co-mingled in the underground reservoir with oil and natural gas.
The disposal of all of that dirty water from oil wells has been cited in the past as one of the main factors for a rise in earthquakes in places such as Oklahoma, where seismicity increases happen in oil-drilling hot spots.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=122858072&vname=dennotallissues&fn=122858072&jd=122858072
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Lawmakers Press DOJ On Pipeline Sabotage
Oct 24, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sam Mintz
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers wants to know whether efforts to sabotage oil and gas pipelines might qualify as domestic terrorism.
In a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, 84 members — mostly Republicans, but with a few Democrats also signing on — cite instances of individuals using blowtorches to burn holes in pipelines and promoting violence against oil and gas company employees.
"While we are strong advocates for the First Amendment, violence toward individuals and destruction of property are both illegal and potentially fatal," the lawmakers wrote.
They asked Sessions whether existing federal laws adequately arm DOJ to prosecute "criminal activity against infrastructure."
They also want to know specifically whether the agency has taken any action against the climate activists involved with the attempted sabotage of four major oil pipelines in multiple states last October (E&E News PM, Oct. 11, 2016).
"We realize the DOJ faces unique challenges when confronting these crimes, including identifying suspects amidst the rural and remote infrastructure across the country," they wrote. "But maintaining safe and reliable energy infrastructure is a matter of national security."
The request was applauded by the American Petroleum Institute, a top oil and gas trade association.
"Safety is our industry's core value, and any illegal or dangerous effort to undermine safety and bring harm to the environment and communities should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," said API's Midstream and Industry Operations Group Director Robin Rorick.
"We take these attacks very seriously, and we welcome the bipartisan efforts in Congress to strengthen our nation's infrastructure that delivers the energy Americans demand every day," Rorick said.
Environmental groups and activists opposing pipelines have taken a dim view of efforts by companies and law enforcement to crack down on what they see as constitutionally protected activities.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/10/24/stories/1060064415
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U.S. Warns Public About Attacks On Energy, Industrial Firms
Oct 21, 2017 | Reuters
By Jim Finkle
(Reuters) -
The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in a report distributed by email late on Friday that the nuclear, energy, aviation, water and critical manufacturing industries have been targeted along with government entities in attacks dating back to at least May.
The agencies warned that hackers had succeeded in compromising some targeted networks, but did not identify specific victims or describe any cases of sabotage.
The objective of the attackers is to compromise organizational networks with malicious emails and tainted websites to obtain credentials for accessing computer networks of their targets, the report said.
U.S. authorities have been monitoring the activity for months, which they initially detailed in a confidential June report first reported by Reuters. That document, which was privately distributed to firms at risk of attacks, described a narrower set of activity focusing on the nuclear, energy and critical manufacturing sectors.
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Scott McConnell declined to elaborate on the information in the report or say what prompted the government to go public with the information at this time.
“The technical alert provides recommendations to prevent and mitigate malicious cyber activity targeting multiple sectors and reiterated our commitment to remain vigilant for new threats,” he said.
The FBI declined to comment on the report, which security researchers said described an escalation in targeting of infrastructure in Europe and the United States that had been described in recent reports from private firms, including Symantec Corp.
“This is very aggressive activity,” said Robert Lee, an expert in securing industrial networks.
Lee, chief executive of cyber-security firm Dragos, said the report appears to describe hackers working in the interests of the Russian government, though he declined to elaborate. Dragos is also monitoring other groups targeting infrastructure that appear to be aligned with China, Iran, North Korea, he said.
The hacking described in the government report is unlikely to result in dramatic attacks in the near term, Lee said, but he added that it is still troubling: “We don’t want our adversaries learning enough to be able to do things that are disruptive later.”
The report said that hackers have succeeded in infiltrating some targets, including at least one energy generator, and conducting reconnaissance on their networks. It was accompanied by six technical documents describing malware used in the attacks.
Homeland Security “has confidence that this campaign is still ongoing and threat actors are actively pursuing their objectives over a long-term campaign,” the report said.
The report said the attacker was the same as one described by Symantec in a September report that warned advanced hackers had penetrated the systems controlling operations of some U.S. and European energy companies.
Symantec researcher Vikram Thakur said in an email that much of the contents of Friday’s report were previously known within the security community.
Cyber-security firm CrowdStrike said the technical indicators described in the report suggested the attacks were the work of a hacking group it calls Berserk Bear, which is affiliated with the Russian Federation and has targeted the energy, financial and transportation industries.
“We have not observed any destructive action by this actor,” CrowdStrike Vice President Adam Meyers said in an email.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-kaspersky-russia/kaspersky-lab-to-open-software-to-review-says-nothing-to-hide-idUSKBN1CS0Y1
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Former EPA Chief Reilly Slams House For 'Full Retreat' On Environment
Oct 23, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Former EPA Administrator William Reilly is harshly criticizing the House-passed spending bill that includes major cuts to “core” EPA programs, saying that the provisions as written signal a “full retreat” from decades of efforts to achieve environmental improvement and urging the Senate to reconsider.
“One should make no mistake that a full retreat has been signaled by the House budget, and if this is the budget that ends up coming out of the Senate and [subsequent negotiations], then the United States can expect all of the curves of [environmental] improvement which have been so steady with public support over the past 40 to 50 years to begin to go the other way, to start trending down,” Reilly said in comments to Inside EPA.
The remark makes clear that Reilly, who served as administrator during the George H.W. Bush administration, sees the House passed budget as incompatible with promises by Administrator Scott Pruitt to implement a “back to basics” agenda that Pruitt has defended as a way to emphasize other environmental priorities in lieu of climate change programs.
“It is very difficult to square the commitments the [EPA] administrator has made to core programs with a 27 percent reduction in clean air, clean water and safe drinking water,” Reilly tells Inside EPA.
His criticisms come at a time when the agency's defenders are pressing for senators to reconsider the House-passed funding cuts to EPA's budget, as well as policy “riders” that impose new restrictions on agency activities.
While the precise timeline for revisiting the House language remains in flux, the Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to mark up EPA's spending bill as soon as the week of Oct. 30 after postponing a planned markup earlier this month.
Reilly’s comments come after a recent analysis by the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), a group of former EPA employees, shows that the House-passed budget would result in a 27 percent cut to core EPA programs, even though the House's overall funding for EPA is $1.7 billion more than the overall administration request.
The analysis cites diversions by Congress of funds from EPA's crucial Environmental Programs and Management account to fund other priorities both within and outside the agency.
It also raises concern about the impact of policy riders on environmental protections.
Reilly in his comments expresses broad concern at both the core program cuts and several of the policy provisions in then House-passed bill that could hamstring enforcement of environmental laws including through citizen suits.
“That is the legacy that the Trump administration and the Pruitt administration are directing us to and it is a tragedy for the environment,” if implemented, he said.
Reilly served as EPA Administrator from 1989 -1993 -- a notable period that included the enactment of the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990.
A biography on EPA's archived webpage notes other work by Reilly including: efforts to make sure that a then- pending push for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took environmental issues into account; efforts to work with industry on voluntary initiatives; and work to address regional pollution problems.
Reilly is also past president of the World Wildlife Fund. But his perspective on EPA goes even farther back, when he was hired on in 1970 as a senior staff member of the Council on Environmental Quality under Russell Train, who subsequently served as EPA Administrator during the Nixon and Ford Administrations, according to the bio.
27 Percent Cut
Reilly during the interview expressed concern at both the proposed 27 percent cut to core programs, as well as policy provisions in the House-passed bill that hamstring the agency in areas including environmental enforcement and protection of federal waters.
Those provisions include an amendment added to spending legislation during House floor consideration -- offered by Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) -- that restricts federal payment of legal fees as part of settlements under the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, or Endangered Species Act.
“It is perverse that not only has the administration and the House concurred that enforcement will now be diminished, but those who file to affect the administration and implementation of laws will not have their lawyers compensated,” Reilly said. “That is the result of proposing to remove monies to compensate attorneys fees of environmentalists, of environmental groups, in settlements.”
Reilly during the interview held out hope that senators -- and anyone involved in subsequent budget negotiations to finalize EPA spending -- might rethink both the funding cuts and proposed policy riders included in the House budget, with the alternative being reversing decades of environmental improvements.
And he called the House budget a “fairly shocking abandonment of long-standing American commitments to environmental protection, to health, to the ecology,” citing as another example of his concern the potential combined effect of repealing the Waters of the U.S. rule -- a step called for in the spending bill and by the Trump White House -- and the budget bill's enforcement impacts, and the broader message being sent that wetlands protections will not be enforced.
“The waters of the United States are to be basically reduced in scope, and no doubt in vigor, when you add both the definitional changes that are to occur together with the want of enforcement,” Reilly said.
Reilly added that the House passed budget “represents a calculated retreat from enforcement, science, technology and some key geographic areas such as San Francisco Bay, Long Island Sound and Chesapeake Bay -- all of which are slated for cuts.
That critique comes after House appropriators rebuffed Trump administration calls to completely zero out geographic programs focused on specific water bodies, but still reduced funding for such efforts by over $100 million, including cuts or elimination or funding for some of the programs, including San Francisco Bay and the Chesapeake Bay.
House lawmakers also approved an amendment from Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) that would bar any use of EPA funds for the agency to take “backstop” actions to protect the Chesapeake Bay watershed, thus limiting the agency's ability to remedy any failure by states in the region to attain pollution reduction goals required by EPA's Total Maximum Daily Load program.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/former-epa-chief-reilly-slams-house-full-retreat-environment
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Bill Would Toughen Permitting, Ease Litigation
Oct 24, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Arianna Skibell
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) have introduced legislation to ensure marginalized communities do not bear the brunt of environmental degradation.
The "Environmental Justice Act of 2017" would require federal agencies to take environmental justice into account when making permitting decisions. It also aims to strengthen legal protections for communities of color and indigenous and low-income areas.
"This bill is not a panacea, but is going to arm localities and communities with the tools necessary to begin to better fight back against this kind of villainy that's going on," Booker said at a news conference in New Jersey yesterday. "To begin to try to right the wrongs."
Children in Newark, N.J., where Booker was once mayor, are three times more likely than average to have asthma from air pollution, according to recent data. The senator is seen as a potential presidential contender.
The legislation would codify executive order 12898, which President Clinton signed in 1994 and has served as the basis for agency environmental justice work.
The order directs agencies to develop strategies for identifying and addressing disproportionately adverse health effects on marginalized communities because of environmental degradation.
The proposal would also make the existing National Environmental Justice Advisory Council and certain environmental justice grant programs law.
The House and Senate bills would require agencies to consider cumulative impacts in permitting decisions under the Clean Water and Clean Air acts.
It says communities affected by events like the Flint, Mich., water crisis — in which hundreds of children suffered lead poisoning — may bring statutory claims for damages. They may also bring common law claims and request injunctive relief.
Lastly, the bill would reinstate a private right of action for discriminatory practices under the Civil Rights Act, undoing the Supreme Court decision in Alexander v. Sandoval, which said only federal agencies could bring action on claimants' behalf.
The Sierra Club has come out in full support of the measure, saying the Booker-Ruiz plan would address communities who are more likely to suffer from dirty energy.
"For far too long, certain communities have been targeted for pollution and environmental destruction. Communities such as low-income or communities of color are more likely to be located near hazardous waste sites and be exposed to pollutants at a higher rate," Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said in a statement.
"For the first time, we have legislation that codifies President Clinton's executive order and comes up with a grant program to fund it. More importantly, it requires air and water permitting to look at cumulative impacts to these communities. We must be taking steps to eliminate environmental injustice in New Jersey and nationally."
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/10/24/stories/1060064421
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