Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 26/12/17
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(ACC Mentioned) Under Scott Pruitt, a Year of Tumult and Transformation at EPA
Dec 26, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin
Since 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency has been embroiled in an enforcement battle with a Michigan-based company accused of modifying the state’s largest coal-fired power plant without getting federal permits for a projected rise in pollution. -
(ACC Mentioned) Oil Giants Invest $180B in Plastics, Propelling Oceans Toward 'Near-Permanent' Pollution
Dec 26, 2017 | Common Dreams
By Julia Conley
Scientists and environmental protection advocates are warning that a coming plastics boom could lead to a permanent state of pollution on the planet—and denouncing the fossil fuel industry for driving an increase in plastics production amid all that's known about the material polluting the world's oceans. -
Trump to Roll Back Offshore Drilling Safety Regulations: Report
Dec 26, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Avery Anapol
The Trump administration is reportedly moving to roll back a series of safety regulations related to offshore drilling. -
FERC, Which Rejected 2 Gas Pipelines Out of 400 Since 1999, to Review Approval Policy
Dec 26, 2017 | DeSmogBlog (In EcoWatch)
By Steve Horn
The new chairman for the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Kevin McIntyre, says the agency plans to review its permitting process and procedures for natural gas pipelines. -
EPA's Anti-Pollution Weapon in the Crosshairs
Dec 26, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillen
After nearly five decades, the EPA has dramatically cut down on the worst pollutants fouling American skies by wielding a powerful weapon — one that its critics in industry say has outlived its usefulness. -
Environmentalists File Suit Over States' Missing PM2.5 SIPs
Dec 26, 2017 | Inside EPA
Three environmental groups are suing EPA over the agency's failure to issue findings that areas in California, Idaho and Pennsylvania did not submit to EPA Clean Air Act-mandated state implementation plans (SIPs) detailing how they intend to meet the fine particulate matter national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS).
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(ACC Mentioned) Under Scott Pruitt, a Year of Tumult and Transformation at EPA
Dec 26, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin
Since 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency has been embroiled in an enforcement battle with a Michigan-based company accused of modifying the state’s largest coal-fired power plant without getting federal permits for a projected rise in pollution.
On Dec. 7, as the Supreme Court was considering whether to hear the case, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt issued a memo that single-handedly reversed the agency’s position. No longer would the EPA be “second-guessing” DTE Energy’s emission projections. Rather, it would accept the firm’s “intent” to manage its pollution without requiring an enforceable agreement — part of President Trump’s broader push to reduce the “burden” on companies, he wrote.
The little-noticed episode offers a glimpse into how Pruitt has spent his first year running the EPA. In legal maneuvers and executive actions, in public speeches and closed-door meetings with industry groups, he has moved to shrink the agency’s reach, alter its focus and pause or reverse numerous environmental rules. The effect has been to steer the EPA in the direction sought by those being regulated.
Along the way, Pruitt has begun to dismantle former president Barack Obama’s environmental legacy, halting the agency’s efforts to combat climate change and shift the nation away from its reliance on fossil fuels.
Such aggressiveness on issues from coal waste to vehicle emissions has made Pruitt one of President Trump’s most high-profile and consequential Cabinet members. It also has made him one of the most controversial.
Critics describe his short tenure as an assault on the agency’s mission, its science and its employees.EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in June. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
“We’ve spent 40 years putting together an apparatus to protect public health and the environment from a lot of different pollutants,” said William Ruckleshaus, the EPA’s first administrator, who led the agency under both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. “He’s pulling that whole apparatus down.”
Yet, allies praise Pruitt for returning more power to individual states while scaling back what they see as the previous administration’s regulatory excesses.
“It is a stark change, the way they solicit input from the industry that they’re seeking to regulate,” said Karen Harbert, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute, who welcomes the shift.
In an interview, Pruitt said a priority during his first 10 months in office has been listening to “stakeholders that actually live under the regulations that we adopt . . . I don’t understand how that’s not what I should be doing.”
Already, some people are speculating about what his future holds.
As Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt was widely viewed as a potential gubernatorial candidate there. Since he joined the Trump administration, rumors have swirled about whether he might pursue a Senate seat. He regularly heads to the White House mess for lunch, which provides more opportunities to run into key presidential aides. Privately, he has mused about whether he could occupy other Cabinet spots, according to individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.
The man who spent years railing against the long reach of the federal government now seems determined to make his mark in Washington.
Pruitt, 49, stands on the opposite end of the political spectrum from his immediate predecessor, Gina McCarthy, but the two share something in common: a willingness to use the agency’s broad executive authority to act unilaterally.
“Vested in the administrator is this incredible power and this incredible regulatory reach,” said Ken Cook, president of the advocacy organization Environmental Working Group (EWG). “When there’s someone on the inside willing to unlock the door and let these special interests in, they can do tremendous damage to the environmental rule of law.”
From the moment he arrived at the agency in February, Pruitt began using his levers of power to halt existing regulations and shift the bureaucracy.
“The administrator has been effective and very decisive on a number of issues [where] he can do things with the stroke of a pen,” said Jeffrey Holmstead, a former top EPA official under George W. Bush and now a partner at the law and lobbying firm Bracewell. “He came in with a list of targets he needed to deal with, and he’s been very decisive on saying, ‘Here’s what we need to do.’ ”
Within days of taking office, Pruitt canceled EPA’s request that nearly 20,000 oil and gas companies gauge their emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The following month, he withdrew a proposed ban on a commonly used pesticide, chlorpyrifos, that the EPA’s own scientists had argued posed risks to human health.
Last month, the EPA issued a guidance document outlining how it would implement a bipartisan 2016 law that for the first time requires the agency to rule on a new chemical’s potential risks before allowing it on the market. Instead of including “reasonably foreseeable uses,” the document states, the agency will now consider only the “intended” conditions of use submitted by the manufacturer — a significant and contentious change.
Three of the bill’s Democratic authors say the interpretation defies the law’s intent. But it is precisely the approach pushed by the American Chemistry Council.The EPA chief traveled to Sycamore, Pa., in April to talk with coal miners at the Harvey Mine. The site, owned by CNX Coal Resources, is part of the largest U.S. underground mining complex. (Justin Merriman/Getty Images)President Trump tours the American Center of Mobility in Ypsilanti Township, Mich., in March. Pruitt, far left, was the only Cabinet member on the visit. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Despite his scant experience running environmental programs, Pruitt sued the Obama EPA 14 times as Oklahoma attorney general and challenged the agency’s authority to regulate toxic mercury pollution, smog, carbon emissions from power plants and the quality of wetlands and other waters.
“All that suing he did for years steeped him in the knowledge of the agency and how it works,” Ruckleshaus noted.
That doesn’t mean Pruitt has prevailed on all fronts this year. In July, a federal appeals court vacated EPA’s attempt to delay a rule limiting methane and other pollutants from oil and gas operations. The next month, after Democratic attorneys general and public health groups went to court, the agency reversed its decision to delay implementating an Obama-era rule requiring more stringent air quality standards.
David Rivkin, a partner at Baker Hostetler and one of the administrator’s informal advisers, said Pruitt remains acutely aware of the gauntlet he faces. “I cannot think of any administrator who paid so much attention to creating rules that are legally defensible,” Rivkin said.
Pruitt says he has set about “revitalizing” the agency and focusing on areas, such as the Superfund cleanup program, that were “dormant” in past administrations. He seems confident that he will succeed in reshaping the EPA as he and Trump envision, despite environmental advocates vowing to battle him at every turn.
“I’m pretty sanguine about our ability to defend our actions here at the agency, so long as we do things timely and within the text of the statute,” he said. “The problem the agency had historically is when [officials] have not done things in the time frame they were supposed to do something. That’s invited lawsuits that then allow others to set the priorities.”
A giant puppet depicting Pruitt is carried by demonstrators during the People’s Climate March in Washington in April. (Mike Theiler/Reuters)From his wood-paneled office complex on the third floor of EPA’s headquarters, Pruitt operates in a cocoon of sorts.
He is accompanied 24/7 by a security detail — a setup that has tripled past staffing requirements. He has installed biometric locks on his office doors, as well as a $25,000 soundproof booth from which he can make secure calls to the White House. And he has shied away from using email at the EPA, which would be subject to open records laws, preferring instead to communicate by phone or in face-to-face meetings.
While he has met with scores of industry executives, trade groups, farmers and ranchers, spoken to conservative political organizations and shuttled back and forth to the White House, Pruitt’s calendars show limited contact with the EPA’s own career staff. He has visited 30 states, by his count, but has yet to visit any of EPA’s 10 regional offices.
The EPA routinely refuses to release details about where Pruitt will be any given day, citing security concerns. So as he travels the country and sometimes the world, his appearances often come as a surprise to the media and the public.
Despite Pruitt’s claims that his door is open, advocacy groups such as the Sierra Club and EWG haven’t bothered to request meetings. But when Earthjustice asked to attend a May session with state officials about how EPA planned to give them more authority over storing toxic coal ash, the agency refused. It also denied access to a 247-page guidance document it was drafting.
Other organizations have come up against similar walls. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from a public watchdog group, government lawyers said Pruitt’s Superfund Task Force took no minutes of its meetings. On one of the administrator’s top priorities, the task force apparently produced just one document — a list of final recommendations.
The paradigm shift at EPA has been dominated so far by a handful of political aides and trusted advisers, led by the agency’s chief of staff Ryan Jackson, who didn’t require confirmation. The Senate only recently confirmed several of the agency’s top deputies.
“It doesn’t take a big staff to delay things and provide almost no reasoning,” said Georgetown University law professor Lisa Heinzerling, who served as EPA’s associate administrator for the Office of Policy between July 2009 and December 2010. But she cautioned that Pruitt eventually will have to provide more detailed legal justifications for his own regulatory proposals. “That’s where it’s going to get trickier.”
Legal fights aside, Pruitt is making a more fundamental push to alter the agency’s composition and mind-set. Too often in recent years, he said, the agency has come at issues in terms of “prohibition” — “It was to put up fences. It was to keep fossil fuels in the ground, as an example.” By contrast, he sees his role as allowing the country to responsibly tap its natural resources.
“He understands the culture of the agency as part of the problem,” said former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, who joined Pruitt in suing the Obama administration. Some EPA staff “believe they have been anointed by God” to pursue a specific agenda, he said.
To that end, Pruitt has moved aggressively to shrink the agency. More than 700 people have left, several hundred through buyouts this summer. With them have gone decades of scientific expertise. T he EPA now has about 14,400 staff — fewer than at any time since the final year of the Reagan administration. The exodus has dampened morale, numerous current and former career staffers say.
At the same time, Pruitt has overhauled the EPA’s scientific advisory boards, getting rid of numerous academic researchers in favor of experts from regulated industries and conservative states.
EPA’s leader argues that he is trying to make it more efficient, to create “almost a franchise model” where regional offices around the country would act with more uniformity. He recruited a former top Arizona environmental official to create metrics for the agency’s performance.
What Pruitt describes as efficiency, his critics see as undermining the EPA’s ability to fulfill its mission. But friends and foes alike agree that he has been straightforward about his intentions.
Environmental group Trout Unlimited’s president, Chris Wood, met with the administrator early on. The two spoke cordially about cleaning up abandoned mines, but the reception “was a lot chillier” when Wood suggested maintaining Obama-era policies to protect seasonal streams and block a proposed gold mine near Alaska’s Bristol Bay.
“It was an incredibly honest meeting,” Wood recalled. “He didn’t pretend he was going to be Theodore Roosevelt.”
Both at home and abroad, Pruitt is proving to be anything but a typical EPA head.
While he successfully lobbied Trump to exit the 2015 Paris climate accord, leaving the United States as the only nation in the world to reject it, Pruitt has shown an interest in raising his profile beyond U.S. borders.
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In June, he took seven political aides to Rome before attending a summit of G-7 environment ministers in Bologna, Italy. Their first stop featured not just a meet-and-greet with business executives but two days of papal visits, including a private tour of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica.
This month, he and an entourage of aides traveled to Morocco at a price tag of roughly $40,000. Pruitt met with the country’s foreign minister, talked about solid waste and toured a solar energy installation. But he also spent time touting the advantages of U.S. natural gas exports.
It was an extraordinary occurrence: the leader of the EPA, in a foreign land, serving as one of the most outspoken salesmen for the nation’s fossil fuel industry.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/under-scott-pruitt-a-year-of-tumult-and-transformation-at-epa/2017/12/26/f93d1262-e017-11e7-8679-a9728984779c_story.html?utm_term=.6a5e8630e96d
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Dec 26, 2017 | Common Dreams
By Julia Conley
Scientists and environmental protection advocates are warning that a coming plastics boom could lead to a permanent state of pollution on the planet—and denouncing the fossil fuel industry for driving an increase in plastics production amid all that's known about the material polluting the world's oceans.
"We could be locking in decades of expanded plastics production at precisely the time the world is realizing we should use far less of it," Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law (CEIL), told the Guardian. The CEIL has compiled several reports about the plastics industry since September.
The American Chemistry Council, a trade organization, has acknowledged that fossil fuel companies including Exxon and Shell Chemical have poured more than $180 billion into the creation of plastics facilities that are expected to create a 40 percent rise in production of the material over the next decade.
The rise in shale gas exploration in recent years has caused the price of natural gas liquids, used to make plastic, to drop significantly, causing companies to begin more than 300 plastics production projects since 2010.
"Around 99 percent of the feedstock for plastics is fossil fuels, so we are looking at the same companies...that have helped create the climate crisis," said Muffett. "There is a deep and pervasive relationship between oil and gas companies and plastics."
The report follows the CEIL's recent study, released earlier this month, which showed that the plastics industry has known its products were polluting the world's oceans since the 1970s and has spent decades fighting regulations that aim to keep the crisis from getting worse.
"We are already producing more disposable plastic than we can deal with, more in the last decade than in the entire twentieth century, and millions of tons of it are ending up in our oceans," Louise Edge, senior oceans campaigner for Greenpeace UK, told the Guardian.
Another study by researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara, published earlier this year, warned that excessive plastic production could lead to "near-permanent contamination" of the earth since the material is not biodegradable.
The CEIL warns that the rise in plastics will prove that research correct in the coming decades.
"All this buildout, if allowed to proceed, will flood the global market with even more disposable, unmanageable plastic for decades to come," predicted Steven Feit, an attorney with CEIL.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/26/oil-giants-invest-180b-plastics-propelling-oceans-toward-near-permanent-pollution
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Trump to Roll Back Offshore Drilling Safety Regulations: Report
Dec 26, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Avery Anapol
The Trump administration is reportedly moving to roll back a series of safety regulations related to offshore drilling.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) earlier this month submitted a proposal to the White House budget office seeking to revise safety measures, estimating that it would save more than $900 million over the next decade, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The proposal would largely affect safety regulations that were put in place by the Obama administration after the 2010 Deep Horizon disaster, the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
Industry officials argue the safety rules are too broad, and the Trump administration appears to agree.
The BSEE has pitched rolling back a requirement that government regulators review real-time production data from oil companies, as well as a requirement that they approve critical drilling equipment from third-party vendors, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The agency said such regulations “would increase procedural burdens and costs without giving rise to meaningful improvements to safety or environmental protection.”
Despite pressure from industry groups, the BSEE will not propose changes to a “well control rule,” a pressure standard drillers must maintain to prevent a well blowout. However, the proposal notes that the word “safe” would be stricken from that particular rule in an effort to stop regulators from exceeding their “authority in interpreting the term in a way to withhold certain drilling permits,” the newspaper reports.
President Trump has committed to rolling back regulations across industries, including oil and gas drilling. A provision in the recently-signed GOP tax plan allows for offshore drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Trump’s Interior Department has also stopped funding for a study aimed at improving offshore drilling safety regulations.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/366480-trump-to-roll-back-offshore-drilling-safety-regulations-report
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FERC, Which Rejected 2 Gas Pipelines Out of 400 Since 1999, to Review Approval Policy
Dec 26, 2017 | DeSmogBlog (In EcoWatch)
By Steve Horn
The new chairman for the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Kevin McIntyre, says the agency plans to review its permitting process and procedures for natural gas pipelines.
FERC has come under fire for serving as a "rubber stamp" for these pipelines, which these days mostly carry gas obtained via the horizontal drilling and injection technique known as hydraulic fracturing or "fracking." The agency has rejected only two out of the approximately 400 pipeline applications received since 1999, when it last updated its gas pipeline review process. That's according to a report published in November by Susan Tierney, currently employed by economic consulting firm Analysis Group and former member of the Obama-era Department of Energy's Natural Gas Subcommittee.
"1999 was quite a while ago, particularly in the natural gas pipeline area. So much has changed. So much has changed in our entire industry, of course, since then," McIntyre told reporters at a Dec. 21 FERC meeting, according to The Hill. "But it would be hard to find an area that has changed more than natural gas and our pipeline industry."
Indeed, beginning in the 2000s and booming after the Energy Policy Act of 2005, fracking has opened up massive industry demand for interstate pipelines.
And before those lines are built, they must receive a permit from FERC. Gas pipelines crossing international borders, too, by law require a FERC permit and have become increasingly common along the U.S.-Mexico border in the aftermath of the passage of constitutional energy sector privatization reform in December 2013.
Tierney's report, commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), emphasizes the role fracking has played in the spike of FERC pipeline approvals.
"From 2007 through 2016 alone, FERC approved 234 gas pipeline projects, more than half the number approved since the Policy Statement was issued in 1999," reads the report. "These projects amounted to 121 [billion cubic feet per day] in total incremental capacity approvals, with 10,250 miles of pipe estimated to cost approximately $51.2 billion."
In particular, the report zeroes in on the role of Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale basin, which saw a total of nine interstate pipelines approved in 2016 alone. According to U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data from 2015, the Marcellus and its neighboring Utica Shale basin in Ohio are responsible for 85 percent of U.S. shale gas production since 2012.
The Analysis Group report is in agreement with McIntyre, who formerly served as an industry lawyer representing pipeline companies. The firm posited that, due to deep industry changes since the agency last issued a permitting statement in 1999, it is time to look at the policy with a fresh set of eyes and a new perspective.
"The motivation for FERC to review its pipeline certification guidance and policy is similar to what it was in 1999," wrote the Analysis Group. "At that time, FERC was considering evidence and insights about changes then underway in the gas industry that, in the Commission's view, warranted evolution of FERC's policies on certification and the pricing of new construction projects."
McIntyre argues that it is a matter of "good governance" to listen to concerns among stakeholders and incorporate those into a new set of policies for pipeline permitting going forward.
"It's a matter, we believe, of good governance, to take a fresh look at this area, and to give all stakeholders and the public an opportunity to weigh in on what they believe should be changed to our existing policies," The Hill quoted McIntyre as saying. "But I guarantee you, whatever it is, it will be open and transparent and thorough, and we will invite the views of all stakeholders to ensure that we are doing everything we can to accurately and efficiently assess the pipeline applications that we receive and the process."
Perhaps the most vocal FERC critic, the group Beyond Extreme Energy, has said that it does not trust the agency and remains skeptical of what it will do in the months ahead on the 1999 policy.
"If FERC were an agency which truly put the public interest first, the announced plan to review their process for approving pipelines would be a welcome development," the group said in a press statement. "But facts don't lie: over the past 30 years FERC has granted permits for all but two proposed interstate gas pipelines. It is a rubber stamp agency, and it has been this through both Democratic and Republican administrations."
The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), a trade association for gas pipeline companies, has said it is open to the review of the 1999 policy, expressing in its press release little trepidation of the implications for the gas pipeline industry.
"The interstate natural gas pipeline industry welcomes the opportunity to provide input when FERC initiates its inquiry into whether the 1999 policy statement can be improved upon," Don Santa, president and CEO of INGAA, said in a press release. "The ability to site and construct this critical infrastructure has enabled the United States to benefit quickly from the natural gas supply unlocked by the shale revolution."
"We believe that it will be demonstrated that the 1999 policy statement has withstood the test of time quite well. The criteria specified in the policy statement continue to provide FERC with what remains a robust framework for evaluating the range of questions that must be addressed in determining whether a proposed pipeline meets the public convenience and necessity."
For their part, Tierney and her Analysis Group have called on FERC to look back at its mandate as expressed in 1999, which read: "In considering the impact of new construction projects on existing pipelines, the Commission's goal is to appropriately consider the enhancement of competitive transportation alternatives, the possibility of overbuilding, the avoidance of unnecessary disruption of the environment, and the unneeded exercise of eminent domain."
https://www.ecowatch.com/ferc-approval-process-2520084281.html
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EPA's Anti-Pollution Weapon in the Crosshairs
Dec 26, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillen
After nearly five decades, the EPA has dramatically cut down on the worst pollutants fouling American skies by wielding a powerful weapon — one that its critics in industry say has outlived its usefulness.
Known as the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, the program created in 1970 under the Clean Air Act played a major role in healing the damage to the U.S. environment, reducing the smog that occluded the skies, soot that choked people’s lungs, and gases that produced acid rain and haze.
Now there are signs that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who is already rescinding the Obama EPA's landmark climate change regulations and Waters of the U.S. rule, may be easing enforcement on new pollution limits under the air quality program. That is bringing praise from industry groups, which complain that the rules nowadays yield only modest health benefits at a high cost to companies.
“It could certainly use some modernization,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. "That low-hanging fruit is now gone. And so you have a fairly heavy-handed statute with very rigid deadlines that may not work as well as it should for modern environmental problems.”
Business groups and conservatives have long chafed under the program, known in policy circles by the acronym NAAQS, arguing that the ever-tighter pollution limits required would cripple the economy. Environmentalists and public health advocates dismiss those complaints as knee-jerk resistance to rules that companies have always managed to meet.
Now the NAAQS critics have a sympathetic EPA chief in Pruitt, who has already sparked lawsuits by failing to even reveal which areas of the country are failing to meet the Obama administration's 2015 ozone standard. Pruitt's delay means areas with poor air quality can continue to avoid actions to come into compliance, at least for now. Democratic states and public health groups have sued EPA to force Pruitt to act, even as the agency reviews that underlying 2015 standard — which Pruitt sued over during his tenure as Oklahoma's attorney general.
For the six specific pollutants that are regulated under NAAQS — including ground-level ozone, particulate matter and carbon monoxide — EPA is required to establish a level safe for human health, with an “adequate margin of safety” to err on the side of caution. And the agency isn't supposed to consider the costs of meeting those safe levels when setting the standards. Once the federal standards are set, states determine their own path to reduce their emissions, which gives them flexibility to target the easiest cuts first.
But under the law, those pollution levels must be reviewed and potentially tightened every five years — lightning speed for Washington's regulatory world. If EPA fails to meet the deadlines as it regularly has under both parties,environmentalists can sue to force it to act, making that five-year review period a top target of NAAQS critics who believe they may be able to convince Congress to ease it,
NAAQS "is unworkable in the five-year period,” said Howard Feldman, senior director of regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute. “That has been proven to be the case in Republican and Democratic administrations.”
Five years does not give states the breathing room they need, critics say, because just as they start work on reducing emissions to meet one standard, EPA could ratchet it down further.
“I often compare it to the movie ‘Groundhog Day,’ where basically every five years, EPA misses the deadline and then is sued, and then has to either litigate that or settle and agree to a rushed process, which can lead to mistakes or missing key details,” said Eisenberg. “And then that process takes a few years, and then that’s litigated, and then by the time they actually get around to implementing that standard, we’re already close to having to do the next one.”
As an example, critics cite the ozone standard, which was updated in 2008 and then again in 2015, even though major portions of the country were still struggling to meet the previous levels.
Both NAM and API have sued EPA over the 2015 ozone standard, arguing it was too strict, while environmentalists' lawsuits called the standard too lenient.
Pruitt has said about 40 percent of Americans live in areas that don't meet ozone pollution standards, a point he often raises when arguing that EPA should focus on cleaning up that air before issuing new regulations.
But Congress included the five-year review requirement for a reason: Agencies rarely act unless forced, according to Thomas Jorling, who as a Republican congressional aide helped write the Clean Air Act of 1970. That tight timeframe was designed to allow citizen lawsuits to prod the agency to move more quickly.
However, Jorling thinks it may be time to extend that five-year deadline.
“I can say yes, now, in retrospect, the timetables were — perhaps especially after the first go-around — a bit too tight,” he said. “But again, the purpose is to compel agencies to act.”
For years Republicans have pushed legislation that would lengthen the review period to 10 years, though they've never been successful.
Environmentalists argue that the five-year review generally takes seven to eight years in reality, and that a 10-year review will really translate to at least 12 to 13 years between revisions.
The American Lung Association said industry complaints about rapid review times amount to crocodile tears.
“They spend time trying to delay the implementation of the NAAQS and then they argue we shouldn’t update the NAAQS because they haven’t implemented the previous NAAQS,” said Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at American Lung Association. “Heads they win, tails we lose.”
Janet McCabe, who as a top air official in the Obama administration worked on several NAAQS reviews, acknowledged that the five-year review is “challenging” for all sides, including EPA. But, she said, it serves an important role in recognizing the ever-changing science underlying these rules.
“That’s one of the things that’s always true about science: You never have the perfect answer,” she said. “But when you’re a regulator or legislator wanting to make sure we have clean, healthy air in this country, you don’t wait for the perfect answer, you work with the information that you have.”
Plus, McCabe argued, even if cities still struggle to meet the older standards, there’s value in telling the public what level EPA considers safe so people can take action on their own, such as keeping asthmatic children from outdoor activities on high-ozone days.
Any push to alter the five-year review period in Congress would face long odds, since any bill targeting it would need to win 60 votes in the Senate, where it would encounter heavy Democratic opposition. And any effort to update the broader Clean Air Act, which has not happened in 27 years, remains pie-in-the-sky thanks to deep partisan divides over regulations for greenhouse gases.
“The actual increment of time, whether it’s five years or seven years or 10 years, I think is less important than the fact that there has to be a mandate to review these, because science does not stand still,” said Jorling.
Having helped create the NAAQS program nearly 50 years ago, Jorling declined to say if or when the program might eventually reach a point when the standards no longer need revision.
“There may be a time when science says the 340 million people in the United States can breathe this level of air and not suffer either premature mortality or morbidity of one sort or another,” said Jorling. “I’d love to be able to say science can produce that knowledge, but it’s some distance off.”
The future could come down to whether scientists can ever be more precise about the granular health effects of different standards of pollution concentrations, which are often measured in parts per billion.
For some pollutants, like lead, scientists generally agree there is no safe level for all humans, although the lead standard was designed to protect vulnerable populations such as children and fetuses. Other more widely emitted pollutants like ozone are more complicated, as the standard approaches levels that occur naturally in certain parts of the U.S..
“I don’t know if it’s possible for science to ever to prove they’ve hit that magic point, because that would imply that everything that is known now is all that could be known about a topic,” said Billings of ALA.
But there could come a time when review after review takes place without one of the more controversial standards being revised.
It’s already happened with some — the carbon monoxide standard has been in place since 1971 and gone unchanged through three reviews, and every part of the U.S. meets that standard.
In the meantime, EPA continues with its regular NAAQS reviews.
The agency is expected to issue rules in the next few years that will maintain the current standards for nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Deadlines to finish those reviews were set under a court order — because EPA missed the five-year deadlines.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2017/12/epas-anti-pollution-weapon-in-the-crosshairs-217761
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Environmentalists File Suit Over States' Missing PM2.5 SIPs
Dec 26, 2017 | Inside EPA
Three environmental groups are suing EPA over the agency's failure to issue findings that areas in California, Idaho and Pennsylvania did not submit to EPA Clean Air Act-mandated state implementation plans (SIPs) detailing how they intend to meet the fine particulate matter national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS).
The suit, filed Dec. 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Environmental Health and Clean Air Council, aims to secure judicial deadlines for the agency to act.
The litigation marks another test for Administrator Scott Pruitt's policy barring the agency from settling such suits without broader consultation with other parties that might be effected, including states and industry groups, even though courts generally do not grant such parties standing to intervene.
The suit says EPA has missed statutory deadlines to issue “findings of failure to submit” plans by the states. Such findings trigger a two-year clock for EPA to issue federal implementation plans if the states cannot come forward with their own.
Under the Clean Air Act, states must submit SIPs showing how areas classified in “nonattainment” with NAAQS will attain the standards.
The environmental groups say that the three states missed an Oct. 15, 2016, deadline to supply SIPs for their areas designated nonattainment for the 2012 PM2.5 NAAQS, set at 12 micrograms per cubic meter. EPA has six months after the states miss such a deadline to issue the necessary findings, but failed to do so, the groups say.
“By failing to enforce common-sense measures to reduce soot, Trump’s EPA is sentencing thousands of Americans to asthma and heart attacks and death,” said Robert Ukeiley, environmental health senior attorney at CBD, in a press release announcing the suit.
Ukeiley also faults EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, saying, “People in these states desperately need cleaner air. But Pruitt doesn’t mind sacrificing human health if it pumps up the profits of his buddies in the fossil fuel industry.”
The areas concerned are: Imperial County, CA; West Silver Valley, ID; Allegheny County, PA; Delaware County, PA; and Lebanon County, PA.
Typically, such deadline suits do not involve disputes over facts, where EPA has clearly missed statutory deadlines. However, current Justice Department policy prohibits EPA from entering into settlements with environmentalists that might result in agreed deadlines for the agency to act, forcing the agency to litigate and the courts to ultimately order deadlines instead.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/environmentalists-file-suit-over-states-missing-pm25-sips
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