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ACC AM 10/25/17

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) ‘Army’ Of Lobbyists Hits Capitol Hill To Preserve Nafta
Oct 25, 2017 | The New York Times
By Ana Swanson And Natalie Kitroeff

Automakers, retailers and other business leaders stormed Capitol Hill on Tuesday in an extraordinary show of force against a Republican president they fear will cripple or kill the North American Free Trade Agreement, an outcome business leaders said could devastate their profits and harm the United States’ ability to compete in a global market.
(ACC Mentioned) John Young: Treating The Trumpite Infestation
Oct 25, 2017 | MyStatesman
By John Young

Termites did not destroy my house. Neither will Trumpites destroy your democracy.
(ACC Mentioned) NFI’s Connelly: Seafood Industry Should’ve Seen Trump Trade Storm Coming
Oct 24, 2017 | Undercurrent News
By Jason Huffman

Nobody should be surprised by the tough stance US president Donald Trump has taken in relation to trade, John Connelly, president of the National Fisheries Institute (NFI), said Monday.
(ACC Mentioned) Menendez Seeks IG Inquiry Into EPA's Toxics Office
Oct 25, 2017 | Inside EPA

A Democratic senator is asking EPA's Inspector General to investigate a range of agency practices that were highlighted in a recent New York Times report that detailed the prominent role that Nancy Beck -- the former chemical industry lobbyist who is the Trump administration's top appointee in EPA's toxics office -- played in writing recent rules.
(ACC Mentioned) Senate Dems Grill Dourson About His Agency Post
Oct 25, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Corbin Hiar

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Democrats expressed concern today about what work President Trump's pick to lead U.S. EPA's chemical safety office is doing at the agency.
Democrats Query EPA Toxics Nominee Over Advisory Role
Oct 25, 2017 | Inside EPA

Senate environment committee Democrats are asking President Donald Trump's nominee to lead EPA's toxics office for more information regarding his current role at the agency as an adviser to Administrator Scott Pruitt, suggesting they will block a floor vote on the nomination -- one day before the panel is scheduled to vote on it -- unless they receive the responses.
Chemical Industry Hired Gun Would Be A Big Step Backward For Chemical Safety
Oct 25, 2017 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Sen. Tom Udall

Last year, Republicans and Democrats reached a rare bipartisan agreement on a major environmental law and passed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. The Lautenberg Act – for the first time – provides the Environmental Protection Agency with the authority to protect our kids from dangerous chemicals.

LCSA News

Democrats See TSCA as Achilles’ Heal for Trump Chemical Nominee
Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott

Some Senate Democrats are trying to cast doubt on President Trump's pick to head the EPA chemical safety office by appealing to Republican fears that the nominee won't aggressively implement a bipartisan chemical reform law.

Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chemical Review Would Exclude Millions Of Tons Of Toxins
Oct 25, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)
By Matthew Brown

Spurred by the chemical industry, President Donald Trump's administration is retreating from a congressionally mandated review of some of the most dangerous chemicals in public use: millions of tons of asbestos, flame retardants and other toxins in homes, offices and industrial plants across the United States.
(ACC Mentioned) Editorial: As Newburgh Recovers More Threats Emerging
Oct 24, 2017 | Times Herald-Record

The City of Newburgh might not be preparing a lawsuit if the Department of Defense had been honorable and a good neighbor, admitting its role in contaminating the water supply and offering to pay its share.
Asbestos, Dry Cleaning Agent Among 10 Chemicals Under Review
Oct 25, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)

Under a congressional mandate, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing 10 chemicals to determine if they pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment and should be subject to additional regulation.
States Struggle to Set Standards for Hundreds of Toxics
Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan

Several Northeastern state governments are feverishly working to find and clean up two emerging chemicals considered toxic that have contaminated water and soil around the country, but toxicologists say states are missing hundreds more that are related with unknown health risks.
Chemours’ Chemical Actions Spur N.C. to Retain Wastewater Permit
Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew M. Ballard

The Chemours Co. can keep its wastewater discharge permit for its facility in Fayetteville, N.C., because of work the company has done to address contamination involving a substitute for the widely used chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), state regulators say.
European Parliament Calls for Glyphosate Phaseout Ahead of Vote
Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner

The European Union should reauthorize the use of glyphosate for a limited period before phasing it out, according to a nonbinding resolution European Parliament lawmakers adopted one day before a key regulatory committee vote on the world's most widely used herbicide.
EU Delays Decision on Herbicide Glyphosate
Oct 25, 2017 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Philip Blenkinsop

EU countries failed on Wednesday to vote on a licence extension for weedkiller glyphosate, delaying again a decision on the widely used herbicide that critics say could cause cancer.
Dow, BASF Beat Kasowitz Firm's Whistleblower Claims
Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes

BASF, Dow Chemical, Covestro LLC and Huntsman International have beaten federal whistleblower claims alleging that they failed to report chemical dangers (United States ex rel. Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP v. BASF Corp., 2017 BL 378811, D.D.C., No. 16-2269, 10/23/17).
European Commission Briefs On Future Of POPs
Oct 25, 2017 | Chemical Watch

A European Commission report on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) has concluded that there are many reasons for vigilance but that research, regulatory and implementation efforts can reduce or even eliminate POPs from the environment.

Energy News

In Washington Clash of Industries, King Corn Trounces Big Oil
Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy

Farm-state interests just conquered Big Oil in a fight over biofuels, proving that in Donald Trump's Washington, King Corn still reigns.

Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Environment News

(ACC Mentioned) Climate-Change Costs Could Rise By $35 Billion A Year Within Decades: Report
Oct 24, 2017 | Metro US
By Michael Martin

The nonpartisan report comes as the Trump administration continues to roll back efforts to fight climate change.
House Passes Bill Targeting Environmental Settlements
Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott

A House-passed bill that would end a Justice Department practice of entering into settlements that steer funds to third-party groups faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
Attorney Urges EPA To Scale Back Consent Decree Monitoring Mandates
Oct 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds

An industry attorney is urging EPA to scale back its use of mandates in enforcement consent decrees for companies to use new environmental monitoring technologies that can impose major costs on individual companies, instead suggesting EPA require their use through the permitting process for all facilities.
AAPCA's Woods Says States Can Improve EPA Rules 'On The Front End'
Oct 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey

Clint Woods, executive director of a group of state air quality agencies, is welcoming EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's push to bolster states' role in environmental protection, saying states can “improve regulations on the front end” if EPA includes them more closely in crafting rules and gives them a greater role on agency advisory panels.
ECOS Launches New Website To Push For Flexibility In Environmental Oversight
Oct 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds

The Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) has launched a new website to improve public access to state environmental data reported to EPA, an effort that a top Trump EPA official says will help states' push to shift to an “outcome-based” assessment of their pollution control efforts and allow them greater flexibility in meeting their goals.
EPA, ECOS Form Panel To Set Goals For New Audit Approach For State Programs
Oct 25, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds

State environmental regulators and EPA are forming a working group to craft a plan for streamlining EPA reviews of states' federally delegated environmental programs, a priority for the Trump EPA and states, under a broad new audit approach that the two sides are weighing, though a key state regulator says there is not a clear model for how such an approach would work.

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) ‘Army’ Of Lobbyists Hits Capitol Hill To Preserve Nafta

Oct 25, 2017 | The New York Times

By Ana Swanson And Natalie Kitroeff

WASHINGTON — Automakers, retailers and other business leaders stormed Capitol Hill on Tuesday in an extraordinary show of force against a Republican president they fear will cripple or kill the North American Free Trade Agreement, an outcome business leaders said could devastate their profits and harm the United States’ ability to compete in a global market.
More than 130 representatives from an array of industries met with senators on Tuesday to ratchet up pressure on lawmakers — many of whose constituents work for companies dependent on Nafta — to keep the deal intact.
The future of Nafta has appeared increasingly at risk in recent weeks as the Trump administration presses for significant changes that businesses and Canadian and Mexican negotiators say are nonstarters. The United States’ position has pitted the Trump White House against the business community — an unusual position for a Republican president who cast himself as a friend of the business community.
But the Trump administration’s proposals to rewrite Nafta have triggered alarm bells among automakers, retailers, agricultural companies and other businesses, who say the provisions the United States is pushing are “poison pills” that would hurt American companies and jobs. They have mounted an increasingly frantic effort to persuade lawmakers to preserve Nafta and push back against the provisions the United States is advocating.
The daylong lobbying session was organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which promised to send an “army” of lobbyists to Capitol Hill to fight the provisions. The group organized a similar visit to the House of Representatives on Oct. 11.Continue reading the main storyThe Trump White HouseThe historic moments, head-spinning developments and inside-the-White House intrigue.Clinton Campaign and Democratic Party Helped Pay for Russia DossierOCT 24Another Republican Call to Arms, but Who Will Answer?OCT 24Courting Democratic Ire, Republicans Open New Obama-Era InquiriesOCT 24Trump Lifts Refugee Suspension, but 11 Countries Face More ReviewOCT 24Senate Approves $36.5 Billion Aid Package as Hurricane Costs MountOCT 24
See More »RELATED COVERAGEWhat Would Happen if the U.S. Withdrew From Nafta OCT. 12, 2017Nafta Talks’ Extension May Make for Slow, Painful Demise OCT. 17, 2017A Nafta Battleground on the Shores of Canada OCT. 16, 2017Trump’s America First Trade Agenda Roiled by Internal Divisions OCT. 20, 2017
Business groups are worried about a number of United States proposals, including a “sunset clause” that would terminate the trade pact after five years unless the three countries voted to continue it. Businesses argue that the change would reduce the certainty the agreement gives them over their future operating environment — a key consideration when investing long term.
“Any proposals that would risk a crisis every five years on Nafta wouldn’t provide the certainty our members need to bring these investments forward,” said Greg Skelton, who heads the global affairs division at the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group. “We are going to have a huge increase in domestic production, and there is no way we can consume that domestically.”
Mr. Skelton said the group has “picked up the pace of our meetings on hill.”
Manufacturers are also concerned about the administration’s demand to increase the amount of a product that is manufactured domestically. The United States wants to require 85 percent of the value of an automobile to be manufactured in North America to benefit from Nafta’s zero tariffs, up from 62.5 percent currently. The proposals would also require half of the value of cars manufactured in Canada or Mexico to be sourced from the United States.
Novelis Corporation, an Atlanta-based aluminum producer, buys most of its primary metal from Canada since there is not enough of it produced in the United States to satisfy demand, said Marco Palmieri, the president of Novelis North America. The company brings Canadian raw materials to a plant in Oswego, N.Y., where they are melted down and transformed into coils that ultimately wind up in Ford or Toyota automobiles.
“Our business can be very badly hit depending on what direction this goes,” Mr. Palmieri said. Restricting cross-border trade “would be much higher cost, and it would make our business much less competitive.”
Matt Blunt, the president of the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents Ford, General Motors and Fiat-Chrysler, said the so-called rules of origin restrictions would probably encourage companies to shift automobile production outside of the United States and pay a tariff to import the vehicles. That would essentially create a tax on the auto industry and harm its competitiveness, he said.
Those arguments fell on largely sympathetic ears among Senate Republicans, many of whom support Nafta because it supports companies and jobs in their home states. But, privately, Congressional aides say lawmakers feel they have little influence over the White House’s trade policies.
President Trump has long threatened to ditch Nafta, but businesses largely discounted that as more bluster than reality. That has changed in recent weeks as negotiations with Canada and Mexico have become rockier. The next round of trade talks were postponed until mid-November to give the parties more time to resolve what they described as “significant conceptual gaps.”
Bill Lane, the chairman of the Trade Leadership Coalition, which advocates preserving Nafta, said that until recently businesses had been largely silent on Nafta because they did not want to undercut other policy priorities, such as rewriting the tax code to secure a lower corporate tax rate.
“But they also realize it doesn’t matter what the tax rate is if you’re not competitive, and Nafta makes North American manufacturing competitive,” he said.
Warren K. Erdman, an executive vice president of Kansas City Southern Railway Company who came to Washington to lobby senators, said he believed new restrictions on trade would harm the economy. “While we support growth of the American economy through tax reform, we don’t want at the same time to impose tariffs, which are essentially taxes on production,” he said.
The Trump administration does not appear ready to give in. In remarks to the news media in mid-October, Robert E. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, said that businesses should be ready to forego some of the advantages they receive under Nafta as the United States seeks to negotiate a better deal for workers. In order to win the support of people in both parties, businesses would have to “give up a little bit of candy,” he said.
“I think it’s possible to take a little bit of the sugar away, and have them say, ‘Yeah, we’re still doing pretty well,’” Mr. Lighthizer said of American businesses. In the final analysis, businesses would support the revised agreement, he said.
But business leaders say it is less about taking sugar away and more about pouring salt into the wounds of companies that are trying to compete in an era of global trade, where capital is mobile and businesses move around the world to increase their profits by a few percentage points. Many argue that tighter restrictions could push manufacturing out of North America altogether.
Hun Quach, a lobbyist for the retail industry who visited the Senate on Tuesday, said retailers are concerned about tighter regulations for apparel and textiles, the introduction of more uncertainty into the deal through a sunset clause, and more protectionist trade cases by the United States that would block imports from Canada and Mexico.
“Anyone doing business within the Nafta region would like to have certainty to know that their supply chains they build over decades will remain in place,” Ms. Quach said.
Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said a study he is currently conducting on the effects of the Nafta proposals show that the Trump administration’s efforts would have either very little benefit to the economy or a substantial negative effect.
Some of the administration’s basic proposals — including its plan to raise the threshold for automobiles manufactured in the United States — would actually slightly raise economic growth in the United States, though by an almost imperceptible amount, Mr. Zandi said.
However, tearing up Nafta entirely would stunt the United States economy in a way that is comparable to a $150 billion tax increase, he said. And leaving Nafta and restoring 20 percent tariffs on all exports — which Mr. Trump frequently discussed during the campaign — would be enough to stall out the United States economy in 2019 and push Mexico into a recession, most likely triggering a wave of illegal immigration across the southern border, Mr. Zandi’s research indicates.
Mr. Zandi said he was “hard pressed” to think of any industries that would benefit from these proposed changes.
“I don’t think there’s any upside here,” he said. “I see this as a big waste of time. And it’s just creating angst unnecessarily among business people.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/us/politics/nafta-lobby-congress.html

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(ACC Mentioned) John Young: Treating The Trumpite Infestation

Oct 25, 2017 | MyStatesman

By John Young

Termites did not destroy my house. Neither will Trumpites destroy your democracy.
But they will do damage, and it will be costly.
Termites, and other wood or plant borers like the mountain pine beetle, leave a trail of dust.
The Trumpites who have infested government leave jet trails as they engage their carnal pleasures on our dime, even occasionally doing their jobs. Unfortunately, in almost all cases what they consider their job is to destroy the structural sector of government to which each is assigned.
Consider a new top-level hire to the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Nancy Beck qualified for that position, based on Trumpite intentions, by having been a lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council, an industry arm that fights regulations of chemicals.
This fits perfectly with the philosophy of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, who rose to his position via the Trumpite virtue of suing the EPA on behalf of polluters as Oklahoma attorney general.
Former Georgia congressman Tom Price, the Trumpite choice as secretary of Health and Human Services, appeared to be the man who would eviscerate each and every one of those services, starting with the Affordable Care Act.
Unfortunately for him, he was mostly interested in taxpayer-funded jetting to and from family functions.
With Price gone, and with Congress failing to gnaw through legislation to abolish the ACA, Trump has announced to those who benefit, “Eat my dust.”
We’ll see what happens as affected states take Trump to court over the end of subsidies that have kept insurers in the game and have lowered copays and deductibles.
One thing for sure is that Trump’s tunnel assault on ACA is wreaking the requisite havoc.
For instance, cutting back on the marketing funds that inform people that Dec. 15 is the deadline for signing up for health coverage or changing one’s policy under ACA. Another destructive act was to cut the enrollment period in half, from three months to 45 days. More about that shortly.
Meanwhile, though we’ve been assured that Donald Trump is the smartest man to ever ride an escalator into history:
The Law of Unintended Consequences is playing out with his designs, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Associated Press reports that yanking the subsidies could trigger the bizarro result of making free basic coverage available to more low-income people — yes, hundreds of thousands of them — while costing taxpayers more.
It takes a lot of explaining, but the bottom line: Higher insurer costs caused by the yanked subsidies mean more spent on those tax credits and the reshuffling of what qualifies for the low-income “bronze” coverage, meaning free.
If so, we could see more people insured, having signed up for free coverage even as the Evil Weevil declares the ACA “dead.”
At the same time, The Washington Post reports that millions of Americans may get locked into coverage plans they don’t want. That’s because after Dec. 15, those who have coverage are auto-enrolled.
Health industry analysts predict that with the much-shorter season, and with less notice about their options, and with auto-enrollment, many may not make the necessary call regarding a policy that is not suiting their needs.
Whatever happens, Trump will not be able to blame Obamacare. Trump is the death-wish engineer of this runaway train.
So, what do we do about this matter? Anyone who has termites knows that they can’t be shooed out the door. If they are not treated, the structure they inhabit will be reduced to dust.
However, I’ve never known any homeowner to allow that to happen. I didn’t. We fought. We won. The termites had a feast at our expense, but they could not eat us out of our home.
Neither will the Evil Weevil.
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/opinion/john-young-treating-the-trumpite-infestation/ao1tu2hOu9Wbf2lZ0A9oMN/

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(ACC Mentioned) NFI’s Connelly: Seafood Industry Should’ve Seen Trump Trade Storm Coming

Oct 24, 2017 | Undercurrent News

By Jason Huffman

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Nobody should be surprised by the tough stance US president Donald Trump has taken in relation to trade, John Connelly, president of the National Fisheries Institute (NFI), said Monday.
“There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind about the attitude of president Trump … or his leaders that he has put into positions of authority,” Connelly told a large crowd at the 57th annual conference of IFFO, the marine ingredients organization, in Washington, DC. “President Trump campaigned on a very strong promise of promoting domestic production, domestic manufacturing, domestic coal, things like that, so the fact that he’s taking these steps should not be a surprise.”
Introduced as the speaker who best represents the local flavor of this year’s IFFO conference host city, Connelly clarified to the crowd that he was a lobbyist. His group is described as representing the US seafood industry, though given the high amount of seafood imported into the country, roughly 85% of it, its members include a fair number of companies with foreign interests.
Trump roiled much of the US agriculture industry when he withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) almost immediately after taking office, ending what had already been a tortured effort to get Congress’ approval of the 12-nation trade deal that the Barack Obama administration took seven years to negotiate. He has now set his sights on the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The US seafood industry got dinged, too, by the withdraw from TPP. It meant giving up an opportunity to reduce tariffs of 3% to 11% on Alaskan seafood exported to Asian countries, while also further opening the door for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a competing trade deal involving China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia among other Asian countries.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has acknowledged having an 'unusual fixation' with the US seafood trade deficit
RCEP is seen as potentially facilitating the movement of Indian and Vietnamese shrimp to China, while stimulating some movement of further processing of seafood from China to Vietnam.
Meanwhile, commerce secretary Wilbur Ross has acknowledged having an "unusual fixation" with the US seafood trade deficit, and the individuals named to operate many of the US agencies that are important to trade come with backgrounds in trade enforcement, Connelly said.
“Frankly, we wish he would concentrate more on exports in order to rebalance trade,” he said.
NFI, in particular, takes issue with the administration’s advancement of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), a rule that takes effect in January and will require seafood companies to provide information detailing the kind of fish they’re importing into the US as well as where and how it was caught or farmed.
The federal government will start with a focus on 12 or 13 fish, Connelly said Monday, adding that “there is some push to include shrimp” in the program by January 2019.
“It’s going to be a very costly regulating program,” he said.
A federal judge, in August, threw out an effort by NFI, Trident Seafoods, Pacific Seafood Group, Fortune Fish & Gourmet and others to challenge the new SIMP regulation, which NFI has argued will cost the seafood industry $53 million in recordkeeping expenses while reducing seafood choices for the average American family.
Not the biggest protein source, but big enough
Connelly, who took the helm at NFI in early 2003 after 13 years at the American Chemistry Council and five years in the US Navy, spent a good bit of his presentation on Monday extolling the importance of the US as a buyer of seafood.
“…We spend about $100 billion on seafood items. Even if that’s only 15 lbs per person, that’s still a lot of seafood sold in this country.”
It's true that the US consumer ate only 15 pounds of fish per capita in 2016, with seafood accounting for only about 15% of the dollars spent on protein, according to a combination of federal data, Connelly conceded. By comparison, US consumers ate 64lbs of poultry, 52lbs of beef and 46lbs of pork last year.
“But in a country with 325m people that means we have a fairly sizable market,” he said. “…We spend about $100 billion on seafood items. Even if that’s only 15lbs per person, that’s still a lot of seafood sold in this country.”
The US is importing 40% of Chile’s farmed salmon, for example, he noted. It takes one in every five pounds of Chinese tilapia, he said.
Because so much of the seafood imported by the US is farmed, it’s “very important to have your governments communicate the steps they are taking to make sure they are [maintaining strong sustainability measures],” Connelly told the attendees reported to be from 15 foreign countries in the room.
Could tilapia, shrimp follow pangasius to USDA?
Another regulatory matter Connelly focused on Monday was labor issues. He noted how US Customs and Border Protection has asked companies to identify practices at Tier 4 and explained how that is a reference to workers at the very beginning of a product’s creation, such as fishing companies.
“Well, folks you are the Tier 4 suppliers,” he told attendees at the IFFO conference.
He also warned against becoming complacent with new requirements that moved the inspection of pangasius from Food and Drug Administration (FDA) jurisdiction to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Unlike FDA, the USDA requires other countries to maintain standards that are equivalent to the US, which NFI suggests is a non-tariff barrier against Vietnam and other major sources of pangasius .
It may not stop with pangasius, he said.
“Tilapia is a natural extension of this program,” Connelly said in his presentation.
Later, he added, “It sure would be a shame to have anyone expand the USDA supervision to shrimp.”
Tilapia is already facing “significant headwind” in the US due in large part to a rash of negative attention being received via social media, Connelly said, pointing to statistics that show it losing sales in the US in 2017.
https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2017/10/24/nfis-connelly-seafood-industry-shouldve-seen-trump-trade-storm-coming/

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(ACC Mentioned) Menendez Seeks IG Inquiry Into EPA's Toxics Office

Oct 25, 2017 | Inside EPA

A Democratic senator is asking EPA's Inspector General to investigate a range of agency practices that were highlighted in a recent New York Times report that detailed the prominent role that Nancy Beck -- the former chemical industry lobbyist who is the Trump administration's top appointee in EPA's toxics office -- played in writing recent rules.
In an Oct. 23 letter to EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins Jr., Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) sought an investigation into reports of “the suppression of science,” “'administratively determined' hiring practices,” and the lack of scientific and technical analysis in the agencies rule making process” as detailed in the New York Times' Oct. 21 report.
“EPA's chemical safety work is essential to protecting human health in a society where interaction with chemicals is both pervasive and unavoidable. The public has the right no know whether EPA employees are working on their behalf, or the behalf of the industries the agency purports to regulate,” Menendez wrote.
According to the Times' report, current and former agency staff and career officials point to Beck, the principal deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), as chiefly responsible for the Trump administration's rewrite of proposed “framework rules” for implementing the new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
According to their accounts, her single-handed reworking of the proposed rules -- based on comments she helped write while at the American Chemistry Council (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.
“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.
Such criticisms appear to be underscoring environmentalists concerns over Beck's key role in implementing TSCA reform, an issue Beck highlighted in an exclusive interview with Inside EPA.
In written responses to questions, Beck said the agency's biggest challenge will be “implementing TSCA.”
“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 said
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.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/menendez-seeks-ig-inquiry-epas-toxics-office

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(ACC Mentioned) Senate Dems Grill Dourson About His Agency Post

Oct 25, 2017 | E&E News PM

By Corbin Hiar

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Democrats expressed concern today about what work President Trump's pick to lead U.S. EPA's chemical safety office is doing at the agency.
Michael Dourson, an industry-tied toxicologist whose nomination is scheduled for a committee vote tomorrow, began working at EPA as an adviser to Administrator Scott Pruitt last week, breaking recent precedent at the agency. Some former EPA officials questioned the legality of the scientist's appointment (Greenwire, Oct. 24).
The 10 EPW Democrats, led by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, told Dourson in a letter, "Your appointment creates the appearance, and perhaps the effect, of circumventing the Senate's constitutional advice and consent responsibility for the position to which you have been nominated."
They warned, "Your improper involvement in EPA decisions could provide grounds for subjects of EPA regulations and oversight to challenge the legal validity of those decisions in court."
The Democrats also asked Dourson for additional information to "help inform how we engage with your nomination."
The committee would send Dourson's nomination to the Senate floor if none of the panel's 11 Republican members oppose it.
The lawmakers asked Dourson for the type of appointment he was hired under, whom he is supervising, the nature of his relationship with the acting head of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, and a written job description, if one exists.
EPA hasn't responded to similar requests from E&E News for more information about Dourson's current role and responsibilities. But spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement that "Dourson is not 'performing the duties' of the [assistant administrator] for [the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention], which is what occurred in previous administrations."
The Democrats went on to ask Dourson if he is governed in his current post by the same ethics pledges he made as a nominee.
Ethics watchdogs expressed doubt that Dourson is bound by those promises since they were intended to apply to his work as assistant administrator. One promise was to not participate in "any particular matter" involving the North American Flame Retardant Alliance, a component of the chemical industry's top lobby group, the American Chemistry Council, which paid him $10,000 last year (E&E Daily, Oct. 18).
The Senate Democrats also asked for all EPA email addresses Dourson is using, proof that he's resigned from the posts he promised to quit and an explanation of what he meant when he promised the committee he would release his work calendar "on a timely basis."
Finally, the lawmakers reiterated scores of detailed questions about chemical regulations they initially posed to Dourson during questions for the hearing record. In earlier responses to Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the committee's top Democrat, Dourson offered the same one-sentence answer to 14 specific questions about implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act overhaul that Congress passed and was signed into law last year (E&E Daily, Oct. 17).
"Now that you are 'adviser to the administrator,' we expect that you have familiarized yourself with these issues and can be more forthright in answering the questions we previously asked," they wrote.
Separately, the Center for Environmental Health and CREDO Action said they are planning to deliver a petition with over 150,000 signatures opposing Dourson's confirmation to "the Senators who are most important to this fight," Virali Modi-Parekh, the center's spokeswoman, said in an email.
The progressive advocacy groups' top targets include Carper and committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) as well as Republican Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Dean Heller of Nevada, John Boozman of Arkansas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/stories/1060064511/search?keyword=%22American+Chemistry+Council%22

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Democrats Query EPA Toxics Nominee Over Advisory Role

Oct 25, 2017 | Inside EPA

Senate environment committee Democrats are asking President Donald Trump's nominee to lead EPA's toxics office for more information regarding his current role at the agency as an adviser to Administrator Scott Pruitt, suggesting they will block a floor vote on the nomination -- one day before the panel is scheduled to vote on it -- unless they receive the responses.
“This appointment raises several concerns that we request you address before a Floor vote on your nomination, assuming [the environment committee] agrees to advance it,” the senators said in an Oct. 24 letter to Dourson.
Although Dourson is not yet confirmed, EPA officials have confirmed press reports that he is already working at the agency as a “special advisor” to Pruitt.
The letter, signed by all 10 Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), does not say whether they will oppose Dourson's nomination in committee before receiving answers to their questions -- though they are widely expected to.
In addition, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), one of the senators who signed the letter, has already placed a hold on the nomination, which will slow it down.
Instead, it signals that Democrats plan to employ the same tactics to leverage responses from Dourson to their questions as they employed when they delayed action on Trump's choice to lead EPA's enforcement office pick because of concerns over the similar role she is serving at the agency prior to her confirmation.
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are blocking a floor vote on the nomination of Susan Bodine to serve as EPA's enforcement chief, charging that her claims that she was unable to answer pre-confirmation questions because she was not yet at EPA were no longer operative.
Such pre-confirmation appointments used to be fairly standard -- former President Barack Obama's choice to lead EPA's research office was never confirmed and served at EPA as Science Advisor for the last years of Obama's administration, for example.
But the practice has been under scrutiny following the 2017 Supreme Court ruling in National Labor Relations Board v. SW General, which limits appointees' ability to serve in interim positions under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
The Democrats' letter cites the high court's ruling and asks Dourson for details on his advisory role to ensure his “appointment is not violating the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.”
Although Republicans have the votes to clear Dourson's nomination, the path forward is uncertain. Following Dourson's Oct. 4 confirmation hearing, Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) raised doubt over whether there was a majority vote for Dourson.
During the hearing, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) asked some probing questions of Dourson, raising questions over how she might vote. There are 11 Republicans on the committee, so if Democrats vote as a block against Dourson, only one Republican no vote would block his nomination from leaving the committee.
The Democrats' letter also asks Dourson to provide updated answers to earlier questions from Democrats that Dourson sought to sidestep, regarding EPA risk assessment practices, implementation of the new statute reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act, and specific chemicals or rules.
“You declined to answer several questions for the record from members of [EPW] due to lack of familiarity … Now that you are “adviser to the administrator,” we expect that you have familiarized yourself with these issues and can be more forthright in answering the questions we previously asked.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/democrats-query-epa-toxics-nominee-over-advisory-role

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Chemical Industry Hired Gun Would Be A Big Step Backward For Chemical Safety

Oct 25, 2017 | The Hill - Congress Blog

By Sen. Tom Udall

Last year, Republicans and Democrats reached a rare bipartisan agreement on a major environmental law and passed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. The Lautenberg Act – for the first time – provides the Environmental Protection Agency with the authority to protect our kids from dangerous chemicals.
A year later, that new law is in a critically important phase as the EPA works to implement provisions that Congress wrote to promote safety. Environmental advocates and industry agreed that passage was a critical step to restore confidence in the safety of products in our homes and workplaces. And that can only happen if the EPA is allowed to do its work free from political interference. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will take a crucial vote today on whether to advance President Trump’s nominee to head the EPA’s office responsible for implementing the new law. If Michael Dourson is confirmed, the EPA’s current and future progress on chemical safety will be at risk.
The American people have a vested interest in the EPA’s unbiased process. We come in contact with tens of thousands of chemicals—they prevent stains on our carpets, reduce static in our laptop, prevent the spread of fire, and keep our shirts wrinkle free. Yet, while we know that some can cause serious health impacts, the EPA didn’t have the authority to restrict their use until the Lautenberg law was passed.
For example, certain “flame retardant” chemicals can still be found in nearly every American home, despite evidence that they affect children’s brain development. The Lautenberg Act explicitly requires the EPA to review every new and existing chemical on the market. Late last year, the agency assembled its list of the first 10 existing chemicals to review for safety. It includes the industrial solvents TCE and 1-bromopropane, and 1,4-dioxane, a carcinogen found in cosmetics and drinking water.
And that’s why the nomination of Dourson, a chemical industry hired gun, is so concerning. Dourson, whose nomination is pending before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has spent his career helping industry cover up the damage caused by dangerous substances – from second-hand smoke to PFOA, the chemical in Teflon tied to cancer.
As has been reported by several news outlets, Dourson’s firm, TERA, has had a clear business strategy: Industry would ask TERA to review a chemical, and Dourson would reliably suggest a looser standard than government scientists, even when the chemical is linked to serious health impacts. For example, Dourson recommended a safety standard for PFOA that was 2,000 times weaker than that recommended by the EPA. His work helped weaken the standard acceptable in West Virginia – even after a severe spill contaminated groundwater near a DuPont plant outside Parkersburg.
The list of chemicals that Dourson has found safer than relevant government agencies goes on and on. And if he were confirmed for his position, he would take the helm of the EPA’s toxics bureau with serious conflicts of interest. The chemicals Dourson has worked to greenwash include three on the bureau’s top 10 list: TCE, 1-bromopropane, and 1,4-dioxane. Anyone who believes Dourson could simply avoid conflicts should consider his responses during his Senate confirmation hearing. When asked if he agreed with the EPA’s safety analyses of petcoke, which diverged greatly from his own, Dourson refused to answer three times until he finally responded, “I’m not ready to answer that question.”
The American people already have reason to worry about his impact at EPA. Although he has not been confirmed, Dourson is currently working as an “adviser” to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Of course, Dourson is free to make a living however he chooses outside of government. But a toxicologist for hire has no place overseeing what the American people expect is a neutral process by which chemicals are evaluated for safety. By confirming Dourson to head the toxics bureau, Congress would – just a year after passing chemical safety reform – take a huge step toward undermining public confidence in the new law.
Dourson has made a career as a hired gun. But we don’t have to hire him, and we shouldn’t. The Senate should reject Dourson.
Udall was the Democratic co-author of the bipartisan Frank R. Lautenberg for the 21st Century Act
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/356992-chemical-industry-hired-gun-would-be-a-big-step

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LCSA News

Democrats See TSCA as Achilles’ Heal for Trump Chemical Nominee

Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Dean Scott

Some Senate Democrats are trying to cast doubt on President Trump's pick to head the EPA chemical safety office by appealing to Republican fears that the nominee won't aggressively implement a bipartisan chemical reform law.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) told Bloomberg Environment Oct. 24 that he doesn't expect the effort to derail the nominee to head the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Michael Dourson, who along with three other Environmental Protection Agency nominees is likely to clear a confirmation vote slated for Oct. 25 in the Environment and Public Works Committee. The panel's chairman, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), told reporters that he is unfazed by the opposition and predicted that all four of the EPA nominees will ultimately be confirmed on the floor.
Carper has been trying to find cracks in that Republican support by questioning whether Dourson will work to implement a 2016 law that overhauled the Toxic Substances Control Act, which passed with strong GOP support in part because it assured more speedy chemical reviews.
Lobbyists for chemical safety and environmental groups have been making the same case to Republican senators, including meetings Oct. 24 with two Republican senators meant to raise questions about whether Dourson sufficiently backs the TSCA revamp: Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.).
Carper, the environment committee's top Democrat, said he has had the same conversations. “Every Republican I have talked to on the committee, and I've talked to a number of them, that is exactly the point I've been making,” he said.
“We worked for years to pass this legislation, to pass a good bill, so we wouldn't have 50 states trying to have a piece in the regulation of toxic substances,” Carper said. “Now we have a good strong bill [requiring] a highly regarded federal regulator and that's not Dr. Dourson. That is not him.”
Slow-Walking of Nominees
Barrasso said he sees the Carper effort as little more than Democratic slow-walking of nominees, a topic raised earlier in the day by President Donald Trump when he met with Republican senators in the Capitol for their closed-door policy lunch. Barrasso said he expected that ultimately, all the nominees will be confirmed on the Senate floor.
Besides Dourson, the other nominees are William Wehrum, Trump's pick to head EPA air and radiation office; Michael Leopold for EPA general counsel; and David Ross, to head EPA Office of Water.
Democrats have so far done all they can “to vociferously slow down every one” of those nominations, as well as other Trump nominees, said Barrasso, who called their actions “disproportionate, excessive, unnecessary, and dilatory.”

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Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chemical Review Would Exclude Millions Of Tons Of Toxins

Oct 25, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)

By Matthew Brown

BILLINGS, Mont. — Spurred by the chemical industry, President Donald Trump's administration is retreating from a congressionally mandated review of some of the most dangerous chemicals in public use: millions of tons of asbestos, flame retardants and other toxins in homes, offices and industrial plants across the United States.
Instead of following President Barack Obama's proposal to look at chemicals already in widespread use that result in some of the most common exposures, the new administration wants to limit the review to products still being manufactured and entering the marketplace.
For asbestos, that means gauging the risks from just a few hundred tons of the material imported annually while excluding almost all of the estimated 8.9 million tons (8.1 million metric tons) of asbestos-containing products that the U.S. Geological Survey said entered the marketplace between 1970 and 2016.
Lawmakers say the review was intended to be the first step toward enacting new regulations needed to protect the public. But critics - including health workers, consumer advocates, members of Congress and environmental groups - contend ignoring products already in use undermines that goal.
The administration's stance is the latest example of Trump siding with industry. In this case, firefighters and construction workers say the move jeopardizes their health.Continue reading the main story
Both groups risk harm from asbestos because of its historical popularity in construction materials ranging from roofing and flooring tiles to insulation used in tens of millions of homes. Most of the insulation came from a mine in a Montana town that's been declared a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site and where hundreds of people have died from asbestos exposure.
"Hundreds of thousands of firefighters are going to be affected by this. It is by far the biggest hazard we have out there," said Patrick Morrison, assistant general president for health and safety at the International Association of Fire Fighters. "My God, these are not just firefighters at risk. There are people that live in these structures and don't know the danger of asbestos."
Asbestos fibers can become deadly when disturbed in a fire or during remodeling, lodging in the lungs and causing problems including mesothelioma, a form of cancer. The material's dangers have long been recognized. But a 1989 attempt to ban most asbestos products was overturned by a federal court, and it remains in widespread use.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health analyzed cancer-related deaths among 30,000 firefighters from Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. The 2015 study concluded firefighters contract mesothelioma at twice the rate of other U.S. residents.
Firefighters also face exposure to flame retardants included in the EPA's review that are used in furniture and other products.
"I believe the chemical industry is killing firefighters," said Tony Stefani, a former San Francisco fireman who retired in 2003 after 28 years when diagnosed with cancer he believes resulted from exposure to chemicals in the pending review.
Stefani said he was one of five in his station to contract cancer in a short period. Three later died, while Stefani had a kidney removed and endured a year of treatment before being declared cancer-free.
"When I entered the department in the early 70s, our biggest fear was dying in the line of duty or succumbing to a heart attack," he said. "Those were the biggest killers, not cancer. But we work in a hazardous-materials situation every time we have a fire now."
Mesothelioma caused or contributed to more than 45,000 deaths nationwide between 1999 and 2015, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study in March. The number of people dying annually from the disease increased about 5 percent during that time.
Congress ordered the EPA review last year to gauge risks of asbestos and nine other highly toxic substances and find better ways to manage them for public safety.
In one of its last acts under Obama, the EPA said in January it would judge the chemicals "in a comprehensive way" based on their "known, intended and reasonably foreseen uses."
Under Trump, the agency has aligned with the chemical industry, which sought to narrow the review's scope. The EPA now says it will focus only on toxins still being manufactured and entering commerce. It won't consider whether new handling and disposal rules are needed for "legacy," or previously existing, materials.
"EPA considers that such purposes generally fall outside of the circumstances Congress intended EPA to consider," said EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones, adding the agency lacks authority to regulate noncommercial uses of the chemicals.
One of the law's co-authors, New Mexico Democratic Sen. Tom Udall, disputes that Congress wanted to limit the review.
"It doesn't matter whether the dangerous substance is no longer being manufactured; if people are still being exposed, then there is still a risk," Udall told The Associated Press. "Ignoring these circumstances would openly violate the letter and the underlying purpose of the law."
Rep. Frank Pallone of New York, ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the EPA was deferring to the chemical industry's wishes at the expense of public health.
Democrats and public health advocates have criticized EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt for hiring two people - Nancy Beck, the agency's deputy assistant administrator for chemical safety, and Liz Bowman, its associate administrator for public affairs - who formerly worked for the American Chemistry Council, the industry's lobbying arm.
The council pushed back against the Obama administration's interpretation of the law, urging the EPA's new leadership to narrow its review. The Trump administration did that in June.
"Did we get everything we wanted? No. But we certainly agree the (Trump) administration put forth a reasonable final rule," said council vice president Michael Walls. Broadening the review, he added, would send the EPA "down a rabbit hole chasing after illusory risks."
The politically influential National Association of Homebuilders, which represents the residential construction industry, fears broadly interpreting the new law would lead to burdensome regulations that are unnecessary because it says asbestos disposal rules already are adequate.
Many of those regulations are based on a 1994 Occupational Safety and Health Administration finding that materials had to contain at least 1 percent asbestos to qualify for regulation. But public health experts say the 1 percent threshold is arbitrary.
"It's bad medicine, and it's harmful," said Michael Harbut, an internal medicine professor at Detroit's Wayne State University and medical adviser to an insulation workers' union.
"There's still a lot of asbestos out there," said Harbut, who helped establish criteria used by physicians to diagnose and treat asbestos-related diseases. "It's still legal, it's still deadly, and it's going to be a problem for decades to come."
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/10/25/us/ap-us-deadly-chemicals.html

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(ACC Mentioned) Editorial: As Newburgh Recovers More Threats Emerging

Oct 24, 2017 | Times Herald-Record

The City of Newburgh might not be preparing a lawsuit if the Department of Defense had been honorable and a good neighbor, admitting its role in contaminating the water supply and offering to pay its share.
But the stalling and resistance has left the city no choice. And while you might think that things could not get worse, that an alternative water supply and financial aid from the state have at least stabilized the situation, you are not paying attention to some other activities in Washington.
The chemicals involved — perfluorooctane sulfonate, a toxic chemical more commonly known as PFOS, and its cousin perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA — are known as legacy chemicals, no longer sold but whose use in previous years is still being felt, as was the case in Newburgh.
One challenge in the local contamination was determining exactly what the threat of PFOA and PFOS contamination is, what levels in the body are dangerous, how long-term exposure can lead to health problems in the future and what is the best way to remediate the situation.
This was a goal of the Environmental Protection Agency until the Trump administration took over and began looking at these dangers from a different perspective. As a New York Times article over the weekend explained, the new EPA leadership is insisting that when it comes to PFOA and others, it will be working toward the “rewriting of a rule to make it harder to track the health consequences of the chemical, and therefore regulate it.”
And this is not the only legacy chemical now getting that treatment. The quest to pull back regulations includes several others and is likely to lead to an “underestimation of the potential risks to human health and the environment” that they cause.
In other words, if you found the Newburgh water contamination troubling but could be relieved that your supply was not affected, just wait. Like the people in the city, you may some day find that an unfamiliar chemical with unclear ramifications for your health has been flowing into your home and the people at the EPA who were working to at the least get a better handle on the effects have been told to look elsewhere.
Most are familiar with the resume of the leader of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, who as attorney general for the state of Oklahoma was a staunch ally of the oil and gas industries and a constant critic of the agency he now heads.
Well, oil and gas are not the only foxes inside this henhouse. The person pushing for decreased scrutiny of chemicals in the environment is Nancy Beck, top deputy in the toxic chemical unit whose credentials include a stint as an executive in the chemical industry’s trade association, the American Chemistry Council.
Beck and others now controlling the EPA are pushing back on regulations they deem to be excessively costly for the industry in pursuit of what they like to call “phantom” threats, ones that lurk in the shadows but might not be that dangerous.
Newburgh understands what happens when one of those phantoms turns real and others soon will get that chance.
http://www.recordonline.com/opinion/20171024/editorial-as-newburgh-recovers-more-threats-emerging

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Asbestos, Dry Cleaning Agent Among 10 Chemicals Under Review

Oct 25, 2017 | AP (In The New York Times)

Under a congressional mandate, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing 10 chemicals to determine if they pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment and should be subject to additional regulation. They range from asbestos, which was widely used for decades in products including insulation and roofing materials, to the dry cleaning chemical PCE.
Here's a look at what the 10 chemicals are used for and the hazards they pose to human health and the environment:
_1,4-Dioxane . Uses: chemicals manufacturing, laboratory chemical, in adhesives and sealants and residual amounts in some consumer products. Hazard: possible human carcinogen.
—1-Bromopropane . Uses: solvent in spray adhesives and dry cleaning, foam cushion manufacturing, lubricant, refrigerant and as a degreaser. Hazard: possible human carcinogen, neurotoxicity, reproductive problems and lung cancer.
—Asbestos . Uses: insulation, coatings and compounds, plastics, roofing products, chlor-alkali production, consumer products and other applications. Also found in certain imported products such as brakes, friction products, gaskets, packing materials and building materials. Hazard: known human carcinogen; acute and chronic toxicity from inhalation.
—Carbon Tetrachloride . Uses: petrochemical manufacturing, degreasing and cleaning, adhesives, sealants, paints, coatings, rubber, cement and asphalt formulation. Hazard: probable human carcinogen.Continue reading the main story
—Cyclic Aliphatic Bromide Cluster (HBCD). Uses: Flame retardant in extruded polystyrene foam for insulation, textiles, and electrical and electronic appliances. Hazard: toxic to aquatic organisms; potential reproductive, developmental and neurological effects in humans.
—Methylene Chloride . Uses: paint stripping, adhesives, pharmaceutical manufacturing, metal cleaning, aerosol solvents, chemical processing, flexible polyurethane foam manufacturing, and miscellaneous other uses. Hazard: probable human carcinogen.
—N-Methylpyrrolidone (NMP). Uses: about 184 million pounds (83 million kilograms) annually in petrochemical processing, plastics, coatings (i.e., resins, paints, finishes, inks and enamels), electronics and other chemical manufacturing, paint removal, and industrial and consumer cleaning, paint removal products, auto care products, home cleaning products, and arts and craft materials. Hazard: reproductive toxicity.
—Pigment Violet 29 . Uses: automotive paints, watercolor and acrylic paints, carpeting, inks, cleaning agents, pharmaceuticals, solar cells, paper, architectural uses, polyester fibers, sporting goods, appliances, agricultural equipment and oil and gas pipelines. Estimated to have moderate releases to the environment. Hazard: toxic to aquatic organisms.
—Trichloroethylene (TCE). Uses: about 250 million pounds (113 million kilograms) per year in manufacturing for refrigerant chemicals, consumer products including as a degreasing solvent and as a spotting agent in dry cleaning. Uses: consumer products. Hazard: probable human carcinogen, can affect developing fetuses, respiratory irritant.
—Tetrachloroethylene (also known as perchloroethylene or PCE). Uses: a solvent used in a wide range of industrial, commercial and industrial applications including in dry cleaning, automotive products, cleaning and furniture care, lubricants, sealants, adhesives, paints and coatings. Hazard: probable human carcinogen.
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/10/25/us/ap-us-deadly-chemicals-glance.html

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States Struggle to Set Standards for Hundreds of Toxics

Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Sylvia Carignan

Several Northeastern state governments are feverishly working to find and clean up two emerging chemicals considered toxic that have contaminated water and soil around the country, but toxicologists say states are missing hundreds more that are related with unknown health risks.
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont are among the states systematically looking at hazardous waste sites, fire departments, and water supplies to determine locations where polyfluorinated and perfluorinated compounds—also known as PFAS chemicals—have concentrated at toxic levels. But with states’ limited resources and unanswered questions about health risks and remediation, the contaminants could be going unchecked in drinking water, soil, and groundwater.
There are hundreds of compounds within the PFAS group, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Companies that are or were in the PFAS-producing industry include Arkema, DuPont, 3M, Chemours, and BASF Corporation.
“One of the...biggest faults that we find in the regulatory approaches that are being used for PFAS compounds are whether out of convenience or ignorance, they are being treated as one compound,” Judi Durda, vice president and principal toxicologist at Integral Consulting, told Bloomberg BNA.
The compounds have been used to manufacture non-stick and stain-resistant coatings in clothing, fast food wrappers, carpets and other consumer products.
Many states have found at least a handful of sites contaminated with two types of PFAS, though those may be only the tip of the iceberg.
The two types—perfluorooctane sulfonate, known as PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, known as PFOA—are getting the most attention in states’ environmental departments, but other compounds in the PFAS family also could pose health risks, Durda said.
Lesser-known compounds that have been found in water supplies in New Hampshire, for example, include perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA), perfluoroheptanoic acid (PFHpA), perfluoro-n-pentanoic acid (PFPEA) and perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA).
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has provided guidance to states regarding PFOA and PFOS, but does not yet regulate them with soil or water standards.
Tracking Multiple Toxins
The state of New Hampshire is making an effort to avoid the pitfall Durda outlined.
“We like to analyze for as many compounds as we can get, so typically 20-30 of them,” said Lea Anne Atwell, project manager at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services’ Hazardous Waste Remediation Bureau. “There's more compounds that we're analyzing for, but we haven't seen those [in test results].”
Atwell and representatives from other New England states spoke Oct. 19 at a conference of the Association for Environmental Health and Sciences Foundation in Amherst, Mass.
The state found PFOS and PFOA above 70 parts per trillion at about 60 percent of unlined landfills, and found the compounds in groundwater.
New Hampshire has set standards for acceptable levels of PFOA and PFOS, Atwell said, “but our approach is that we wanted to see what's out there…and what we're dealing with.”
The state of Massachusetts is considering creating standards for “possibly multiple” PFAS compounds, according to Paul Locke, assistant commissioner for waste site cleanup at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. But, the department also has to consider other priorities, like 1,4-dioxane, which Locke said appears in environmental samples more often.
“We're balancing and trying to figure that out right now,” he told Bloomberg Environment.
The Environmental Protection Agency has deemed 1,4-dioxane a “likely human carcinogen” that has been found in groundwater throughout the U.S. The chemical is used in products such as dyes, greases, varnishes, and paint strippers.
Health Risks
According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, most people in the U.S. have one form of PFAS chemicals in their blood, especially PFOA and PFOS.
The EPA released a health advisory last winter for PFOA and PFOS. When people are exposed to PFOA or PFOS at more than 70 parts per trillion over their lifetimes, the EPA said, they may be at risk for developmental effects to fetuses, testicular and kidney cancer, liver tissue damage, immune system effects, thyroid effects, and changes in cholesterol.
Some of the states’ searches for perfluorinated compounds were set into motion by the EPA's third Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, also known as UCMR 3. The rule, published in 2012, asks large public water systems to test water for several perfluorinated compounds.
The compounds in the rule are PFOA, PFOS, perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluoroheptanoic acid (PFHpA) and perfluorobutanesulfonic acid (PFBS).
Before the EPA rule, few state agencies were looking for any of the compounds in that family.
“Why don't people look for them? Because we don't have standards for them,” Locke said at the Amherst conference. “As long as nobody's looking for it, it's not there.”
To address PFAS, Massachusetts is now monitoring water supplies more frequently, blending water from multiple wells to dilute the concentration of PFAS, deactivating wells where PFAS is found, and treating contaminated wells.
The toxicity of perfluorinated compounds is a little more clear than that of polyfluorinated compounds, Elizabeth Denly, quality assurance and chemistry systems director for TRC Solutions in Lowell, Mass., told Bloomberg Environment. But, it's unclear what the lack of state and federal standards means for public health.

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Chemours’ Chemical Actions Spur N.C. to Retain Wastewater Permit

Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Andrew M. Ballard

The Chemours Co. can keep its wastewater discharge permit for its facility in Fayetteville, N.C., because of work the company has done to address contamination involving a substitute for the widely used chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), state regulators say.
North Carolina regulators informed the company in an Oct. 24 letter that, because of efforts the company took to prevent releases of GenX and other per- and polyfluourinated compounds, they decided not to suspend the permit. The compounds at issue have been linked to certain health effects and are used to make stain resistant coatings for carpets, rain gear, fast food wrappers, and frying pans.
Discharges of GenX and other compounds into the Cape Fear River have led to a state and federal investigation and several lawsuits against Chemours and DuPont, its past parent company. Chemours has stopped discharging GenX and two other compounds of concern and is providing bottled water to certain residents living near its facility.
Chemours representatives didn't immediately respond to Bloomberg Environment's requests for comment.
Investigations, Lawsuits
The state Department of Environmental Quality had informed Chemours in September it was beginning the process of suspending its discharge permit “for failure to adequately disclose the release of GenX into the river.” In announcing Oct. 24 that it had decided against pulling the permit at this time, the agency said it would continue to evaluate the matter.
“People deserve to know the water they are drinking is safe, and we are doing everything in our power to make sure it is,” Michael Regan, North Carolina's secretary of environmental quality, said in an Oct. 24 statement. “We have ordered Chemours to stop releasing these compounds and we will continue to scrutinize the company's actions to ensure they are meeting all of our demands to protect water quality.”
Gov. Roy Cooper (D) recently formed a new scientific advisory group to provide advice on GenX, hexavalent chromium, and other “new and emerging chemicals” and their potential impacts on human health and the environment. That group had its first meeting Oct. 23 in Raleigh.
At least four lawsuits have been filed in federal court against Chemours and DuPont over GenX releases this month, including one by the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority that claims the companies withheld information about the contamination. A lawsuit also was filed on behalf of affected residents Oct. 23 by the law firm that represented people impacted by the tainted water in Flint, Mich. (Carey v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co., E.D.N.C., No. 7:17-cv-00201, filed10/23/17).

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European Parliament Calls for Glyphosate Phaseout Ahead of Vote

Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Stephen Gardner

The European Union should reauthorize the use of glyphosate for a limited period before phasing it out, according to a nonbinding resolution European Parliament lawmakers adopted one day before a key regulatory committee vote on the world's most widely used herbicide.
The EU authorization for glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto Co.’s Roundup and dozens of other herbicides, expires Dec. 15. The bloc's regulators have been dragging their feet about reauthorizing it amid cancer concerns and a public campaign against continued use of the substance.
Under EU rules, a decision on reauthorization would be taken by a regulatory panel of EU national representatives, known as the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed. The committee is scheduled to meet Oct. 25, but it's unclear if a vote will take place.

The European Parliament, sitting in Strasbourg, France, voted 355–204, with 11 abstentions, for an advisory resolution that said glyphosate should be reauthorized up to the end of 2022 for agricultural use only, and thereafter should be banned in the EU.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said in May glyphosate could be reauthorized for 10 years through 2027. The commission stepped back from that Oct. 24, however. Commission spokeswoman Anca Paduraru told Bloomberg Environment the commission will talk with the regulatory committee Oct. 25 about a renewal of five to seven years for the herbicide.
If the commission decides there's enough support for a five-to-seven year renewal, then a vote in the committee could take place, Paduraru said.
Polarized Views
The reauthorization in the EU of glyphosate has been held up since the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer declared it “probably carcinogenic” in 2015. Since then, the European Chemicals Agency and the European Food Safety Authority have issued assessments contradicting the international agency's finding.
Countries such as France and Italy said they would vote against the commission's proposed 10-year authorization. A public campaign by environmental groups including Greenpeace has gathered more than a million signatures on a formal petition to ban glyphosate, which under EU rules would force the European Commission to consider the request.
Graeme Taylor, public affairs director for the European Crop Protection Association, said in an Oct. 24 emailed statement that, “given the calls to ban glyphosate, it is encouraging to see that the Parliament has voted yet again to reapprove it,” but that five years was an “arbitrary number” of years for the reauthorization. The regulatory committee Oct. 25 should reauthorize glyphosate for 15 years, Taylor said.
Natacha Cingotti, chemicals policy officer for the Health & Environment Alliance, an advocacy group, said in an Oct. 24 statement that the regulatory committee should follow the European Parliament's lead and “agree on a full phase-out plan for glyphosate as soon as possible.”

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EU Delays Decision on Herbicide Glyphosate

Oct 25, 2017 | Reuters (In The New York Times)

By Philip Blenkinsop

BRUSSELS — EU countries failed on Wednesday to vote on a licence extension for weedkiller glyphosate, delaying again a decision on the widely used herbicide that critics say could cause cancer.
The European Commission said in a statement the relevant committee did not hold a vote at a meeting and that it would announce the date of the next meeting shortly.
It also failed to vote at a meeting earlier this month. The current licence expires at the end of the year.
Europe has been stuck over what to do with the chemical, a key ingredient in Monsanto Co's top-selling weedkiller Roundup, after the World Health Organization's cancer agency concluded in March 2015 it was a substance that probably causes cancer.
The classification has led to mass litigation in the United States.
The EU passed an 18-month extension in June 2016 pending further scientific study.Continue reading the main story
That research came in the form of a European Chemical Agency conclusion in March that there was no evidence to link glyphosate to cancer in humans.
It was the same conclusion as that of the European Food Safety Agency and of regulatory bodies of other countries such as Canada and Japan.
In anticipation of a vote, the European Parliament called on Tuesday for the weedkiller to be phased out in the next five years, prompting the Commission to drop its proposal for a 10 year licence extension.
The Commission then said it would seek to find a consensus around an extension of between five and seven years.
Weedkillers containing glyphosate have been in use for more than 40 years. European agriculture group Copa and Cogeca says the product is safe and that removing it would put EU farmers at a competitive disadvantage.
Campaign group Greenpeace has questioned the methodology of studies concluding glyphosate is safe and says there are other farming methods, including crop rotation, to reduce weeds.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/10/25/business/25reuters-eu-health-glyphosate.html

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Dow, BASF Beat Kasowitz Firm's Whistleblower Claims

Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Peter Hayes

BASF, Dow Chemical, Covestro LLC and Huntsman International have beaten federal whistleblower claims alleging that they failed to report chemical dangers (United States ex rel. Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP v. BASF Corp., 2017 BL 378811, D.D.C., No. 16-2269, 10/23/17).
The False Claims Act suit filed by the law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP failed because the companies had no “obligation to pay” penalties to the government, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said.
Under the FCA, private parties may sue others for defrauding the federal government.
The Kasowitz firm filed the claims under the “reverse” false claims provision, under which a party may be liable for avoiding “an obligation to pay or transmit money or property to the Government.”
The complaint alleged that the companies opened themselves up to reporting penalties under the FCA by failing to report the dangers of isocyanate chemicals to federal regulators as required under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
The firm alleged that the companies were liable for billions of dollars in reporting penalties, despite the fact that the EPA never imposed any penalties for failure to report.
Because the government never imposed a penalty, the companies had no duty to pay penalties, and thus no FCA liability, the court ruled.
“An unassessed penalty is not an ‘obligation’ to pay the United States under the reverse false claims provision,” the court said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in Simoneaux v. DuPont, dismissed a similar claim in December 2016.
The government opposed the claims in both cases.
Judge Rosemary M. Collyer issued the opinion.
Venable LLP represented BASF.
Latham & Watkins LLP represented Dow.
Reed Smith LLP represented Huntsman International LLC.
Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP represented Covestro LLC.

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European Commission Briefs On Future Of POPs

Oct 25, 2017 | Chemical Watch

A European Commission report on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) has concluded that there are many reasons for vigilance but that research, regulatory and implementation efforts can reduce or even eliminate POPs from the environment.
The report is part of the Science for Environment Policy, Future Brief series in which DG Environment provides the latest policy relevant research findings.
POPs are still present, it says, with possible impacts explored in the report of reproductive effects on mother, child and foetus and endocrine disruption among others. But monitoring studies indicate that regulation has curbed emissions and led to a decline detected in the atmosphere and in humans.
The report advises that impacts, emissions and mitigation measures need to be carefully considered for newly identified POPs, for which there is less data.
It also stresses the necessity of finding substitutes if usage is to be reduced. A broad range of non-chemical alternatives should also be considered, it says, as well as looking at the methods for identifying alternatives themselves.
Meanwhile, the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) said in June that the process for evaluating substances under the UN Stockholm Convention on POPs needs to be 'modernised'.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60464/european-commission-briefs-on-future-of-pops

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Energy News

In Washington Clash of Industries, King Corn Trounces Big Oil

Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy

Farm-state interests just conquered Big Oil in a fight over biofuels, proving that in Donald Trump's Washington, King Corn still reigns.
The clash erupted over the future of the Renewable Fuel Standard, a 12-year-old law that compels the use of fuels such as corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel. Although the president had repeatedly promised Midwest voters he would “protect” ethanol and support the program, his Environmental Protection Agency was considering steps to dilute the mandate.
Farm-state governors and senators revolted—setting off a behind-the-scenes struggle between two special-interest heavyweights. Lobbyists for oil refiners warned of higher gasoline prices if the administration backed down. Iowa leaders countered that Trump could face political retribution in 2020 during the state's first-in-the-nation caucuses. Republican senators threatened to delay confirmation of his nominees.
“I wasn't afraid to put the squeeze on,” Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, said in an interview. “This was really important. We've got 88,500 family farms here in Iowa, and they rely on this.“
After three weeks of frenzied lobbying by both sides, the president ordered his EPA administrator to back off—handing an unalloyed victory to the farm belt. EPA chief Scott Pruitt's formal capitulation came days later in the form of a letter that detailed concessions to biofuel producers and underscored corn's continued clout in the nation's capital.
The issue is politically perilous for any president, but especially Trump, who visited ethanol factories while campaigning in Iowa and promised the state's voters he would stand by the home-grown biofuel if they elected him to the White House.
But biofuel industry leaders grew worried after Trump began staffing his administration with allies of the oil industry, which views the biofuel requirements as costly and burdensome. Chief among them: Pruitt, a former attorney general from Oklahoma who criticized the RFS before he became EPA administrator and is expected to run for political office from the state, where ethanol-free gasoline flows at many filling stations and the oil industry dominates.
Then came a formal EPA request for public comment on possibly reducing biodiesel quotas. The Sept. 26 “notice of data availability” that set those potential changes in motion posed some 20 questions about ways to lower quotas. None related to increasing the mandate. It explicitly invoked oil industry arguments about the danger of relying on imported biodiesel.
A day later, Bloomberg reported the EPA was weighing a plan to allow exported biofuel to count toward domestic quotas—a move that would drive down compliance costs for refiners but disadvantage many ethanol makers.
The threat was obvious. “It galvanized our industry,” said Brooke Coleman, executive director of the Advanced Biofuels Business Council.
The oil industry, by contrast, remained fractured over the best prescription for what they argue are rising costs of complying with the law. Oil industry lobbyists urged Trump administration officials not to give in to an “extortion” attempt by senators, nor back down from changes they described as modest fixes needed to keep gasoline prices from spiking.
But they were outmatched. In the Midwest, the news of a possible reduction in biofuels quotas arrived as cash-strapped farmers were already growing concerned about Trump's trade policy. Taking the teeth out of a program that helps to put a floor under corn and soybean prices would only add to their current woes, they worried. Some 38 percent of the corn crop is destined for ethanol plants, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The response was immediate. Ethanol supporters who had battled biodiesel backers on other policy matters linked arm in arm.
“With that one-two punch, there was not a segment of the industry that was not facing a severe threat to its future,” said Monte Shaw, head of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. “The only alternative was to try to get this on the president's radar screen and hope that he in fact was going to stick by his promises -- and he did.“
The biofuel industry was able to count on a host of Midwest politicians to advance their cause, from statehouses to the U.S. Capitol. Thirty-eight senators sent a letter to Pruitt backing the RFS on Oct. 5, and four governors sent their own missive to Trump Oct. 16.
Among the industry's fiercest advocates: Chuck Grassley, the Republican senior senator from Iowa, who immediately decried a “bait and switch” by the Trump administration. He took to Twitter and the Senate floor to voice his displeasure. Grassley's complaints prompted a call from Trump, who told Pruitt to meet with senator. “That woke everybody up,” Grassley said.
“My point in talking to the president was to make the point that he had some people in his administration that weren't helping him keep his campaign promises,” Grassley said in an interview. “He needed to know he was being undercut.“
Trump subsequently directed his EPA administrator to resolve the senator's concerns, according to people familiar with the discussions. The message: Keep Grassley happy.
Grassley's Leverage
Grassley had unique leverage. He heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, which plays a gatekeeper role vetting judicial nominations and has the power to probe numerous issues, including Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.
“It is clear that the political novice—the president—knows how powerful the head of the Judiciary Committee is,” said Jeff Stein, a political analyst who hosts an afternoon talk radio program on KXEL in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “To have Iowa's leading senators make very public stands sent a message to the White House that this was different.“
Grassley and Pruitt met for lunch Oct. 16 followed by a closed-door meeting with four other senators a day later. According to multiple accounts, Grassley did most of the talking in that session—occasionally with a raised voice.
Pruitt and his staff members may have thought the RFS program “could be modified a little bit without doing any harm,” Grassley said in an interview. “Our job was to point out great harm could be done, and we made our point.“
An EPA spokesman declined to comment on this story. A top EPA official said last week that the agency's goal was to make the program work better—and to encourage domestic biofuel use, not undermine the initiative.
Beyond Politics
Even beyond politics, biofuel backers had additional leverage. Ernst, the other Iowa senator, is one of 11 Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which was considering the nomination of lawyer Bill Wehrum to lead the EPA office that administers the biofuel program. With 10 panel Democrats expected to vote no, her position would be decisive.
Although Pruitt told senators he would support the RFS, Ernst insisted she needed Pruitt's assurances in writing before she could support Wehrum.
Back in Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds pressed the issue in a phone call with the president, following it up with a Oc.t 18 news conference with ethanol producers.
“They are feeling the pressure, and that's why we need to keep it up, we can't let down,” Reynolds said then.
The following evening, Pruitt sent a letter to Ernst and other senators promising the EPA would not cut biodiesel quotas and would drop consideration of the ethanol exports idea. Ernst said she would back Wehrum for the EPA job, and the Senate committee rescheduled its vote on his nomination for Oct. 18.
But not everyone was pleased.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board termed the episode a “special-interest shakedown.” Chet Thompson, head of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, said it was “astonishing” to see Pruitt making concessions “to appease a few senators at the expense of American families and workers.“
Valero Energy Corp., an independent refiner seeking some of the changes, blasted the senators’ opposition as “bullying” rooted in “a desire to maintain the status quo” and “protect windfall profits associated with unregulated trading” of biofuel compliance credits.
Coleman, with the biofuels council, says this wasn't a case of the administration bowing to special interests, but rather it was an example of Trump keeping his promise to the mid-American voters who got him elected.
“We're not the swamp; we're the anti-swamp,” Coleman said. “He bucked special interests to return to and in favor of rural America.“

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Environment News

(ACC Mentioned) Climate-Change Costs Could Rise By $35 Billion A Year Within Decades: Report

Oct 24, 2017 | Metro US

By Michael Martin

The nonpartisan report comes as the Trump administration continues to roll back efforts to fight climate change.
The cost of climate change could rise by $35 billion a year by mid-century, and the federal government should develop a strategy to manage climate-change risks, a new report by the nonpartisan General Accountability Office says.
The report, prepared at the request of Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, comes as President Trump continues to roll back the environmental initiatives of the Obama administration, and a new estimate shows the cost of 2017's hurricanes and wildfires nearly matches what the federal government spent on weather-recovery efforts over the last decade.
"Climate change impacts are already costing the federal government money, and these costs will likely increase over time as the climate continues to change," said the report, which noted that extreme fire and weather events have cost the government $350 billion over the last decade per the Office of Management and Budget.
Preliminary government estimates show that economic losses related to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the wildfires in nine western states this year alone will top $300 billion.
"Our government cannot afford to spend more than $300 billion each year in response to severe weather events that are connected to warming waters, which produce stronger hurricanes,” said Collins.
The report means the federal government will need to pay "trillions more in the future unless we mitigate the impacts," said Cantwell, whose home state of Washington was affected by wildfires this year.
The GAO recommended that White House executive offices, including the Office of Science and Technology Policy, use available economic reports to "craft appropriate federal responses."
Trump, a climate-change denier, has not appointed a chief scientific policy officer.
This week, it was reported that dozens of resources to help state and local governments prepare for the effects of climate change had been scrubbed from the Environmental Protection Agency's website.
Trump has filled key environmental positions with climate-change skeptics and advocates for chemical industries: Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the EPA, does not agree with scientific consensus that human activity is the source of climate change and has sued the EPA 14 times over environmental regulations. Trump's nominee to chair the Commission on Environmental Quality, Kathleen Hartnett-White, is a climate-change skeptic who once called carbon dioxide "the gas of life on this planet" and has called efforts to combat climate change an attack on the fossil fuel industry. The New York Times reported Sunday that Nancy Beck, a new top deputy in the EPA's toxic chemical unit, jointed the agency from the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry's top trade association.
https://www.metro.us/news/the-big-stories/climate-change-costs-rise-35-billion-year

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House Passes Bill Targeting Environmental Settlements

Oct 25, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Dean Scott

A House-passed bill that would end a Justice Department practice of entering into settlements that steer funds to third-party groups faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
The House on Oct. 24 approved the measure (H.R. 732) by a 238–183 vote. The bill bars federal agencies from requiring defendants to donate money to outside groups as part of settlement agreements, and requires that settlement money either goes directly to victims or to the U.S. Treasury.
But passage of the House bill, introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), is unlikely to create much momentum in the Senate, where Republicans need 60 votes to overcome likely Democratic opposition. The House passed a similar bill last year, but it didn't move in the Senate.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a leading voice for revamping regulatory processes and rolling back regulations, introduced the Senate version (S. 333) in February but has yet to attract a single Democratic co-sponsor.
Favored Projects
Republicans said they disliked the way the Justice Department has required a donation to an outside group when the agency settled a lawsuit with a corporation or individual as a term of those agreements. They argued that some settlements have forced companies to fund projects favored by environmental groups rather than focusing on simply addressing the harm of companies’ actions.
They pointed to the settlement in which Volkswagen AG agreed with the Obama administration not only to pay a $2.8 billion criminal fine over its diesel emissions cheating scandal but also to fund environmental remediation projects intended to fully offset the excess pollution linked to its diesel fleet and to invest in U.S. electric-vehicle infrastructure.
Those settlement requirements in effect forced VW to fund an electric-vehicle policy that Congress did not approve, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said during debate on the bill.
Once a penalty is agreed to and paid to the Treasury, it should be “left to the people's elected representatives in Congress” to decide whether to undertake national initiatives such as electric vehicles, he said.
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), argued the bill would hamstring settlements to remove lead contamination from drinking water supplies, such as those that could address future lead contamination.

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Attorney Urges EPA To Scale Back Consent Decree Monitoring Mandates

Oct 24, 2017 | Inside EPA

By Dave Reynolds

BALTIMORE -- An industry attorney is urging EPA to scale back its use of mandates in enforcement consent decrees for companies to use new environmental monitoring technologies that can impose major costs on individual companies, instead suggesting EPA require their use through the permitting process for all facilities.
But a top agency enforcement official says that EPA is not driving the development of technology used to monitor adherence to consent decrees, but merely using the technology to collect better data and ensure requirements are met.
Debate over how EPA should use infrared cameras and other emerging monitoring technologies in facility oversight grew during the Obama administration, when it prioritized use of new technologies in its so-called “next generation” enforcement efforts. The efforts called for greater focus on advanced environmental monitoring, such as portable air quality sensors, as opposed to site visits from agency or state inspectors.
At the American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy and Resources (SEER) 2017 conference here Oct. 19, lawyer Richard Alonso of Sidely Austin LLP -- who represents several industries -- said EPA enforcement officials are using infrared cameras to detect emissions from oil refinery tanks, and requiring use of the cameras and other novel equipment in consent decrees, imposing costly requirements on some companies but not others.
“When it comes to the regulatory aspect, enforcement is driving this technology from a compliance perspective, not the permitting office,” Alonso said. “It's a little scary when you're a regulated industry,” he added, noting that enforcement actions impose new requirements for use of the technologies on a case-by-case basis.
Alonso said that EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) is relying on information gathering and general duty clause authorities, such as requirements that facilities take reasonable steps to reduce emissions, to impose the new compliance obligations not specifically called for in permits or regulations.
But EPA's Mike Fisher, legal division director in OECA's Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics & Training, argued that agency enforcement officials are using the new technologies to ensure facilities meet existing requirements.
“The fact the EPA has a new sensor does not allow them to subject [facilities] to new pollution control, requirements,” Fisher said at the SEER conference. But “all the sudden, with new information, what's reasonable is different and more powerful and allows the facility to control emissions that no one knew about before.”
Fisher argued that industry's “settled expectations” about how to comply with existing obligations may be changing though the standards have not. Fisher noted that Susan Bodine, a special advisor to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt who is awaiting Senate confirmation as the agency's enforcement chief, attended the ABA conference, and suggested that Alonso “dial back” his advocacy to the Trump administration on EPA enforcement policy.
Enforcement Initiatives
In September 2015, the Obama EPA proposed new National Enforcement Initiatives (NEIs) as part of its fiscal years 2017 through 2019 enforcement strategy, and officials said they intended to adapt the plans to the agency's next generation compliance framework. The three new proposed NEIs included a renewed focus on air toxics at the community level, especially in environmental justice communities and when the releases are from organic liquid storage tanks or hazardous wastes.
But an industry attorney pushed back at the time, saying the EPA plan raised fears of a spike in prosecutions, if the agency increased focus on enforcing against air toxics violations while also encouraging the use of new monitoring technologies. The attorney noted that data from next generation tools could be cited as falling under a Clean Air Act provision that allows "any credible evidence" to support an enforcement action, rather than only the monitoring methods spelled out in EPA rules.
David Hindin, director of EPA's Office of Compliance, told the SEER conference that new sensor technologies are changing a long-standing paradigm of pollution monitoring. While EPA traditionally sets standards for monitoring technologies and assuring quality data, new equipment allows citizens to measure emissions data and provide it directly to the public.
Hindin noted that increased public availability of data will ultimately be a good thing, though numerous challenges exist. He said EPA lacks resources to certify the accuracy of the equipment, but that testing of some equipment has proven some manufacturers' claims inaccurate.
“Some devices are easy to use, but easier to misuse,” Hindin said, of new technologies available to consumers. By contrast, technologies used by regulators and industry are well-tested.
Alonso's comments at the ABA meeting for EPA to push new monitoring technologies through permitting and rules rather than enforcement decrees came during a panel discussion on the “Legal Implications of Emerging Pollution Sensors and Monitoring Technologies.”
Monitoring Technologies
The Environmental Defense Fund's Vickie Patton told the meeting that after industrial releases in Houston caused by Hurricane Harvey floodwaters, advocates partnered with Silicon Valley tech companies and used “laboratory quality” mobile monitors to detect high levels of benzene releases.
After their findings, Patton said, EPA has indicated it is beginning an investigation into the releases. She also said Valero plans to submit revised reporting of releases that resulted from the storm.
Alonso argued that use of infrared cameras and other new technologies are significantly changing facilities' compliance obligations. While facilities have traditionally complied with air rules by purchasing equipment rated to reduce releases to permitted levels, new technologies are revealing that properly maintained equipment is not working.
And he said regulators, including EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) are already using the technology in enforcement. TCEQ has mounted infrared cameras on helicopters and flown over facilities and then used the images to target facilities for inspection.
In a May 17 consent decree with Vopak Terminal Deer Park Inc. and Vopak Logistics Services USA, Inc, EPA and TCEQ imposed new compliance mandates on the facility, including using infrared cameras to check for leaks, Alonso said. The company is required to inspect and then repair leaking tanks, and return with cameras for a subsequent check.
He also said currently available equipment has significant limitations, noting that infrared cameras may show a leak but not quantify the emissions. When improved cameras are able to quantify releases that will be a “game-changer” for compliance, Alonso acknowledged.
Given the equipment in use now, Alonso said, facilities that are doing their best to reduce emissions face limited evidence from new technologies that is hard to assess and address.
“I've been in situations where tanks are fine and all the seals are in place and EPA says it's leaking or venting too much,” he said. “I don't know how to deal with that.”

https://insideepa.com/daily-news/attorney-urges-epa-scale-back-consent-decree-monitoring-mandates

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AAPCA's Woods Says States Can Improve EPA Rules 'On The Front End'

Oct 24, 2017 | Inside EPA

By Anthony Lacey

Clint Woods, executive director of a group of state air quality agencies, is welcoming EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's push to bolster states' role in environmental protection, saying states can “improve regulations on the front end” if EPA includes them more closely in crafting rules and gives them a greater role on agency advisory panels.
“I'm enthusiastic about the administration's emphasis on cooperative federalism,” Woods said in an Oct. 20 interview with Inside EPA.
Woods' group, the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies (AAPCA), which represents several state and local air agencies, launched in 2012 with the goal of “assisting air quality agencies and personnel with implementation and technical issues associated with the federal Clean Air Act,” according to its website.
The group formed after some states in the National Association of Clean Air Agencies faulted that organization for pursuing what it saw as non-technical political support for Obama EPA rules.
Woods said AAPCA in contrast is “highly focused on technical issues, we're consensus driven, often we don't take positions on major rulemakings but we fill in the gaps and provide resources for members.”
The group is currently taking a number of steps to push EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and others to tap state officials for key advisory roles and other positions. Pruitt is expected to announce his selections in the coming days.
For example, last month, AAPCA submitted separate comments urging EPA to include state officials on its Science Advisory Board (SAB) and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC).
In Sept. 15 comments AAPCA backed four state experts that EPA included in its list of potential candidates for CASAC -- Dr. James Boylan of Georgia's Environmental Protection Division, Dr. Sabine Lange of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality; Dr. Steve Packham of Utah's Department of Environmental Quality; and Dr. Larry Wolk of Colorado's Department of Public Health and Environment.
“These individuals have demonstrated high levels of competence, knowledge, and expertise in fields relevant to air pollution and air quality issues, and possess significant experience in the technical aspects of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), including cost-benefit analysis, modeling, monitoring, and emissions inventory assessment. Their on-the-ground experience in implementing the NAAQS would be indispensable to CASAC and EPA, and would provide key perspectives in the scientific review process,” AAPCA said.
Woods says that tapping state officials for such roles “could help improve regulations on the front end by having states involved.”
He says that increasing states' involvement at the front end -- before final regulatory or other decisions are made -- can help improve implementation for a score of Clean Air Act issues, ranging from helping to reduce the number of areas out of attainment with the six NAAQS for ozone, fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and other pollutants, to offering states' perspective on major EPA advisory committees.
NAAQS Attainment
Involving states early could also help Pruitt achieve his goal of significantly reducing NAAQS nonattainment areas, Woods said. “That obviously is a shared goal,” he said, and AAPCA has offered suggestions including doing more planning on the front end of the NAAQS process to craft strategies for meeting the standards.
EPA is currently reconsidering the Obama administration's decision in 2015 to tighten the ozone NAAQS from 75 parts per billion (ppb) in 2008 down to 70 ppb, but the agency missed an Oct. 1 deadline to issue designations for which areas are either attaining or violating the standard.
The designations are vital to states because they start the Clean Air Act clock for crafting state implementation plans (SIP) for cutting ozone and attaining the NAAQS.
Asked about AAPCA member states' response to the delay, Woods said, “You'd probably get 50 different answers from 50 different states and some of them would surprise you. Some might appreciate the breathing room of additional time for designations” because it gives them more time to collect air quality data that might help argue in favor of an attainment designation rather than the nonattainment designation states try to avoid.
“But quite a few would rather have designations sooner than later, and some states are probably not going to have any nonattainment areas,” Woods said.
Once states submit their SIPs for the ozone NAAQS and other air programs such as the regional haze program, Woods also said that “it's entirely possible” that the Trump EPA could issue a federal implementation plan (FIP) in which the agency finds a SIP deficient and imposes its own emissions-reduction plan on states.
Woods said that EPA in recent years has “shifted toward a FIP presumption” for some programs, but he expressed hope that states will be able to “get the right information and EPA guidance to develop an approvable SIP.”
Achieving those goals will require close communication with EPA, and Woods concluded that the agency even before President Donald Trump took office “has been very responsive.”
Strategic Plan
Other steps that EPA is taking could also help bolster states' roles in EPA policymaking.
For example, the agency's recent draft strategic plan for 2018-2022 includes a vow to develop a new joint governance model recognizing states' programs and assessing EPA programs for potential future delegation.
The draft plan offers a general overview of how the agency intends to bolster states' roles, and Woods said AAPCA is still “trying to distill that down.”
In addition, he noted several Obama-era rules “of great interest” that the Trump EPA is now working to repeal.
Chief among them is the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the rule governing greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.
Woods says the proposed repeal is one of the regulatory actions that “suck up all the oxygen.” AAPCA's work will be to inform its member states about the issues on which EPA is seeking comment as part of the proposed repeal, such as explaining technical changes that the agency made in the regulatory impact analysis for the proposal that downplays the Obama EPA's predicted benefits of the CPP -- including changes to how the agency counts ancillary co-benefits of reducing non-GHGs such as PM2.5.
Environmentalists and some Democratic lawmakers have criticized the Trump EPA for pursuing what they see as an overly deregulatory agenda, including the proposed repeal of the CPP, reconsideration of the 2015 ozone NAAQS, and more.
Asked whether the Trump EPA is unlike any administration before, Woods said, “Any time there's a transition after eight years of a different administration there are going to be bumps in the road. Obviously this EPA has some very different priorities on rules, but the lines of communication are open” to states.
But he downplayed concerns and said that on issues such as the budget “we use history as our guide, and there you see a little bit more consistence” -- for example for Congress annually rejecting proposed administration cuts to EPA grants to states, regardless of whether a Democratic or GOP president proposes them.
“It can sometimes seem like the end of history, but things in Washington often end up working like more of the same,” Woods said.
Still, he said that the Trump administration offers several “inflection points” whose themes coincide with issues raised by AAPCA's members: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming and several local air agencies throughout the United States.
“There are some positive signals, some areas for collaboration with our federal counterparts,” he said, including regulatory reform; the Commerce Department's recent report calling for streamlining Clean Air Act new source review permitting and other programs; improving cooperative federalism, and more.
“Those terms could be a Rorschach test in what they mean for state and local agencies with delegated authorities and how that all fits together,” Woods said.
He noted that the pace of the Senate confirmation for nominees to top EPA positions -- for example former George W. Bush EPA acting air chief Bill Wehrum to head the agency's air office -- has been “in some cases slower than we'd like,” but added that “even before and after the [presidential] transition we heard that their doors and ears were open.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/aapcas-woods-says-states-can-improve-epa-rules-front-end

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ECOS Launches New Website To Push For Flexibility In Environmental Oversight

Oct 24, 2017 | Inside EPA

By Dave Reynolds

The Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) has launched a new website to improve public access to state environmental data reported to EPA, an effort that a top Trump EPA official says will help states' push to shift to an “outcome-based” assessment of their pollution control efforts and allow them greater flexibility in meeting their goals.
During an Oct. 24 conference call, ECOS officials touted EcosResults.org as a first-ever site detailing states' pollution reduction efforts on a national scale using common measures. They said common data elements would allow the public to compare states' environmental efforts and serve as a foundation for setting future state and federal metrics.
The effort is also winning praise from Henry Darwin, a former Arizona environment chief who is EPA's chief of operations and the third top-ranking official at the agency. “To know how we are doing in protecting human health and the environment, we must measure the right things,” he said in an Oct. 24 statement issued by ECOS.
“By tracking state environmental and public health progress on a national scale using a common set of measures, ECOS Results is providing a critical step forward in this collective effort.”
ECOS officials said that EPA collaborated on the website, which contains state data reported to the agency.
Launch of the website comes as EPA and state officials have also launched a new workgroup to craft a plan for streamlining EPA reviews of states' federally delegated environmental programs.
ECOS' new website currently compiles data from 15 states on a small set of public health and economic measures of state efforts in four fundamental areas of environmental oversight: air that's healthy to breathe, healthy and thriving communities, less and properly managed waste, and clean water available for all uses.
State officials say that work began on the website in 2015, and that all states that participate in ECOS are expected to put data on the site by this time next year. The 15 states already participating include, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
During the Oct. 24 call John Linc Stine, an ECOS past president and commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, said that states are beginning talks with EPA on aligning metrics for assessing environmental cleanup efforts, but that having common data sets, such as those on ECOS Results, is a step forward in defining future metrics.
Changing metrics for assessing states' environmental cleanup efforts is one of a series of goals under ECOS' recent paper on “Cooperative Federalism 2.0,” which sets principles for redefining state and federal roles overseeing pollution control requirements in the face of significant uncertainty about EPA's future budgets and its regulatory role.
In the Oct. 24 statement, ECOS President Todd Parfitt says that the ECOS Results site will help states, EPA and the public assess the outcomes of state programs seeking to provide clean air, water and land. He also says it furthers ECOS' cooperative federalism efforts in that it is a public platform that focuses on environmental outcomes.
Officials told the call that ECOS began work on the ECOS Results website in 2015, prior to the groups' renewed focus on cooperative federalism but that the site's increased transparency and consistent data elements further that effort.
In an Oct. 19 interview with Inside EPA, ECOS Executive Director and General Counsel Alexandra Dunn said that greater focus on the outcomes of state environmental programs could bring states greater flexibility in how they achieve pollution reduction controls.
For example, Dunn said that if states and EPA seek to achieve an 85-90 percent compliance rate within a particular sector, rather than simply focusing on the number of enforcement actions, then states could use voluntary approaches, such as conducting training or workshops, or facilitating industry mentoring, as well as enforcement to meet the desired outcome.
“Both are trying to do the same thing,” Dunn said. “But one allows for more creative approaches than the other.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/ecos-launches-new-website-push-flexibility-environmental-oversight

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EPA, ECOS Form Panel To Set Goals For New Audit Approach For State Programs

Oct 25, 2017 | Inside EPA

By Dave Reynolds

State environmental regulators and EPA are forming a working group to craft a plan for streamlining EPA reviews of states' federally delegated environmental programs, a priority for the Trump EPA and states, under a broad new audit approach that the two sides are weighing, though a key state regulator says there is not a clear model for how such an approach would work.
In an Oct. 23 interview with Inside EPA, John Linc Stine, past president of the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) and commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, said state and federal regulators are beginning talks on how EPA could audit state permitting and other programs rather than reviewing individual decisions, an ECOS priority that EPA officials have suggested they may adopt.
“We think that the original system of checks and balances on permits where individual permits got reviewed on various levels by EPA, it's time to review that framework” and find a more efficient approach, Stine said. “States being evaluated need to have clarity about how to be evaluated and what the requirements are going forward.”
But he said ECOS lacks a clear model for how such an audit policy would work. The working group of EPA and state officials will seek to craft a statement of challenges or opportunities that a new policy for EPA reviews of state environmental programs could seek to address.
Scaling back EPA review of state environmental programs is a component of ECOS' recent paper, “Cooperative Federalism 2.0,” outlining principles for redefining state and federal roles for overseeing pollution control requirements.
In addition, Todd Parfitt, Wyoming's top environment official and ECOS' president, has urged EPA to establish an audit system under which "EPA should not review individual state implementation decisions, including enforcement, on a routine basis unless an audit recognizes" that there is a problem.
EPA strongly backed state regulators' call to give them greater autonomy in implementing federal environmental laws in its Fiscal Year 2018-2022 Draft Strategic Plan, which the agency is seeking public comment on through Oct. 31.
The draft calls for a renewed focus on core agency priorities, defined as ensuring clean, air, land and water, as well as bolstering EPA's cooperation with states and a focus on statutory obligations. But ECOS officials have said that EPA and states are in the early stages of conversations on specific metrics for how the goals of EPA's plan will be reached.
In a wide-ranging interview, Stine outlined several areas where ECOS and EPA are beginning discussions on how to implement states' and the Trump EPA's shared goal of improving regulatory efficiency without losing environmental protections.
In addition to forming the working group to consider streamlining EPA reviews of state programs, Stine said regulators are also beginning talks on how to improve cooperation between state and EPA regional and headquarters officials, as well as on harmonizing metrics for assessing the effectiveness of state and federal environmental oversight.
He also teed up several concerns some states may raise in comments on EPA's draft strategic plan, including ensuring that EPA's planned review of its Performance Partnership Grants, which fund states to implement federal programs, ensures that states receive commensurate EPA funding for steps they commit to take. He also said that EPA's plan could more thoroughly address coordination between federal agencies on cleanups of contaminated sites.
Regional Consistency
On improving state cooperation with EPA regional officials, Stine said that ECOS is considering how to make those relationships more consistent across various EPA regions.
“There are places in the country where that's already working really well, but places where it's not working well, where it's strained or close to non-existent,” he said of cooperation between state and EPA regional staff. “We need to learn from the places that are working and strengthen the places that are not.”
State efforts to strengthen cooperation with EPA regions comes amid uncertainty spurred by a White House Office of Management & Budget directive this spring instructing EPA to develop a plan for consolidating its 10 regional offices into eight, a step justified as a way to improve efficiency, though it has sparked concerns it could spread a cash-strapped EPA too thin.
Stine said he is not aware that consolidation will occur, describing that as “a rumor that has not been borne out.”
But to the extent that the OMB directive calls for more effective structures for EPA and regional cooperation, Stine said ECOS wants to be involved in conversations that affect state and regional working relationships early and often.
He also said that in weighing how to effectively deploy its regional resources, EPA should apply principles of its 2014 Lean Government Initiative, which is based on principles and methods for helping organizations identify and eliminate waste in their processes. EPA Chief of Operations Henry Darwin has called for expanding EPA's adherence to Lean principles.
“Look at the process and 'Lean' the process. Go back to how many steps are required and how much time it takes” to perform a task, Stine said, describing the process states would like EPA to take in considering how to best deploy regional resources.
The forthcoming ECOS discussions with EPA on crafting a policy for federal auditing of state programs and for improving state cooperation with EPA regional officials build on discussions of other ways to improve state and federal cooperation on environmental oversight.
During the ECOS Fall Meeting in September, state officials said they had recently started talks aimed at streamlining enforcement efficiency and resolving other areas of past disagreement. Discussions have focused on improving data sharing and determining whether states or EPA have the most reliable information, as well as how to balance formal and informal enforcement and compliance efforts in various cases.
While the Trump EPA has strongly backed ECOS' goals of advancing cooperative federalism, Stine argued that the states' focus on improving cooperation with EPA began during the Obama administration and will likely continue in future administrations provided states succeed in making processes more efficient.
“It was started under Obama and accelerated under this administration, and a new administration will apply the same test,” Stine said of efforts to improve state and EPA partnerships. “Will it achieve results? If so, then it's a good idea.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-ecos-form-panel-set-goals-new-audit-approach-state-programs

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