Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 10/26/17
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(ACC Mentioned) Labor Department Top Attorney Nominee Represented Silica Company
Oct 26, 2017 | Bloomberg Big Law Business
By Bruce Rolfsen
President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Labor Department’s Office of the Solicitor, Kate O’Scannlain, once worked for one of the nation’s largest silica sand suppliers, potentially putting her at odds with the department’s ongoing defense of OSHA’s silica rule. -
(ACC Mentioned) Sworn Enemies of EPA Now Just One Step from Heading Key Agency Offices
Oct 25, 2017 | Common Dreams
By Jessica Corbett
"All four have condemned the very existence of the EPA and want to weaken it beyond recognition, threatening the EPA's mission to protect our clean air and water." -
(ACC Mentioned) Hostile EPA Press Office Disrespects American Public
Oct 25, 2017 | O'Dwyer's PR News
By Kevin McCauley
Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt has taken much well-deserved flak for his mission to overturn regulations regarding clean air & water, excessive spending for travel and security (e.g., 24/7 bodyguards, soundproof phone booth) and crackdown on EPA scientists for participating in programs dealing with the effects of climate change. -
(ACC Mentioned) CPSC Chairman Ann Marie Buerkle Addresses AHFA Regulatory Summit
Oct 25, 2017 | Furniture Today
By Thomas Russell
Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairman Ann Marie Buerkle revealed her agency’s plans to boost engagement with various industries as it continues its mission of protecting consumers against unsafe products in the marketplace. -
Waiting Game Begins as EPA Nominees Sail Through Committee
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker and Sylvia Carignan
President Donald Trump's picks to staff the EPA and the nation's nuclear regulator sailed through a Senate committee, but they face a longer road to getting a confirmation vote. -
EPA Releases Draft Mercury Reporting Rule For Comment
Oct 26, 2017 | Inside EPA
EPA is releasing for public comment its draft rule requiring people working with mercury to report those uses to the agency, a rule that the agency is required to promulgate by the 2016 law that reformed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
Republicans Attack Process For Challenging IRIS Assessments
Oct 26, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
House Republicans are refocusing their attacks on the US EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) programme on to how the agency responds to requests to "correct" analyses that have had their scientific basis challenged. -
Bisphenol S ‘Ubiquitous In Environment’, Study Finds
Oct 26, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Turley
Bisphenol S (BPS) - an analogue of bisphenol A (BPA) - "is now ubiquitous in the environment and found worldwide", according to a review of the scientific literature. -
US EPA Proposes Formaldehyde Amendments
Oct 26, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The US EPA has proposed administrative regulations related to formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products, as promised at a September workshop. -
Home Depot Is Removing Formaldehyde as Part of Push to Go Green
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Lauren Coleman-Lochner and Matt Townsend
Home Depot Inc. is eliminating substances like formaldehyde and lead in several categories, making it the latest retailer to accede to demands for greener products. -
Lumber Liquidators Reaches $36M Laminate Flooring Settlement
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
Lumber Liquidators has reached a $36 million settlement of class action claims over its sale of Chinese-made laminate flooring (In re Lumber Liquidators Chinese-Manufactured Flooring Products Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, E.D. Va., 15-md-2627, 16-md-2743, 10/24/17). -
San Francisco Bans Sale Of Furniture Treated With Flame Retardants
Oct 26, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
San Francisco has banned the sale of upholstered furniture and children’s products "made with or containing an added flame retardant chemical". -
Toothpaste Compounds, Including Triclosan, Build Up In Toothbrushes
Oct 25, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Emma Hiolski
Toothpaste leaves your mouth feeling clean and tingly, but how does it leave your toothbrush? New research shows that compounds in toothpaste, including the antimicrobial agent triclosan, can build up in toothbrush heads and leach back out over time (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b02839). -
Ametek Exec Loses Bid to Dismiss Hazmat Death Claims
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
An executive for Ametek Inc. must answer claims that his inaction in cleaning up a large hazardous waste spill contributed to a woman's cancer death, the Southern District of California ruled Oct. 24 (Cox v. Ametek, Inc., 2017 BL 381749, S.D. Cal., No. 17-cv-01211, 10/24/17). -
Sulfur Dioxide Pollution Tied To Degraded Sperm Quality
Oct 25, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Janet Pelley
Men’s sperm counts have plummeted by up to 60% over the last 40 years in Western countries and by nearly 30% since 2001 in China. -
Practitioner Insights: Manipulated Science Attacks Vital Herbicide
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Scott Partridge
Our quality of life depends on sound science. From health care to transportation to energy and food, progress and innovation will require valid and objective research. -
Chemical Companies Concerned as EU Glyphosate Deadlock Continues
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
BASF Corp., Monsanto Co., and other companies marketing products containing glyphosate expressed frustration Oct. 25 at the lack of progress in the European Union over the reauthorization of the herbicide. -
No Consensus On Glyphosate In The EU
Oct 26, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson
European Union officials have postponed a key decision on whether to reauthorize use of glyphosate, after a vote by the European Parliament in favor of phasing out the controversial herbicide by 2022. The chemical’s current EU license expires on Dec. 15. -
U.K. Chemical Companies Face Brexit Uncertainty, Green Watchdog Warns
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ali Qassim
U.K. chemical companies fear the government's lack of clarity about their future regulatory framework could significantly damage the country's second-biggest manufacturing industry after it leaves the European Union, according to the British Parliament's green watchdog. -
(ACC Mentioned) US Manufacturers Ask FERC To Stop DOE Notice Of Proposed Rulemaking
Oct 25, 2017 | Daily Energy Insider
By Kevin Randolph
A group of large industrial users of electricity filed comments with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) this week, asking the commission to terminate a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) from the Department of Energy (DOE) that seeks to compensate certain generation resources for reliability and resiliency attributes. -
Fossil Fuels Get Boost as Agencies Scrutinize Their Rules
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
Natural gas permitting is likely to be streamlined and air pollution and appliance efficiency regulations will get extra scrutiny as federal agencies seek ways to ease burdens on domestic energy production. -
DOE To Scrutinize Efficiency Rulemaking, LNG Exports
Oct 26, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darius Dixon
The Energy Department plans to revisit how it handles the development of energy efficiency standards, the agency’s central regulatory power, according to a memo the agency released this afternoon. -
Group of Lawmakers Suggests Calling Pipeline Sabotage Domestic Terrorism
Oct 25, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jeremiah Shelor
A bipartisan group of federal lawmakers has raised the possibility of prosecuting pipeline saboteurs and violent anti-oil and gas activists as domestic terrorists, according to a letter sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions Monday. -
(ACC Mentioned) Workplace Chemical Exposure Limits Now in EPA's Hands
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson and Pat Rizzuto
Regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency can accomplish what their counterparts at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration largely have not: They can limit worker exposure to a host of hazardous chemicals. -
EPA's Pruitt Denies He's an Ally of Polluters, Vows to Get Tough
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Jennifer Jacobs
Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, vowed that he will get tough on corporate polluters, dismissing critics who cast him as too cozy with industry. -
House Votes to Bolster Industry Say in Environmental Settlements
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Lee and Dean Scott
The House moved Oct. 25 to abolish what Republicans see as improper collusion between the EPA and environmental groups when they negotiate settlements that force the agency to expedite or strengthen regulations, sending the bill to an uncertain future in the Senate. -
Agency Takes Aim At Air Standards, Permitting Program
Oct 26, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Maxine Joselow and Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA this afternoon publicly released its report on rules that could be repealed or reformed because of the impact to domestic energy production. -
EPA Touts Four 'Key' Policy Reform Efforts To Boost Trump's Energy Order
Oct 26, 2017 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
EPA is touting four “key” policy reforms it will pursue to implement President Donald Trump's sweeping executive order on reducing energy sector regulatory burdens, including a new initiative to study rules' impacts on employment as well as previously announced “task forces” on reworking Clean Air Act permits and ambient air standards.
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Labor Department Top Attorney Nominee Represented Silica Company
Oct 26, 2017 | Bloomberg Big Law Business
By Bruce Rolfsen
President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Labor Department’s Office of the Solicitor, Kate O’Scannlain, once worked for one of the nation’s largest silica sand suppliers, potentially putting her at odds with the department’s ongoing defense of OSHA’s silica rule.
Among O’Scannlain’s private law practice clients at Kirkland & Ellis LLP is U.S. Silica Co., based in Frederick, Md., according a financial disclosure form she filed in early October with the Office of Government Ethics.
In her Oct. 6 recusal letter to the ethics office, O’Scannlain said she “will not participate personally and substantially” in any matter involving a former client for a period of one year after she last provided a service to the client.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued the final silica rule in March 2016, following decades of debate on whether to approve tougher requirements for how much airborne silica workers can be exposed to without triggering debilitating lung illnesses.
While full enforcement for construction companies began Oct. 23, business groups contested the rule’s requirements at a Sept. 26 hearing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The court hasn’t said when a decision will be issued.
A date hasn’t been set for O’Scannlain’s Senate confirmation hearing for the job, which is the No. 3 position at the Labor Department.
U.S. Silica is among the 86 organizations that O’Scannlain listed as paying her more than $5,000 for work as a legal counsel. The report doesn’t disclose the issues she handled for U.S. Silica.
Among the other companies are investment firms the Blackstone Group and Bain Capital Private Equity LP; and online food delivery provider GrubHub Inc.
According to U.S. Silica stockholder reports, the company had a revenue of $560 million in 2016, operating nine industrial sand production plants, and nine oil and gas sand production plants. Products range from sand used in fracking to sand for golf course bunkers and volleyball courts.
U.S. Silica isn’t among the plaintiffs challenging in federal court the scientific and financial evidence on which OSHA based the silica rule. Attorneys for other industry groups in the lawsuit didn’t respond to Bloomberg Environment’s request for comment.
But, the company is listed in rulemaking documents as a member of two industry groups, the National Industrial Sand Association and the Crystalline Silica Panel of the American Chemistry Council, that fought the OSHA silica proposal while the rule was drafted from 2013 to 2016.
The agency expects the construction silica rule (29 C.F.R 1926.1153) and related regulations to prevent 642 deaths annually and 918 moderate to severe silicosis cases (RIN:1218-AB70).
Enforcement of the general industry requirements is set to start in June 2018.
The silica rule sets a permissible exposure limit for airborne crystalline silica of 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air (50 μg/m3), 80 percent less than the old construction limit of 250 μg/m3 set in 1971.
https://biglawbusiness.com/labor-department-top-attorney-nominee-represented-silica-company/
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(ACC Mentioned) Sworn Enemies of EPA Now Just One Step from Heading Key Agency Offices
Oct 25, 2017 | Common Dreams
By Jessica Corbett
"All four have condemned the very existence of the EPA and want to weaken it beyond recognition, threatening the EPA's mission to protect our clean air and water."
The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on Wednesday advanced the nominations of four potential assistant administrators for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), raising concerns among conservationists and Democratic lawmakers who worry the candidates' connections to various industries will further endanger regulations that have been in under attack since Trump appointee Scott Pruitt took over as the agency's administrator.
The four EPA nominees whose fate could soon be decided by a full senate vote are: William "Bill" Wehrum, nominee to be assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Regulation at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Michael Dourson, nominee to be assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention at the EPA; Matthew Leopold, nominee to be assistant administrator for the Office of General Counsel at the EPA; and David Ross, nominee to be assistant administrator for the Office of Water at the EPA.
While Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the committee chairman, introduced the candidates as "well-qualified, experienced, and dedicated public servants," declaring "their confirmation will fill critically important roles in ensuring that all Americans benefit from clean air, clean water, and clean land," conservationists and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the committee's ranking Democrat, expressed concerns about the nominees' ties to industry.
"All four of these nominees, especially Bill Wehrum and Michael Dourson, would accelerate Scott Pruitt's mission to dismantle the EPA from the inside," said League of Conservation Voters vice president for government affairs Sara Chieffo. "Far from draining the swamp, these industry insiders are entirely unfit to serve and pose a grave threat to our communities and our health."
"All four of these nominees, especially Bill Wehrum and Michael Dourson, would accelerate Scott Pruitt's mission to dismantle the EPA from the inside."
—Sara Chieffo, League of Conservation Voters"All four have condemned the very existence of the EPA and want to weaken it beyond recognition, threatening the EPA's mission to protect our clean air and water," Chieffo added. "We call on the Senate to reject their nominations."Although Leopold and Ross have been criticized, Wehrum and Dourson have garnered the most negative attention.
Carper told Reuters Wehrum and Dourson's nominations were of "grave concern," and called Dourson "one of the most troubling nominees I have ever considered during my time on this committee." Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said Dourson was "so far out of the scientific mainstream, it is outrageous."
"We've done the wrong thing," Carper said after the committee voted along party lines to approve both men. "I have never been this troubled on this committee, or any committee, in 17 years."
Wehrum, an attorney, was nominated for this same positon in 2006, but his name was withdrawn over concerns about his industry connections. He "has represented several industry groups and corporations, including the American Petroleum Institute and Kinder Morgan, in fights against clean air and other health protections," reports The Intercept's Sharon Lerner.
During a committee hearing earlier this month, Wehrum reportedly said "I believe that's an open question," when asked whether he believed "with high confidence that human activities [are] the main driver of climate change." If confirmed, Wehrum would oversee various regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
Lerner describes Dourson, who would hold influence over the agency's chemical policy, as "a massively conflicted scientist known within industry for his ability to come up with standards companies liked, create science to justify them, and then 'sell' the package to the EPA." Critics of Dourson worry that his appointment will interfere with update to a major chemical safety law that was updated last year.
"If approved by the full Senate, Dourson will oversee the implementation of the updated law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, though he has been paid by manufacturers and other interested parties to work on 20 of the chemicals that may come before him as part of its implementation," Lerner writes. "When asked during his confirmation hearing whether he would recuse himself from making decisions about these chemicals earlier this month, Dourson refused."
The Senate committee's ten Democrats sent a letter (pdf) to Dourson on Tuesday, pointing out that while his assistant administrator position is pending, he has been appointed to serve as an adviser to Pruitt, which they wrote, "creates the appearance, and perhaps the effect, of circumventing the Senate's constitutional advice and consent responsibility" regarding the position to which he has been nominated.
"It has been widely reported that Nancy Beck, previously of the American Chemistry Council, has been working behind the scenes to undermine the protections Congress intended" when updating the toxic substances law last year, the senators noted, just days after the New York Times published a particularly damning piece about Beck's recent revisions to EPA rules.
Similarly, they wrote to Dourson, "Your prior association with the the tobacco industry and your extensive work for the American Chemistry Council and other chemical manufacturers led The New York Times to deem you a 'scientist for hire' and accordingly raises similar concerns."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/10/25/sworn-enemies-epa-now-just-one-step-heading-key-agency-offices
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(ACC Mentioned) Hostile EPA Press Office Disrespects American Public
Oct 25, 2017 | O'Dwyer's PR News
By Kevin McCauley
Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt has taken much well-deserved flak for his mission to overturn regulations regarding clean air & water, excessive spending for travel and security (e.g., 24/7 bodyguards, soundproof phone booth) and crackdown on EPA scientists for participating in programs dealing with the effects of climate change.
The EPA press shop has adopted Pruitt’s confrontational approach, dropping its traditional “fishbowl” or total transparency policy advocated by its first administrator Bill Ruckelshaus. In 1983, Ruckelshaus: “EPA will not accord privileged status to any special interest group, nor will it accept any recommendation without careful examination.”
The EPA press shop traditionally adhered to that fishbowl strategy by remaining neutral to agency policy directives. Team Trump has shattered that neutrality.
Inside Climate News, the Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental watchdog, reported Oct. 24 that the EPA press office has gone from stripping mentions of climate change from the agency’s website and singing praises of Pruitt to lobbing personal attacks at reporters.
EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman, an alum from the American Chemistry Council, responded to an email request from New York Times reporter Eric Lipton with: “No matter how much information we give you, you would never write a fair piece. The only thing inappropriate and biased is your continued fixation on writing elitist clickbait trying to attack qualified professionals committed to serving their country.”
An Associated Press reporter was attacked in an EPA release for “a history of not letting the facts get the way of his story.”
Reporters represent the public’s interest. The EPA’s press office’s hostility toward the media is a disservice to the American people.
http://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/9623/2017-10-25/hostile-epa-press-office-disrespects-american-public.html
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(ACC Mentioned) CPSC Chairman Ann Marie Buerkle Addresses AHFA Regulatory Summit
Oct 25, 2017 | Furniture Today
By Thomas Russell
COLFAX, N.C. - Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairman Ann Marie Buerkle revealed her agency’s plans to boost engagement with various industries as it continues its mission of protecting consumers against unsafe products in the marketplace.
As part of that mission, she added, the CPSC needs to make decisions that are not based on emotion, but rather on data and research. She also touted the flexibility and relevance of voluntary standards that get both regulators and industry to the table to discuss this type information to ultimately address and improve product safety.
Buerkle spoke Wednesday to a gathering of furniture industry compliance and safety experts attending the American Home Furnishings Alliance 2017 Regulatory Summit held at Guilford Technical Community College’s Colfax campus. Roughly 170 individuals, including industry professionals, legal counsel, government officials and representatives of various product testing firms attended the event.
“We have to rely on data,” she told the audience. “Our voluntary standards can’t be based on emotion. They have to be based on science and data. We have to be brought up to the 21 st Century to make data- driven decisions.”
The issue is key as the CPSC weighs issues of importance to the furniture industry, including changes to a voluntary tip-over standard that could increase testing weights of clothing storage units from 50 to 60 pounds.
“It is about the data, the numbers and the science,” Buerkle added regarding the implementation and effectiveness of voluntary standards. “That is how we protect the consumer, by being vigilant about the data and the science.”
She also identified several key priorities for her agency as it moves into the new fiscal year. These included making sure it uses its resources – both employees and funding – wisely. “The resources are limited and we have to pay attention to how we spend money,” she noted.
She added that the agency also needs to continue engagement with various industries across the 15,000 products it has jurisdiction over in the marketplace. “It is critical for us to engage,” she said. “Collaboration and engagement is extremely important to me.”
Other priorities include educating both consumers and industry and making sure there is transparency throughout the agency. Another key goal is to keep unsafe products from entering the U.S. from other countries, a process that will require the agency to work closely with Customs and Border Protection as it monitors the movement of products through U.S. ports.
As the agency continues its dicsussion of tip-over in the new fiscal year, Buerkle said it plans to use its ANPR (Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) as another opportunity to engage with the furniture industry. This type of engagement, she noted, will help guide the decision making process.
“We need to look at data before we make any changes,” she said.
Buerkle took several questions from the audience including one regarding how comments on social media influence the debate on product safety. Here too she urged for the collection of more data- driven information.
“We don’t need to sensationalize,” she said. “We need to see the facts.”
Harrison Toms, manager of product integrity and regulatory compliance at Hooker Furniture Corp., agreed that the CPSC needs to get more complete data before it makes any decisions on product safety, including the issue of increasing the testing weight for tip-overs.
“It doesn’t show we need to go to 60 pounds based on IDI (In-Depth Investigation) data,” he said, adding that anything less than complete data involved in any decision making regarding product safety suggests that these decisions could be simply based on guesswork.
Other speakers at the event included Erik Winchester, the Fiber & Organics Branch Chief for the EPA, who gave an update on the new national formaldehyde standard; William Guerry Jr, a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Kelley Drye, who talked about the Trump Administration’s Impact on EPA Regulation; Chris Andresen, a senior vice president in the Washington, D.C. office of Dutko GR, who discussed the Legislative & Regulatory Climate in Washington for 2018; and Mark Fellin, a compliance expert at Amazon, who discussed how Amazon Direct Imports handles regulatory and compliance issues and policies.
The afternoon session featured Michael Sullivan, managing partner of Womble Carlyle and Christa Burger, also an attorney at Womble Carlyle, who discussed the issue of Compliance & Risk Management: Cost of Business or Competitive Advantage; Christine Zanella, a compliance manager at Wayfair, who discussed Global Compliance Issues in an E-Commerce World and Allyson Azar, manager of state affairs and political mobilization at the American Chemistry Council, who discussed The Unpredictable Landscape of State Regulation.
http://www.furnituretoday.com/article/547514-cpsc-chairman-ann-marie-buerkle-addresses-ahfa-regulatory-summit/
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Waiting Game Begins as EPA Nominees Sail Through Committee
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker and Sylvia Carignan
President Donald Trump's picks to staff the EPA and the nation's nuclear regulator sailed through a Senate committee, but they face a longer road to getting a confirmation vote.
The Senate Environment and Public Works committee Oct. 25 approved Michael Dourson to head the Environmental Protection Agency's chemicals office and William Wehrum for the agency's air division. The panel also approved by voice vote the nominations of Matthew Leopold to be the EPA's assistant administrator for the Office of General Counsel and David Ross to serve as EPA's assistant administrator for the Office of Water.
In addition to the EPA nominees, the nomination of Jeff Baran (D) to join the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also gained approval by voice vote.
The nominations join a list of more than 80 that have cleared committee and await a vote by the full Senate.
EPA Nominees Approved
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the committee's chairman, told Bloomberg BNA that given Democrats’ “concerted effort” to delay the nominees and the existing backlog, he's unsure when the nominations would come to the Senate floor.
Senators voted 11-10 for Dourson to serve as the EPA's assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. A former EPA scientist, Dourson recently taught at the University of Cincinnati.
Industry groups have praised Dourson's knowledge of risk assessment, but environmental groups and Democrats have condemned his nomination, saying his consulting work for tobacco, energy, and chemical companies make him unfit to take on a role at the EPA. In several instances, Dourson recommended a safety level for a chemical that was far more lax than the threshold set by state or federal regulators, according to the Environmental Working Group.
The panel also voted 11-10 for Wehrum, the White House's pick to lead the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. An attorney in the Washington offices of Hunton & Williams LLP and former acting assistant administrator for the air office during the George W. Bush administration, Wehrum has faced questions from farm-state senators who doubted his commitment to upholding the Renewable Fuel Standard.
The fuel standard requires oil refiners to mix a certain volume of biofuels into the nation's fuel supply each year, a level that is set by the EPA.
Nuclear Regulator Nears Full Staff
Baran is currently a commissioner on the NRC, a position he has held since October 2014.
If confirmed, he will serve a five-year term beginning July 1, 2018. Prior to working at the commission, he held various positions, including staff director and counsel, for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, as well as counsel for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Baran is currently the lone Democratic member of the three-person commission. He serves with NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki (R), who was confirmed in June to serve another five-year term, and Commissioner Stephen G. Burns (I).
Republican NRC nominees Annie Caputo, an energy policy adviser for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and David Wright, a former commissioner on the South Carolina Public Service Commission, were voted out of committee in July. When fully staffed, the NRC has five commissioners, with up to three allowed from the political party in power.
—With assistance from Rebecca Kern.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123010880&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123010880&jd=123010880
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EPA Releases Draft Mercury Reporting Rule For Comment
Oct 26, 2017 | Inside EPA
EPA is releasing for public comment its draft rule requiring people working with mercury to report those uses to the agency, a rule that the agency is required to promulgate by the 2016 law that reformed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Publication of the draft rule in the Federal Register, scheduled for Oct. 26, will open a 60-day public comment period. The TSCA reform law gives EPA a June 2018 deadline to finalize the rule, intended to create an inventory of mercury "supply, use and trade," as well as reporting deadlines and other requirements for relevant industries.
EPA's pending notice explains the rule's “requirements would be applicable to any person who manufactures (including imports) mercury or mercury-added products, or otherwise intentionally uses mercury in a manufacturing process. Based on the inventory of information collected, the Agency is directed to 'identify any manufacturing processes or products that intentionally add mercury; and . . . recommend actions, including proposed revisions of Federal law or regulations, to achieve further reductions in mercury use.' At this time, EPA is not making such identifications or recommendations.”
EPA is advancing the rulemaking based on new TSCA section 8(b)(10)(D), requiring EPA to issue a final rule no later than June 2018. The draft rule underwent White House review over the summer. Once completed, the rule could help the United States comply with its international obligations to regulate mercury under the United Nations' Minamata Convention on Mercury, signed by the Obama administration. The treaty took effect last August.
The requirements were included in the TSCA reform law after EPA in 2015 rejected a petition from environmentalists and some states urging EPA to collect information about uses of mercury produced, imported, or used in the United States, also citing TSCA section 8 authority -- at that time, section 8(a) -- arguing that section 8(a) rules were warranted when data is not otherwise available. The petitioners included the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Northeast Waste Management Officials' Association, which manages the Interstate Mercury Education and Reduction Clearinghouse, the leading state agency-sponsored mercury tracking program.
But EPA rejected the petition in October 2015, saying that although the general premise behind the petition was correct, the agency's then-voluntary strategy on reducing mercury use was more efficient and effective.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-releases-draft-mercury-reporting-rule-comment
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Republicans Attack Process For Challenging IRIS Assessments
Oct 26, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
House Republicans are refocusing their attacks on the US EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) programme on to how the agency responds to requests to "correct" analyses that have had their scientific basis challenged.
IRIS assessments underpin regulatory action by the EPA and thus are of high importance. Industry has been arguing for many years about their scientific validity and the transparency with which they are conducted. On Capitol Hill, Republicans have called for the reform or elimination of IRIS, most recently at a September hearing.
A 12 October letter from top Republicans on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology focused on the "Request for Correction" (RFC) process that is used to ask the EPA to reconsider the conclusions of an IRIS assessment. The letter, signed by Chairman Lamar Smith (Texas) and Rep. Andy Biggs (Arizona), chairman of the panel’s environment subcommittee, demanded a staff briefing and copies of "all documents and communications" related to RFCs submitted since 20 January 2009, the day President Obama took office.
A "troubling pattern has emerged", they said, "in which credible scientific evidence is disregarded when amendments and corrections are requested for assessments".
The letter gave examples of IRIS assessments: one of the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE), another of the pesticide chloroprene.
Industry groups have repeatedly attacked the validity of the TCE assessment finalised in 2014, most recently in comments on proposed rules that would ban the substance’s use as an aerosol degreaser and for spot cleaning in dry cleaning facilities.
The issue has currency, as the fate of those Obama-era proposals is officially in doubt and TCE is also among the first ten substances subject to risk evaluation under the new TSCA.
The letter said the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance submitted an RFC in 2013 which "demonstrated that the EPA chose to rely upon an inaccurate study as the primary basis for its conclusion". It said the EPA denied the RFC in 2016.
Similarly, the letter contended that the EPA’s review of chloroprene resulted in an inhalation standard that is too stringent and "ignored the conclusion of the highest quality study published on human exposure to chloroprene". An RFC filed by Denka Perfumance Elastomer, a chloroprene manufacturer, in 2010 is still pending.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60534/republicans-attack-process-for-challenging-iris-assessments
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Bisphenol S ‘Ubiquitous In Environment’, Study Finds
Oct 26, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Andrew Turley
Bisphenol S (BPS) - an analogue of bisphenol A (BPA) - "is now ubiquitous in the environment and found worldwide", according to a review of the scientific literature.
Published studies show that BPS is present in water, sediment, sludge, indoor dust and air and consumer products. Furthermore, they show that in all regions of the world, it is present in human urine, indicating that humans are exposed on a daily basis.
BPS urine concentrations were generally lower than those for BPA but of the same order of magnitude.
BPA is used primarily in production of plastics but also in resins and - to a lesser extent - thermal papers of the kind used for till receipts. BPS is structurally similar to BPA and can function in the same way in chemical products. Thus, as regulatory acceptance of BPA has waned, focus on BPS has grown.
Meanwhile, evidence that BPS could have a similar toxicity profile to BPA has raised concerns that simply switching from one to the other would lead to a case of so-called regrettable substitution.
The scientists say that food, indoor dust, personal care products and thermal paper are the primary sources of human exposure. Of those, food is the dominant source. "Pregnant women and babies should pay special attention to avoid exposure to BPS," they say.
The review was conducted by a Chinese team of scientists led by Ying Guo at Jinan University, with funding from the state, and is published in Science of the Total Environment.Ongoing investigations
BPS is the subject of a range of state-funded, risk-assessment based initiatives in the EU and the US.
Belgium is conducting a substance evaluation of the BPS REACH registration dossier in response to evidence of endocrine disruption.
Last year, Echa's Member State Committee (MSC) requested that the registrants conduct further tests, including two extended, one-generation reproductive toxicity studies (Eogrts): one using rats, as described in OECD test method 443; and another using either medaka or zebrafish, via a method adapted from OECD 443.
The registrants have until 20 September 2018 to update the dossier accordingly.
The MSC also asked for additional exposure data by 20 September this year. The registrants have now updated the dossier to include this.
Meanwhile, Echa is conducting a survey to determine the extent to which BPS is used in thermal paper till receipts and if the use is growing.
The EU has banned the use of BPA in the receipts from 2020, raising concerns that manufacturers will simply switch to BPS. Therefore the Commission has asked Echa to survey manufacturers and importers by the end of the year.
Preliminary data suggest growing use of BPS while that of BPA is shrinking, but the use of other substances is also increasing, creating a more complex picture. Echa is proposing to continue monitoring this market until 2020, while extending the scope to capture the breakdown with respect to the other substances.
Additionally, BPS is part of the pan-Europe human biomonitoring project, HBM4EU, which was launched in December last year. Bisphenols are one of ten groups of substances prioritised by the organisers.
The project aims to provide data on:how much BPS EU citizens have in their bodies;which populations, in which regions, have the most;the most relevant analytical methods for monitoring BPS;whether current or predicted BPS levels are cause for concern; andthe toxicity of BPS compared with BPA.
It also aims to provide EU-wide health based guidance values for BPS.
BPS is also part of the US National Toxicology Program NTP workplan. In 2014, the NTP approved a research concept for the substance, with the aim of builing a ‘knowledge base’ for bisphenols. Initial findings are expected in 2018, a spokesperson for the organisation told Chemical Watch.
More information about Eogrts, including an introductory overview, is available as at Chemical Risk Manager.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60519/bisphenol-s-ubiquitous-in-environment-study-finds
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US EPA Proposes Formaldehyde Amendments
Oct 26, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The US EPA has proposed administrative regulations related to formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products, as promised at a September workshop.
The proposal, published on 25 October, updates references to voluntary consensus standards on emission testing methods and product construction characteristics incorporated into the formaldehyde regulations that begin going into effect in 2018.
It would also allow the use of two testing methods approved by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), rather than one. CARB’s formaldehyde standards were nationalised by the federal regulations.
The proposed rule will go into effect on 11 December unless the EPA receives adverse comments by the 9 November deadline.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60526/us-epa-proposes-formaldehyde-amendments
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Home Depot Is Removing Formaldehyde as Part of Push to Go Green
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Lauren Coleman-Lochner and Matt Townsend
Home Depot Inc. is eliminating substances like formaldehyde and lead in several categories, making it the latest retailer to accede to demands for greener products.
The changes are part of a broader plan to minimize or disclose harmful substances in the paints, carpets, insulation and flooring it sells, the Atlanta-based retailer said Oct. 25.
Home Depot follows Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and other large retailers that have moved to both disclose the chemicals in the products they sell and remove them whenever possible. The world's largest home-improvement company says it's working with suppliers and groups like the Green Chemistry & Commerce Council to find safer components.
Home Depot said it has “significantly improved” its paints in the past decade, removing triclosan, lead, and formaldehyde from the latex-based wall paint it sells in the U.S. and Canada. It has also eliminated substances such as vinyl chloride and perfluorooctanoic acid from the indoor wall-to-wall carpeting it sells.
There's been increased scrutiny of the home-improvement sector after Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc. was accused by short sellers in 2015 of offering laminate flooring with unsafe levels of formaldehyde, a substance that has been linked to cancer.
That led to an investigation by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission that ended last year without a recall. The company agreed to stop selling Chinese-made laminate flooring and offer free tests to customers. While Lumber Liquidators’ sales have rebounded, its stock price is still half of what it was before the allegations.
As part of the announcement, Home Depot said formaldehyde is excluded from the paints, carpet and insulation it sells. In laminate flooring, the company set the level allowed at 0.0073 parts per million. That's lower than the 0.05 ppm required by California, which has the strictest rules in the U.S.
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Lumber Liquidators Reaches $36M Laminate Flooring Settlement
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
Lumber Liquidators has reached a $36 million settlement of class action claims over its sale of Chinese-made laminate flooring (In re Lumber Liquidators Chinese-Manufactured Flooring Products Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, E.D. Va., 15-md-2627, 16-md-2743, 10/24/17).
The agreement calls for the company to pay $22 million in cash and $14 million in store credits, the company said Oct. 24.
The memorandum of understanding, which is subject to court approval, would resolve all class action claims over the flooring, Daniel Bryson with Whitfield, Bryson & Mason, LLP, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, told Bloomberg Law.
A CBS “60 Minutes” report in 2015 sparked public outrage when it alleged Lumber Liquidators’ China-made laminated wood flooring exceeded California's formaldehyde limits.
The company stopped selling the products in May 2015 and agreed to pay $2.5 million as part of an administrative settlement with the California Air Resources Board in March 2016.
Lumber Liquidators also settled with the Consumer Product Safety Commission in June 2016.
Cohen, Milstein, Sellers & Toll PLLC, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, LLP, and Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP represent the plaintiffs in the formaldehyde MDL.
Robertson & Associates, LLP and Whitfield, Bryson & Mason LLP represent the plaintiffs in the durability MDL.
McGuireWoods LLP, Greenberg Traurig, Morrison and Foerster LLP and others represent Lumber Liquidators.
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San Francisco Bans Sale Of Furniture Treated With Flame Retardants
Oct 26, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
San Francisco has banned the sale of upholstered furniture and children’s products "made with or containing an added flame retardant chemical".
The 17 October vote by the California city’s Board of Supervisors makes it the first municipality in the US to enact such a ban. The law goes into effect in January 2019, giving retailers a year to move their inventory.
The state of Rhode Island banned the sale of bedding and furniture treated with organohalogen flame retardants in October. In August, the Maine legislature gave final approval to a measure banning the use of all chemical flame retardants in upholstered furniture.
More than a dozen US states have banned some categories of flame retardants. Many more considered legislation this year to restrict their use.
On a national level, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted on 21 September to ban the use of organohalogen flame retardants in furniture and several other household product categories.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60536/san-francisco-bans-sale-of-furniture-treated-with-flame-retardants
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Toothpaste Compounds, Including Triclosan, Build Up In Toothbrushes
Oct 25, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Emma Hiolski
Bristles and tongue cleaners accumulate and release common toothpaste components, scientists find
Toothpaste leaves your mouth feeling clean and tingly, but how does it leave your toothbrush? New research shows that compounds in toothpaste, including the antimicrobial agent triclosan, can build up in toothbrush heads and leach back out over time (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b02839).
Triclosan was once a common component of antibacterial soaps and body washes in the U.S. Last year, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration gave companies a deadline of September 2017 by which to stop marketing those products, citing concerns about triclosan causing antibiotic resistance and a lack of evidence that triclosan-containing soaps were more effective than soap and water alone. The compound’s use in toothpaste is still approved, though, because of reports that it reduces gum inflammation, gingivitis, and plaque.
Because some nylons—materials commonly used in toothbrush bristles—can take up some compounds, including triclosan, researchers led by Baoshan Xing of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, set out to determine the fate of chemicals in toothpaste. They simulated three months of tooth brushing in the lab with 22 types of manual toothbrushes, artificial saliva, and six best-selling antibacterial toothpastes containing 0.3% triclosan (3 mg/g of toothpaste).
Triclosan and other toothpaste chemicals accumulated in elastomeric toothbrush head components such as cheek and tongue cleaners, as well as nylon bristles. More than half of the toothbrushes accumulated at least 10 mg of triclosan over the simulated three-month brushing. When the researchers switched some of those toothbrushes to non-triclosan toothpastes for two weeks’ simulated brushing, triclosan leached out of the toothbrushes.
Although triclosan uptake and release did not reach harmful levels—the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s limit for dietary exposure is 0.3 mg/kg/day—the, the authors point out that this represents previously unrecognized sources of exposure to both humans and the environment, including transport to landfills through discarded toothbrushes.
“This study really highlights how little we know about the fate of antimicrobial chemicals,” says Erica Hartmann, a civil engineer at Northwestern University who studies antimicrobial resistance. “Every time one of these chemicals winds up in a new context, that’s another opportunity for it to have unintended consequences.”
https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i43/Toothpaste-compounds-including-triclosan-build.html
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Ametek Exec Loses Bid to Dismiss Hazmat Death Claims
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
An executive for Ametek Inc. must answer claims that his inaction in cleaning up a large hazardous waste spill contributed to a woman's cancer death, the Southern District of California ruled Oct. 24 (Cox v. Ametek, Inc., 2017 BL 381749, S.D. Cal., No. 17-cv-01211, 10/24/17).
The ruling rejected a dismissal bid by Thomas Deeney, an Ametek vice-president, in a case that involves one of the largest trichloroethylene and chlorinated solvent contamination plumes in California history.
Deeney argued the complaint by Arla Cox's estate was based only on speculation that the executive's conduct caused Cox's death in 2001.
But the complaint plausibly alleges a claim that Cox, who resided near the contaminated manufacturing site in El Cajon, Calif., would have lived longer had Deeney promptly complied with a 1998 state cleanup and abatement order, the court said.
The case presents the unusual scenario of wrongful death allegations proceeding against a corporation, as well as one of its executives, for a hazardous waste spill.
The contamination forced the closing of an elementary school and spawned class claims against Ametek and other defendants.
Cox lived near the site from 1976 until her death in 2001 from kidney cancer, and her illness resulted from years of exposure to toxic vapors from the toxic plume beneath her home, the complaint states.
Ametek used the nearby property from 1968 to 1988 to manufacture aircraft engine parts, and toxic waste was disposed at the site from 1952 until 1985, according to the decision.
Ametek didn't comply with cleanup orders of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board in 1998 and 2002, and that was the basis for Deeney's potential liability, the court said.
“It is at least plausible that had Deeney decided to comply with the 1998” cleanup order “Cox would not have passed away when she did,” the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California said.
In a related Oct. 24 ruling, the court also declined to dismiss similar complaints against Ametek, Deeney, and other defendants by plaintiffs who rented mobile homes near the toxic plume.
U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel wrote the opinion.
The law offices of Baron & Budd represented Cox.
Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch represented Deeney.
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Sulfur Dioxide Pollution Tied To Degraded Sperm Quality
Oct 25, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Janet Pelley
Exposure to an air pollutant is linked with lower sperm count, according to a new study
Men’s sperm counts have plummeted by up to 60% over the last 40 years in Western countries and by nearly 30% since 2001 in China. Experts lack firm answers regarding the cause of the sperm deficit but suspect that behaviors such as smoking or exposures to hormone-disrupting compounds in plastics or pesticides are to blame. A handful of papers have questioned whether air pollution could also affect semen quality. Now, a new study links sulfur dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels to depressed sperm count and concentration in Chinese men (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b03289).
“Infertility is a global public health issue affecting at least 50 million couples worldwide,” says Yuewei Liu, an environmental epidemiologist at Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control & Prevention. Data suggest that poor semen quality accounts for 90% of male infertility. Impaired semen clearly interferes with conception, but it is also often an indicator of other health problems.
While most research has focused on risky behaviors and commercial chemicals as potential causes, experts have recently suggested that air pollutants might damage sperm quality. However, studies on air pollution and semen quality have been inconsistent due to inaccurate measures of an individual’s exposure to pollutants and insufficient sample sizes.
So Liu and his team decided to study semen samples collected from 1,759 men in Wuhan, China. They had all visited Tongji Hospital from 2013 to 2015 seeking help to conceive a child with their partners. The researchers measured sperm concentration, total sperm, and total motile sperm in each sample, controlling for factors that might affect semen quality such as age and smoking. Then the scientists drew on government data from nine air quality monitoring stations in Wuhan—a transportation hub and manufacturing powerhouse—to estimate exposure to air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone. Liu employed a model that analyzed the location of the monitoring stations in relationship to each man’s home to predict individual daily pollutant exposures. Because human sperm develops over 90 days, the researchers calculated pollution exposures for the 90 days prior to semen collection so they could look at key periods of sperm development.
When Liu and the team used a statistical test to rate semen quality against increasing air pollution, they found no impact from NO2, CO or O3. However, for each 10 µg/m3 increase in SO2exposure during the first stage of sperm development, sperm concentration dropped by 6.5%, total sperm count by 11.3%, and total motile sperm by 13.2%, Liu says. Levels of SO2 during the later stages of sperm development did not appear to impact sperm quality. The annual mean SO2 concentrations in Wuhan during the study period ranged from a high of 33 µg/m3 in 2013 to 18 µg/m3 in 2015. In the U.S., annual mean SO2 concentration was less than 5 µg/m3 in 2013.
“Our results indicate for the first time that SO2 exposure may lower semen quality by affecting the earliest stage of sperm development, 70 to 90 days before ejaculation,” Liu says. He speculates that SO2 could impair sperm by triggering oxidative stress and damage to DNA. “Given the limited evidence from epidemiological and in vivo studies, further studies are needed to confirm the association of NO2, CO and O3 with semen quality,” Liu adds. He recommends caution in generalizing the findings to other populations since the men were all from one city in China.
“Even though the study was limited to one city, this paper adds evidence to the existing literature showing a downward trend in sperm concentration and count with increasing exposure to air pollution,” says Bénédicte Jacquemin, an epidemiologist at the health research institute ISGlobal in Barcelona. The study’s findings are more applicable to countries such as China and India where SO2 pollution is severe, she notes. “Exposure to SO2 might not be the cause of decline in sperm quality in North America and Europe, as regulations have lowered SO2 levels for a couple of decades now.”
https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/web/2017/10/Sulfur-dioxide-pollution-tied-degraded-sperm-quality.html
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Practitioner Insights: Manipulated Science Attacks Vital Herbicide
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Scott Partridge
Our quality of life depends on sound science. From health care to transportation to energy and food, progress and innovation will require valid and objective research.
Unfortunately, a chilling trend of political attacks on science is spreading. While science grows more reliable and precise, the chorus of voices attacking reliable and sound research grows ever louder.
Sadly, these attacks are largely enabled by one of science's greatest achievements: the Internet. An emerging cottage industry of opportunists is capitalizing on new online platforms, blogs and social media to cast doubt and fear in places where, according to sound research and settled scientific fact, no legitimate question exists. This is a toxic landscape where unfounded theories are given credible voice, and wild, ill-conceived myths have unlimited room to run. Often, these attacks are disguised to hide the financial motives or other conflicts of interest of those behind the claims.
In a digital land with few editors or gatekeepers, activists, aggressive plaintiffs’ attorneys, partisan actors, and others can leverage disinformation and emotion to undermine the very knowledge that drives social and economic advancement. In this atmosphere, fiction replaces fact, and the public's faith in sound science falters.
Recent History Gives Us a Clear Example
In 1998 British researcher Andrew Wakefield published a study linking autism to an antiseptic agent widely used in vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella. Wakefield's paper, published in the respected journal Lancet, caused a stir in the medical community and quickly attracted public attention.
Wakefield's shocking claims prompted dozens of new studies that were peer reviewed and published in respected journals—none of which agreed with him. All the leading medical authorities, including the World Health Organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unanimously concluded that there was no connection between autism and vaccines.
Soon, Wakefield's conclusions, and his credibility, were crumbling. It was revealed that lawyers representing parents suing the vaccine-makers for causing autism in their children had paid Wakefield and that his study was fraudulent. In 2010, the Lancet retracted his study, and the UK Medical Council found Wakefield guilty of professional misconduct. His medical license was revoked.
But what was the longer-term impact on our society? Despite the retraction and public rebuke, nearly 20 years later, Wakefield's vaccine myth lives on. In the year 2000, measles had been declared eradicated in the United States, but since 2015 hundreds of new cases have been reported, largely among unvaccinated populations. Severe outbreaks in California forced the state recently to add new laws eliminating the “personal beliefs exemption” that some parents were using to skirt vaccine requirements.
A recent study by Pew Research shows that 10 percent of Americans still believe that vaccines are unsafe. In France, ironically the birthplace of vaccine pioneer Louis Pasteur, a survey reveals that 40 percent of the population does not believe vaccines are safe. In a world of instant information, fiction often travels faster than fact—and it lingers, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
The “stickiness” of corrupt science and false information does not bode well for future discussions around important scientific advances.
Indeed, there are striking similarities between those who refuse to believe that vaccines do not cause autism, in the face of irrefutable evidence, and those who are now ignoring—and attempting to undermine—the mountain of independent, peer-reviewed science underpinning the safety of a tool that farmers need to meet the world's growing demand for food.
Glyphosate, the most widely studied and used herbicide in the world, is under unfounded attack. The compound, brought to market in 1974, has been studied for more than 40 years by regulatory authorities and independent experts. Based on that rigorous scientific research, glyphosate has been approved in more than 160 countries and is now among the most effective tools farmers have to control weeds, increase crop yields, and help feed an increasingly hungry world. No regulatory authority in the world has concluded that glyphosate is carcinogenic.
Then, in 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) published an opinion that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” IARC, which is based in Lyon, France, published this opinion after a one-week discussion of some—but not all—of the research on glyphosate. IARC did no original research and conducted no tests. IARC's interpretation of studies also directly contradicted the conclusions of original authors and regulators who reviewed the full study data and reports. However, in some circles, IARC's flawed opinion has been given outsize influence.
Globally, glyphosate is considered one of the most effective, sustainable and safe agricultural tools available to farmers. It has enabled farmers to produce greater yields while minimizing or eliminating tillage, which is energy intensive and destructive to soil health and the environment. But just like vaccines, glyphosate remains under public attack—and the force behind that attack is being both discredited and exposed as scientifically compromised.
The damage caused by those allied with IARC's attack has been very real. IARC's outlier opinion on glyphosate was picked up widely by mainstream media, often reported without context, and trumpeted across the internet by agenda-driven organizations that have long refused to accept the overwhelming scientific verdict that glyphosate is safe. In places like California, regulators are taking unjustified actions, such as requiring warning labels on glyphosate-based products. Some park districts and local municipalities are restricting the use of glyphosate. And hundreds of cancer patients, recruited through advertising by opportunistic plaintiffs’ lawyers, are now suing the inventor of glyphosate, Monsanto, basing their claims on IARC's baseless opinion.
But now, the truth about the financial and political motivations for that unjustified attack is finally coming into view.
In a clear conflict of interest, the panel IARC assembled to discuss glyphosate was stacked with individuals with a long history of anti-chemical activism and close ties with the U.S. plaintiffs’ bar. Some of these panelists were even secretly hired as paid witnesses for various law firms representing plaintiffs in the cancer litigation. A determination that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen satisfied the preconceived notion of these advocates and might very well benefit them personally through their profitable trial testimony business.
In one example, it has recently been revealed that Christopher Portier, an “invited specialist” at the IARC meeting on glyphosate, signed a consulting contract with plaintiffs’ attorneys just days after IARC's opinion on glyphosate first published. Portier began to bill the plaintiffs’ attorneys for his consulting services in June 2015, as he was also embarking on a major lobbying effort in both the European Union and the United States to undermine regulatory reviews of glyphosate that were underway.
In his ongoing lobbying efforts, which rely on the flawed IARC conclusion, Portier repeatedly hid the fact that he began accepting payments from U.S. plaintiffs’ attorneys in June 2015. From June 2015 to June 2017, Portier accepted more than $160,000 in consulting fees. Over that same period, Portier concealed the payments in correspondence to European policymakers, in a presentation to the European Chemicals Agency, in a submission to the U.S. EPA's Scientific Advisory Panel on glyphosate, and in numerous media interviews. All the while, Portier was on the plaintiffs’ payroll. But the public was left in the dark about Portier's secret agenda.
Further evidence that IARC's conclusions are not to be trusted is the recent revelation that the organization intentionally ignored what is considered the most relevant research showing that glyphosate-based herbicides are not carcinogenic. The U.S. Agricultural Health Study (AHS), launched in 1993, is a massive, real-life study of nearly 90,000 farmers and their families. The first reports from that study released in 2005 declared that even in this most exposed population, glyphosate was shown not to be carcinogenic.
In 2013, the very same researcher who chaired the flawed IARC working group on glyphosate also reviewed pre-publication drafts of an updated AHS study of glyphosate with four times the sample size and many years of additional monitoring. Again, the data showed no carcinogenic effect of glyphosate. Despite being intimately familiar with this new key data, the IARC working group chair testified under oath, in related litigation, that not only did he intentionally keep this information from the IARC monograph panel, but he also admitted that, if considered, the new data would have altered IARC's analysis of the glyphosate epidemiology and removed a key basis for IARC's glyphosate classification. Suspicion surrounds the fact that the comprehensive AHS study exonerating glyphosate has yet to be released by the National Institutes of Health.
The lawyers who have filed claims against Monsanto have based their cases entirely on the flawed IARC monograph. Knowing the science is not on their side, these lawyers are now resorting to increasingly desperate tactics to try their case in the court of public opinion—turning back to the very same tactics used by anti-vaccine activists who amplified Wakefield's discredited research.
The overwhelming body of glyphosate science leaves no doubt that IARC's conclusion is wrong and the lawyers’ strategy will fail. The trial lawyers are attempting to paint a picture that suggests Monsanto has undue influence over the scientific data and over the regulatory authorities themselves. This is simply not true.
Regulators such as the U.S. EPA conduct extensive analyses of all the relevant studies on a pesticide product before determining its safety. For instance, in a 2016 review, EPA identified a total of 128 studies that involved the carcinogenicity and/or toxicity of glyphosate. These studies pertained to three different subject areas: epidemiology, genotoxicity, and carcinogenicity in experimental animals. Of this broad data set, only 12 of the studies were submitted by Monsanto. Studies submitted by Monsanto and other registrants were—and must be—conducted according to rigorous Good Laboratory Practices and are audited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The leading independent scientists and regulators from around the world have spoken unambiguously contradicting IARC in no uncertain terms, beginning with the very organization under which IARC operates, the World Health Organization (WHO), which said in 2016: “Glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet.”
The following statements issued by global health and environmental regulators speak for themselves:
• The U.S. EPA in 2016: “The available data at this time do not support a carcinogenic process for glyphosate.”
• Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) in 2016: “Glyphosate is not genotoxic and is unlikely to pose a human cancer risk.”
• European Chemical Agency (ECHA) Committee for Risk Assessment (RAC) in 2017: “RAC concluded that the available scientific evidence did not meet the criteria to classify glyphosate as a carcinogen, as a mutagen, or as toxic for reproduction.”
• European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) November 2015: “Glyphosate is not classified or proposed to be classified as carcinogenic or toxic for Reproduction Class 2.”
• Korean Rural Development Administration (RDA) in 2017: “Moreover, it was concluded that animal testing found no carcinogenic association and health risk of glyphosate on farmers was low. … A large-scale of epidemiological studies on glyphosate similarly found no cancer link.”
• Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) in 2016: “Glyphosate does not pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.”
• Expert Panels on Glyphosate—Peer Reviewed in Critical Reviews of Toxicology in September 2016:
• “The data do not support IARC's conclusion that glyphosate is a ‘probable human carcinogen’ and, consistent with previous regulatory assessments, further concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.”
• New Zealand Environmental Protection Authority in 2016: “Glyphosate is unlikely to be genotoxic or carcinogenic.”
• German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in May 2016: “No hazard classification for carcinogenicity is warranted for glyphosate according to the CLP criteria.”
• Japan Food Safety Commission (FSC) in 2016: “No neurotoxicity, carcinogenicity, reproductive effect, teratogenicity, or genotoxicity was observed.”
And yet, because of the power of unchecked social media and a financially motivated plaintiffs’ bar, IARC's junk science lives on.But there are voices being raised against this travesty. Both the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee are demanding to know why the AHS, the most comprehensive research ever conducted on pesticides and glyphosate, has not been released. And rational players from science and industry are calling for fundamental reform in IARC's broken monograph program. We cannot afford to wait another day for this transparency and honesty.
For its part, Monsanto will continue to champion innovative and rigorous science, defend itself against baseless litigation, and press for answers about IARC's failed science and unscrupulous tactics.
Sound science enables us to develop new technologies, solve practical problems, and make informed decisions—both individually and collectively. Without it, we are lost.
Scott Partridge is Vice President of Global Strategy at the Monsanto Company. Mr. Partridge oversees global competition policy and leads integrated competition and communications strategies to guide U.S. and international policy, litigation, and regulatory matters.
The opinions expressed here do not represent those of Bloomberg BNA, which welcomes other points of view.
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Chemical Companies Concerned as EU Glyphosate Deadlock Continues
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
BASF Corp., Monsanto Co., and other companies marketing products containing glyphosate expressed frustration Oct. 25 at the lack of progress in the European Union over the reauthorization of the herbicide.
A regulatory committee of EU member country representatives met Oct. 25 to discuss the reauthorization, but held back from voting on it. The current EU authorization for glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup and dozens of other herbicides, expires Dec. 15.
The next steps are unclear, however, as several countries have suggested moving toward a ban amid cancern concerns. European Commission spokeswoman Anca Paduraru said that, following the non-vote in the regulatory committee, the commission would “now reflect and will announce the date of the next meeting shortly.”
Eike Croucher, a spokeswoman for Germany's BASF, which sells formulations containing the herbicide, told Bloomberg Environment Oct. 25 that glyphosate “has been repeatedly and extensively reviewed by authorities in numerous countries around the world.”
“Anyone who is willing to look at the facts will come to the conclusion that this product—if applied as intended and per label instructions—can be used responsibly,” Croucher said.
Support Lacking
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, previously put forward a proposal to reauthorize glyphosate through 2027, but subsequently said it would discuss a five- to seven-year reauthorization with the committee and possibly put the issue to a vote.
A lack of support from countries such as France, Luxembourg, and Sweden, however, means, under EU qualified majority voting rules, there is a sufficient bloc of countries to hold up reauthorization if it's put to a vote.
Luxembourg favors a “clear exit strategy with usage limitation” for glyphosate, and the EU should agree to “clear steps towards end of glyphosate,” Environment Minister Carole Dieschbourg said in Oct. 24 and Oct. 25 tweets.
Dieschbourg's comments echoed a European Parliament resolution adopted Oct. 24 that said glyphosate should be reauthorized for agricultural use for only five years and then banned from use in the EU.
The reauthorization in the EU of glyphosate is controversial after 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.
The commission's proposal to reauthorize glyphosate “was based on the assessment and the evaluations at our disposal,” Paduraru said.
Companies Frustrated
A spokeswoman for Syngenta Oct. 25 referred a request for comment to the European Crop Protection Association, and added that the company had decided to reduce sales of glyphosate-based herbicides because they are “increasingly less effective.”
Graeme Taylor, public affairs director for the European Crop Protection Association, said in an emailed statement Oct. 25 that authorities had repeatedly judged glyphosate to be safe and “we implore decision-makers to consider the facts.”
“Science is now being traded away in a high-stakes game of political roulette to decide how long an approval for the substance should be granted,” Taylor said.
A spokesman for Monsanto who asked not to be named, citing company policy, told Bloomberg Environment Oct. 25 that the EU should “move promptly to renew glyphosate,” and there was “no scientific or health basis for approving authorization for less than the maximum allowable limit.”
Next Steps Unclear
Green lawmakers and groups said the indecision over glyphosate showed the EU should take a lead in phasing it out. The European Commission hasn't convinced EU countries of the safety of the product and instead of pushing for reauthorization it should “bring forward proposals to swiftly phase out glyphosate use in the EU,” said Bart Staes, a Belgian Green member of the European Parliament.
The European Commission has tried five times to garner sufficient support from countries for reauthorization of glyphosate and would “continue to fail” unless it puts forward a phase-out plan, Franziska Achterberg, Greenpeace EU food policy director, said Oct. 25.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123010888&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123010888&jd=123010888
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No Consensus On Glyphosate In The EU
Oct 26, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson
Member states fail to agree on length of renewal
European Union officials have postponed a key decision on whether to reauthorize use of glyphosate, after a vote by the European Parliament in favor of phasing out the controversial herbicide by 2022. The chemical’s current EU license expires on Dec. 15.
The European Parliament, made up of elected representatives, passed its nonbinding resolution to ban glyphosate on Oct. 24. A committee of the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, planned to vote on Oct. 25 on a proposal to renew the chemical’s license in the EU for 10 years. But after the Parliament vote, the Commission dropped the proposal.
Debate over the use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, has been escalating in the EU since 2015, when the World Health Organization’s cancer agency classified the chemical as a probable carcinogen. Earlier this month, the Commission received a petition signed by more than 1.3 million EU citizens, urging member states to ban use of glyphosate in the EU and reform the pesticide approval process.
EU officials failed to get enough votes to reauthorize glyphosate in June 2016, when the Commission proposed renewing it for 15 years. Rather than letting glyphosate authorization lapse, the Commission extended glyphosate’s license for 18 months while regulators evaluated the herbicide’s safety. The European Chemicals Agency has since declared there is no evidence to link glyphosate to cancer or reproductive effects. The European Food Safety Authority came to the same conclusion.
But EU member nations have yet to reach consensus on an appropriate length of time for glyphosate’s reauthorization. The Commission is now trying for an agreement in the five- to seven-year range.
Farm groups and pesticide makers are urging EU officials to reauthorize use of glyphosate for 15 years, the full term for a pesticide. “Without renewal, our affordable food supplies and agricultural conservation will be thrown into jeopardy,” says Pekka Pesonen, secretary-general of Copa and Cogeca, groups that represent European farmers and agricultural co-ops. Failing to renew glyphosate’s license “would break consumer trust in our institutions and decision makers and allow minority views to take the stage,” he says.
EU officials are expected to discuss glyphosate reauthorization again at the next committee meeting on Nov. 6.
https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i43/consensus-glyphosate-EU.html
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U.K. Chemical Companies Face Brexit Uncertainty, Green Watchdog Warns
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ali Qassim
U.K. chemical companies fear the government's lack of clarity about their future regulatory framework could significantly damage the country's second-biggest manufacturing industry after it leaves the European Union, according to the British Parliament's green watchdog.
“Businesses working in the chemicals industry are concerned by the government's failure to set out a vision for the sector post-Brexit,” Mary Creagh, chair of Parliament's Environment Audit Committee, said Oct. 25.
To avoid any break in trade and exports once the U.K. leaves the EU in March 2019, the chemicals industry “is clear that they will still need to meet EU regulations,” said Creagh, a member of the opposition Labour Party.These regulations include REACH (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation, and authorization of chemicals) which came into force in 2007; the EU regulation on classification, labeling, and packaging of substances and mixtures (CLP Regulation, (EC) No 1272/2008), which came into force in 2009; and EU Biocides Regulation 528/2012 (EU BPR), which cover the biocides used to control organisms such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, insects, and animals.
In contrast to the chemical industry's clarity on the need to meeting EU rules post-Brexit, the U.K.'s position on the sector's regulatory framework is “vague” and “could cost the taxpayer millions of pounds and leave our second-largest export sector in disarray,” Creagh said.
The chemicals industry is the second-largest exporter to the EU after the automotive industry with total sales of 32 billion pounds ($42 billion) and total exports of 26 billion pounds ($34 billion).
‘Absence of Clear Answers’
The Environment Audit Committee's warning comes after receiving feedback from industry and environmentalists following the government's response to a report the committee published earlier this year. The committee examines how government policies and programs affect the environment and sustainable development.
The report highlighted how companies face significant uncertainty about the validity of current REACH registrations after the U.K. leaves the EU and how the government must clarify urgently their position on the future regulatory framework.
In its response to the report, the government said it was planning to amend REACH and assured industry that its priority “will be to make sure that chemicals continue to be effectively and safely managed.”
But chemical companies said they were unhappy with the government's vague response.
The Chemicals Business Association, the voice of the U.K. chemical supply chain, said Oct. 24 that the government doesn't recognize “the unique nature of the regulatory issues facing the chemical industry.”
Speaking for chemical scientists, the Royal Society of Chemistry agreed that there is a “lack of clarity about what the legal relationship will be between the U.K. and the EU following ‘exit day’ and how the delegated powers will actually be used.”
The former head of the Belgium REACH help desk agreed. Jean-Pierre Feyaerts said Oct. 24 that the U.K. government “did not bring the right answers expected to the questions raised in the report” and “does not seem to understand the risks of relocation in the absence of clear answers.”
Regulatory Compliance
Compliance with EU chemicals regulation represents “the key to market access” and is in fact, “non-negotiable,” the Chemicals Business Association said, adding that “failure to comply is a barrier to market access. Without market access there is no trade.”
Consequently, chemical businesses are calling for the British government to adopt the REACH, CLP, and biocides legislation into U.K. law “on exactly the same regulatory and legislative terms as they are currently operating.”
Members of the Chemicals Business Association include distributors, traders, warehouse operators, along with logistics and transport companies that together distribute, pack, and blend more than 3 million tons of chemicals annually.
A representative from the government was unavailable to respond to the Environment Audit Committee's announcements at press time.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123010886&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123010886&jd=123010886
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(ACC Mentioned) US Manufacturers Ask FERC To Stop DOE Notice Of Proposed Rulemaking
Oct 25, 2017 | Daily Energy Insider
By Kevin Randolph
A group of large industrial users of electricity filed comments with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) this week, asking the commission to terminate a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) from the Department of Energy (DOE) that seeks to compensate certain generation resources for reliability and resiliency attributes.
The NOPR directs FERC to develop and implement rules to provide these compensations, which would be paid primarily to nuclear and coal plants.
The group included the Electricity Consumers Resource Council (ELCON), American Chemistry Council (ACC), American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), and a number of state industrial energy groups.
“The U.S. manufacturing community strongly oppose the DOE NOPR and urges the FERC to terminate this proceeding,” the group said in its comments. “If implemented, the Proposal would override the market’s ability to select the most efficient units, increase the electricity costs by many millions of dollars for untold numbers of businesses and consumers, and result in substantial loss of U.S. manufacturing capacity of jobs.”
The comments said the NOPR’s premise, that the shutdown of coal and nuclear plants threaten grid reliability and resiliency, “unfounded.” The manufacturers attributed it to a properly functioning competitive market.
“Although the competitive markets are not perfect, the current historically low electricity prices that have resulted from their operation have substantially benefited that competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing sector that depends on affordable and reliable energy supplies,” the comments said. “Those markets cannot be sustained if coal, nuclear, wind, and solar resources are all compensated with out-of-market payments.”
https://dailyenergyinsider.com/news/8642-us-manufacturers-ask-ferc-stop-doe-notice-proposed-rulemaking/
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Fossil Fuels Get Boost as Agencies Scrutinize Their Rules
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rebecca Kern
Natural gas permitting is likely to be streamlined and air pollution and appliance efficiency regulations will get extra scrutiny as federal agencies seek ways to ease burdens on domestic energy production.
Federal agencies, including the Department of Energy, Department of Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency, outlined Oct. 25 recommendations to boost domestic energy in response to President Donald Trump's Executive Order 13783, which seeks to remove impediments to oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power in particular.
Among the recommendations is streamlining a variety of permitting programs from natural gas exports and offshore oil exploration to the air pollution reviews required for manufacturers and other industries to expand. Federal agencies also plan to roll back Obama-era regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and leaking methane as part of its efforts to develop America's energy resources.
Trump's executive order has the support of the nation's manufacturers, businesses, and oil and natural gas producers and distributors, according to a Bloomberg Environment analysis of public disclosure records that lobbyists filed with the Senate Office of Public Record by Oct. 30.
Fossil Fuel Impediments Targeted
A variety of agencies explored ways to ease burdens on fossil fuel industries.
The Energy Department review, conducted by the department's Regulatory Reform Task Force, first recommended that the agency streamline and speed up the approval process for liquefied natural gas exports. The agency Sept. 1 issued a proposal to accelerate the approval process for small-scale natural gas exports to the Caribbean and Central and South America even though analysts and the industry say it will have limited benefits.
Also, the task force recommended reforming the National Environmental Policy Act process for permit and export applications, including for natural gas exports and gas pipelines.
“We look forward to working with them to help revise the NEPA process while maintaining our industry's excellent safety and environmental records,” Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Center of Liquefied Natural Gas, which represents natural gas producers, shippers, terminal operators, and developers, told Bloomberg Environment.
The Interior Department in its report reaffirmed its decisions to rescind the Obama administration's hydraulic fracturing regulations and to rescind or revise new regulations on the venting, flaring, and leaking of natural gas on federal lands.
Interior is considering possible revisions for several parts of a 2016 rule that extensively tightened regulations to control offshore oil and gas wells, also known as the blowout preventer rule. Interior also said it is considering revision of the 2016 Arctic Rule that toughened regulations governing oil work in federal waters of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas north of Alaska.
Interior also appears set on getting rid of a new layer of planning for onshore oil and gas leasing that involves the use of “master leasing plans” intended to create a more ambitious and integrated policy of deciding what to approve or block in large swathes of landscape on federal lands.
Separately, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency organized under the Energy Department, said in its review that it could speed up licensing of hydroelectric power projects. Days earlier, FERC issued a policy statement to make the licensing process more predictable for industry.
Army Corps Advises Water Act Changes
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recommends changes to nine Clean Water Act permits that are used for domestic energy production projects.
Nationwide permits are issued by the corps that authorize dredge-and-fill activities in wetlands and streams with minimal adverse impacts for a variety of projects, including mining, home building, agriculture, manufacturing, and road construction.
The nine nationwide permits that the corps identified for change deal with hydropower, renewable energy, utility lines, and coal mining.
EPA Aims to Ease Air Permitting
The EPA's Oct. 25 review outlines plans to streamline the agency's air pollution permitting program and to make compliance with federal air quality standards for criteria pollutants more flexible.
A task force created by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is reviewing options to allow for “cooperative agreements” between states and the EPA “to provide regulatory relief and meaningfully improve ozone air quality.”
Pruitt will announce the members of another task force to focus on reform of the EPA's New Source Review permitting program, which requires industrial facilities to install modern pollution controls when renovating or building new facilities that significantly increase air emissions. Several companies, including Arch Coal, Ameren, BP America, and Phillips 66, lobbied the government this summer on New Source Review permitting, according to a Bloomberg Environment review of Senate lobbying records.
John Walke, clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Bloomberg Environment the EPA's report is “a combination of rollbacks and the surprisingly vapid.”
The EPA also said it would evaluate how its regulations will impact employment. Coal producer Murray Energy Corp. sued the EPA in 2014 seeking to force those kinds of evaluations, but the agency had said they were too time consuming and resource intensive.
In addition, the EPA listed several Obama-era climate, air, and water regulations it is working to rewrite— including the agency's carbon pollution limits for the power sector and the 2015 Waters of the U.S. regulation.
More Voluntary Appliance Standards Possible
The Energy Department also recommended changes to its appliance energy efficiency standards affecting more than 60 household and commercial appliances. The task force recommended considering industry feedback, which has called for considering the option of voluntary or market-based standards in lieu of more stringent efficiency standards required to be considered by the agency every six years.
Andrew DeLaski, executive director of the Appliance Awareness Standards Project, which advocates for appliance efficiency standards, criticized the industry-focused recommendations.
“While there's lip service to protecting consumers, it's more about protecting manufacturers—to get things out of the way that might be suppressing oil and gas consumption,” he told Bloomberg Environment. “That's concerning.”
—With assistance from Abby Smith, Amena Saiyid, and Alan Kovski
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DOE To Scrutinize Efficiency Rulemaking, LNG Exports
Oct 26, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darius Dixon
The Energy Department plans to revisit how it handles the development of energy efficiency standards, the agency’s central regulatory power, according to a memo the agency released this afternoon.
In a six-page document responding to a White House executive order aimed at reducing rules that "unnecessarily encumber" energy development, Energy Secretary Rick Perry says the agency is focusing on four areas where it wants to shed burdensome regulations, particularly on energy efficiency.
The document says DOE is considering whether to issue a request for information specifically on how to amend its procedures for setting up new efficiency standards for consumer products. Commenters, the agency said, pressed DOE to extend the agency’s so-called lookback provision, which mandates that each efficiency rule be revisited every six years for a potentially tighter standard. Although changing that timeframe would need congressional intervention, the memo states that DOE may conduct the necessary review but avoid establishing a more restrictive rule in order to give affected industries more time to comply.
Before it can sign off on a more aggressive standard, DOE rulemakers have to declare that a regulation is both “economically justified” and “technologically feasible.” But DOE says economically justified “is subject to interpretation” and may seek to redefine the term.
Perry says DOE will look for ways to make the national labs “operate more efficiently” and it plans to build on its rulemaking effort to lower barriers for “small-scale” natural gas exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries to potentially include “larger-scale exports.”
WHAT'S NEXT: The document was sent to the White House but it didn't include a timeline for the review processes.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Group of Lawmakers Suggests Calling Pipeline Sabotage Domestic Terrorism
Oct 25, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jeremiah Shelor
A bipartisan group of federal lawmakers has raised the possibility of prosecuting pipeline saboteurs and violent anti-oil and gas activists as domestic terrorists, according to a letter sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions Monday.
Led by Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), a group more than 80 members of the House of Representatives -- mostly Republicans -- highlighted reports of attempts to vandalize oil and natural gas pipelines, and of calls to violence against the oil and gas industry.
"In April, a newspaper in Colorado went as far as publishing a letter to the editor that stated, 'If the oil and gas industry puts fracking wells in our neighborhoods, threatening our lives and our children's lives, then don't we have a moral responsibility to blow up wells and eliminate fracking and workers?'" the lawmakers wrote. "While we are strong advocates for the First Amendment, violence toward individuals and destruction of property are both illegal and potentially fatal."
The lawmakers also noted attempts to "shut down lines by turning valves at pump stations...Even though some activists commit these acts of sabotage to raise awareness about climate change, they only create the serious risk of harm to the environment they claim to care about."
Asking Sessions to detail the Department of Justice's (DOJ) efforts to prosecute recent cases involving criminal actions taken against pipelines, the lawmakers questioned whether "the attacks against the nation's energy infrastructure, which pose a threat to human life, and appear to be intended to intimidate and coerce policy changes, fall within" the DOJ's definition of domestic terrorism.
"Environmental activists who choose to use violence against our nation's energy infrastructure and the men and women who work in the energy industry should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law," Buck said of the letter to Sessions. "While I will continue to support their right to protest policies they disagree with, we need to send a strong message to those who destroy property that such dangerous behavior will not be tolerated by the communities who live around and rely on this energy infrastructure."
The American Petroleum Institute (API) praised the lawmakers for urging Sessions to take action against pipeline saboteurs.
"Safety is our industry's core value, and any illegal or dangerous effort to undermine safety and bring harm to the environment and communities should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," API Midstream and Industry Operations Group Director Robin Rorick said. "We take these attacks very seriously, and we welcome the bipartisan efforts in Congress to strengthen our nation's infrastructure that delivers the energy Americans demand every day."
API has been working with the Trump administration on this issue, including the DOJ, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, among others, the group said.
"A key component of securing our nation's energy infrastructure is ensuring that law enforcement has the tools needed to prosecute those who attack it," Rorick said.
In recent years, pipeline operators have dealt with heightened opposition to new projects, fed by anti-fossil fuel activism. Many projects have faced fierce opposition during the regulatory process, and protests and demonstrations against Energy Transfer Partners LP's Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) grew heated, grabbing national headlines last year.
In August, Energy Transfer filed a complaint in federal court calling the DAPL protest organizers "a network of putative not-for-profits and rogue eco-terrorist groups," accusing them of carrying out cyberattacks against Energy Transfer and its employees, inciting violence during protests against the crude oil pipeline and engaging in a campaign to harm the company's financial standing.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/112211-group-of-lawmakers-suggests-calling-pipeline-sabotage-domestic-terrorism
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(ACC Mentioned) Workplace Chemical Exposure Limits Now in EPA's Hands
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson and Pat Rizzuto
Regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency can accomplish what their counterparts at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration largely have not: They can limit worker exposure to a host of hazardous chemicals.
But even with that newfound legal authority, the EPA is hampered by a lack of credible data on which to act.
In fact, most worker exposure standards haven't been updated by OSHA since the 1970s, which led former director David Michaels to say those limits “are outdated and inadequate for ensuring protection of worker health.”
“That's a little frustrating,” Chris Trahan Cain, director of health and safety at North America's Building Trades Unions, told Bloomberg Environment. “We should know what jobs expose workers to what chemicals, but we simply don't.”
Under the recently amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the EPA is required to address chemical impacts on workers. They are among the groups of people the amended law designates as potentially susceptible or more highly exposed subpopulations. The law also includes infants, children, pregnant women, and the elderly in that group.
In documents to explain EPA risk reviews of 10 chemicals, the agency said workers “may experience greater exposures than the general population.”
The EPA now has up to three years to complete the TSCA risk evaluations, a change from the old law, which didn't require the agency to assess chemicals already in use.
How Hard Will EPA Push?
While the EPA has the authority to protect workers from hazardous chemicals, environmental and labor advocates said they are worried that Administrator Scott Pruitt may not aggressively implement the new law.
“It's not clear that the Pruitt-Trump administration has any interest in protecting workers, even though workers were a large part of them being in office,” Eve Gartner, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, told Bloomberg Environment.
EPA didn't respond to requests for comment on this story.
Under the new TSCA law, Gartner said, the “EPA has much more authority to protect workers than OSHA does.”
The TSCA implementation process is being overseen by Nancy Beck, the deputy assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, and a former official with the American Chemistry Council, the industry trade group.
Some Exposures Ignored
Jennifer McPartland, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, said at a recent International Society of Exposure Science conference the agency has unlawfully excluded from planned analyses certain sources of exposure. The Environmental Defense Fund is suing the EPA over its final risk evaluation and two other TSCA rules for these alleged deficiencies.
McPartland said the EPA proposed to exclude from consideration the presence of asbestos in existing buildings and its associated disposal from the agency's analysis. Asbestos fibers have been broadly used in historic construction practices with wide worker exposures in the building and demolition industries.
For the solvent 1,4-dioxane—primarily a byproduct generated during the production of other chemicals—EPA proposed to exclude the chemical's presence in products as an impurity, she said.
In addition, even though the EPA now has a deadline to finish risk evaluations, the agency is reluctant to use the new authorities TSCA gave it to require companies to generate exposure information, McPartland alleged.
The original TSCA statute made it too difficult for the EPA to obtain information it needed to understand whether chemicals posed a health or environmental risk, she said. But when Congress amended TSCA, it specifically gave the EPA greater authority to collect existing chemical hazard and exposure data for workers and other subgroups or to require companies to generate the data.
“The EPA should use these authorities,” McPartland said.
Rocket Science?
While the EPA hasn't traditionally examined occupational exposures to chemicals, the agency should be able to adjust, Adam Finkel, professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan and former director of OSHA's health standards programs, told Bloomberg Environment.
“It's not rocket science,” Finkel said.
Before the EPA can restrict a chemical or require workplace warnings about it, the agency has to find that the chemical poses an unreasonable risk.
As required by TSCA, the EPA picked 10 chemicals—asbestos, pigment violet 29, seven solvents and a cluster of flame retardants—and is now working to explore their exposures and risks. The chemicals have a variety of uses including in paint strippers, furniture, building materials, and to make other substances.
If a chemical poses an unreasonable risk using the best available science, TSCA says the EPA can require labeling or hazard communication, restrict the chemical's use or even ban it.
Few Places to Look
But if the EPA wants to find out more about worker exposures, it has few places to look.
The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health conducted only one National Occupational Exposure Survey—a comprehensive inventory of chemical exposures at U.S. workplaces—from 1981 to 1983. The project was never repeated and it is still used as a data source even though workplaces have changed significantly since.
OSHA also has surveillance information—saved over years of workplace inspections—to draw on, Finkel said. Most OSHA permissible exposure limits for chemicals in the workplace are outdated, and the agency has proposed only four such limits in the past 20 years for chloride, chromium, silica, and beryllium.
And while companies may have more detailed information, Finkel said, it may be protected by proprietary agreements or contain confidential business information.
Controlling Exposures
The challenge of identifying worker exposures is illustrated by three of those first 10 chemicals to be studied—paint strippers methylene chloride and n-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), and the dry cleaning solvent trichloroethylene (TCE)—for which the EPA already has risk assessments detailing worker exposures.
Under the Obama administration, the EPA issued two proposed rules—in December 2016 and a month later—to restrict uses of TCE. It also proposed a rule in January that would prohibit the use of methylene chloride and ban or restrict NMP in paint removal products. The Trump administration has delayed all three proposed rules with no planned finalization date.
In the methylene chloride assessment, the EPA determined at least 230,000 workers were exposed to paint strippers containing the chemical, while at least 330,000 workers were exposed to TCE through degreasing and dry cleaning operations.
“That's pretty meaningful,” Gartner of Earthjustice said, “especially because EPA found the risks were pretty serious.”
The risk rationales justifying these actions show the agency quantified how many workers were exposed, Gartner added.
The agency also completed risk reviews for TCE and methylene chloride in 2014, and NMP in 2015. The EPA concluded that TCE and methylene chloride were probable human carcinogens, while NMP was likely to cause reproductive toxicity.
Dennis Shireman, vice president of research and development at W.M. Barr & Company Inc., said at a recent EPA workshop that the company has used methylene chloride to manufacture nonflammable paint remover for 70 years, but has never seen a serious worker injury associated with the chemical.
Shireman told the EPA that the company—the largest U.S. retail supplier of paint removals, solvents and thinners—uses engineering controls at its manufacturing plant “to completely comply with OSHA standards.”
Motivation for Companies
Other companies that make methylene chloride-containing strippers—and belong to the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance—have provided exposure information to the EPA, Faye Graul, the alliance's executive director, told Bloomberg Environment.
Graul declined to elaborate on what the companies found, but in comments the association filed with the agency earlier this year, the group wrote worker exposure risks from methylene chloride appeared “manageable with the appropriate worker protection strategies that already exist,” such as as using respirators.
Chemical manufacturers and other parties interested in chemical safety want to work with the EPA to provide worker exposure information, according to Rosemary Zaleski, head of the exposure sciences section at ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences. A lot of exposure information exists, but it can be difficult and time consuming to extract, she said.
The agency doesn't need to do all the work, because if asked, companies and other interested parties will help gather this information, Zaleski said.
For example, some companies are studying what type of gloves are most effective at controlling NMP exposure, according to Kathleen Roberts, managing director of the NMP Producers Group, whose members include Ashland Inc., BASF Corp and Lyondell Chemical Co.
Companies may be motivated to help the EPA with the reviews to ensure the agency doesn't “identify risks that may not exist, and then could be implementing use restrictions that aren't necessary,” Roberts told Bloomberg Environment.
EPA Generating Data
The EPA's research office continues to make strides towards developing exposure estimates for thousands of chemicals. The agency is developing high-throughput computerized estimates for people that experience different types of exposure via consumer products and in occupational settings, an EPA spokeswoman told Bloomberg Environment.
These exposure estimates will be available to the agency's chemicals office to account for worker and other vulnerable groups in making regulatory decisions under the amended TSCA should EPA leadership opt to protect those groups, the labor and environmental advocates say.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123010887&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123010887&jd=123010887
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EPA's Pruitt Denies He's an Ally of Polluters, Vows to Get Tough
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Jennifer Jacobs
Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, vowed that he will get tough on corporate polluters, dismissing critics who cast him as too cozy with industry.
“They don't know me,” Pruitt said, during an interview with Bloomberg News in his Washington office. “I've led a grand jury. We are going to do enforcement, to go after bad actors and go after polluters.“
Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general, is leading the efforts to roll back Obama-era environmental regulations, including the first limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and an overhaul of clean water rules. Despite moving to rescind those measures, those that remain in place will be fully enforced, he said.
“I know what it means to prosecute people,” he said. “And we've got some of those folks across the country—those people that are intentionally taking steps to pollute our water, to pollute our air.“
While coal miners, manufacturers and oil companies have praised Pruitt's efforts to halt or rescind regulations, environmental advocates say he's the leading example of a Trump administration appointee who has an agenda that conflicts with the very nature of the agency he leads.
Under former President Barack Obama, the EPA played a pivotal role in the government's fight against climate change, proposing sweeping rules to limit on methane leaks from oil wells and carbon-dioxide emissions from coal plants. Pruitt, who sued the EPA more than a dozen time to challenge those and other regulations, by contrast, is pursuing what he calls a “back to basics” agenda that he says will prioritize action on traditional pollutants.
Eric Schaeffer, a former director of civil enforcement at the EPA under former President Bill Clinton, says Pruitt's environmental record as attorney general Oklahoma—where “he didn't do bupkis for enforcement”—makes him skeptical the administrator is going to be “very good on enforcement” now.
“But it would be great to be wrong,” Schaeffer said in an interview. “So far, the EPA's enforcement record is thin.“
The Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group led by Schaeffer, reported in August that during President Donald Trump's first six months in office, civil penalties paid for environmental violations were 60 percent smaller on average than for comparable periods in the administrations of presidents Obama, George W. Bush and Clinton.
In Oklahoma, Pruitt pursued fraud cases against some insurers and claims of unfair and deceptive practices by mortgage servicers, yielding a multimillion dollar payout for victims in the state. But he also dismantled a unit in Oklahoma dedicated to enforcing environmental violations and built his political career challenging what he termed the “EPA's activist agenda” under Obama.
Pruitt highlighted the EPA's decision earlier this month to approve a plan for removing toxins from the San Jacinto Waste Pits, a Superfund site near Houston that began leaking cancer-causing dioxin after flooding from Hurricane Harvey.
That included ordering two companies—International Paper Co. and a subsidiary of Waste Management Inc.—to pay an estimated $115 million toward excavating more than 212,000 cubic yards of contaminated waste from the site. Both companies have objected to the cleanup plan.
“And they are already barking down there,” Pruitt said, referencing those companies’ complaints. Pruitt said he was told some people would be “surprised” he would seek to hold Fortune 500 companies accountable.
Another example: In June, the Trump administration filed a lawsuit alleging that a Colorado-based oil company repeatedly violated clean air rules by allowing volatile organic compounds to escape from of storage-tank batteries. According to the complaint filed in that civil case, the EPA alleged that PDC Energy Inc. failed to adequately design, operate and maintain control systems on those tanks., resulting in those leaks. That case is ongoing.
“I am here because I really feel called to it,” Pruitt said. “My desire each day is to bless the president and the decisions he's making.“
Pruitt said he is still making plans for a “red team, blue team” exercise to examine the scientific research around climate change, with skeptics squaring off against scientists who say data overwhelmingly prove carbon dioxide emissions drive the phenomenon.
That effort—which Pruitt likened to “peer review happening in real time”—would be separate from any formal review of the EPA's landmark 2009 conclusion that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. Some conservatives have argued that unless the EPA reverses that endangerment finding, as it is known, his regulatory repeals will not endure.
Pruitt didn't explicitly detail plans for a review of the endangerment finding—or commit to one—instead suggesting that regulatory action around the EPA's proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan should come first.
“Any type of review of endangerment findings would take time—it would take meaningful time,” Pruitt said. “You can't in the midst of that have confusion created by a vacuum because you are not addressing the Clean Power Plan, the 2015 rule or any authority you have” under the Clean Air Act to address greenhouse gas emissions.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123010877&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123010877&jd=123010877
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House Votes to Bolster Industry Say in Environmental Settlements
Oct 26, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Lee and Dean Scott
The House moved Oct. 25 to abolish what Republicans see as improper collusion between the EPA and environmental groups when they negotiate settlements that force the agency to expedite or strengthen regulations, sending the bill to an uncertain future in the Senate.
The Sunshine for Regulations and Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act (H.R. 469), passed by the House 234-187, targets what industry groups deride as a “sue and settle” practice, under which agencies are sued when they miss a legal deadline to take action or review existing standards. The agency then agrees to settle the case, rather than litigate.
The bill would require agencies to request public comments on any settlement before it is final and allow industry groups and other outside parties the opportunity to intervene before any consent decrees or settlement agreements are filed.
The House passed a similar bill in 2016 but it was ultimately doomed in the Senate by an Obama administration veto threat. Such measures now enjoy strong support from the Republican-controlled Congress and President Trump. But the Senate companion bill introduced in January by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) (S. 119) remains in committee and is strongly opposed by many Democrats in that chamber.
House passage of the bill came after Republicans, led by the bill's author, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), rebuffed Democrats’ attempts to weaken the measure and voted down all of the minority party's amendments. The House adopted by voice vote an amendment—authored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and offered on the floor by Collins—to ensure the name of plaintiffs in such settlements are made public with certain exceptions, such as when a court elects to keep such information private.
Democrats argued that the amendment overrides protections of such information under the Privacy Act.
Criticism Overblown?
Environmental groups and public interest groups say industry criticism of such settlements is overblown and that such efforts are often the only way to get the EPA and other agencies to expedite long-delayed rulemakings or to get them to comply with legislative deadlines. Those deadlines can require such rules to be periodically reviewed and, if necessary, strengthened.
However, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said Oct. 16 that the agency would no longer settle such cases, vowing instead to litigate them.
“The days of regulation through litigation are over,” Pruitt said at the time.
Environmental groups have taken the most advantage of the sue-and-settle technique, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The chamber in 2013 listed the Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians, Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity, and Environmental Defense Fund as the top five groups bringing lawsuits.
The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P. Bloomberg BNA is an affiliate of Bloomberg L.P.
The sue and settle bill was the second passed by the House this week pushing for what Republicans view as reform of environmental settlements. The House passed a bill Oct. 24 that would forbid the Justice Department from entering into settlement agreements that include payments to third party groups.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123010882&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123010882&jd=123010882
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Agency Takes Aim At Air Standards, Permitting Program
Oct 26, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Maxine Joselow and Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA this afternoon publicly released its report on rules that could be repealed or reformed because of the impact to domestic energy production.
The report from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt calls for re-evaluating the New Source Review permitting program under the Clean Air Act as well as national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). The report also announces the formation of task forces to review each issue.
The document comes in response to President Trump's high-profile "energy independence" executive order, which directed agencies to review all federal rules that potentially hamper U.S. energy producers.
"EPA is committed to President Trump's agenda," Pruitt said in a statement. "We can be both pro-jobs and pro-environment. At EPA, that means we are working to curb unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens that do not serve the American people — while continuing to partner with states, tribes and stakeholders to protect our air, land and water."
The report comes one month after the deadline for submitting the report to the White House. At that time, an EPA spokeswoman confirmed the report was being submitted, though it was not yet publicly available (Greenwire, Sept. 25).New Source Review
Chief among the report's recommendations is reassessing the New Source Review, which puts utilities on the hook for upgrading their pollution controls if they make major modifications to a power plant.
The Commerce Department previously targeted the NSR in a report on streamlining the permitting process for manufacturers, calling the program's requirements "complex, onerous, inefficient and lengthy" (Greenwire, Oct. 13).
EPA built on these concerns in its own report, noting that the agency heard several concerns about the NSR in comments on Trump's energy independence order in the Federal Register.
Many commenters said the NSR permitting process is "unduly lengthy and complex" and can discourage utilities from making upgrades to facilities, according to the report. The comments are no longer publicly accessible.
"The potential costs, complexity and delays that may arise from the NSR permitting process can slow the construction of domestic energy exploration, production or transmission facilities that must undergo review," the report said.
During the George W. Bush administration, EPA made several attempts to weaken the NSR that were ultimately struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
John Walke, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, was involved in much of the major Bush-era NSR litigation. He criticized the report as trying to repeat a quest that had already failed once.
"We've seen this movie and we know how it ends — EPA losing in court," Walke said in an email. "The Trump EPA remake of a B-grade Bush EPA movie will face the same negative reception with courts and Americans. It's the same obsessive-compulsive disorder concerning Clean Air Act permitting, the same antagonism to clean air health standards."Air rules
The report also faulted the current framework for setting and implementing NAAQS for ozone, particulate matter and four other "criteria" pollutants, saying it imposes higher costs on oil and gas facilities, coupled with "greater uncertainties in making future plans."
Under the Clean Air Act, EPA is supposed to review NAAQS every five years in light of the latest research on the health effects of individual pollutants. While the agency rarely meets that timetable, some commenters raised concerns about the "short review time between revisions" as well as EPA's slowness in approving state implementation plans for meeting the standards, the report said. Others objected that EPA "will second-guess" state permitting decisions, thus fostering delays and financial risks for applicants.
An immediate target is the 70 parts per billion standard for ground-level ozone, set in 2015 after EPA concluded that the lung irritant was dangerous at lower levels than previously thought. Key contributors to ozone formation are volatile organic compounds produced by oil and gas operations; critics of the tighter standard contend that it's so strict, some parts of the country may have difficulty meeting it because of high levels of "background ozone" not directly attributable to man-made emissions.
Under Pruitt, EPA has already moved to ease the impact of implementation. Saying that it's still working with states, the agency has delayed attainment designations that were originally due at the beginning of this month without setting a new deadline (Greenwire, Oct. 3). Pruitt has also created the Ozone Cooperative Compliance Task Force, which — behind closed doors — is weighing other options for addressing compliance requirements.
Already, EPA is planning to streamline approval of the state plans "through a nationally consistent process that includes setting performance targets," the report said.
The task force is also exploring ways to allow states "to enter into cooperative agreements with EPA to provide regulatory relief and meaningfully improve ozone air quality," the report said.
During much of George W. Bush's administration, EPA used one type of those agreements — which substituted customized cleanup milestones for the Clean Air Act's typical compliance schedule — in a number of areas that had failed to meet an earlier ozone threshold. The agency dropped that approach after environmentalists challenged it in court.Smart Sectors
The report highlights the creation of the Smart Sectors program within the Office of Policy as a step toward meaningful regulatory reform at the agency.
The Smart Sectors team was established last month to "re-examine how EPA engages with industry" (Greenwire, Sept. 25).
The industries covered by the team include agriculture, automotive, chemical manufacturing, forestry and paper products, mining, oil and gas, and utilities and power generation.
Don Parrish, senior director of regulatory relations with the American Farm Bureau Federation, said he was pleased to see the Smart Sectors team emphasized in the report.
"We were not very impressed with the last administration's ability to communicate with agriculture, and we welcome any opportunity to improve that communication and exchange of information," Parrish said.
"Anything they can do to work with industry — whether it's the energy industry or the agriculture industry — the better."
Reporter Kevin Bogardus contributed.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/10/25/stories/1060064657
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EPA Touts Four 'Key' Policy Reform Efforts To Boost Trump's Energy Order
Oct 26, 2017 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
EPA is touting four “key” policy reforms it will pursue to implement President Donald Trump's sweeping executive order on reducing energy sector regulatory burdens, including a new initiative to study rules' impacts on employment as well as previously announced “task forces” on reworking Clean Air Act permits and ambient air standards.
The agency on Oct. 25 released an “Energy Independence Report” as part of its ongoing effort to reconsider rules that carry “undue” regulatory burdens for the energy sector, as mandated by President Donald Trump's Executive Order (E.O.) 13783. That order, signed March 28, calls on EPA and other agencies to reconsider specific high-profile energy rules, including major climate regulations, while identifying other policies in need of revision.
“In an effort to meet the requirements of E.O. 13783, EPA identified four key initiatives that it believes will further the goal of reducing unnecessary burdens on the development and use of domestic energy resources. These initiatives include: (1) comprehensive New Source Review [NSR] reform, (2) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) reform, (3) robust evaluations of the employment effects of EPA regulations, and (4) a sector-based outreach program” known as “Smart Sectors,” the report says.
EPA has already formally announced a NAAQS task force aimed at reconsidering the Obama-era decision in 2015 to tighten the ozone standard from the 2008 limit of 75 parts per billion down to 70 ppb, which some energy groups warned would trigger new permitting and air pollution control costs.
The agency has also already announced its Smart Sectors outreach initiative, through which EPA is seeking input from trade associations on co-operative problem solving.
And although EPA is yet to formally announce a proposed overhaul of the NSR program, Pruitt told Fox News in a Sept. 19 interview that the agency is “engaged in an NSR kind of task force” that was already working to urge companies to invest in facilities without fear of air permitting hurdles.
Beyond the four areas outlined in the Oct. 25 report, EPA is also taking a series of additional steps Trump's order required, including proposing to repeal the Clean Power Plan that limits greenhouse gas releases from existing power plants, and the separate effort to roll back rules governing methane emissions from oil and gas operations.
NSR Reform
The agency's report expands on Pruitt's brief Sept. 19 statement on the NSR reform effort and outlines a broad array of areas where an NSR task force could recommend revisions to the program, which generally requires new or modified facilities to install emissions control technology if their emissions are expected to worsen air quality.
It draws on comments filed with EPA and with the Commerce Department on its recent report outlining regulatory reform recommendations that identified NSR reform as a “top priority.”
“EPA believes opportunities exist to simplify the NSR application and permit process; to review ways to reduce the length of the permitting process; to review burdens created by the current emissions offsets structure; to improve relationships with the states; and to review the 'once in, always in' policy to clarify the means by which a facility currently classified as a major source can become an area source,” the report says.
Major sources are those that emit at least 100 tons per year (tpy) or 250 tpy, depending on the pollutant, of a "criteria" air pollutant. Changes to that calculation are likely to involve long-standing industry requests to ease project “aggregation,” where linked facilities are considered a single source for purposes of NSR permitting.
The report continues that details on the NSR task force “will be announced in a forthcoming agency memorandum.”
Jobs Review
By contrast, the pledge to review the jobs impacts of existing rules is a new addition to EPA's regulatory reform agenda, and could satisfy the long-pending suit by coal companies led by the Trump-allied Murray Energy seeking such a study targeting air policies that affect the coal and power sectors.
The plaintiffs in Murray Energy, et al., v. EPA, et al., have claimed that the agency is neglecting a Clean Air Act duty to conduct “continuing evaluations of potential loss or shifts of employment which may result” from air rules and their implementation. Murray and its allies hoped that such data would provide ammunition to demand rollbacks of key air policies, either through agency action or statutory reforms.
But the Oct. 25 study goes beyond air policy and promises to review the employment impacts of EPA rules under many of the agency's major authorizing statutes.
“In the [Clean Air Act], the Clean Water Act, the Toxic Substance and Control Act, Solid Waste Disposal Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, Congress expressed its intent that EPA conduct continuing evaluations of potential losses or shifts of employment that may result from implementation of these statutes. However, the Agency historically has not conducted these assessments. EPA acknowledges the importance of considering the cumulative effects of its regulations on the American public. Accordingly, EPA intends to conduct these evaluations consistent with the statutes,” the report says.
Murray Energy's suit has been seen as an important case not only because EPA could be forced to conduct the jobs study, but because the agency has argued that the duty to perform such “continuing” studies is so broad that it cannot be the subject of a citizen suit under the air law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit backed that argument, but if the Supreme Court takes up the case as Murray has requested and rules in the company's favor, it could open the door to citizen suits alleging that the agency has failed to implement other broad mandates, including from environmentalists.
NAAQS Reforms
The report also addresses the scope of the ozone NAAQS task force's mandate -- a controversial topic among Democrats and other Trump administration critics who have faulted that body for working in secret.
EPA says the task force is developing ways to accelerate approval of state implementation plans (SIPs) that detail how states will achieve NAAQS goals, which would also help efforts to reduce the backlog of SIPs awaiting approval, and foster new “cooperative agreements” with states.
“Among its priorities, the Task Force is reviewing administrative options to enable states to enter into cooperative agreements with EPA to provide regulatory relief and meaningfully improve ozone air quality. Moreover, EPA plans to work to streamline SIP approvals through a nationally consistent process that includes setting performance targets, and better monitoring progress on SIP reviews. EPA further plans to work to eliminate the SIP backlog,” the report says.
Finally, the section on Smart Sectors -- which the agency announced Sept. 26 as a program that will work with trade associations and others to find creative ways to document environmental progress and burden reductions -- promises that recommendations from industry will have a meaningful impact on EPA's actions, and pledges monthly updates on its activities.
“EPA anticipates that participating industries will benefit from coordinated, cooperative, and constructive problem-solving with government. The Agency will invite participating industries to engage in active dialogue and offer their own innovative ideas to reduce environmental impacts. Beginning in January 2018, EPA plans to release monthly updates on its Smart Sectors website with data and other information.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-touts-four-key-policy-reform-efforts-boost-trumps-energy-order
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