Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 1/11/17
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(ACC Mentioned) Pruitt Signals an Embrace of Industry Researchers
Nov 1, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
Researchers being considered by U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to serve on science advisory boards routinely produce the type of work favored by the energy and chemical industries. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chief Pruitt’s Halloween Trick Will Scare the Health Out of You
Nov 1, 2017 | Eco Watch
By Elliott Negin
On Halloween, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt gave Americans the equivalent of an apple filled with razor blades. -
Ewire: Potential Senate Rule Changes Could Boost EPA Nominees
Nov 1, 2017 | Inside EPA
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is considering several changes to the Senate's rules to speed considering of Trump administration nominees, according to a report, a move that could aid several controversial picks for top EPA slots that Democrats have held up over their close ties to industry. -
NGOs Ask Court to Stop US EPA Extending Formaldehyde Deadline
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
NGOs have filed a lawsuit asking that the US EPA be prevented from extending the deadline for compliance with new rules on formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products. -
Canada Decides Against Regulating Four Surfactants
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The Canadian government has decided that, after screening assessments on four surfactants, they do not pose health or environmental risks sufficient to warrant regulation under the country's Environmental Protection Act (Cepa). -
EU Member States Back Proposed NMP Ban
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
EU member states have voted to approve a Dutch proposal to ban the manufacture, marketing and use of the aprotic solvent 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) if producers do not meet stringent exposure limits for workers. -
German Textiles Project Takes Industry Forward to 2030
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
A German research project has seen chemical suppliers and the sporting goods industry work together on finding marketing opportunities for safe chemicals, triggered by the REACH Regulation. -
Sweden's Kemi Identifies Poor Labelling of Eyelash Glue
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
An investigation by the Swedish Chemical Agency, Kemi, has found that eyelash glue is being sold in the country with inadequate accompanying information. This can often lead to its unsafe use. -
Welsh Government Consults on Microbeads Ban
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The Welsh government has launched a consultation on a proposal to ban the manufacture and sale of cosmetics and personal care products containing plastic microbeads. -
Court Rejects Greens' Plea to Stop Natural Gas Export Projects
Nov 1, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A federal appeals court Wednesday rejected an environmental group’s lawsuits trying to overturn federal approval for three liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects. -
Now It's Oilmen Who Say Fracking Could Harm Groundwater
Nov 1, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
Oil companies here in Oklahoma — ones that produce from older vertical wells — have raised that prospect as they complain about the practices of their larger brethren. -
FedEx Executive Named to Head Osha
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
President Trump will nominate Scott Mugno, a vice president at FedEx, to be head of the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) – the Labor Department subsidiary that enforces workplace safety regulations. -
Exxon Settles Pollution Case With US, Will Upgrade 8 Plants
Nov 1, 2017 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By David Koenig
Exxon Mobil settled violations of the clean-air law with the Trump administration by agreeing to pay a $2.5 million civil penalty and spend $300 million on pollution-control technology at plants along the Gulf Coast. -
EPA Seeks Comment on Permitting Best Practices
Nov 1, 2017 | Inside EPA
EPA is seeking public comment on whether the permitting best practices principles outlined in a federal report earlier this year are generally applicable to permits issued by states under delegated authority from EPA, an effort that could help the Trump administration advance its priority of speeding permitting. -
Trump's EPA Says Obama's Climate Rule Could Prevent up to 4,500 Deaths Annually, Moves to Scrap It
Nov 1, 2017 | The Washingotn Post
By Chris Mooney
A sweeping Obama-era climate rule could prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths per year by 2030, the Trump administration has found in its analysis of the plan, projecting that the plan could save more lives than the Obama administration said it would. -
Pruitt Demotes Critic as He Remakes Science Boards
Nov 1, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
Deborah Swackhamer checked her phone yesterday in the Zagreb, Croatia, airport and found out she would no longer lead a U.S. EPA science advisory board.
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(ACC Mentioned) Pruitt Signals an Embrace of Industry Researchers
Nov 1, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
Researchers being considered by U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to serve on science advisory boards routinely produce the type of work favored by the energy and chemical industries.
Some of them have received funding directly, or indirectly, from the industries regulated by EPA. At least one has traveled to state capitols to oppose legislation that would restrict chemicals in children's toys. Others have crafted talking points for lobbying groups of the energy industry.
About 500 researchers from around the country applied for positions on the Science Advisory Board, the Board of Scientific Counselors and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, Pruitt said yesterday. A list of almost two dozen finalists obtained by E&E News leans heavily toward industry researchers (E&E Daily, Oct. 31). One of them, who has had some work funded by the American Petroleum Institute, told E&E News that EPA officials reached out to him to apply.
During the Obama administration, industry had some representation on the agency's 22 science advisory boards, but they were mostly stacked with academics and experts in related fields. They were often the recipients of government funding for specialized research.
Yesterday, Pruitt flipped that script. He said that such academics who volunteered on the board and received agency funding were ethically compromised, and instead appointed several industry-tied researchers to head three science boards. He issued a directive, effective immediately, banning board members from receiving EPA grants, which critics said could shut out qualified advisers.
"As we engage in rulemaking here at the agency, our focus should be sound science, not political science," Pruitt said at a press conference announcing the changes. "And I think, historically, that has been in question because these that have been issued and extended to individuals that have served in these respective committees. We want to ensure independence, and we want to ensure that we can have confidence in the counsel they're providing us as we do our job here at the agency."
In the last three years, EPA board members have received $77 million in grants, Pruitt said. Pruitt also criticized previous configurations of the board, saying they lacked geographic diversity and an understanding of state needs outside their own.
While the new members, and candidates, are independent of EPA, they are well-connected to industries being regulated by the federal agency. The list of potential appointees includes a number of advisers employed, funded or supported by groups such as the American Petroleum Institute, American Chemistry Council and Heartland Institute.
Past EPA administrators, including Republicans, have not seen the practice of advisers getting support from EPA as a problem, said Bill Reilly, who served as EPA administrator under George H.W. Bush. He has criticized Pruitt's positions against mainstream climate science, and he said the new policy over advisory boards will shut out scientific experts from weighing in on their fields.
"I think it's a mistake. I think it will preclude a lot of very able and important people from being heard, and probably reduce your contact with them and availability to them. That matters," Reilly told E&E News.
Major scientific organizations also panned Pruitt's suggestion that science advisers who receive agency grants are conflicted.
"EPA's decisions have real implications for the health and well-being of Americans and in some cases people worldwide," American Geophysical Union Executive Director Chris McEntee said in a statement. "By curtailing the input of some of the most respected minds in science, Pruitt's decision robs the agency, and by extension Americans, of a critically important resource."
Two researchers considered finalists for one of the agency's boards recently produced a study that found smog doesn't harm human health, even though public health researchers found the opposite to be true years ago. Stanley Young and Richard Smith published their work in a journal, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, that has been criticized as a publication that supports industry-funded research.
Young is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, which has accepted millions of dollars from energy companies as well as the Mercer family. The Mercers also support Breitbart, which seeks to fuel uncertainty about climate science and other research.
In 2015, Young gave a speech at a Heartland conference in which he accused EPA of using "scare tactics." He has indicated that his research related to California smog fatalities was started with Steve Milloy, a coal and tobacco industry advocate. Young and Milloy, who was a member of Trump's EPA transition team, collected data from California death certificates to demonstrate that no level of soot, known as PM2.5, was fatal. The findings were largely rejected by mainstream scientists.
"If air pollution was a killer, it would be killing everywhere, and the fact that we have established that it's not killing in California puts every other paper at risk for the claims that they have made," Young said at a Heartland Institute event in 2015.
Young did not mention that his study was funded by the American Petroleum Institute.
Mainstream science has long determined that soot and smog are significant threats to human health. Last month, a major paper published in The Lancet found that 1 in 6 deaths worldwide, or about 9 million, could be attributed to pollution, with air pollution being the biggest contributor.
Pruitt's moves on the advisory boards coincide with his efforts to roll back the Clean Power Plan, former President Obama's signature effort to stem climate change. Young could assist with that effort. He has claimed that more carbon dioxide is beneficial to humanity and has written that the Clean Power Plan would actually harm human health.
Young's co-author on the paper, Smith, a professor in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at the University of North Carolina, was also selected to serve on the EPA Science Advisory Board. Yesterday, Smith acknowledged that he has received funding from the energy industry for his work, and he said that EPA reached out to him to be on the board. Smith said that mainstream science journals have a publication bias because they fail to publish studies that don't find clear causation between human health and pollution. He said he isn't for or against policies promoted by the Trump administration, and he pledged to conduct his work with academic rigor.
"My viewpoint is that if the U.S. government would like me to advise them, then I think I should do that," he said.
Pruitt selected Michael Honeycutt, director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's toxicology division and a longtime opponent of EPA, as the new Science Advisory Board chairman. He unsuccessfully lobbied for a role on the board during the Obama administration and has at times discarded mainstream scientific findings in favor of results that benefit industry seeking to reduce regulations.
For instance, Honeycutt has rejected a body of science that says reducing ozone levels would benefit human health. Instead, he has suggested that increased ozone won't harm Americans because they're "likely to spend 90 percent of their time indoors." In congressional testimony, he has said that some forms of soot make "you live longer."
Pruitt selected Tony Cox, a Colorado-based consultant, to head the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. Cox has crafted talking points for API that challenged ozone health regulations. Paul Gilman, chief sustainability officer at Covanta Energy, a waste-to-energy company, will head to the Board of Scientific Counselors.
Another possible appointee is Kimberly White, a senior director at the American Chemistry Council, the industry lobbying group. She traveled to Albany, N.Y., in 2015 to help kill legislation that would restrict chemicals in children's toys.
White's trip occurred when a majority of New York lawmakers in the state Senate, including some of its most conservative and liberal members, were co-sponsoring a bill to block some chemicals in children's toys. The bill, called the "Child Safe Products Act," was seen as a bipartisan effort with a good chance of passing.
The American Chemistry Council launched a spending blitz, and lobbyists approached lawmakers outside the Senate chambers to pressure them to kill the bill. At the time, the council brought White to Albany as part of its effort to fight the measure. As part of an impromptu presentation for reporters held in the Dunkin' Donuts near the Capitol, White downplayed the risk of toxic chemicals. She pointed out that some of them, including arsenic, also occur naturally and are present in apple seeds.
The bill never came up for a vote.
While Pruitt is putting his stamp on the advisory boards, it might not make his attempts to roll back Obama-era regulations any more defensible in court, said John Walke, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Walke said the "outliers and deniers" who rail against established science won't be able to create a body of work that can withstand scientific scrutiny. He said the science advisory boards are now hostile ideological bodies marking time until the next administration removes them.
"You cannot make chocolate cake from fertilizer; when you have schlock science practiced by deniers and naysayers, it's not going to give EPA sound legal grounds to defy accepted science," he said. "I think what's more likely to happen is the SAB and CASAC will become marginalized, defunct organizations at best and lightning rods for science-denying ideological hostility at worst."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/11/01/stories/1060065271
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chief Pruitt’s Halloween Trick Will Scare the Health Out of You
Nov 1, 2017 | Eco Watch
By Elliott Negin
On Halloween, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt gave Americans the equivalent of an apple filled with razor blades.
Instead of picking the best experts for his agency's Science Advisory Board (SAB) to protect public health, Pruitt appointed candidates who oppose the very laws the EPA is supposed to enforce.
To make matters worse, Pruitt did not renew terms for a number of respected members and even dismissed several independent scientists before their terms were up. All told, Pruitt shrunk the SAB from 47 to 42 participants and more than doubled the number of its polluter-friendly members.
Undermining the SAB's integrity might make sense to a former Oklahoma attorney general who openly promotes the interests of the fossil fuel industry. But doing so jeopardizes the independent science the agency needs to protect American health and safety.
Pruitt's Ill-Advised Appointments
The Science Advisory Board was established by Congress nearly 40 years ago as an impartial reality check. As Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), recently explained, the board "doesn't make policy recommendations or decisions. It holds no veto power. It should exist as a check on anyone with an agenda, from environmentalists to oil companies. If the science is on your side, the board validates it. If you make unsupportable claims, the board calls you out."
The SAB's role as "arbiter of scientific fact" has proven to be invaluable. Over the last five years, for instance, the board provided the EPA recommendations for integrating science more effectively into its decision making process; advised the agency on the best model to use when evaluating the health threats posed by perchlorate, a likely carcinogen; and determined that the EPA's preliminary finding that the hydraulic fracturing drilling process has not led to "widespread, systemic impacts" on drinking water resources was not supported by the best available science. The final version of the fracking study, released in December 2016, correctly concluded that the technique has indeed contaminated some drinking water supplies across the country.
As reconstituted by Pruitt, however, the SAB is more likely to come down in favor of industrial polluters than public health.
Take the new board chairman, Michael Honeycutt, who directs the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's toxicology division. Over the last decade, Honeycutt rolled back the state's protections for 45 toxic chemicals, including arsenic, benzene and formaldehyde. He also attacked EPA rules for ground-level ozone (smog), which aggravates lung diseases, and particulate matter (PM) (soot), which has been linked to lung cancer, cardiovascular damage, reproductive problems and premature death. Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence linking fine soot particles to premature death, Honeycutt testified before Congress that "some studies even suggest PM makes you live longer."
Many of Pruitt's other appointees to three-year terms on the SAB share a similar disregard for established science.
Kimberly White is senior director of chemical products at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the country's largest chemical manufacturing trade association. Representing the interests of 155 corporate members, including BP, Dow, DuPont and ExxonMobil, the ACC has delayed, weakened and blocked science-based health, environmental and workplace protections at the state, national and even international levels.
Samuel Cohen, a professor at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, produces industry-friendly papers and testimony for chemical companies and trade groups, including the American Chemistry Council. He has downplayed the risks of monosodium methanearsonate (MSMA) for the arsenic-based weed killer's manufacturers and testified on behalf of Dupont during a kidney cancer trial involving perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the main ingredient in Teflon.
Economist John D. Graham, who ran the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for five years during the George W. Bush administration, has a long history of emphasizing industry's costs to reduce pollution, while discounting scientific evidence of exposure risks and ignoring the benefits of a cleaner environment.
Anne Smith, a senior vice president at NERA Consulting, is another economist with a pronounced corporate bias. Over the past few years, NERA has written reports for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and other industry trade groups arguing that the EPA underestimates the cost of its rules, including ones designed to lower mercury emissions and reduce ground-level ozone. In February 2015, Smith testified before Congress against the Clean Power Plan to curb coal-fired power plant carbon emissions.
Donald Van der Vaart, former secretary of North Carolina's Department of Environmental Quality, was the agency's point man against federal air quality rules, including a cap on nitrogen oxide emissions, a major component of ground-level ozone. Last November, he sent a letter to President-elect Trump denouncing "federal overreach" and asking him to all but eliminate the EPA. "By returning responsibility for implementing these laws to the states," Van der Vaart wrote, "your administration can avoid the agenda-driven federal regulatory process that has stifled our country's competitiveness."
Pruitt also enlisted Richard Smith and S. Stanley Young to serve on the board. The two statisticians co-authored an August 2017 study claiming there is "little evidence" of a connection between fine particulate pollution and premature death, ignoring established scientific understanding of air pollution and health risks. Three other appointees, meanwhile, directly represent the energy industry: Merlin Lindstrom is vice president of technology at Phillips 66, Robert Merritt was a geology manager at Total, and Larry Monroe was the chief environmental officer at Southern Company.
Independent Scientists Shut Out
Perhaps most shocking, Pruitt upended four decades of precedent when—in advance of his Halloween announcement—he declared that scientists who receive EPA funding cannot serve on the SAB or any other agency advisory panel. Why? In Pruitt's estimation, they have a conflict of interest. On Halloween, he followed through by kicking at least a half-dozen EPA-funded scientists off the SAB before their terms were up.
Pruitt's attack on EPA grantees particularly rankled Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at UCS and a former regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"The suggestion that federal research grants would conflict with advisory board work is frankly dishonest," Rosenberg said. "Pruitt is turning the idea of 'conflict of interest' on its head by claiming that federal research grants should exclude a scientist from an EPA advisory board while industry funding shouldn't. The truth is, EPA grants don't come with strings. They're meant to help promote the best independent science.
"Independent science is absolutely critical to making good policies that keep our air and water clean and our communities safe," he added. "But this administration—particularly Administrator Pruitt—seems to have taken every opportunity to cut science out. Pruitt's Halloween announcement is a blatant effort to stack the board and put narrow industry interests ahead of public health and safety. We will pursue all legal options available to us to prevent any scientist ban from remaining in place."
https://www.ecowatch.com/pruitt-science-advisory-board-2504948311.html
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Ewire: Potential Senate Rule Changes Could Boost EPA Nominees
Nov 1, 2017 | Inside EPA
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is considering several changes to the Senate's rules to speed considering of Trump administration nominees, according to a report, a move that could aid several controversial picks for top EPA slots that Democrats have held up over their close ties to industry.
According to Politico, McConnell says that nominee consideration is “a different matter” than the minority's power to filibuster legislation. He cited a plan by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) that would limit debate time from the current 30 hours to 8 hours.
The majority leader said there may be a possibility to adjust the debate limits “in a way more consistent with the Senate, and the administration getting its positions filled in a timely fashion.”
Such a move could aid several EPA nominees that Democrats have been holding up -- including picks for the air and toxics offices. Minority party senators are strongly opposing former EPA risk assessor and industry consultant Michael Dourson as toxics chief and former George W. Bush EPA acting air chief Bill Wehrum to permanently head the air office.
The administration's pick for enforcement chief, Susan Bodine, recently replied to senators' request about her ongoing advisory work at the agency could ease her path to confirmation.
However, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) recently told Inside EPA that both Dourson and Wehrum are “hold-worthy nominees” that Democrats will try to block. The minority can place a hold on nominees to delay consideration by the full Senate, requiring 50 senators to vote to break the hold.
At a recent Senate environment committee business meeting, Democrats expressed their frustration about the party-line votes on Dourson and Wehrum, and particularly Dourson's advancement out of committee.
Committee ranking member Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) warned that on the votes to advance Dourson and Wehrum, whose industry connections Democrats also object to, “we've done the wrong thing. . . . You can win the battle but you may not win the war. . . . I'll tell you this, on the nomination of Michael Dourson, we will never give up, in opposition to it.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-potential-senate-rule-changes-could-boost-epa-nominees
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NGOs Ask Court to Stop US EPA Extending Formaldehyde Deadline
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
NGOs have filed a lawsuit asking that the US EPA be prevented from extending the deadline for compliance with new rules on formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products.
The federal rule extends the California Air Resources Board (CARB) formaldehyde standards nationwide. The regulations apply to plywood, fibreboard, particleboard and finished goods containing these products.
A 2009 law required the EPA to publish the regulations by 2013, and draft rules were indeed published that year. But the regulations were not finalised until 2016.
The agency finalised another rule in September pushing back the compliance deadlines. The earliest deadline, which had been 12 December this year, was moved back a year.
Earthjustice filed the lawsuit on 31 October on behalf of the Sierra Club and A Community Voice, a New Orleans-based organisation. The petition, filed in US District Court in San Francisco, argues that the EPA was already in violation of a statutory deadline and had no authority to further delay implementation of the formaldehyde rules.
And, the petition says, the EPA "sought to reduce inconvenience to the regulated entities and downplayed the adverse health effects of delaying compliance".
https://chemicalwatch.com/60667/ngos-ask-court-to-stop-us-epa-extending-formaldehyde-deadline
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Canada Decides Against Regulating Four Surfactants
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The Canadian government has decided that, after screening assessments on four surfactants, they do not pose health or environmental risks sufficient to warrant regulation under the country's Environmental Protection Act (Cepa).
The substances – three alkyl sulfates and an α-olefin sulfonate – are:
· triethanolamine (TEA) lauryl sulfate;
· sodium lauryl sulfate;
· ammonium lauryl sulfate; and
· sodium C14-16olefin sulfonate.
The substances are primarily found in cleaning products, according to the Canada Gazette notice, but are also used in some personal care products and food packaging materials.
The risk assessment of these substances, and the proposal to take no action on them, was published for public consultation in December 2016.
The final determination was published in the 21 October Gazette.
Ministerial condition
A separate notice, published the same day, bans the substance fatty acids, tall-oil, reaction products with bisphenol A, epichlorohydrin, glycidyl tolyl ether and triethylenetetramine from being used to manufacture consumer products or being "imported into" one.
The notice imposing the ministerial condition was retroactively given an effective date of 10 October. It also includes reporting and disposal restrictions for the substance.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60669/canada-decides-against-regulating-four-surfactants
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EU Member States Back Proposed NMP Ban
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
EU member states have voted to approve a Dutch proposal to ban the manufacture, marketing and use of the aprotic solvent 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) if producers do not meet stringent exposure limits for workers.
The proposal, which addresses risks to workers caused by inhalation and dermal exposure to the substance, carries a two-year general deferral of the ban’s application to allow stakeholders time to take necessary compliance measures.
The wire-coating industry will have a six-year deferral period because it will have to replace part of its older production lines prematurely to comply with the derived no-effect levels (Dnels).
NMP, which is suspected of being reprotoxic, is used in pH regulators, water treatment products, washing and cleaning products and laboratory chemicals.
The restriction proposal, which was approved at the REACH Committee meeting on 24 October, would be enforced unless:registration dossiers are updated with the new Dnels relating to worker exposure of 14.4mg/m3
by inhalation and 4.8mg/kg/day dermally; andmanufacturers and downstream users comply with these values in the workplace.Twenty-four member states voted for the proposal, with two against and two abstentions. The vote concludes a long debate between Echa’s Risk Assessment Committee (Rac) and the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Occupational Exposure Limits (Scoel) on the derivation of exposure limits for workers, with the Commission supporting the approach suggested by Rac.Other restrictions
At the previous REACH committee meeting in September, some member states questioned why the restriction was proposed for one aprotic solvent and not for three others in use on the EU market – dimethyl formamide (DMF), n,n-dimethylacetamide (DMAC) and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO).
At the October meeting, the Commission said it has asked Echa to prepare a similar restriction proposal for all four aprotic solvents. Meanwhile, Italy announced it is also preparing to submit one for DMF.
The Commission must now formally adopt the NMP restriction proposal, which is likely to take place in early 2018.
NMP is also undergoing scrutiny outside of Europe. In September, Chemical Watch reported that the US EPA might still move ahead with a proposal to restrict the use of the substance and fellow solvent methylene chloride (dichloromethane) under section 6 of TSCA.
And in February, Canada said NMP is not harmful as defined by section 64 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (Cepa), a conclusion at odds with a 2015 TSCA workplan assessment conducted by the US EPA.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60691/eu-member-states-back-proposed-nmp-ban
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German Textiles Project Takes Industry Forward to 2030
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
A German research project has seen chemical suppliers and the sporting goods industry work together on finding marketing opportunities for safe chemicals, triggered by the REACH Regulation.
Results of the SuSport research will feed into the EU Life AskREACH project, which plans to develop an EU-wide phone app for identifying substances of very high concern (SVHCs) in products.
The Society for Institutional Analysis (Sofia) at the University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, began SuSport in 2015. It is funded by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU) using public money.
Results are due to be published in December this year and will be used to inform the supply chain IT system of the AskREACH project. This will help manufacturers obtain the relevant information about SVHCs, requested by the consumer app.
Both chemical producers that supply the textile sector and sporting goods trade associations were involved in the project. This included the chemicals producer associations TEGEWA (Association of Textile and Leather Chemicals Manufacturers) and BSI (the Federal Association of the German Sports Goods Industry).
Speaking at the recent Chemical Watch Nordic Summit in Copenhagen, Martin Führ (pictured), professor at Darmstadt University, said: "Better chemicals now have a better chance to perform on the market because the REACH Regulation increases transparency, cuts out not-so good competitors through restrictions and authorisations."
But there has to be a demand pull for safer chemicals so that chemical suppliers can have a chance on the market, he added.
The project, he said, aims to discover how to "create a system that brings demand pull right up to the chemical suppliers in order to promote less toxic chemicals."Futuristic scenario
Several workshops were held involving the suppliers and sporting goods companies in 2016. But neither the suppliers nor brands were willing to take responsibility for action.
"In our test, there was a consensus there is a problem and something should be done – but everybody said not by me," Professor Führ said.
Chemical companies said that although they had better alternatives, there was not sufficient demand for them from textile mills in Asia.
The brands said they were willing to exclude SVHCs, but it was difficult because of the cost of testing.
To combat this mindset, the researchers ran four workshops this year in which participants were encouraged to 'backcast', by imagining the textile industry in 2030 and different scenarios that could play out.
Professor Führ said: "We thought of impact factors which were relevant in 2013. The actors themselves asked how these interacted. They themselves created a future. This opened their mindset."
Participants then wrote 'novels' looking back from 2030 about how the scenarios took place and presented them to the group.
They came up with two storylines – one called Muddling Through in which no major changes had been made to industry and one called Boldly Ahead, in which the textile sector had become more sustainable. These were produced to look like Unep reports.
Through these imagined futures, the participants had the choice to take action to create the future they wanted.Supply chain communication
Participants concluded that the two most important impact factors were traceability of chemicals in the supply chain and knowledge about substances and processes. These two factors would enable brands and retailers to know what is happening in their supply chains.
The results will now feed into the AskReach IT tool for suppliers, which will help manufacturers supply information for the consumer app.
"The app will only work with proper supply chain communication," Professor Führ said.
Front-runner companies involved in the project will be able to test IT tools for traceability, to see whether they are appropriate for their needs and can be integrated into contracts.
"There could be some contractual provisions to say you have to feed into the database or you can't be a supplier for certain companies," Professor Führ said.
"The whole system only works when it has been fed from the very beginning. Chemical suppliers need to be transparent about the ingredients of their formulations."
The companies can also use the research to inform their own internal policies.
Professor Führ hopes that trade associations will encourage their members to join the AskReach project.
"They have the unique chance to be part of the boldly ahead movement. We have the opportunities for the actors to take this forward," he said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60650/german-textiles-project-takes-industry-forward-to-2030
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Sweden's Kemi Identifies Poor Labelling of Eyelash Glue
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
An investigation by the Swedish Chemical Agency, Kemi, has found that eyelash glue is being sold in the country with inadequate accompanying information. This can often lead to its unsafe use.
Following reports of related health problems, the agency undertook an inspection of 25 companies selling the adhesive. And it found that 14 of the products had extensive shortcomings in the information they provided, and eleven had minor failings of the same.
And Kemi has reported four of the companies to prosecutors for suspected environmental crimes. They have been notified that their packaging was not labelled properly in Swedish, and possibly lacked a safety data sheet.
Asthma attacks, breathing difficulties and skin rashes are some of the health problems that stylists can suffer after working with eyelash glue, the agency says. The symptoms are caused by cyanoacrylate, which is used to make the adhesive.
Several companies said there were also safety concerns over people performing the eyelash extensions at home. Working without protective measures, for example, such as proper ventilation, increases risk of exposure to allergenic substances present in the glue.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60641/swedens-kemi-identifies-poor-labelling-of-eyelash-glue
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Welsh Government Consults on Microbeads Ban
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
The Welsh government has launched a consultation on a proposal to ban the manufacture and sale of cosmetics and personal care products containing plastic microbeads.
This follows the decision of UK ministers to ban products containing microbeads designed to be washed down the drain.
Wales is consulting on proposals to:
· ban the sale and manufacture of the products from June 2018; and
· make their manufacture, supply or sale a punishable offence.
The deadline for comments is 8 January 2018.
Earlier this year, Ireland also proposed a similar ban.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60654/welsh-government-consults-on-microbeads-ban
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Court Rejects Greens' Plea to Stop Natural Gas Export Projects
Nov 1, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A federal appeals court Wednesday rejected an environmental group’s lawsuits trying to overturn federal approval for three liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the Sierra Club’s challenges to export facilities in Maryland, Louisiana and Texas, fail for the same reasons that the same court ruled against the group in a similar case concerning a different project in August.
“In a very recent case, Sierra Club v. U.S. Department of Energy (Freeport), this court denied a petition by Sierra Club challenging, under the same two statutes, the Department [of Energy]’s approval of an LNG export application from a fourth facility. The court’s decision in Freeport largely governs the resolution of the instant cases,” the court’s three judges wrote in the brief judgment.
The cases decided Wednesday were part of a collection of cases the Sierra Club and other groups filed to try to stop approvals of LNG export facilities by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
The greens generally argued that the federal agencies did not sufficiently consider environmental impacts of the approvals, like increases in hydraulic fracturing and greenhouse gas emissions.
In June 2016, the D.C. Circuit Court rejected the green’s arguments regarding FERC. And in August, the same court rejected the DOE arguments.
“Under our limited and deferential review, we cannot say that the Department failed to fulfill its obligations under [The National Environmental Policy Act] by declining to make specific projections about environmental impacts stemming from specific levels of export-induced gas production,” the court wrote in the August case.
While that same argument applied to the three cases in Wednesday’s decision, the judges said that there were some small issues remaining in the Sierra Club’s challenges, regarding environmental reviews and the impacts on low-income households. But none of those issues were convincing, they ruled.
The projects at issue in Wednesday’s cases were Dominion Energy’s Cove Point facility in Maryland, scheduled to open within weeks; Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana, which opened last year; and Cheniere’s Corpus Christi, Texas, project, due to open next year.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/358184-court-rejects-greens-plea-to-stop-natural-gas-export-projects
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Now It's Oilmen Who Say Fracking Could Harm Groundwater
Nov 1, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Soraghan
It's no longer just environmentalists who suspect hydraulic fracturing is contaminating groundwater.
Oil companies here in Oklahoma — ones that produce from older vertical wells — have raised that prospect as they complain about the practices of their larger brethren.
They say hundreds of their wells have been flooded by high-pressure fracturing of horizontal wells that blast fluid a mile or more underground. Some of those "frack hits," they suspect, have reached groundwater.
"I'm convinced we're impacting fresh water here," Mike Majors, a small producer from Holdenville, said as he drove from well to well on a September afternoon. "If they truly impact the groundwater, we can kiss hydraulic fracturing goodbye."
Oil and gas regulators at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) say they've found no proof of such groundwater contamination. But some oil and gas operators think regulators aren't looking too hard. And at least one OCC official has said it's "beyond the authority" of the agency to block drilling based on a risk to groundwater.
Larger producers acknowledge that such contamination could happen, but they reiterate that there's no proof that it has.
"We have never seen a freshwater impact," said Lloyd Hetrick, operations engineering adviser for Newfield Exploration Co., the state's largest oil producer. "I'm not saying it can never occur. If we felt it was us, I think we'd clean it up."
Groundwater contamination is an inflammatory charge — large oil companies and national trade groups have been fending off such allegations almost since the horizontal drilling boom began. They've often tarred such critics as environmental extremists.
The small producers leveling these accusations are tangling with Oklahoma's large independent drillers in a bitter political brawl. The question of groundwater contamination is a small part of that debate, overshadowed by a fight over taxes on drilling and where horizontal wells can be drilled.
The complaints have a familiar ring to them. In places like Pennsylvania, many small farmers complained that their water wells went bad after "fracking" showed up.
But unlike some fracking critics elsewhere, the small producers say they're not against fracking, much less drilling itself. They say they simply want it done right, and they say it's the larger horizontal drillers who are putting the industry's reputation at risk.
"If it happens where farmers depend on groundwater, the entire industry will get blamed," said Dewey Bartlett, a small producer and former mayor of Tulsa. "That's scary."
The prospect of frack hits causing water contamination was raised in a 2016 EPA study that nevertheless found no systemic threat to groundwater from fracking (Energywire, Dec. 14, 2016). It was mentioned in both the draft and final versions of the study, which were alternately praised and criticized by industry groups (Energywire, June 5, 2015).
Those who dismiss concerns about groundwater contamination have long asserted that fracking occurs far beneath aquifers — a mile or more — and oil and gas wells are sealed off with cement casing to protect even remotely drinkable groundwater.
That was pretty much true at the beginning of the boom, when producers were focused on deep shale formations. But now, some large producers have turned that same technology on shallower formations. In Oklahoma, high-volume fracking has gotten as shallow as 2,800 feet, and many old wells were built without protections for groundwater.
Oklahoma's unique system of spacing and pooling means that the horizontal wells can be fracked within 600 feet of the older vertical ones, sometimes closer (Energywire, Oct. 31).
And fractures can reach much farther than that. A Newfield engineer testified in September that frack fluid has been found a mile away from where it started, although he said he did not believe that it could get into groundwater.
Bubbling to the surface
Majors found a burbling mess two years ago when he showed up at his friends' oil well outside Holdenville.
Water was bubbling up around the wellhead of the well, named the I. Davis No. A-1, but also flowing out of a nearby embankment leading to a drainage.
A company called Silver Creek Oil & Gas LLC had been fracking a well about 2,000 feet away from the well. The frack fluid leaked out of its intended path and flooded into the well, which belongs to a company called Rayland Operating LLC.
The older wellbore, drilled in 1928, was not sealed off with cement casing deep enough to prevent the surging flow from reaching groundwater.
On a warm September afternoon, Majors, a lanky, chain-smoking veteran of the oil field, leaned on the hood of his pickup parked at the well site and explained that with thousands of pounds of upward pressure, there was nothing to stop the fluid from flooding into groundwater.
"Logic says it will impact [groundwater]," Majors said, looking out over the slight slope. "There was water coming out of the ground. There was enough pressure to bring it to surface."
When the state inspector showed up at the well site in 2015, he had similar concerns about underground contamination. He ordered Silver Creek to drill a monitoring well to see if water had been contaminated.
It took months and the threat of a contempt charge to get the monitoring well drilled. The results, filed with the state and obtained by E&E News through state open records laws, shows that chlorides, sometimes a sign of oil and gas contamination, are low.
"A frack hit would cause elevated chlorides, and that's what we're most concerned with when it comes to groundwater protection," said OCC spokesman Matt Skinner.
But there wasn't a baseline to measure the chlorides against. And there was no test for fracking chemicals. A list of frack fluid ingredients Silver Creek filed with the FracFocus registry included chemicals such as isopropanol and naphthenic solvents.
The report is vague about where the samples were collected. It doesn't list the depth of the monitoring well, or its location. It merely says the monitoring well is north of another well.
The monitoring well was drilled only to the depth of water likely to be used currently for drinking. Environmental laws generally require the protection of groundwater that isn't used now but might be someday.
Mike Cantrell, co-chairman of the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance (OEPA), said the sampling should be taken deeply enough to find contamination that might not show up for years in drinking water.
"You may never see it," he said. "It's not a problem until it's a problem."
Low as it is, the chloride level is likely above background level, said Kerry Sublette, a spill cleanup expert and chemical engineering professor at the University of Tulsa. After reviewing the results, he said the saltiness of the water could be a problem for irrigation and drinking water.
"That could be confirmed with a more complete analysis," Sublette said. To make a more conclusive determination on whether fracturing contaminated the well, he said "a more complete analysis is required."
Silver Creek did not respond to requests for comment. But in a pending federal lawsuit, Silver Creek alleged that Rayland was at fault for the incident because the well was set up to produce from a formation it wasn't supposed to. Rayland countered that Silver Creek was reckless and failed to give notice of its plans.
Majors hopped in his dusty pickup, steering it down another dirt road. He stopped in front of a house set well back from the road across a low, barbed-wire fence.
He said the water well to this house gushed water — or "purged" — for four days in 2013 after Silver Creek fracked a well about a mile away, pointing with a smoldering cigarette across a stand of trees.
"It looked like a lake," Majors said. "It never purged prior, and it hasn't purged since."
Majors cited the incident when he protested Silver Creek's further development plans in his area in 2014. He said it showed a risk to groundwater.
But Niles Stuck, an OCC administrative law judge, said preventing such contamination wasn't the agency's job. Majors, he said, could seek an injunction in civil court or report contamination when it happens.
"The proposed development may also result in pollution," Stuck wrote. But, "It is beyond the authority of OCC to deny a spacing or location exception application based on the theory that development may cause pollution."A minefield for contamination
Small producers, some of whom have banded together as OEPA, released a study in September estimating more than 400 frack hits in just one county. They say many more haven't been reported.
And they say that with that much disruption underground, often leading to surface spills, it would just make sense that groundwater is getting contaminated.
"If it's happening at the surface, you can make a logical assumption it's probably happening in groundwater," Bartlett said.
Particularly here on the eastern side of the state, the ground is already riddled with thousands of holes — old vertical wells that could conduct frack fluid right to the surface. Many of them were drilled, produced and plugged long before modern cementing techniques were introduced to protect underground water.
Darlene Wallace, president of Columbus Oil Co., said she operates wells drilled in the 1920s that are still producing oil. Others were plugged with primitive methods.
She recalled one "plugged with two cedar trees shoved down the shaft and a bag of mud poured over them." She thinks damage to water wells often goes unreported.
"The problem is created when we have high-pressure fracks," Wallace said. "There's lots of faults. If it gets in a fault, I've been told it can go a mile and a half."
There's far less horizontal drilling and fracking here than in the hot plays west of Oklahoma City where OEPA's study was done. Still, more than 100 horizontal wells have been drilled and fracked in Hughes County, where Holdenville is located, since the beginning of 2015.
Chad Warmington, president of the Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association, which represents larger producers, acknowledges the combination of high-volume fracturing and old, decrepit wells could lead to problems.
"We may need to be more careful in places with mud-plugged wells," Warmington told E&E News in a telephone interview. But he said any rule should be tailored to areas with more legacy wells, rather than statewide.
But Zack Taylor, who operates wells with his father out of Seminole, said he tried that and met defeat at the hands of horizontal drillers. He and other small producers proposed a field rule several years ago that would require horizontal drillers to look for wells close to wellbore before drilling in his area.
But larger drillers objected, he said, and his proposal was rewritten to put the burden on small, vertical producers. He withdrew it.
"It got turned back on us," said Taylor, who has since been elected to the state Legislature. "We're not the ones causing the problem."
Today, the once-burbling Davis well is just a low spot in the cracked dirt in the gravelly clearing.
The conflict between Silver Creek and the well's owner is scheduled for trial in federal court in April next year. But that is unlikely to resolve the questions about whether groundwater was contaminated or how well it is protected statewide.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/11/01/stories/1060065209
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FedEx Executive Named to Head Osha
Nov 1, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
President Trump will nominate Scott Mugno, a vice president at FedEx, to be head of the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) – the Labor Department subsidiary that enforces workplace safety regulations.
Mr Mugno is currently VP of safety, sustainability and vehicle maintenance at FedEx Ground.
The White House announced the choice on 27 October. While other Trump administration appointments have been greeted with strong opposition, environmental advocates have been silent on this nomination.
Mr Mugno joined FedEx Express in 1994 as a senior regulatory affairs attorney. He became managing director of corporate safety, health and fire prevention in 2000.
In 2011, he moved to FedEx Ground, the parcel delivery service. He leads four departments of about 200 professionals, "focused on creating a safe work environment for 95,000 team members and the public", according to the company website.
Before joining FedEx, Mr Mugno was a division counsel at Westinghouse Electric Corporation's waste isolation division and a military judge advocate.
He is chair of the US Chamber of Commerce Osha subcommittee.
The Department of Labor has been without an assistant secretary over Osha since January, when David Michaels stepped down.
https://chemicalwatch.com/60661/fedex-executive-named-to-head-osha
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Exxon Settles Pollution Case With US, Will Upgrade 8 Plants
Nov 1, 2017 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By David Koenig
Exxon Mobil settled violations of the clean-air law with the Trump administration by agreeing to pay a $2.5 million civil penalty and spend $300 million on pollution-control technology at plants along the Gulf Coast.
Federal officials said Tuesday that the settlement will prevent thousands of tons of future pollution, including cancer-causing benzene, from eight petrochemical plants in Texas and Louisiana.
Some environmentalists criticized the settlement as insufficient punishment for years of violations by the giant oil company, while others said it addressed excess burning or flaring of gas, a major pollution problem at refineries and chemical plants.
The deal with the U.S. and Louisiana settles allegations that Exxon violated the federal Clean Air Act by releasing excess harmful pollution after modifying flaring systems at five plants in Texas and three in Louisiana. The allegations date back more than a decade.
Exxon said it will install and increase efficiency of the flaring systems and monitor for benzene outside four of the plants. U.S. officials said the deal will cut emissions of toxic pollutants including benzene by 1,500 tons a year and reduce release of other chemicals by thousands of tons.
The Justice Department and the state of Colorado announced a smaller settlement over pollution charges against Denver-based PDC Energy Inc. The company will spend about $20 million to upgrade equipment and pay a $2.5 million civil penalty to the federal government and Colorado. Up to $1 million of the state’s share can be forgiven if the company performs certain environmental projects.
Patrick Traylor, a former energy industry lawyer hired by new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, said the settlements show that the Trump administration will enforce environmental laws “with prudence and with excellence.”
Traylor said the deals bring “two very well-respected companies” back into compliance with environmental laws. “Now they can continue their work of driving economic growth,” he said.
Environmentalists said the civil penalty against Exxon was far too small size given the duration and seriousness of the violations of the federal Clean Air Act.
“The fossil-fueled Trump administration letting Exxon Mobil off the hook with a slap of the wrist,” said Lindsay Meiman of 350.org, an environmental group that emphasizes lower emissions of greenhouse gases. She said the deal would embolden Exxon and other companies to continue to pollute.
However, the director of a group that successfully sued Exxon praised the deal — even while calling the $2.5 million penalty “weak” — because it forced Exxon to spend $300 million on reducing pollution.
“This enforcement case was in the works for many, many years” before the Trump administration, said Luke Metzger of Environment Texas. “It’s a very good settlement” that addresses issues his group raised in a lawsuit over Exxon’s refinery complex in Baytown, Texas, including excessive flaring of natural gas and inadequate monitoring of emissions.
In April, a federal judge ordered Exxon to pay the government nearly $20 million after Environment Texas and the Sierra Club sued over the release of tons of pollutants at Baytown. Exxon is appealing the ruling.
Exxon spokesman Aaron Stryk said in a statement that the company “worked closely” with EPA “to address concerns about flaring and opportunities to improve flaring efficiency at our U.S. chemical sites.” He said the $300 million investment would increase flare efficiency at the petrochemical plants, among the biggest in the world.
The plants are in Baytown, Beaumont and Mont Belvieu, Texas, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As part of the settlement, Exxon will spend $1 million to plant trees in Baytown.
Exxon Mobil Corp., based in Irving, Texas, can afford the investment in technology. The company reported last week that it earned $11.3 billion in the first nine months of 2017, an 84 percent increase over the same period last year. Its former CEO, Rex Tillerson, is serving in the Trump administration as secretary of state.
The settlement was welcomed by Carlos Caban, pastor of the Temple Emanuel church, which sits two blocks from the Baytown refinery complex.
“Wow, that is good, that is really good news,” Caban said. “I cannot believe how awesome that will be because they were polluting big-time.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/exxon-settles-pollution-case-with-feds-by-upgrading-8-plants/2017/10/31/6083d9c8-be5e-11e7-9294-705f80164f6e_story.html?utm_term=.3ec0d40b0c70
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EPA Seeks Comment on Permitting Best Practices
Nov 1, 2017 | Inside EPA
EPA is seeking public comment on whether the permitting best practices principles outlined in a federal report earlier this year are generally applicable to permits issued by states under delegated authority from EPA, an effort that could help the Trump administration advance its priority of speeding permitting.
The agency is seeking comment in order to comply with the requirements of a 2015 federal transportation law, which predates the Trump administration.
Title 41 of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST-41) requires the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC) to issue annual best practices recommendations aimed at streamlining and improving the process by which the federal government undertakes environmental reviews and authorizations for covered projects.
FPISC's January 2017 report outlined eight best practices, including enhancing early stakeholder engagement, ensuring timely decisions regarding environmental reviews, improving coordination between federal and non-federal governmental entities, increasing transparency, reducing information collection requirements, developing appropriate geographic information systems, and creating and distributing training materials.
“Consistent with the EPA's obligation under 42 U.S.C. 4370m-5(a)(1), the EPA is now seeking public comment to determine whether and the extent to which any of the best practices identified by the FPISC are generally applicable on a delegation- or authorization-wide basis to permitting under FAST-41,” the agency says in an Oct. 31 Federal Register notice.
EPA in the notice says it has already taken a number of steps related to best practices for delegated and authorized state permitting programs, including establishing minimum program requirements for authorized and delegated programs.
“In addition, the EPA regularly communicates with delegated and authorized programs regarding program implementation and oversight,” the agency says, pointing to its 2016 development of best practices for oversight of state permitting programs in consultation with state regulators.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-seeks-comment-permitting-best-practices
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Trump's EPA Says Obama's Climate Rule Could Prevent up to 4,500 Deaths Annually, Moves to Scrap It
Nov 1, 2017 | The Washingotn Post
By Chris Mooney
A sweeping Obama-era climate rule could prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths per year by 2030, the Trump administration has found in its analysis of the plan, projecting that the plan could save more lives than the Obama administration said it would.
The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is moving to repeal the plan.
The rule in question is the Clean Power Plan, which consists of regulations on U.S. power plants aimed at decreasing the country’s contribution to global climate change by reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. In practice, the rule is projected to move the energy sector away from coal-fired power plants and toward more natural gas-fired power plants, as well as wind and solar power sources.
Such power sources have lower emissions of greenhouse gases, but they also produce lower quantities of other pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide. Such pollutants can cause respiratory problems, heart disease and lung cancer, conditions that would therefore be made less prevalent by the climate regulations.
The Obama administration loudly touted the Clean Power Plan’s health benefits while the EPA put measure in place in 2015. At the time, President Barack Obama’s EPA asserted that the plan could prevent 1,500 to 3,600 premature deaths annually by 2030.
But when President Trump’s EPA released a draft analysis of its repeal of the plan last month, it said that in one scenario, the plan would prevent 1,900 to 4,500 premature deaths per year by 2030.
That scenario is based on a 2017 “annual energy outlook” by the federal Energy Information Administration — which contained projections for the evolution of the U.S. power sector with, and without, the Clean Power Plan. It’s a more recent analysis than the ones EPA used under the Obama administration.
“The right way to do this is update your model, your analysis for more recent conditions,” said Alan Krupnick, an economist with the think tank Resources for the Future. “Which is what that second analysis does. And then the chips fall where they may.”
The new figure appears deep in a long, technocratic document called a Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) that the EPA released last month when it moved to repeal the plan.
The Trump administration’s EPA has said that, in its analysis of the Clean Power Plan, it has deliberately provided a range of different numbers to outline different possibilities. The agency suggests that this is necessary because there were “numerous concerns and uncertainties associated with the previous administration’s approach.”
“In keeping with Administrator [Scott] Pruitt’s commitment to a heightened level of transparency, the Agency provided a vast series of scenarios of the potential effects of the proposed rule, including those based on EIA’s 2017 Energy Outlook; and we welcome any public comments on the RIA,” said Michael Abboud, an agency spokesman.
From the perspective of the Trump administration’s EPA, the Clean Power Plan was illegally drawn, going beyond the agency’s authority, specifically because it sought to change the broad nature of the energy system, rather than to reduce pollution levels at individual plants. How many lives the policy would save is not central to this legal determination and presumably would not change the agency’s decision to repeal it.
Still, some advocates who support the plan are touting the revision. “The benefits of the Clean Power Plan are even greater than EPA forecast two years ago,” said Paul Billings, the senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association.
The draft Regulatory Impact Analysis provides a formal accounting of the costs and benefits of the EPA’s decision to withdraw from the rule to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It is open for public comment until December 15.
It remains to be seen how the agency ultimately decides to treat the health benefits of addressing climate change in its final analysis — given that, after all, it wants to withdraw the Clean Power Plan. Kathy Fallon Lambert, a researcher at the Harvard Forest, said she worries that there’s a possibility that the agency will ultimately opt to dismiss these “co-benefits” entirely.
When the regulatory analysis document first emerged, it was instantly controversial — the agency had tweaked a variety of tools used to calculate the benefits and costs of environmental actions like this one, shrinking the “social cost of carbon,” changing the assumptions used to determine the present value of actions to aid future generations, and more. Critics quickly denounced the seemingly selective math used to justify a foregone conclusion.
Since then, though, experts poring over the document have found additional details, including one that makes the Clean Power Plan appear considerably better than before. This would indeed appear to bolster the EPA’s contention that it is simply running the numbers and presenting them transparently.
The new data underscore that although the battle over the Clean Power Plan has been cast as one about how the United States does, or doesn’t, address climate pollution emanating from coal plants and other electricity generating stations, the “co-benefits” of reducing air pollution in some ways loom even larger.
After all, even if the United States cuts its greenhouse gas emissions, the entire world would need to do the same to affect the trajectory of climate change in a large way. But air pollution unleashes deadly, tiny particles called PM2.5 that can get into the lungs and bloodstream and cause dangerous outcomes. We’re in fact still learning how bad it really is.
In 2015, the Obama EPA had estimated that sulfur dioxide emissions – which the agency calls a “major precursor” to levels of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5 — would have been as much as 318,000 tons lower in 2030 under the plan than they would have been without it.
Those reductions translated, under one approach to the plan’s implementation, into the avoidance of about 1,500 to 3,600 premature deaths from air pollution each year and $14 to $34 billion in annual benefits in 2030, the agency calculated, most of which were attributable to reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions and resulting fine particles in the air. (Another implementation approach yielded somewhat smaller numbers – 280,000 tons of avoided sulfur dioxide emissions, about 1,300 to 2,900 avoided deaths annually, and $12 to $ 28billion annual benefits in 2030.)
But in the new Trump administration document, the air pollution benefits now appear even better in one version of the analysis. In that scenario, the plan would avoid as much as 423,000 tons of sulfur dioxide emissions in 2030, which translates into the avoidance of an even larger number of premature deaths (as many as 1,900 to 4,500 per year in 2030) and even greater potential benefits, $18 billion to $42 billion.
“The difference is approximately 400-900 deaths per year, or around $4-8 billion each year in health costs,” said Jonathan Levy, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, in an emailed comment on the differences in the two analyses. “This is a non-trivial amount of money, not to mention the importance of the public health toll.”
The change, according to an analysis by Dallas Burtraw of Resources for the Future, appears to be because the Energy Information Administration in 2017 estimated that the Clean Power Plan would have an even sharper effect in reducing emissions from the burning of coal than previously predicted — which would mean an even larger effect on air pollution.
It’s important to underscore that all of the numbers presented above are based on different sets of assumptions, many of which can be individually questioned. In essence, they are scenarios, where if you assume a certain set of developments then you can predict an outcome based on those assumptions. But whether the developments will actually happen in the real world is another matter.
The agency also cautions against comparing its 2015 estimates with those made on the basis of the 2017 Energy Information Administration analysis — but that appears to involve how the agency treated the subject of changes in power plant energy efficiency, not air pollution.
“My interpretation is that this would influence costs and net benefits but would not influence the health benefits calculation,” Levy said.
The current data exemplify the connection between climate policy and conventional, non-climate air pollutants, whose concentrations on a local level can be a matter of life and death.
And although critics have harshly criticized the EPA for tweaking its numbers, in this respect at least, it found a result that complicated its argument that the rule should be repealed.
“It’s down in the weeds, but I think it does point to a big picture story that’s important,” Lambert said. “Which is, will these kinds of benefits and emissions reductions occur absent the Clean Power Plan?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/11/01/trumps-epa-says-obamas-climate-rule-could-prevent-up-to-4500-deaths-annually-moves-to-scrap-it/?utm_term=.8d4deaaaf550
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Pruitt Demotes Critic as He Remakes Science Boards
Nov 1, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
Deborah Swackhamer checked her phone yesterday in the Zagreb, Croatia, airport and found out she would no longer lead a U.S. EPA science advisory board.
A friend had forwarded to Swackhamer, the chairwoman of EPA's Board of Scientific Counselors, who was returning from vacation in Europe, a news article saying Administrator Scott Pruitt had launched a sweeping directive to reshape the agency's science panels. Pruitt had also named new chairmen for some of those boards, including Paul Gilman to lead BOSC, which Swackhamer currently heads up.
"I was getting hints from inside EPA from its Office of Research and Development asking me if I wanted to stay, tiptoeing around it," Swackhamer told E&E News. "I officially found out yesterday when I saw Paul Gilman's name in the paper."
Since March 2015, Swackhamer, a retired public health professor from the University of Minnesota and an environmental chemist, has been chairwoman of the science board, which advises EPA on its research programs. Her term ends in March 2018, and she expects to serve out her term on BOSC — although just as a member, not as its chairwoman.
"I will be getting a letter to say I'm not a chair. I asked for clarity on when I'm going to be terminated as chair and was told I would get a letter," Swackhamer said. "When I get that letter, I will serve as a member of the BOSC, and I will serve out my term."
She added, "It is not normal to remove a chair. None of this is normal. None of this is regular."
Swackhamer has been critical of Pruitt and EPA under the Trump administration. She said she openly criticized his plan to remove the agency's science advisers who have received EPA grants and also clashed with President Trump's political appointees in the agency.
She gave congressional testimony earlier this year in which she questioned whether the administration could be politicizing science. That led to a dispute with EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson, who Swackhamer says tried to sway her testimony (E&E Daily, June 28).
Swackhamer said she doesn't know the "official reason" for losing the BOSC chairmanship but suspects it involves the controversy over her testimony, which sparked a letter from Capitol Hill Democrats asking for an EPA inspector general investigation.
"I didn't tangle with Ryan Jackson. Ryan Jackson tangled with me, and it ended up in the press and with letters from Congress and to the IG," Swackhamer said. "I think that was a black mark against me. ... I suspect that's the reason."
In response to written questions from E&E News asking why Swackhamer was demoted and whether it resulted from the episode with Jackson, an EPA spokesman said she "is currently serving a three-year term on the BOSC, and we fully expect her to continue serving."
Yesterday, Pruitt announced his order that required members of EPA's advisory committees to not be in receipt of EPA grants. Critics argue the order will leave EPA's advisers with industry ties in place, while academics and other researchers will be ousted (E&E News PM, Oct. 31).
Pruitt "is remaking these boards to support his agenda. This is not about science," Swackhamer said. "I have never seen such a takeover of an agency from top to bottom. ... He is playing his cards totally professionally well. He is a very strategic man."
She added, "I don't have any EPA funding, so they could not use that against me."
Pruitt also installed new chairmen for two other EPA panels: the Science Advisory Board (SAB) and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC).
But on both committees, those positions were already vacant. Ana Diez Roux, a Drexel University epidemiologist who had headed the CASAC, stepped down after her term expired Sept. 30. Peter Thorne, an occupational health professor at the University of Iowa, left the chairmanship of the SAB at the same time, also because his term had ended.
The BOSC chairman spot wasn't empty, given that Swackhamer still had roughly four months to serve as head of the science panel.
BOSC has already been targeted by Pruitt. The EPA chief decided not to renew several of the board members' terms, leading it to cancel its subcommittee meetings in the late summer and fall of this year (Greenwire, June 20).
Members of the science board traditionally serve two consecutive three-year terms. Swackhamer's first term ends this coming March, and she does not anticipate it will be renewed.
"I have no expectation of renewal," Swackhamer said. "He [Pruitt] has shown that he is not going to follow that tradition."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/11/01/stories/1060065333
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