Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 11/3/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA’s Pruitt and Staff to Attend Chemical Industry Meeting at Luxury Resort Next Week
Nov 3, 2017 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt will travel next week to address the American Chemistry Council’s board meeting at a high-end resort on South Carolina’s Kiawah Island, his spokesman confirmed Thursday. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chief to be Fêted at Chemical Industry Soirée
Nov 3, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt will deliver remarks at the annual board meeting of the American Chemistry Council, the main chemical industry trade and lobby group, according to a press report by The Washington Post. -
(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Chemicals Are Rocketing Back
Nov 3, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Jack Kaskey
A decade ago, chemicals were just another fading U.S. manufacturing business. Companies were reluctant to invest in new factories because of soaring prices for the oil and natural gas that serve as both raw materials and power sources. -
Price Gouging Alleged of Makers of Water Treatment Chemical
Nov 2, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Many municipally owned utilities find themselves in a tough spot as they sue major chemical manufacturers for allegedly fixing the price of an ingredient used for treating drinking water and wastewater. -
Senate Confirms Two Energy Regulators to Fill Commission
Nov 3, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
The Senate confirmed two new members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday, filling the five-member board for the first time since October 2015. -
Environmentalists Push EPA to Complete Delayed TSCA Bans
Nov 2, 2017 | Inside EPA
Environmental groups are urging the Trump administration to finalize as soon as possible three pending Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rules, proposed under the Obama administration, that would restrict the uses of three chemicals. -
Chemical Firms’ Advice Sought by EPA on Test Animal Reductions
Nov 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The advice of chemical makers and testing laboratories is being sought by EPA so fewer test animals are used in collecting safety information to inform chemical regulations, an EPA scientist said Nov. 2. -
Democrats Revive Bill to Outlaw Asbestos
Nov 3, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Corbin Hiar
Democratic senators have revived legislation to outlaw nearly all domestic uses of the carcinogenic mineral asbestos. -
(ACC Mentioned) Roundup Ready... Or Not? Play Video
Nov 3, 2017 | KMSP-TV
By Tom Lyden
Roundup is the popular weed killer used by homeowners and farmers alike, but controversy around the pesticide is growing as people question the safety of the product’s active ingredient, Glyphosate. -
The PFOA Drinking Water Contamination Crisis Just Got Much Bigger
Nov 2, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By David Andrews and Bill Walker
Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that 1 percent of samples from public drinking water systems nationwide were contaminated with PFOA, a nonstick chemical formerly used to make DuPont's Teflon. -
EPA Quietly Floats Data Notices on Oil And Gas Methane Rule Stay
Nov 2, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
EPA is quietly seeking comment on two notices of data availability (NODA) related to its proposals to delay the Obama-era new source performance standards (NSPS) methane reduction rule for new oil and gas drilling, measures that could help the Trump administration... -
EPA Announces Clean Power Plan Withdrawal Meeting in West Virginia
Nov 3, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Emily Holden
EPA will hold a public hearing about the decision to withdraw the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan in West Virginia on Nov. 28 and 29. -
Critics Say Drilling Math Doesn't Add Up
Nov 3, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Kellie Lunney
The fiscal math on drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could become clearer when the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee unveils its legislation, possibly as early as next week. -
U.S. to Exit Global Anti-Corruption Effort Aimed at Oil Cash
Nov 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The Trump administration said it will exit a global anti-corruption effort that compels oil, gas and mining companies to disclose the payments they give governments worldwide. -
After Chemical Fires, Texans Worry About Toxic Effects
Nov 2, 2017 | NPR
By Rebecca Hersher
Shannan Wheeler was born and raised in Baytown, Texas, an industrial suburb east of Houston that is part of the so-called chemical coast. -
The Next Big Hack Could Turn America's Lights Off
Nov 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Max Chafkin and Dune Lawrence
When a serious cyberattack against the U.S. begins, at first you'll blame the weather, or an accident, or corporate incompetence. It'll be a power outage that lasts a few hours at most. But things will start to get more unsettling when reports trickle out that the blackout is the work of hackers... -
(ACC Mentioned) NASA Nominee’s Support of ‘Secret Science’ Bill Alarms Environmentalists
Nov 3, 2017 | Death Rattle Sports
By Caroline Morrison
President Trump’s decision to nominate Jim Bridenstine as NASA administrator has some environmental and public health groups on edge, and not just because of the Oklahoma congressman’s public skepticism about climate change. -
(ACC Mentioned) Scott Pruitt Has More Than Doubled the Number of Polluter-Friendly Members of EPA's Science Advisory Board
Nov 2, 2017 | AlterNet
By Elliott Negin
On Halloween, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt gave Americans the equivalent of an apple filled with razor blades. -
Trump EPA's Deregulatory Agenda May Have Staying Power Amidst Chaos
Nov 2, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Jeremy Bernstein
Faced with a divisive and chaotic political environment in Washington, President Donald Trump's efforts to roll back EPA and other agencies' rules may be one of the few priority agenda items his administration is successfully advancing... -
Major Climate Science Reports Coming Friday
Nov 3, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Emily Holden
The Trump administration will release three major scientific reports on Friday acknowledging manmade climate change, according to a source familiar with the studies. -
Carbon Tax Gains Steam as New York Marks Sandy Anniversary
Nov 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
Carbon tax backers hope the recent hurricanes and fifth anniversary of Sandy are the perfect storm to force New York to put a price on carbon dioxide. -
Making the Case for Carbon Pricing in New York
Nov 3, 2017 | Platts
By Charles Noh
New York’s State Energy Plan, self-proclaimed to include some of the nation’s most ambitious 2030 clean energy targets, has perhaps by necessity intensified the discussion of carbon prices in the wholesale power markets, possibly redefining their traditional role.
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Nov 3, 2017 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt will travel next week to address the American Chemistry Council’s board meeting at a high-end resort on South Carolina’s Kiawah Island, his spokesman confirmed Thursday.
Pruitt, who has traveled across the country to meet with industry groups regulated by the EPA, is scheduled to address the board during a session on Nov. 9, according to the event’s official schedule. The administrator plans to bring eight EPA staffers to the event. The contingent includes his chief of staff, a senior adviser on state and regional affairs, a press aide, a public engagement official, a security detail of three and an advance person.
The EPA on Thursday said the government is paying for the group’s expenses.
“This is part of Administrator Pruitt’s ‘back-to-basics’ tour as he continues to meet with as many stakeholders as possible,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement. “Administering the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), amended by the 2016 Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, is one of EPA’s core functions.”
Traveling to the session, held at the Sanctuary Hotel at Kiawah Island Golf Resort, is the latest example of Pruitt going outside the Beltway to meet with top corporate officials. In recent months he has gone to a Ritz-Carlton resort for a National Mining Association meeting in Naples, Fla., and to another golf resort in Arizona to speak at a board meeting for the National Association of Manufacturers.
According to an online itinerary, rooms for the event are $389 per night, though Wilcox said EPA officials would be paying a government rate of $135 for lodging. Registration for the meeting begins at $649, and includes access to a “chairman’s reception and board dinner” on Wednesday evening, before Pruitt’s speech.
The American Chemistry Council declined to comment on the event.
The chemical industry group, which frequently criticized the EPA’s approach to regulation under President Barack Obama, has emerged as an influential player in the Trump administration. Along with other trade groups, the organization successfully petitioned the agency to institute a two-year delay for the effective date of a chemical risk safety rule adopted in January. That rule would require operators storing chemicals to provide more detailed information to first responders.
Pruitt moved in June to delay the rule, which is aimed at averting the kind of explosions that occurred in 2013 at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex., killing 15 people. It now would not take effect until Feb. 19, 2019.
EPA has changed course on a number of other policies involving chemicals since Pruitt came into office. It is currently in the process of implementing updates to the Toxic Substances Control Act, which made significant changes to how the agency evaluates and regulates both chemicals that are already on the market or about to be introduced.
Environmentalists have charged that EPA is no longer testing new chemicals as it did after the law was passed, when Obama was still in office, and that Pruitt’s appointees are rewriting the rules for how the law will be implemented going forward.
In March, Pruitt withdrew a petition to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which is used on a range of crops and was determined by EPA to pose potential health risks to fetal neurological development. He has instructed agency officials to reevaluate scientific determinations on that pesticide as well as other chemical compounds.
The ACC has praised Pruitt for moving to change the makeup of scientific advisory boards that provide recommendations to the agency on a range of matters, including pesticides, toxic chemicals and air pollutants. Earlier this year, an ACC spokesman said of the changes, “We are hopeful Administrator Pruitt’s actions will help to ensure regulatory decisions are based on the highest quality science, enhance accountability, create greater balance, more transparency and fewer conflicts of interest on EPA advisory boards.”
Several people linked to the ACC serve in the EPA or are expected to be named to positions in the agency. Pruitt is set to announce new appointments to the Scientific Advisory Board and two other panels as early as next week, and according to individuals briefed on the matter, ACC’s senior director for its chemical products and technology division, Kimberly White, will be named to the board. Nancy Beck, a former ACC executive, now serves as deputy assistant administrator at EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Michael Dourson, an industry consultant who co-authored a 2016 paper with Beck underwritten by ACC, serves as one of Pruitt’s senior advisers and is nominated to lead the chemical safety office. An agency spokeswoman, Liz Bowman, also previously worked at the industry group.
In the paper Beck and Dourson authored last year in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, they argued that EPA had set acceptable risk levels for 19 chemicals that were too stringent.
“Pruitt’s going to meet with ACC’s Board in South Carolina, but the real problem is that he could just as well just call Nancy Beck or Michael Dourson into his office for a staff meeting,” said Richard Denison, lead senior scientist for the advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund. “The chemical industry has unprecedented access to the inner workings of EPA’s toxics office, and it’s showing up in myriad ways.”
Pruitt met with ACC’s chief executive Cal Dooley and several other officials from the group once at EPA headquarters, according to his publicly released schedule, on May 10. The topic listed on the calendar for the meeting was, “Importance of EPA to the antimicrobial and chemical industry and the need for greater transparency and opportunities for stakeholder engagement.”
But it is not Pruitt’s only interaction with the chemical industry. The following week, on May 15, he met with Chemours chief executive Mark Vergnano and other company officials. Later that day, he met with the National Association of Chemical Distributors to discuss TSCA and other related issues. A few days later, on May 20, he toured Brainerd Chemical in Tulsa, which describes itself as “a major regional provider and distributor of chemicals for research facilities, industrial plants and agricultural operations.”
In the past, Pruitt has shown a tendency to take numerous staff members with him on his out-of town trips, according to the few details available about his travel schedule.
For instance, he took at least five political staffers, in addition to his security detail, on a July 27 noncommercial flight to rural Oklahoma for a meeting about water issues. On Aug. 4, he took several other staff members on a charter flight to visit Gold King Mine in Colorado. The state’s governor, John Hickenlooper (D), had offered Pruitt a seat on his plane that day, but the EPA decided to charter its own flight so that Pruitt’s staff members could come along.
On June 7, Pruitt and several EPA staffers took a military flight from Cincinnati, where he had attended an event with President Trump, to New York’s John F. Kennedy airport to catch an evening flight to Italy for a meeting of environmental ministers. That flight cost in excess of $36,000. In Italy, Pruitt met with a number of other staffers who had traveled ahead of him.
Pruitt’s predecessor, Gina McCarthy, made fewer appearances at industry board meetings, though she held more frequent meetings than Pruitt with environmental advocates, often at EPA headquarters.
In the past, when Pruitt has traveled to other industry events to speak, he has received approval from government ethics officials. Each time government attorneys have greenlighted the trips, but warned that “the persons extending the invitation are registered lobbyists or lobbying organizations, therefore if the official speaks, he must be careful about the organization offering him a tangible gift to take home with him.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/11/02/epas-pruitt-and-staff-to-attend-meeting-at-luxury-resort-next-week/?utm_term=.7dc29eab56c5
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chief to be Fêted at Chemical Industry Soirée
Nov 3, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt will deliver remarks at the annual board meeting of the American Chemistry Council, the main chemical industry trade and lobby group, according to a press report by The Washington Post.
“Finally Scott Pruitt can get his marching orders directly in person from chemical industry lobbyists who, up until now, he’s only met over the phone in the soundproof booth he installed in his EPA office,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “He’ll get a warm reception. After all, until Scott Pruitt came along, chemical companies held the worst reputation for environmental integrity in America.”
Since taking control at EPA, Pruitt has installed chemical industry executives in top positions in the agency, including former American Chemistry Council official Nancy Beck. Beck’s long history of defending toxic chemicals was recently documented in a report by The New York Times.
Pruitt also installed Michael Dourson, President Trump’s pick to run EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, as a senior advisor even before the Senate has voted to confirm Dourson in that role.
Dourson has repeatedly argued that the safe exposure levels to highly toxic chemicals are hundreds or thousands of times higher than what independent scientists and the EPA consider safe. As head of the office of chemical safety, he would make crucial decisions on many chemicals he has defended for the industry.
In one of his first major decisions as EPA administrator, Pruitt sided with Dow Chemical over scientists in a decision to abort the agency's proposal to ban chlorpyrifos – an insecticide that at small doses can harm children's brains and nervous systems – from use on food crops.
“The public can’t trust America’s chemical industry to make safe products, tell the truth, or protect our health. Scott Pruitt clearly can’t be trusted to do any of those things, either,” said Cook. “No one in the environmental community will forgive Pruitt for what he’s doing. And we will never forget the companies that used his disgraceful tenure to turn back the clock on chemical safety and environmental regulation. Never.”
https://www.ewg.org/release/epa-chief-be-f-ted-chemical-industry-soir-e#.WfxfZVuCzIU
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(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Chemicals Are Rocketing Back
Nov 3, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Jack Kaskey
A decade ago, chemicals were just another fading U.S. manufacturing business. Companies were reluctant to invest in new factories because of soaring prices for the oil and natural gas that serve as both raw materials and power sources. Dow Chemical and others were closing plants and moving production to the Middle East to save money. “The conventional wisdom was we are not going to produce a lot of petrochemicals here,” says Kevin Swift, chief economist at the American Chemistry Council, an industry group.
Today, Dow, Exxon Mobil Corp., and Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. are putting the finishing touches on multibillion-dollar factories along the Texas Gulf Coast. The plants are part of $185 billion in proposed and recently completed investments, according to the chemistry council. “The U.S. is punching above its weight at the moment,” says Kevin McCarthy, a chemical industry analyst at Vertical Research Partners. Credit the rise of fracking. A torrent of cheap U.S. natural gas has made the country among the most profitable places to produce chemicals, beating out the Middle East in attracting projects. U.S. exports of polyethylene plastic to Asia will rise more than fivefold by 2020, with China as the primary destination, according to research company IHS Markit Ltd.
Almost 20 factories are being built or expanded to convert gas liquids such as ethane and propane into ethylene, the most used petrochemical and the main ingredient in polyethylene plastic. The largest is an $11 billion complex being built near Lake Charles, La., by South Africa’s Sasol Ltd. It’s scheduled to begin producing polyethylene next year. Much of the investment is coming from abroad. Along with Sasol, foreign companies putting money into U.S. facilities include France’s Total, South Korea’s Lotte Chemical, and Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics.
The largest plants are going up in Texas and Louisiana, where chemical makers can tie into existing infrastructure. “Houston has always been the hemispheric center of the plastics business, but this just cements it for decades to come,” says Bill Gilmer, director of the University of Houston’s Bauer Institute for Regional Forecasting.
For oil-driven Houston, the spending splurge on chemical plants has softened the blow from job cuts in the energy sector. Most of the new jobs aren’t permanent: Construction on a typical ethylene plant peaks with about 2,500 workers on-site. A completed plant requires only about 80 employees to operate, Gilmer says. Still, those long-term jobs pay better than most. Laura Marshall, 31, was working as a beautician before enrolling in a two-year community college program that won her an operations job at one of Chevron Phillips’s new Houston area plants. Now she’s making more than $100,000 a year, saving for retirement, and shopping for a house. “It was an extremely large change in my life,” Marshall says. “I’m no longer living paycheck to paycheck.”
The anticipated strain on the Houston area’s export infrastructure has some producers gearing up to send plastic pellets by rail to ports in Long Beach, Calif., and Charleston, S.C. Meanwhile, companies that convert raw plastics to finished products are expanding to take advantage of the abundant material.
More investment is coming across the country. “The cost advantage is strong enough and durable enough that people are going to put money in the ground for a second wave,” says John Roberts, a chemical industry analyst with UBS Securities.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the U.K. oil and chemicals conglomerate, has started building an ethylene complex outside Pittsburgh that will begin production in the early 2020s. Shell sees an advantage in being closer to Appalachian shale gas deposits as well as to the customers who turn plastic pellets into products such as packaging, trash bags, and bottles. Even Saudi Arabia wants a piece of the action. State-owned Saudi Basic Industries Corp. formed a joint venture with ExxonMobil to build an ethylene plant in Corpus Christi, Texas, by early in the next decade. Fertilizers are another major target of capital investment: More than 20 U.S. plants are being built or expanded to convert gas into ammonia, a key ingredient.
This boom relies on gas remaining relatively cheap, but also on continued economic growth worldwide. In India and China, an expanding middle class increasingly buys goods wrapped in plastic and appliances produced with chemicals. “If for some reason the world slows, that will be trouble,” Roberts says.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-03/u-s-chemicals-are-rocketing-back
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Price Gouging Alleged of Makers of Water Treatment Chemical
Nov 2, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
Many municipally owned utilities find themselves in a tough spot as they sue major chemical manufacturers for allegedly fixing the price of an ingredient used for treating drinking water and wastewater.
Yet they can't do without that ingredient.
The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC), which serves areas in Maryland just outside Washington, D.C., in October became the latest to file an antitrust lawsuit against at least half a dozen chemical manufacturers and their subsidiaries. The utility says it continues to use aluminum sulfate, or “alum” as it is commonly known, because the chemical is “essential” to its treatment operations, spokesman Charles Brown told Bloomberg Environment Oct. 31.
Many publicly owned wastewater utilities and local governments, including Richmond and Baltimore, have either filed lawsuits individually or joined a larger class action case alleging the companies have taken advantage of their need for alum by increasing and fixing prices almost four-fold over a decade (Washington Suburban Sanitary Comm'n v. Reich, D. Md., No. 17-cv-03060, 10/19/17).
Utilities add alum to make particles stick together as they process drinking water and wastewater, which then can be more easily filtered out during the treatment process. The utilities and local governments say higher prices for alum have led to a spike in their operational costs.
At least 68 lawsuits name General Chemical Corp. and its affiliates and subsidiaries; Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund and its many subsidiaries and affiliates; GEO Specialty Chemicals Inc. and its many subsidiaries; C & S Chemicals Inc.; RGM of Georgia, Ltd.; Kemira Chemicals, Inc.; Southern Ionics, Inc.; and USALCO, LLC. None of the companies returned calls from Bloomberg Environment seeking comment.
The lawsuits, which stem from a long-running federal criminal investigation of price fixing in the alum industry, allege the companies—and about five named executives—conspired between 1997 and 2011, and possibly longer, to fix, stabilize, and maintain the price of alum.
The complaints also allege the companies conspired to suppress and eliminate competition in the sale and marketing of the chemical. WSSC's lawsuit, like others, alleges that the companies rigged bids for utility contracts by knowingly submitting losing bids favoring a certain company or withdrawing winning bids, and unlawfully discussing prices, for example.
“The Defendants’ actions caused municipalities and governmental subdivisions across the United States to overpay by many millions of dollars for the Alum they needed,” the WSSC wrote in its Oct. 19 complaint to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
Honoring Contracts
The alleged price hikes affected WSSC operational costs into 2016 due to the duration of some of the contracts with the chemical companies, the WSSC lawsuit claims.
“Because of the alleged bid rigging, our price for Alum nearly quadrupled between 2000 and 2010, from $82 per ton to more than $300 per ton, while the cost to produce Alum remained relatively stable,” Chuck Brown, WSSC spokesman, told Bloomberg Environment Oct. 31. Cities and municipalities award sales contracts for commodities and chemicals to firms based on a bidding process.Nevertheless, Brown said, they are still involved in a contract with at least one of the companies—USALCO—named in the lawsuit, though the utility also has branched out to other suppliers of the chemical not named in the lawsuits.
Likewise, Baltimore hasn't changed its supplier of alum since the city sued the chemical companies in June, Jeffrey Raymond, the city spokesman, told Bloomberg Environment Nov. 1.
Antitrust law allows a successful plaintiff to recover three times its damages. The Washington suburban utility has asked for at least $5 million in compensatory damages.
Pleads Guilty
GEO Specialty Chemicals pled guilty in June 2016 in a separate criminal case brought by the Justice Department to one count of price fixing of alum in violation of the Sherman Act. The company agreed to pay $5 million for its alleged role in a plea agreement reached in U.S. v. GEO Specialty Chem. Inc.
Frank A. Reichl, a co-defendant in the WSSC case and a former senior executive at General Chemical, and GEO Specialty Chemicals, also pleaded guilty in February 2016 to participating in the conspiracy, according to the WSSC complaint.
Also named in the suburban utility's lawsuit are two other executives from these companies—Vincent J. Opalewski and Brian C. Steppig—who were indicted by the Justice Department in February 2016. These indictments and pleas are part of its long-running investigation into what government attorneys allege is a cartel of price fixing of alum.
The law firm of Ballard Spahr LLP is representing WSSC, which provides both drinking water and wastewater services to about 1.8 million residents living in Prince George's and Montgomery counties in Maryland.
Ballard Spahr attorneys also are representing Richmond and Baltimore in separate, but similar lawsuits in federal courts of Virginia and Maryland, respectively. All cases are now being transferred to a federal district court in New Jersey, which also is considering the class action lawsuit.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123279731&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123279731&jd=123279731
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Senate Confirms Two Energy Regulators to Fill Commission
Nov 3, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
The Senate confirmed two new members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday, filling the five-member board for the first time since October 2015.
Republican Kevin McIntrye and Democrat Richard Glick were installed as FERC commissioners on unanimous voice votes on Thursday afternoon. McIntrye is Trump’s nominee to chair the commission.
The confirmations establish a full commission at FERC, which is tasked with permitting energy projects like pipelines and export terminals. The commission is currently mulling a controversial proposal from Energy Secretary Rick Perry to overhaul the payment system for the electricity sector and prop up coal and nuclear plants.
McIntyre will take over as chairman from Neil Chatterjee, who had been filling in on an interim basis.
Chatterjee welcomed the pair to the commission on Thursday in a statement, saying “both Kevin and Rich bring years of experience and knowledge to the significant issues before the commission, and, importantly, their arrival restores the commission to full strength.”
The FERC board has long had vacancies, but it dropped down to only one member earlier this year and was without a quorum for six months until Chatterjee and commissioner Robert Powelson were sworn in on Aug. 10.
The Senate also confirmed three Department of Energy nominees on Thursday: Mark Menezes to be undersecretary, Paul Dabbar to be undersecretary for science and Steven Winberg to be assistant secretary for fossil energy.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/358512-senate-confirms-two-energy-regulators-filling-commission
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Environmentalists Push EPA to Complete Delayed TSCA Bans
Nov 2, 2017 | Inside EPA
Environmental groups are urging the Trump administration to finalize as soon as possible three pending Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rules, proposed under the Obama administration, that would restrict the uses of three chemicals.
In an October letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, the environmental groups write they are “deeply concerned by reports that EPA may delay final action on its proposed rules for trichloroethylene (TCE), methylene chloride (MC) and N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) under section 6(a) of the amended TSCA. If these rules are delayed, more than two million workers and consumers will be needlessly exposed to serious, well-documented health risks. We urge you to keep the rulemaking process moving forward and finalize the three rules as proposed as soon as possible.”
The Obama EPA proposed the three draft rules, barring or restricting uses of MC and NMP for paint removal and TCE for dry cleaning spot removal and industrial vapor degreasing nearly a year ago.
The three rules were proposed using EPA's authority under TSCA section 6(a), little used since EPA's attempt to ban most uses of asbestos through this mechanism in the 1980s. That rule was struck down by a federal court decision in the Corrosion Proof Fittings case in 1995. That decision prompted critics of TSCA to seek reform of the statute, eventually enacted in June 2016.
The rules have been hotly contested by industry groups, and the Trump administration's time line for advancing the rules is unknown. A recent New York Times story on the Trump administration appointee in EPA's toxics office, Nancy Beck, says that Trump EPA leaders “pressed agency scientists to re-evaluate” the proposed rules.
But the environmentalists argue that the 2016 bipartisan overhaul of TSCA was “in direct response to EPA’s abysmal record in addressing unsafe chemicals under section 6. The new law removes the roadblocks to effective regulation that had stymied the Agency under the old law . . . If EPA fails to complete its rulemakings on TCE, MC and NMP despite the overwhelming evidence of unreasonable risk, the new risk reduction authorities in TSCA will be rendered ineffective and the work of Congress and many stakeholders to revitalize the TSCA program will go for naught.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/environmentalists-push-epa-complete-delayed-tsca-bans
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Chemical Firms’ Advice Sought by EPA on Test Animal Reductions
Nov 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The advice of chemical makers and testing laboratories is being sought by EPA so fewer test animals are used in collecting safety information to inform chemical regulations, an EPA scientist said Nov. 2.
But companies say they would like to understand what health or environmental questions the EPA is trying to answer when it asks for data from alternative, computerized methods for chemical risk reviews.
The amended Toxic Substances Control Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a strategy document by June 22, 2018, said Louis “Gino” Scarano with the agency's chemicals office. He spoke during a workshop in which the EPA sought advice from chemical manufacturers, chemical testing and evaluation companies, and environmental and animal welfare organizations.
The agency plans to hold meetings and seek input through the end of this year, Scarano said. Recommendations can be submitted through a docketthe EPA established. The agency will then develop a draft strategy that it plans to release for public comment before the end of April 2018, he said.
Companies Investing Millions
Chemical manufacturers, such as the Dow Chemical Co. and BASF SE, already have spent millions of dollars to buy new chemical testing equipment and develop software to analyze chemicals’ toxicity and other characteristics in new ways.
These new types of chemical safety evaluation methods can include automated cellular and genetic tests that can simultaneously examine ways hundreds of chemicals may interact with living organisms.
The analytical approaches include computer software that extracts available information about one or more chemicals and compares that to similar compounds. This helps to determine whether the existing data could predict how the new chemical would interact biologically or move through the environment. The agency now refers to these evolving analytic tools as “new approach methodologies,” or NAMs, Scarano said.
Underwriters Laboratories, also called UL LLC, uses advanced software to work with chemical manufacturers as they conduct research to develop new chemicals, Craig Rowlands, a senior toxicologist with UL, told Bloomberg Environment.
UL uses computer software that allows it to explore existing chemical information and extract and analyze it. Those chemical details can answer critical questions companies have while they are deciding whether or not to bring a new chemical to market, and, if so, how they might adjust that molecule to reduce its toxicity, he said.
For example, a company might want to know what environmental effects the chemical would have when disposed, information that the manufacturer and its customers could use to estimate disposal costs, Rowlands said.
There are many challenges for regulatory use of these methods, according to workshop participants. Companies, for example, need to know what type of decision the EPA is making and how the information they could generate from one or more new approach methods could inform that decision, participants said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123279715&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123279715&jd=123279715
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Democrats Revive Bill to Outlaw Asbestos
Nov 3, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Corbin Hiar
Democratic senators have revived legislation to outlaw nearly all domestic uses of the carcinogenic mineral asbestos.
Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley reintroduced the "Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act" with the support of seven other senators who caucus with the Democratic Party.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) backed a version in 2015 and again last year, shortly after the passage of legislation that overhauled the Toxic Substances Control Act, the nation's bedrock chemical safety law. Neither version made it to a hearing (Greenwire, Sept. 30, 2016).
"It's outrageous that in the year 2017, asbestos is still allowed in the United States," Merkley said in a statement. "It's time for us to catch up to the rest of the developed world, and ban this dangerous public health threat once and for all."
The bill would give U.S. EPA three months to do an assessment of current asbestos exposures and 18 months to prohibit "the manufacture, processing, use, distribution in commerce, and disposal of asbestos and mixtures and articles containing asbestos" as necessary "to eliminate human or environmental exposure to asbestos."
The proposal includes a narrow exemption for national security reasons in instances where asbestos use is necessary, "no reasonable alternative" exists and there isn't "an unreasonable risk to health or the environment."
The president would have to sign off on that exemption, and it could only last for up to six years.
Reinstein, the legislation's namesake, died in 2006 at the age of 66 from mesothelioma, a disease caused by exposure to asbestos.
In 2004 his wife, Linda Reinstein, co-founded the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, which is backing the bill along with several other public health groups.
The bill's co-sponsors are Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Dianne Feinstein of California, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Jon Tester of Montana, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Without any Republican support in the GOP-controlled Senate, the legislation will likely struggle to clear the Environment and Public Works Committee, much less make it to the president's desk.
Prized for its flame-resistant qualities, asbestos was once widely used in insulation, tiles and other building materials. But because of health and liability issues associated with it, consumption of the mineral has fallen from a record high of 803,000 metric tons in 1973 to 343 tons in 2015.
But last year, asbestos imports doubled to 705 tons, raising the stakes for the legislation and EPA's review of the mineral under TSCA (Greenwire, Sept. 19).
The chloralkali industry is currently the nation's only major asbestos consumer. The mineral is a crucial component of semipermeable diaphragms that help produce chlorine, a commonly used industrial chemical.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/11/03/stories/1060065557
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(ACC Mentioned) Roundup Ready... Or Not? Play Video
Nov 3, 2017 | KMSP-TV
By Tom Lyden
Roundup is the popular weed killer used by homeowners and farmers alike, but controversy around the pesticide is growing as people question the safety of the product’s active ingredient, Glyphosate.
Zach Johnson, who calls himself the Minnesota Millennial Farmer, has known about glyphosate his entire life. He’s the fifth generation on his family’s land in central Minnesota and says he depends on Glyphosate to take care of the weeds on his genetically modified corn and soybeans.
Other farmers, like Raymond Herold, wonder if it may have caused their cancer, but he also has doubts.
“I can’t say. I don’t know," said Herold who was diagnosed with stage 4, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma last year. "The doctor didn’t tell me that.”
Herold is now one of 3,500 famers and agricultural workers nationwide who are suing Monsanto, the maker of Glyphosate.
Glyphosate has been the active ingredient in Roundup, another Monsanto product, since 1974. Today, it’s available in hundreds of generic formulations from a dozen companies, and accounts for 25% of all pesticide use worldwide. It was discovered by John Franz, a Monsanto scientist who got his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Minnesota.
By itself, Glyphosate is a relatively simple molecule and breaks down easily. It works by targeting an enzyme found in plants but not found in humans or animals. For decades, it’s been considered non-toxic--a scientist once famously claimed it was safe enough to drink.
The game changer for Glyphosate came in the mid-90’s, about the time Monsanto’s patent on it was set to expire--and when the company developed genetically modified corn and soybeans. Farmers could now spread Glyphosate all they wanted and it would only kill the weeds, but not the crop.
“It’s really a growth hormone," said Prof. Paul Capel of the University of Minnesota, who has researched the presence of Glyphosate in rivers and streams of the Upper Midwest. “In this part of the world, in the Midwest, we put it on 60 to 80 percent of the total landscape and we’ve never done that with a chemical before. It is forcing the environment to react somehow and is it a benign reaction or something more serious? I don't think we know."
THE CONTROVERSY
The controversy over Glyphosate began two years ago in Europe when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), convened a panel of eleven scientists to review the research, concluding that Glyphosate was a “probable human carcinogen,” based on “limited evidence in humans,” and “sufficient evidence in experimental animals.”
Critics point out it puts Glyphosate in the same category as chemicals found in table salt, red meat, and fermented vegetables, while Reuters recently uncovered early drafts of the IARC report showing revisions that edited out studies, some financed by Monsanto, that failed to show a cancer link.
As a result of their findings, the European Union is now considering a ban on Glyphosate.
In the U.S., California followed IARC’s lead, calling Glyphosate “a probable carcinogen,” with warning labels to appear in 2018. For the last year, the Minnesota Health Department has been reviewing Glyphosate as a “pesticide of concern.” Even MDH admits, the evidence is not clear cut.
“As we’ve been looking through the evidence, one of the things we realize there’s a study saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ for every health condition you can imagine," said Sarah Johnson, a research scientist from the MDH. "It’s very difficult to determine what’s going on.”
MONSANTO’S $5 BILLION
Glyphosate, some experts say, is too important to the modern economy to take away.
"This product has been studied extensively by the EPA over and over again--by the European Union, the regulatory authorities in Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Germany," said Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s Vice-President for Global Strategy. "It has been looked at over and over again and it is safe."
As for the controversy over RoundUp products--which bring in $5 billion annually for Monsanto--Partridge blames the lawyers representing farmers with cancer.
“Unfortunately, it’s [a game of] follow the dollars and the plaintiffs’ lawyers believe they have found a way to make money,” said Partridge.
THE MONSANTAO PAPERS
As part of that litigation, lawyers got their hands on hundreds of internal Monsanto documents and emails.
The so-called “Monsanto Papers” include an email from an executive discussing how useful a certain regulator with the EPA could be. Another questions the safety of RoundUp, which contains other chemicals.
"You cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen," a Monsanto executive wrote. "We can make that statement about Glyphosate and can infer that there is no reason to believe that Roundup would cause cancer."
The emails also show Monsanto orchestrating a campaign to discredit a French study of rats fed Roundup that showed it caused tumors, cancer, and early death. Monsanto claimed the rats were prone to tumors anyway, and the study was retracted. The editor of that journal later got a contract with with the company.
Monsanto claims the emails are misunderstandings, taken out of context or simply a company defending its brand.
Carey Gillam wrote Whitewash, a book about Monsanto’s protection of a product that brings in $5 billion a year.
“Follow the money,” said Carey Gillam, author of Whitewash, a book about Monsanto’s efforts to defend Glyphosate. “They have a very vested interest in spinning the science, pushing the science that they pay for, that they interpret and then tell the regulators how to interpret."
TESTING FOR GLYPHOSATE
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is currently reviewing Glyphosate, has generally gone along with Monsanto and that doesn’t look like it'll change.
As the New York Times recently reported, the EPA’s new director for its pesticide review board, Dr. Nancy Beck, came from the American Chemistry Council--the main industry trade group.
Small amounts of Glyphosate have also been found in breads and cereals and residue detected on fruits and nuts.
And yet, the EPA, the Food & Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture do not regularly test for Glyphosate. In fact, they never have because it has always been considered non-toxic.
"It’s the fact that they think it’s safe that keeps them from testing,” said Professor Stephanie Seneff, a researcher and professor emeritus from MIT.
Seneff has published papers describing how Glyphosate interferes with gut bacteria and may be responsible for rising rates of everything from Autism and gluten intolerance.
“Our digestive system is really getting disrupted due of our exposure to Glyphosate,” she said.
Critics accuse her of junk science, say she doesn’t have the correct background for her research and that she’s confusing correlation with causation.
“If you take it from the standpoint of what’s going on, Glyphosate is your prime candidate,” said Seneff.
As for the farmers using it and many consumers who are at risk of exposure, most brush off the possibilities.
"I'm concerned more about the known carcinogens, like sunshine, bacon, and beer," Johnson said.
Famers like Johnson say if they didn’t use Glyphosate, they'd simply use pesticides that everyone agrees are more toxic--even though that might happen anyway.
There are now at least 15 weeds resistant to Glyphosate, which leads to a big question: Are people resistant too? Will they adapt?
The lawsuits against Monsanto are being consolidated in federal court in California. The first case is scheduled for trial next year.
The controversy over Glyphosate is threatening Monsanto’s proposed merger with German pharmaceutical giant, Bayer. It’s a $66 billion deal that would create the world’s largest seed and pesticide company.
http://www.fox9.com/news/roundup-ready-or-not
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The PFOA Drinking Water Contamination Crisis Just Got Much Bigger
Nov 2, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By David Andrews and Bill Walker
Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that 1 percent of samples from public drinking water systems nationwide were contaminated with PFOA, a nonstick chemical formerly used to make DuPont's Teflon. The chemical has been linked to cancer, harm to children's immune systems and other serious health problems at very low doses. But the same company that analyzed many of those samples now says that more than 20 percent of the samples were likely contaminated.
The difference is that the EPA required utilities to report PFOA pollution only when it was detected above a minimum level that is much higher than what is actually in many water systems. The minimum reporting level was 10 times higher than what most labs can detect using the EPA's testing method.
Eurofins Eaton Analytical re-analyzed more than 10,000 samples taken from 2013 to 2015, including ones that were so low they were not reported to EPA, and found that more than one in five were contaminated with PFOA. They did not analyze how many additional systems were contaminated, so it's not possible to say how many Americans are drinking PFOA-contaminated water. But it's certainly many more than the 7 million people served by utilities in the EPA's count.
The high reporting limit is exactly what the chemical industry has argued for. Because of concerns that testing labs were already so contaminated that it would be hard to measure a clean sample, the industry wanted the level set even higher. Setting a high reporting level provides cover for the EPA not to do anything, since the Safe Drinking Water Act says the agency should decide whether to set a legal limit for a chemical only if contamination is deemed sufficiently widespread.
The updated analysis confirms what EWG reported in 2015. We looked at data from PFOA sampling in New Jersey, which used a much lower detection and reporting level, and calculated that the EPA's level would have missed 75 percent of the contamination the state found.
Even with the new analysis, all of the PFOA detections nationwide exceed what the best current, independent science says is safe. That level is 1 part per trillion, or ppt, which EWG has adopted as a health-based drinking water standard.
Based on widespread exposure already occurring through food and other routes, government scientists in New Jersey and Germany say there may actually be be no safe level of drinking water exposure to PFOA and similar compounds in the family of highly fluorinated chemicals known as PFCs or PFASs. Yet the EPA has not set a legal limit for these chemicals, only a non-binding health advisory level of 70 ppt for PFOA and its close chemical cousin PFOS, formerly an ingredient in 3M's Scotchgard.
But there's some more encouraging news on protecting people from PFOA.
New Jersey health officials announced this week that they will set a legal limit for tap water of 14 ppt for PFOA and 13 ppt for a similar chemical called PFNA. While still too high, these limits would be the most stringent in the nation.
PFOA and PFOS were phased out under pressure from the EPA, and are no longer made or used in the U.S. But the chemicals that have replaced them were not adequately tested before they were rushed to market, and they're contaminating drinking water much more widely than previously known.
The EPA reported last year that the fluorinated compound PFBS was found in fewer than 0.1 percent of nationwide water samples, but Eurofin's new analysis says it contaminated nearly 12 percent of samples. The EPA did not require testing for another common replacement chemical, PFHxA, but in more recent testing it is showing up at a similar frequency as PFBS.
In the face of this new evidence, it is scandalous that the EPA has not set a legal limit for PFOA and related chemicals. The PFC contamination crisis is not going away, but the agency has shown no sign that it is even considering enforceable regulations. Other states should follow the lead of New Jersey and Vermont, and take action to protect their drinking water from PFCs.
https://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2017/11/pfoa-drinking-water-contamination-crisis-just-got-much-bigger#.Wfw5AVuCzIU
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EPA Quietly Floats Data Notices on Oil And Gas Methane Rule Stay
Nov 2, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
EPA is quietly seeking comment on two notices of data availability (NODA) related to its proposals to delay the Obama-era new source performance standards (NSPS) methane reduction rule for new oil and gas drilling, measures that could help the Trump administration build a record to revise or repeal portions of the underlying regulation.
Among other things, the NODAs include an updated cost-benefit analysis of up to $280 million in savings from the two-year delay.
Environmentalists are already criticizing the two notices -- quietly posted to EPA's website Nov. 1 -- as an attempt to further delay the rule, which is currently in effect after an appellate court vacated the Trump administration's previous stay of the rule.
EPA is now pursuing notice-and-comment rulemakings to delay the NSPS by either three months or two years in response to the ruling.
But EPA says the additional comment is needed because, since issued the proposed stays in June, the agency has “heard comments from stakeholders on challenges in implementing the requirements that the proposed stays would cover. Those are: fugitive emissions requirements at well sites and compressor stations; well site pneumatic pump requirements; and requirements that closed vent systems be certified by a professional engineer,” the agency says in a fact sheet.
EPA will take comment on the three-month stay NODA and the two-year stay NODA for 30 days following their publication in the Federal Register. Although the public comment period on the proposed stay rules has expired, the agency says input on the NODA could inform the final stay rules.
The agency has been expected to issue final versions of the stay rules as a prelude to a broader overhaul of the underlying regulation. But industry officials have been concerned that the appellate court ruling vacating Administrator Scott Pruitt's administrative stay of the rule may have raised legal doubts about EPA's ability to undermine the regulation.
'Extensive' Record
A senior administration official confirmed that fear earlier this week, signaling that the agency might retain some type of methane regulation for new sources as the Obama administration developed an “extensive” record supporting its regulation.
As a result, an industry source said that the NODA was expected to be issued as a way to solicit information “that might then be used to develop [EPA's] record when it revises the rule.”
One controversial element of the two data notices could be EPA's new cost-benefit analysis of the two-year stay, which the agency says now provides larger expected benefits than previous estimates.
“Since proposing the two-year stay in June, EPA has updated the economic analysis to reflect a revised time frame, correct a technical error in the initial analysis and to include estimates of the forgone benefits associated with the proposed stay. The updated analysis estimates the present value of the cost savings of the proposed two-year stay at $270 million using a 7 percent discount rate and $280 million using a 3 percent discount rate,” EPA says.
In addition, the updated analysis estimates the value of climate benefits that would not occur under the two-year stay, which are $11 million using a 7 percent discount rate and $37 million using a 3 percent discount rate, based on estimates for the domestic social cost of methane.
“The updated analysis also estimates the present value of the net benefits at $250 million a year using a 7 percent discount rate and $240 million using a 3 percent discount rate,” EPA says.
In response to the NODAs, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) said they appear to be an attempt to further delay implementation of the Obama-era NSPS. “There is no reasonable basis for delay. Leading companies have already proven that, with the right regulatory drivers in place, this can be done,” Watson said. “Once again, this administration is prioritizing the interests of industry’s lowest common denominator and threatening the health of Americans," said Matt Watson, EDF Associate Vice President for Climate and Energy.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-quietly-floats-data-notices-oil-and-gas-methane-rule-stay
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EPA Announces Clean Power Plan Withdrawal Meeting in West Virginia
Nov 3, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Emily Holden
EPA will hold a public hearing about the decision to withdraw the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan in West Virginia on Nov. 28 and 29.
“The EPA is headed to the heart of coal country to hear from those most impacted by the CPP and get their comments on the proposed Repeal Rule. The agency looks forward to hearing from all interested stakeholders,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement.
EPA said it will convene two daylong sessions at the state capitol in Charleston, but did not explain its decision to only schedule meetings in the coal-reliant state, rather than collecting input from around the country, including from green states and businesses who disagree with the rollback. The agency said it "may also hold an additional hearing to be announced at a later date."
EPA also extended the comment period on the proposal to Jan. 16, 2018.
When the Obama administration proposed the power-sector climate standards in 2015, the agency had meetings in Pittsburgh, Denver, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
West Virginia is the biggest coal producer east of the Mississippi River and also generates almost all of its power from the fuel. But the state’s biggest utility is a subsidiary of AEP, which has been shifting away from coal and toward cheaper natural gas and renewable power for years.
“AEP has factored future carbon regulations into our evaluation of generation resource options for many years, and we continue to do so,” spokeswoman Tammy Ridout told POLITICO last month.
WHAT'S NEXT: EPA said it may extend the West Virginia public hearing to a third day if necessary. Registration information will be posted on EPA's website.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Critics Say Drilling Math Doesn't Add Up
Nov 3, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Kellie Lunney
The fiscal math on drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could become clearer when the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee unveils its legislation, possibly as early as next week.
Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) did not say yesterday what the bill will specify in terms of the revenue-sharing split between her state and the federal government or how it will square with the $1 billion her panel is expected to generate for Uncle Sam to help pay for the Republicans' tax reform plan.
But she noted that the legislation "has to" include a percentage. That could end up being a 50-50 share of whatever oil and gas royalties are extracted from drilling in the refuge's coastal plain, or a 90-10 percent split, which would be more lucrative for Alaska.
Murkowski spoke to reporters after a four-hour hearing on the pros and cons of allowing drilling in a 1.5-million-acre portion of the 19-million-acre refuge.
Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, Republican Rep. Don Young, Gov. Bill Walker (I) and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott (D) joined Murkowski at the press conference.
"You know, 50 percent of something is better than 90 percent of nothing, is one way of looking at it," Walker said when a reporter asked if he'd be OK with a 50-50 split.
Opponents of drilling in ANWR have argued that the math behind the Republican tax plan is fuzzy at best.
The left-leaning Center for American Progress analyzed data based on recent lease sales in the state, which found the federal government could expect closer to $37.5 million in earnings.
That is well short of $1 billion in revenues over the next decade, which the GOP's fiscal 2018 budget resolution, a vehicle for tax reform, assumes.
"There is no amount of budgetary fairy dust that can make the Arctic refuge produce enough money or oil to pay the massive bill from this tax proposal," Matt Lee-Ashley, a senior fellow at CAP, said during a Wednesday conference call with reporters.
"It's an environmental rider, plain and simple, that's being attached not for budgetary reasons or energy security, but purely for politics," he said.
ENR Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who led the 2005 fight opposing drilling in the refuge, said during yesterday's hearing that inserting the issue into the tax reform package is "the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard as it relates to meeting the tax reform agenda."
Murkowski needs to draft her legislation by Nov. 13 per instructions in the budget resolution, but yesterday she said that "there's some question as to how hard that date is" because of delays in both chambers in rolling out their respective tax bills.
The House unveiled its version yesterday and plans to mark it up next week (see related story).
"Clearly, we need to do this very rapidly in terms of scheduling a markup," Murkowski said, referring to her ANWR proposal.
"It's important to have a very open hearing, [and] it will be important to have that markup and give members the time to review the legislation."
She added: "We have not done that yet, but it will be imminent. Around the Senate, imminent is an amazing word," alluding to the chamber's famously slower pace.
The Alaska Republican also expressed confidence that the $1 billion in savings instructions to her panel will remain intact.
The Senate two weeks ago rejected 48-52 a Democratic amendment to the budget that would have blocked a fast-track process for writing legislation permitting the drilling. That pivotal vote raised the stakes for everyone.
"I look at that and say, we may be the least of the problems with the tax package," Murkowski said. "We saw that vote, and I would hope that that vote would stand."
Even so, supporters of allowing drilling in the refuge aren't taking anything for granted. "We are certainly not going to rest on our laurels," Sullivan said.
Opponents feel the same way.
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said Wednesday on a call with reporters that opponents of ANWR drilling are looking to kill the entire tax package.
"We think we have the potential with such a close vote to change some minds," he said, referring to the 48-52 tally from a few weeks ago.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine broke ranks with her party to support the Democratic amendment during that vote, while West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin was the only Democrat to oppose it.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/11/03/stories/1060065561
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U.S. to Exit Global Anti-Corruption Effort Aimed at Oil Cash
Nov 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The Trump administration said it will exit a global anti-corruption effort that compels oil, gas and mining companies to disclose the payments they give governments worldwide.
The decision, announced in a letter Nov. 2 to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, may undercut the effort that aims to give citizens and watchdogs in poor but mineral-rich nations details on how much their government leaders get in taxes, royalties and lease payments. With that information, they can ensure the money is spent on roads and schools, not squirreled away in foreign bank accounts.
“The U.S. government remains committed to fighting corruption in the extractive industries sector and the ideals of transparency enshrined in the EITI principles,” Gregory Gould, the director of the Interior Department's natural resources revenue office, wrote in the letter. However, “domestic implementation of EITI does not fully account for the U.S. legal framework.“
The decision follows a long lobbying battle waged by the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. against a related regulation compelling U.S. energy and mining companies to disclose those payments. President Donald Trump axed that rule earlier this year.
“It's pretty disgraceful for the United States,” said Jana Morgan, director of the Publish What You Pay coalition that supports the initiative. “Chinese state-owned oil companies and Russian state-owned oil companies” are disclosing payments.
“So you literally have American companies that are less transparent than Russian and Chinese state-owned enterprises,” she said. The pullback puts the U.S. in line with Equatorial Guinea and Azerbaijan— two other countries that are not fully participating in the voluntary, global initiative.
The initiative was launched in 2002 by then-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair with the goal of combating the so-called “resource curse,” a phenomenon in which countries’ oil and mineral resources have enriched a few and not led to broader prosperity. The idea was simple: If more is known about the money mining companies pay to governments, it can discourage graft by making officials accountable for explaining how it was spent. The effort was embraced by the Obama administration.
In February, amid oil industry pressure, Trump signed a congressional resolution repealing a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that required oil, gas and mining companies publish the payments they make to governments. That rule, mandated under the Dodd-Frank law, was seen as critical to compelling disclosure and satisfying the EITI requirements.
Tax Payments
The U.S. decision to withdraw as an EITI implementing country “is a disappointing, backwards step,” Fredrik Reinfeldt, the initiative's chair, said in an emailed statement. Reinfeldt pointed to the disapproval of the Dodd-Frank payment disclosure rule as “a setback undermining the EITI's efforts.”
Some U.S. energy companies also had dragged their feet on revealing more about their tax returns. Foreign-based companies such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Statoil ASA, Total SA and BP Plc disclosed their tax payments, as required under the laws of their home countries.
But at least three big U.S.-based oil companies didn't disclose their tax payments: Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Exxon.
Chevron spokeswoman Melissa Ritchie said the company has been committed to the U.S. effort since its inception. “Chevron spent a significant amount of time preparing and reconciling USEITI report data,” she said, “but not payments to the IRS, given the confidential nature of IRS data.“
A representative for Exxon Mobil pointed to a January opinion piece describing the company's support for the initiative everywhere it operates.
“Exxon and Chevron's preference for secrecy” is what “made it impossible for the U.S. to comply,” said Corinna Gilfillan, head of the U.S. office at Global Witness, a group focused on curbing environmental and human rights abuses tied to oil and mineral extraction.
American Petroleum Institute spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel said the industry will continue working with the Interior department in reporting revenues and disbursements and with the State Department to drive global transparency.
“We're still supportive of EITI, as we have been, and we're going to continue to support our member companies and the U.S. government's participation at the internationally,” he said.
Exxon, Chevron and API all have members on the broad stakeholder group guiding the U.S. effort.
State Now in Charge
The State Department, led by former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, will now be in charge of the U.S. commitment to the EITI as a “supporting country,” Interior's Gould wrote.
Nothing in U.S. law precludes oil, gas or mining companies from voluntarily disclosing their tax or royalty payments, and some foreign subsidiaries of U.S. energy companies are already doing that.
“In reality, the refusal of all but a handful of the involved companies to disclose tax payments—not U.S. law—rendered the U.S. unable to meet the basic level of transparency required,” Morgan said.
The Interior Department said it would continue to maintain a web portal for disclosing government revenues by company and commodity will remain up and operational.
Veronika Shime, who represented the National Mining Association on the stakeholder group guiding the U.S. effort, called that disclosure website critical and said she was pleased it would continue.
Shime said she couldn't explain the U.S. retreat but suspected that the overall cost of the program and a dispiriting lack of attention to it may have been factors. Given already strong anti-corruption measures built into U.S. law and regulations, the government may have felt it was unnecessary and expensive, Shime said.
—With assistance from Eric Roston.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123279726&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123279726&jd=123279726
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After Chemical Fires, Texans Worry About Toxic Effects
Nov 2, 2017 | NPR
By Rebecca Hersher
Shannan Wheeler was born and raised in Baytown, Texas, an industrial suburb east of Houston that is part of the so-called chemical coast.
Houses are tucked between chemical storage tanks. Parks back up to refinery smokestacks.
"I grew up around five of the biggest petrochemical facilities on the planet," Wheeler says. An uncle worked at Chevron. Another worked at Shell. "With my family's history I'm familiar with every one of them," he says.
The Wheeler name is synonymous with business in the area. Shannan Wheeler's mother, Tracey, is the longtime president of the Baytown Chamber of Commerce, and he has spent his entire career as an engineer designing pipe systems for petrochemical facilities.
So Shannan Wheeler, 52, is as surprised as anyone that he's part of a federal lawsuit against a chemical company, especially one that employs people in the town where he and his family live now.
The lawsuit alleges Arkema, a chemical manufacturer, failed to protect nearby residents after its plant in Crosby, Texas, was flooded with 50 inches of rain during Hurricane Harvey, and chemicals caught fire. The suit alleges residents weren't warned about the danger posed by the resulting smoke.
A company spokeswoman says Arkema rejects the claims that it failed to warn people about the danger from the smoke. The company also said it urged people to heed evacuation orders.
The Arkema facility makes and stores organic peroxides, volatile chemicals used in plastic manufacturing, among other things. They need to be kept cool so they don't ignite. When water knocked out power to the plant, workers moved the organic peroxides to refrigerated trailers.
But as the water continued to rise, plant workers were evacuated and the trailers flooded. The chemicals inside got warmer and warmer until they started to catch fire.
Local emergency officials evacuated a zone with a 1.5 mile radius around the plant.
Over the course of the next five days, nine trailers containing organic peroxides burned. People outside the evacuation zone wondered if they should be worried too. Smoke from the fires was visible for miles. Some residents worried the blazes might be putting dangerous chemicals into the air.
At first, Wheeler wasn't concerned. His home is more than 3 miles from the Arkema plant – double the evacuation distance — in a quiet part of town surrounded by sod farms. When the fires first started, he could see just the faintest wisp of smoke over the trees.
And official press conferences seemed to confirm there was nothing for him to worry about. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said "exposure to smoke from these organic peroxides is similar to standing over a campfire." When pressed by a local reporter about potential hazards from the smoke, Bob Royall, the assistant chief of emergency operations for the Harris County Fire Marshall's office, said:
"What I know from doing research is these things are going to catch on fire. They're going to burn with intensity. Most of the material is going to be consumed by very hot fire. From what I have researched and understand, the byproducts of that is going to be black smoke with carbon particles in it."
Richard Rennard, an Arkema executive who spoke at press conferences for the company during the crisis, described the smoke as "noxious," adding "if you breathe in the smoke, it's going to irritate your lungs." He reiterated that the evacuation zone, with a radius of 1.5 miles, was sufficient. But neither he nor local emergency officials warned people outside the zone to take precautions, such as staying inside or turning off intakes on air conditioners.
"Something's wrong here"
Wheeler first noticed the acrid smell the evening of Thursday, Aug. 31, after the fires began. "Usually in the evenings around here we get ground fog that comes it," he says. "It's really kind of pretty." But that evening the fog smelled like leaks he'd encountered working at petrochemical facilities.
"The first smell I got was like battery acid," he said. He went inside his house, thinking something was wrong. When he went back outside a couple hours later the odor had changed to "something like bleach and ammonia."
"Well, next morning came out and that's when we noticed these black oily splotches in this flower bed," Wheeler says, pointing at a strip of dirt just outside his front door. "They were bubbly and black, different from anything I've seen before. They looked like they collected where the dew was."
On Friday, the same thing happened; the fog rolled in, bringing with it a smell like burning plastic. The dew deposited dark bubbly residue in his flower bed. He noticed pieces of black ash — some of it rounded like bubbles, some more like delicate sheets — lying in the grass. When he touched the ash with a screwdriver, it fell apart. "I called the [local police] emergency line and asked, but they didn't know anything. They were in the dark like we were," says Wheeler.
Two days later, on a Sunday, Wheeler was at home watching the local news when he felt the house shake a little. "You could feel it. Like 'Boom!' And then a few minutes later another one."
Arkema and emergency officials had decided to purposely ignite the six remaining containers of organic peroxides. A company statement said that it was the only way to be sure that the hazard posed by the unstable chemicals had "been fully eliminated."
That day, "directly over those trees right there to the east, [I saw a] thick black column going up," Wheeler remembers. "And it was going pretty good. We watched it for about 10 minutes until it went up, and it got right under the cloud cover, and it rolled over. You could see it roll over like it hit a ceiling, and it spread."
To Wheeler it seemed like the wind was carrying the smoke toward his house. From farther away, the column appeared to dissipate up and out in every direction.
"All of the product has been successfully and safely burned," Arkema's Rennard said at a press conference after the controlled burn was over. "We have seen no evidence of any issues with [air quality monitoring] results."
That night, there was no fog — and no odor — at the Wheeler house.
A week later, Wheeler mowed his lawn for the first time since the fires. "I wear a respirator, for grass allergies, so I didn't notice anything while I was mowing," he says. After he was done, he picked up the grass clippings. "I was wearing gloves, and back behind the gauntlet of the glove, up on my wrist and everything, it was starting to sting a little bit, like I was in ants," he says.
But there were no ants.
"Another four, five, six handfuls of grass and [I thought], 'This is bothering me!' I looked, and I noticed welts coming up along my wrists, down my thumbs, on both hands."
The pattern was familiar.
"I've had enough training from my work that I thought, 'These look like chemical burns,' " Wheeler says. He yelled to his son to get baking soda and rubbed it on his wrists to ease the pain. The next day, he went to his doctor, who diagnosed it as dermatitis, or skin irritation, caused by chemical exposure, the complaint says.
The fire, the smoke and the ash
Organic peroxides like the ones that burned at the Arkema plant are known for being highly reactive. In fact, their reactivity is useful for manufacturing, because the chemicals help the building blocks of plastics assemble into long chains.
But their reactivity also means organic peroxides have to be stored carefully. At the Arkema facility they were being stored as chilled liquids. After the power went out, the liquid heated up and caught fire.
"These reactions produce a lot of heat," says Michelle Francl, an organic chemist and the director of chemistry graduate studies at Bryn Mawr college, who isn't involved in investigating the Arkema fires. The intense heat can be a good thing, because it means the peroxides burn completely. "When [organic peroxides] burn at the temperatures that they would burn at in this kind of fire, they turn into carbon dioxide and water. The peroxides turn out to be the easiest part of this whole thing."
"This is carbon, hydrogen and oxygen," says William Carroll, an adjunct professor of chemistry at Indiana University who worked on organic peroxides for the chemical industry for more than 30 years. "There's nothing exotic in there. On the basis of what I know about this material, I would sincerely doubt that people a mile and half away were exposed to much in the way of organic peroxides."
But it wasn't just the chemicals that burned, Arkema emission reports say. The vessels they were in and the refrigerated trailers where they were stored also burned. "A truck fire is ugly," says Carroll, who isn't involved in the investigations or lawsuits. "You've got wood, you've got metal. Burning a truck trailer is not something you want to do at a picnic."
Photos released by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which is investigating the fires, show the remains of the refrigerated trailers. The metal is charred and twisted. The storage containers are no longer visible. The pavement is covered in thick, black, ashy residue.
"Everything from the labels on things, to the whatever plastic or in some cases metal that the containers are made out of — all that stuff is not going to burn completely," says Francl. "It's going to turn into ash, and then it's going to absorb other chemicals that didn't burn entirely." The ash can travel through the air in tiny particles or in larger pieces.
"I don't want to get rid of Arkema"
A week after the fires, Wheeler agreed to join a lawsuit against Arkema, alleging the company didn't do enough to protect residents from physical damage and damage to their property. In the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, he and 14 other plaintiffs describe rashes and respiratory problems they say were caused by chemical exposure.
In the complaint, 0ne resident who walked through flood water near the factory describes "lesions and burns" on his legs. Another alleges he got sick from fumes after he was told not to evacuate his home, which is less than a tenth of a mile beyond the evacuation zone.
A separate lawsuit by a group of first responders describes "police officers doubled over vomiting, unable to breathe" and alleges the cause was "toxic fumes" from the Arkema fires.
A spokesperson for Arkema, Janet Smith, wrote in an email to NPR:
"We deeply regret that anyone experienced temporary ill effects from this incident, particularly first responders who worked with us side-by-side to keep the public safe. However, we reject any suggestion that Arkema failed to warn of the danger of breathing smoke from the fires at the Crosby plant. Arkema officials urged the public, for their own safety, to respect the 1.5-mile evacuation zone imposed by the Unified Command well before any fire. It is also our understanding that those first responders who went to a hospital were released without being admitted to the hospital. Arkema will vigorously defend against any lawsuit we believe is mistaken in its claims."
She declined to comment further, citing ongoing litigation.
There is also a criminal investigation by the Harris County District Attorney; a lawyer in charge of the probe confirmed one is underway but declined to give further details. The Environmental Protection Agency and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality are both investigating the fires.
It will likely take months to analyze contamination at the Arkema plant, but there are some early indications about what chemicals were spread by the blazes.
During the fires, the EPA flew a plane equipped with monitoring equipment through the plume, looking for evidence of unsafe levels of about a dozen chemicals, and reported "trace" amounts of peroxide and butane. "As with any fire, there was smoke," says EPA Acting Regional Administrator Sam Coleman, but "we did not see any of the constituents of concern at levels we considered unhealthy."
Air emissions reports filed by Arkema list more than 65,000 pounds of chemicals as well as more than 17,000 pounds of particulate matter released as a result of Hurricane Harvey.
Frankl says smoke and ash from any fire can cause problems. "It doesn't matter whether it was a chemical plant or not, the issues are real," she says. "People's lungs are irritated. There's a lot of unknown stuff floating around. Irritants can damage your lungs." The effects can be worse for babies or elderly people, or people who have asthma or other respiratory issues.
Being a good neighbor
Shannan Wheeler is quick to say he didn't join the lawsuit against Arkema to get money, and he's not even trying to hurt the company.
"Running business and jobs and money out of town is completely foreign to me," he says. "So no, I don't want to get rid of Arkema." Instead, he says, it's about getting information about what happened, and holding the company accountable for what he refers to as "not being a good neighbor."
"I need to know that my property is safe for me and my family and my dogs," he says. "Right now, I don't trust that I'm not going to be exposed to something on my own property in the future that came from that facility. And if this happens again – I mean, we live in a place that gets hurricanes – will things go better?"
Wheeler says that his family history with the petrochemical industry is why he's suing the company, and not the local government, even though local emergency officials backed up almost every statement made by Arkema executives during the disaster.
"They only knew what the company told them," he says. "I've worked for companies, I know what being a good neighbor looks like. They should have warned us. If they had told us to evacuate, I would have gone."
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/11/02/558313744/in-the-wake-of-chemical-fires-texans-worry-about-toxic-effects
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The Next Big Hack Could Turn America's Lights Off
Nov 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Max Chafkin and Dune Lawrence
When a serious cyberattack against the U.S. begins, at first you'll blame the weather, or an accident, or corporate incompetence. It'll be a power outage that lasts a few hours at most. But things will start to get more unsettling when reports trickle out that the blackout is the work of hackers, most likely connected to the Russian government.
This isn't science fiction—it happened in western Ukraine two years ago. That attack, the first known to take out an electrical grid, used malicious software known as a Trojan to briefly black out several hundred thousand people. The hack forced Ukrainians to start taking their country's conflict with Russia much more seriously, says John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at security company FireEye Inc. The power outage, and another that followed in the capital in 2016, “took the front from the east to Kiev,” he says. “You can't ignore it when the lights go out.”
So far, most Americans and Europeans haven't been forced to reckon with the dangers of a large-scale cybersecurity breach, even as such attacks have become routine. Although close to half of the U.S. population had their Social Security numbers, addresses, and birthdates stolen from credit-monitoring company Equifax Inc. earlier this year, the usual round of press outrage and congressional finger-wagging didn't yield any serious changes. Equifax Chief Executive Officer Rick Smith resigned and lost his 2017 bonus, but he got a retirement package worth at least $18 million.
But the kind of attack that companies will finally take seriously, something like the one in Ukraine, is coming. Security experts call such a hack cyberphysical, meaning it spills into the real world, causing property damage and perhaps deaths. Experts have already found evidence that the hackers responsible for Ukraine's outages have been quietly rolling into the systems that run U.S. energy grids. On Oct. 20, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued an alert warning of a “multistage intrusion campaign” aimed at industrial control systems in critical infrastructure, including in “the energy, water, aviation, nuclear, and manufacturing sectors.”
Attacks on infrastructure are extremely tough to pull off. Most power grids include a tangle of interconnected systems, some online, some offline, and some decades old. Intelligence analysts say only five countries can hack them: the U.S., China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. None, as far as we know, have successfully disabled physical assets beyond computers on American soil.
Even so, U.S. companies are woefully unprepared. Industrial control systems have been connected to the internet in recent years, with little thought given to securing them. Many software systems patch security holes daily; at power plants, well-known vulnerabilities may not be fixed for years, partly because there still isn't a consensus on whether the manufacturer, installer, or utility operator bears responsibility for updating the software, says Marina Krotofil, a Ukrainian-born FireEye analyst. “There was no security in the past, because there was no need,” she says. Many critical infrastructure systems, including natural gas pipelines and storage, are almost entirely unregulated in the digital realm.
Russian hackers, meanwhile, continue to innovate. Krotofil says many low- and midlevel hackers have moved on from hijacking Windows PCs and are writing malware designed to take over power grids. “You see so many exploits, because so many people got into this field,” she says.
So far, Ukraine has been Russia's primary target. The Kremlin-backed group that caused the blackouts, identified by cybersecurity researchers as Sandworm, has also been tied to a large-scale hack that briefly crippled Ukraine this summer. The group used a well-known ransomware program, Petya, that normally attacks a target's computer, encrypts the data, then offers to decrypt it for a ransom. But the hackers came up with a variation, NotPetya, that simply destroyed the data.
“The Russians have crossed lines and, more importantly, done so without punishment”
The hackers spread the virus by targeting the main application that Ukrainians use to file their taxes, and in doing so, they took down the system Ukrainian pharmacies use to keep track of rare prescription drugs and the radiation monitoring system at Chernobyl. Banks, airports, and government offices were also affected. “It was like nothing we'd ever seen before,” says Krotofil. “The entire country was paralyzed.”
There's evidence to suggest the blackouts and NotPetya were just warmups for a hack in the U.S. Sandworm's code has been found on computers run by American electrical operators, according to FireEye. And in July security groups reported that another group, believed by U.S. intelligence agencies to be Russian, had accessed computers at a dozen U.S. power plants, including Wolf Creek, a nuclear plant in Kansas. Russian hackers haven't done anything malicious to these systems, but such stories are troubling, especially when combined with their meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and their smaller-scale attacks in Europe, such as the disabling of a French television network.
The same thing that's kept the nuclear peace between the U.S. and Russia has also stopped Russia from launching a cyberphysical attack in America. The U.S. could respond to a Russian strike with its own crippling cyberattack along the lines of Stuxnet, a worm said to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency and Israeli intelligence that sabotaged Iranian nuclear centrifuges starting in 2009. (Iran has been active in the U.S. as well. In 2016, the Department of Justice announced that it was bringing hacking charges against seven Iranians for crimes that included accessing a control system for a dam in the New York City suburbs.) Martin Libicki, a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and the author of Cyberspace in Peace and War, says he worries that a serious hack could escalate into outright war. “My No. 1 fear is not the direct consequences of a cyberattack,” he says. “It's if we get into a conflict with another country and there's a cyberattack, we will overreact, or they will overreact.”
How long can fear of retaliation hold off a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” as security researchers sometimes call it? Peter Singer, a fellow at the Washington think tank New America, says the phrase is so overused it's basically fodder for a drinking game, but the past few years have been sobering. “We've seen a series of lines crossed that we thought were no-go areas,” he says. “The Russians have crossed lines and, more importantly, done so without punishment. That sends a signal, not just to them but to everyone else, that, ‘Hey, you can get away with this.’”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123279733&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123279733&jd=123279733
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(ACC Mentioned) NASA Nominee’s Support of ‘Secret Science’ Bill Alarms Environmentalists
Nov 3, 2017 | Death Rattle Sports
By Caroline Morrison
President Trump’s decision to nominate Jim Bridenstine as NASA administrator has some environmental and public health groups on edge, and not just because of the Oklahoma congressman’s public skepticism about climate change.
The Tulsa lawmaker serving his third term has co-sponsored legislation that would force the Environmental Protection Agency to divulge all scientific and technical data the agency is using to craft regulations.
Advocates say that legislation would block efforts to reduce pollution because some of the raw data required to justify new regulations would reveal private health information about individuals and therefore could not be released to the general public.
Without the proper data, implementing new regulations – such as to reduce smog — would be stymied.
Further, they think his sponsorship of the legislation demonstrates an anti-scientific orientation, which is especially problematic because Bridenstine may soon be in charge of an agency whose mission includes collecting and analyzing scientific data important to developing future environmental regulations and health standards.
Those advocates are likely to press allies in the Senate to bring up Bridenstine’s backing of the legislation when he appears before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee for his confirmation hearing. No date for that hearing has been set.
“It’s clear that he’s not fit to serve as NASA administrator,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, a lobbyist for the League of Conservation Voters, citing his past comments on climate change and his backing of the secret science legislation. “It’s critical that the EPA use the best available science in setting critically important public health standards.”
The Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017 (or HONEST) Act , patterned after the Secret Science Reform Act he co-sponsored two years ago, is billed by supporters as a good-government effort to make the research behind federal environmental regulations transparent and defensible. Under the Obama administration, over-reaching and burdensome rules were passed with little scientific justification that could not be properly scrutinized, they said.
“My children are in elementary school. They are required to show their work. If they don’t show their work, their integrity could be questioned, which would be appropriate, by the way,” Bridenstine said on the House floor in 2015 during debate on the Secret Science measure. “Is it too much to ask for the EPA to follow the same guidelines I give my children in elementary school? Show your work.”
The HONEST Act, like its predecessor in 2015, passed the House along largely party lines but is languishing in the Senate.
Bridenstine’s spokeswoman said he won’t be providing any interviews or comments to the media during the confirmation process, standard practice for nominees to executive branch positions waiting to be confirmed.
A member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, Bridenstine has no formal science background. A former Navy flier, his last job before being elected to represent Oklahoma’s 1st District in 2012 was as executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium.
He has received more than $170,000 in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry which is dominant in his home state, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.
That combination has fueled criticism of the three-term congressman as someone who might not hew to standard scientific protocol.
Kelvin K. Droegemeier, vice president for research at Oklahoma University’s School of Meteorology, said he believes the Oklahoma lawmaker has the temperament and intelligence to be an effective NASA administrator.
He got to know Bridenstine over his legislation to improve weather forecasting. At first the Oklahoma lawmaker seemed resistant to new approaches, but his thinking evolved as he learned more from experts and researchers, said Droegemeier who spent 12 years on the National Science Board and is now Oklahoma’s secretary of Science and Technology.
“In a very fundamental way, I think he really does truly want to see science rule the day in terms of being used to formulate policy,” he said. “He knows what he doesn’t know and he’s not unwilling to let other people educate him.”
Despite a floor speech in 2013 where Bridenstine seemed to challenge global warming and the conclusion by the scientific community that humans were mainly to blame, Droegemeier said that’s a misconception.
“He believes that (carbon) is increasing. He believes the planet’s warming. He believes (carbon) is a greenhouse gas. (And) he understands that you really need to have observations of the whole earth system,” the Oklahoma scientist said. “He’s not what people think he is … I think he really wants science to be used but I think he’s also very much about ‘let’s not do it behind closed doors. If there are decisions, let’s put it out there’.”
Opponents of the legislation argue the EPA already discloses which peer studies it relies on to support its regulatory actions. But the agency doesn’t make the raw data from these studies publicly available — and cannot compel its release — because much of that information, such as health data of individuals who are part of the study, is confidential and legally protected, they contend.
The law would discourage the EPA from even proposing regulations because agency officials know releasing the information behind it would violate the law, opponents argue.
For instance, the EPA could not use epidemiological studies critical for linking exposure to toxics with certain types of diseases in the creation of standards that ensure safe drinking water and healthy air, Sarah Lamdan, an environmental expert at the City University of New York School of Law, wrote to Congress earlier this year.
“The data access requirements would obstruct public protections critical to human safety and health,” Lamdan wrote. “Any studies that utilize confidential medical records — including many human health studies — would be nearly impossible for the EPA to use because personally identifiable medical data cannot be released to the general public.”
The bill has the backing of industry groups who say it would restore the consistency and transparency in rule-making that was lacking during the Obama administration.
“It is critical that the regulated community and the public have confidence that decisions reached by EPA are grounded in transparent and reproducible science, while ensuring the protection of confidential business information and competitive intelligence,” American Chemistry Council President and Chief Executive Officer Cal Dooley wrote in March to the chief sponsor, Texas Republican Lamar Smith.
“The days of trust-me science are over,” Smith, who chairs the House Science, Space and Technology committee, said during floor debate on the bill in March. “If the EPA’s mandates really are based on sound science, then the American people should be allowed to see the data. The EPA’s past refusal to cooperate, leads to the question: What have they been hiding?”
http://deathrattlesports.com/nasa-nominees-support-of-secret-science-bill-alarms-environmentalists/142881
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Nov 2, 2017 | AlterNet
By Elliott Negin
On Halloween, Environmental Protection Agency 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 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, 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, 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 testifiedon 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 then 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 by banning scientists who have received EPA grants from serving on the SAB or any other agency advisory panel. Why? In Pruitt’s estimation, they have a conflict of interest. He followed through by kicking at least a half-dozen EPA-funded scientists off the SAB before their terms were over.
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.”
Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. His articles have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review
https://www.alternet.org/environment/scott-pruitt-has-more-doubled-number-polluter-friendly-members-epas-science-advisory
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Trump EPA's Deregulatory Agenda May Have Staying Power Amidst Chaos
Nov 2, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Jeremy Bernstein
Faced with a divisive and chaotic political environment in Washington, President Donald Trump's efforts to roll back EPA and other agencies' rules may be one of the few priority agenda items his administration is successfully advancing, though agency officials still face a long and litigious road before any major rules are repealed or revised.
With administration and Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act dead, for now, and a just-announced House GOP bill to cut taxes facing a steep climb in Congress, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is acknowledging that recently filed charges against former top Trump campaign aides are undercutting the president's agenda.
“It is very distracting to the president, as it would be to any citizen, to be investigated for something, while at the same time trying to carry the weight of what being president of the United States means on his shoulder,” Kelly told Fox News Oct. 31, referring to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
But Trump might not be distracted from his deregulatory agenda. He told the New York Times Nov. 1 that he was not bothered by charges against his former campaign aides and remains focused on “deregulation and low unemployment rates.”
The president's focus on deregulation provides a host of political and economic benefits for an administration that has struggled to demonstrate progress on its own terms.
Unlike tax reform and other issues that require congressional action, rolling back rules requires little from Congress, though the current GOP-led legislature takes action when it can.
For example, Trump Nov. 1 signed a congressionally approved resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act -- the 15th such measure since he took office -- rolling back a rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that had eased plaintiffs' abilities to bring class action suits against financial services firms.
In addition, deregulatory actions have long united a Republican base that is frequently divided between the business community and more populist elements.
Despite some of the president's more divisive policy priorities, such as his trade agenda, deregulation is “more-standard Republican canon,” says Dan Goldbeck, a research analyst at American Action Forum, a free-market group.
Trump and many others in his administration frequently tout their initial regulatory overhauls as one driver for the current economic strength, including consecutive quarters of 3 percent GDP growth and increased business confidence.
“Over the last nine months, we have removed job-killing regulations at a record pace,” the president told a Heritage Foundation event Oct. 17. Pledging that there is “much more to come,” Trump said that he believes in regulation, “but it has to be limited to what we need. We want clean water. We want clean air. It has to be fair.”
But he said that his administration's deregulatory efforts are partly responsible for the booming economy and low unemployment. “Our regulatory reductions are going to put more Americans back to work and more lobbyists out of work. . . . Which is why regulatory reform is a crucial part of our drive to drain the swamp,” the president added.
Implemented And Reinforced
Goldbeck and others say that despite distractions, such as former FBI Director Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's campaign ties to Russia, the deregulatory agenda has been launched and is being reinforced and implemented -- in part by the series of executive orders Trump issued early in his administration.
Those include measures to speed infrastructure approvals at the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and elsewhere, requiring agencies to repeal two rules for every new one, prohibit new regulatory costs, and require EPA and other agencies to develop lengthy lists of rules to limit burdens on the energy sector and others.
While EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has not yet formally repealed any rule, he has delayed dozens and has begun the process of repealing or rewriting many, including high-profile measures such as the Clean Power Plan (CPP) and the Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule.
Some, like the CPP and the CWA rule repeals, still face significant litigation from states, environmentalists and others who support the Obama administration's regulations.
But supporters of the deregulatory agenda are pleased with the current progress.
“The big rules that have been separately teed up” such as the CPP and the CWA rule, “are on their own tracks, infrastructure directives are moving forward” with action at CEQ, the Interior Department, the Army Corps of Engineers, and elsewhere, “there's a group of energy-related actions that are moving forward, and [the Office of Management & Budget] is riding herd on the regulatory agenda, with requirements the agencies are supposed to meet for 2-for-1 and negative cost impact obligations,” says Jane Luxton, a former Bush administration official who is now a lawyer at Clark Hill.
“All in all, a significant amount of dereg is occurring, and these actions do seem to be factors in the economic growth and business optimism,” she adds, though she cautions that the administration may not be able to address lower-priority rules that some view as burdensome because of a lack of bandwidth.
While much of the deregulatory agenda may be focused on rolling back existing rules at EPA and elsewhere, both Luxton and Goldbeck note that, with the exception of rules that are court-ordered or congressionally mandated, few, if any, new rules have advanced.
At EPA, for example, the agency has issued final framework rules governing existing chemicals, as required by the revised Toxic Substances Control Act, as well as a handful of air toxics rules. Nearly all other regulatory actions at the agency have been aimed at delaying, repealing or revising current rules.
Goldbeck says that while some deregulatory actions will take time, limits on new rules is further enhancing industry confidence.
“They are trying to make cuts [to existing regulatory burdens], but they are also not increasing new burdens,” he says. “This is helping businesses feel more comfortable.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/trump-epas-deregulatory-agenda-may-have-staying-power-amidst-chaos
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Major Climate Science Reports Coming Friday
Nov 3, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Emily Holden
The Trump administration will release three major scientific reports on Friday acknowledging manmade climate change, according to a source familiar with the studies.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program will publish two volumes of the National Climate Assessment, which is required by law to be issued every four years and expected in late 2018. The first volume is a final version of the Climate Science Special Report. The second is a draft for public comment that focuses on impacts of climate change on humans and the environment.
USGCRP also will post a draft of the State of the Carbon Cycle Report, a supporting document.
An early version of the science report, published by the New York Times in August, found that human activity is the driving force behind increasing temperatures that are already intensifying extreme weather and causing sea-level rise.
The reports will contradict President Donald Trump and cabinet officials like EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who have expressed doubts about mainstream climate science. Some green advocates had worried the administration might suppress the research.
The source told POLITICO that the reports, which include the work of multiple agencies and are reviewed by outside scientists, are expected to stick to the science, avoiding discussions of politics or mitigation policies.
USGCRP was not available to comment.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Carbon Tax Gains Steam as New York Marks Sandy Anniversary
Nov 3, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
Carbon tax backers hope the recent hurricanes and fifth anniversary of Sandy are the perfect storm to force New York to put a price on carbon dioxide.
But enacting the first ever state carbon tax may rest on Democrats in 2018 wresting control of New York's Senate, where Majority Leader John J. Flanagan (R) generally opposes any bid to raise taxes. Still, advocates are using Hurricane Sandy's fifth anniversary as a rallying point to push the state, which already caps carbon dioxide from power plants and is considering a similar tack for cars, to do even more.
“Using our state tax code to incentivize carbon reduction is a logical next step, one that will serve as an example for other states to follow,” Assemblyman Kevin A. Cahill (D), the chief sponsor of the $35 per-ton carbon tax, told Bloomberg Environment in an email.
The state's grid operator and power regulators could take their own steps to price carbon dioxide into the wholesale price of electricity regardless of what the state legislature does.
Unknown yet is whether Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who has been outspoken in support of state–level actions to address climate change, will back the efforts. The Department of Environmental Conservation told Bloomberg Environment in an email that Cuomo would consider the carbon tax proposal “and any others for additional actions the state can take to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
“While the federal government abdicates its leadership on the environment, New York knows climate change is a serious threat not only to our environment, but to the security and economy of its citizens,” the department said.
Taxing Political Battle Looms
The biggest political challenges facing the carbon tax bill are opposition from the fossil fuel industry and Republicans who narrowly control the state Senate. Carbon tax bills have failed to make it out of committee for the past three years.
“We support cutting taxes, not raising them,” Scott Reif, a spokesman for Flanagan, told Bloomberg Environment in an email.
Yet, the narrow operating majority held by Republicans could be wiped out in 2018, giving the bill added momentum toward passage.
“Unlike the Assembly, the state Senate has not been especially receptive to strong environmental legislation,” Michael B. Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told Bloomberg Environment in an email. “We'll see if future elections change that.”
The American Petroleum Institute and the Petroleum Marketers Association of America oppose the tax. Karen Moreau, executive director of API New York, said a state-level carbon tax would create “a piecemeal” approach. The New York bill would create “redundant and possibly burdensome requirements,” she told Bloomberg Environment in an email.
Michael S. Clendenin, a spokesman for Consolidated Edison Inc., said the company hasn't taken a position on the carbon tax bill, but is concerned about its potential impact on reliability and costs to customers.
Carbon Tax Carries Risks
Climate advocates are also concerned about how a carbon tax would interact with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a nine-state carbon dioxide emissions trading program for power plants in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.
William M. Shobe, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at the University of Virginia and an original architect of the regional cap-and-trade program, told Bloomberg Environment that a carbon tax could potentially do “substantial violence” to the RGGI market by putting downward pressure on allowance prices.
Rather than pay the tax, power companies in New York could also choose to import electricity from another state without the same regulatory regime, Gerrard and Shobe said.
Pricing Carbon on the Grid
Even if the carbon tax bill stalls in the legislature yet again, a carbon price could come to New York's power grid as one more tool to hit the state's goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 and by 80 percent by 2050.
The New York Independent System Operator, the state's grid operator, and the state Public Service Commission are considering their own options to price carbon dioxide in the wholesale power market. An August study commissioned by the two groups concluded that adding a carbon charge to the price of wholesale electricity would be an economically efficient way to align the state's carbon reduction goals with the wholesale market.
The plan is in the early stages, but presumably wouldn't need legislative approval if its implemented by the Public Service Commission.
“A carbon price would harmonize wholesale electricity markets with New York's environmental goals by internalizing the cost of carbon emissions,” Sam Newell, a co-author of the study, said in a statement at the time the report was released.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123279723&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123279723&jd=123279723
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Making the Case for Carbon Pricing in New York
Nov 3, 2017 | Platts
By Charles Noh
New York’s State Energy Plan, self-proclaimed to include some of the nation’s most ambitious 2030 clean energy targets, has perhaps by necessity intensified the discussion of carbon prices in the wholesale power markets, possibly redefining their traditional role.
The Brattle Group on August 11 released a study on behalf of the New York Independent System Operator to evaluate how pricing carbon emissions could complement existing state climate goals.
The report analyzed the impacts of a $40/ton carbon charge in 2025, less than the expected $17/ton Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative price, which is consistent with the “social cost of carbon” already adopted by the New York Public Service Commission in its Clean Energy Standard Order.
In this blog, we go deeper into the details of the Brattle report, with additional insight from its lead author, Sam Newell.
In an event organized by NYISO and the New York State Department of Public Service in Albany, New York, in September, Newell discussed the report with stakeholders and market participants.
In discussing the approaches to implementing a carbon price, Newell said, “We’ve been talking about this stuff for years; this is not new. What is new is the idea to actually do it.”
True, New York is already participating in RGGI, but Newell said that RGGI prices are not reflective of the social cost of carbon.
“RGGI to me doesn’t feel designed as sort of the driver of decarbonization; it more is tracking the many states’ agreed upon goals. … It’s not going to give you the same price that we’re talking about in this context, corresponding to the social cost of carbon,” Newell said.
The proposed $40/ton carbon charge would, on average, increase wholesale energy prices paid by customers by $18.8/MWh (ranging from $16.70 to $20.10/MWh across zones), according to the report. These charges would be collected from fossil generation and imports.
So is the carbon charge, as proposed, the same as a carbon tax?
“The idea of a carbon charge is somewhat similar to that, but the idea is that it is fairly simple and it does not involve any tax authority,” Newell said.
More importantly, NYISO would return to customers all carbon charges to help offset adding a carbon price to the market. The form that will take, however, still remains an open discussion.
With a carbon price in place, Newell addressed the four ways a carbon charge could reduce emissions. Newell said during the meeting that this is the most uncertain part of the analysis as there are a number of assumptions.
“What we tried to do is give reasonable assumptions to give an indicator of what plausibly might the effects be,” Newell said.
The first impact of a carbon charge is the tilting of investments in renewables, specifically 2,000 MW of new wind and solar projects, resulting in an annual carbon reduction of 1 million tons.
Second, peaker plants and old steam units would be displaced by the lowest-emitting technologies, reducing carbon emissions by 500,000 tons/ year, assuming 700 MW of combined-cycle generators enter the market.
Third, price signals would incentivize load shifts from the most emitting hours of the day to the least emitting hours. This is the smallest contributor to carbon reductions.
Lastly, carbon prices would incentivize energy efficiency and conservation, reducing emissions by more than 1 million tons annually. The largest customers would see higher costs. Overall costs would not rise substantially, however, given the carbon refund. However, the higher nominal price or an alternative carbon refund could induce more efficiency and conservation.
There are more moving pieces to this study, but we have focused on the core price assumptions and the key drivers in carbon reduction here.
The bottom line is that this is a highly complex issue that would add a substantially higher carbon tax than RGGI. It also remains to be seen in what form the carbon tax revenue will be returned to consumers.Share
http://blogs.platts.com/2017/11/03/carbon-pricing-new-york/
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