Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 08/01/18
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(ACC Mentioned) Trump Picks Another Official with Potential Conflicts of Interest for Powerful Regulatory Role
Jan 8, 2018 | ThinkProgress
By Mark Hand
By choosing a longtime corporate attorney to head the nation’s top energy regulatory agency, President Donald Trump stuck to his practice of nominating officials riddled with potential conflicts of interest to high-ranking roles in the U.S. government. -
US FDA Bans 24 Substances from Healthcare Antiseptic
Jan 8, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a final rule, banning 24 antibacterial active ingredients from use in over-the-counter healthcare antiseptics, including triclosan and several iodine-based compounds. -
Are Toxic Chemicals at Air Force Bases Leading to Cancer, Low Birth Weight?
Jan 8, 2018 | CBS News
For 25 years, Dan Cruz delivered mail at the Peterson Air Force Base and drank the water. -
Week Ahead: House GOP Looks to Revamp Energy Department
Jan 8, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
House lawmakers will return from their holiday vacation and kick off their efforts to reorganize the Department of Energy (DOE). -
Greens Divided on Promised FERC Review
Jan 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sam Mintz
A big policy announcement from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has split environmental groups down the middle. -
Oil and Gas Heavyweight Joins Defense of BLM's Methane Rollback
Jan 8, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The nation's largest oil and gas lobbying group is adding its might to a new legal battle over the Trump administration's decision to sideline an Obama-era rule for methane emissions from oil and gas development on public lands. -
Critics Prepare for War Against Trump Drilling Plan
Jan 8, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, as Newton's third law of motion goes. -
Supreme Court Declines To Hear Two Cases Testing Key Air Act Mandates
Jan 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
The Supreme Court without comment is declining to hear two appeals testing key Clean Air Act mandates, including litigation over when states can rely on preexisting air pollution controls to meet requirements for “contingency measures” to cut emissions, and a suit over when EPA must review the jobs impacts of its air rules. -
Greens Push for Court Order on Ozone Designations
Jan 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
After U.S. EPA penciled in an April 30 deadline for making all remaining compliance decisions for its 2015 ground-level ozone standard, environmental and public health groups want a federal judge to etch it in stone. -
Another Way Greens Might Pick a Climate Fight
Jan 8, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Robin Bravender
Environmentalists are strategizing about how to prod U.S. EPA to crack down on carbon dioxide. -
EWire: EPA Hopes to Finish CPP Replacement This Year
Jan 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
Trump EPA officials are planning to complete a replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) utility greenhouse gas rule this year, according to a news report, a move that could give the Trump administration time to defend the regulation in court. -
Carper Probes EPA Efforts to Ease Enforcement
Jan 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the top Democrat on the Senate environment committee, is asking EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to answer a series of questions about steps the agency has taken to ease enforcement in ways the senator says “may enable regulated industry to violate air and water pollution rules and to avoid accountability for any such violations.”
Industry and Association News
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Environment News
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Jan 8, 2018 | ThinkProgress
By Mark Hand
By choosing a longtime corporate attorney to head the nation’s top energy regulatory agency, President Donald Trump stuck to his practice of nominating officials riddled with potential conflicts of interest to high-ranking roles in the U.S. government.
As a partner with Jones Day, a prominent Washington, D.C. law firm, Kevin McIntyre’s ties to energy companies that fall under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) jurisdiction were so numerous and ran so deep that his swearing-in as chairman of the agency was delayed to give him more time to sever the relationships.
After his first meeting as chairman on December 21, McIntyre explained to reporters that unlike most commissioners, he worked in private practice for almost 30 years representing companies that are regulated by FERC. Unwinding all of the obligations to his clients and business relationships was a slow process. “Each of them took some time and had to be done with care and done properly to my responsibilities,” he said, according to S&P Global News.
Last summer, McIntyre, who joined Jones Day in 1999, submitted his financial disclosure form to the Office of Government Ethics, showing that in the previous two years he had represented a wide variety of energy and utility companies — from electric utility giant American Electric Power Corp. (AEP) to natural gas company Enable Midstream Partners LP — that had cases under consideration by the agency he now heads, DeSmog Blog reported.
Subsidiaries of AEP, for example, have been accused of generating profits that exceed the rates allowed by FERC. Another subsidiary of AEP has filed a complaint with the agency accusing an electric grid operator of unfair treatment. Unless the parties in the disputes reach settlement agreements, the cases would need to be decided by McIntyre and his colleagues on the five-member agency. The agency is composed of three Republicans, including McIntyre, and two Democrats.
It’s already a familiar pattern just one year into the Trump presidency. Trump has filled top positions at other federal agencies with corporate lawyers and lobbyists who are now supposed to regulate the interests on behalf of which they recently lobbied. In July, the Senate voted to confirm industry lobbyist David Bernhardt to the No. 2 position at the Department of the Interior. Bernhardt is a “walking conflict of interest,” said Aaron Weiss, spokesman for the Center for Western Priorities, a nonprofit conservation group.
William Wehrum, an industry lawyer and lobbyist, has represented companies who regularly filed legal challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s clean air regulations. In November, the Senate confirmed Wehrum to head EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt also hired chemical industry representatives to fill top positions at the agency, including Nancy Beck, who came to the agency from the American Chemistry Council, the industry’s leading lobbying group.
McIntyre’s path from Jones Day to FERC marks the first time in almost 30 years that a nominee has gone directly from representing energy companies to leading the agency that regulates those clients. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush nominated Martin Allday, who represented oil and gas companies at the law firm of Lynch, Chappell, Allday and Alsup in Midland, Texas, to head the agency.
Even though he resigned his position at Jones Day, McIntyre still is bound by legal ethics rules as a member of the D.C. Bar. “He has a duty not to reveal or use client confidences or secrets to the disadvantage of the client, or to the advantage of himself or a third person — which would include the agency he is leading — and that duty continues even after the lawyer-client relationship ends,” David Luban, a professor of law at Georgetown University who specializes in professional ethics, told ThinkProgress.
“In other words, he can’t use information he’s learned from or about Jones Day clients either to disadvantage them or to help the agency,” Luban said. “The rules are worded differently in other jurisdictions, but basically the duties are the same for lawyers everywhere.”
As a public official, McIntyre is also bound by federal conflict-of-interest laws and anti-corruption laws, which means he cannot do favors for his former clients or other Jones Day clients, Luban added.
During his legal career, McIntyre has focused on energy compliance and enforcement matters, energy marketing and trading, energy exports, electric reliability standards, and utility mergers and acquisitions, Jones Day said in a news release issued after the Senate confirmed his nomination to chair the commission.
“Flying below the radar … has been a function of what my role has been in private practice where typically I and my law firm colleagues were retained not to land our client in the headlines, but in most instances just to serve as a forceful advocate and — I hope — an effective one,” McIntyre said in a podcast posted on FERC’s website last month.
McIntyre pledged in an ethics letter that he would not “participate personally and substantially in any particular manner involving specific parties” with ties to Jones Day unless he first obtains a waiver from a FERC ethics official. McIntyre also stated he would not not participate in any cases that involve a former client, unless he receives prior authorization.
Financial disclosures and ethics agreements are mandatory for certain executive branch nominees, including FERC commissioners. McIntyre was among more than a dozen Jones Day lawyers who left the law firm to take various positions in the Trump administration, according to the National Law Journal. The Washington-based law firm represented Trump during the presidential campaign.
“Public officials are basically public fiduciaries. We put them in a position of trust to act on our behalf and always in our best interest,” Hana Callahan, director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California, said in an interview. “As public fiduciaries, they have a duty of loyalty, which means they have to put the public’s interest before their own personal interest.”
A variety of outside organizations have been pushing for FERC to create an office that caters to the public interest. In 1978 Congress directed FERC to create the office, but it has yet to happen. In 2016, dozens of groups representing consumer advocates and environmental organizations filed a petition asking FERC to create an office of public participation.
David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, said he has no reason to distrust the promises that McIntyre made in his ethics letter or his general integrity. But Pomerantz believes McIntyre’s appointment follows a pattern at FERC where corporate attorneys and officials are getting picked to work in a position where they are expected to serve the public’s interest, not in the interest of their former clients or employers.
“If Commissioner McIntyre wants to demonstrate his independence from the companies he once represented, one concrete step he could take would be to finally fund a FERC Office of Consumer Advocate and Public Participation that represents the public,” he told ThinkProgress.
McIntyre joins a long list of Trump appointees with strong corporate ties. A large number of these appointees hold radical views, far more extreme than policy positions espoused by officials in previous presidencies — either Republican or Democratic. But there are a lot of unknowns about how McIntyre will manage FERC as he completes his first month on the job.
McIntyre is a longtime Republican donor. He and his wife — Jennifer Brosnahan, a former associate counsel to President George W. Bush who currently works as chief counsel of Boeing’s Washington Operations — gave money in 2016 to the presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), E&E News reported. He also contributed money to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s short-lived campaign for president, and other political donations have gone to the Republican National Committee, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Pat Toomey (R-PA), and Rob Portman (R-OH), along with prior Republican presidential nominees Mitt Romney and John McCain, according to RTO Insider.
McIntyre was preceded by a placeholder chairman, Neil Chatterjee, who had close connections to congressional Republicans. During his brief tenure as agency chairman, Chatterjee fit the stereotype of a Trump appointee. He was described as “political,” both for his previous role as energy policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel (R-KY) and his willingness to promote Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s proposal to subsidize coal and nuclear power plants.
Like other Trump appointees, Chatterjee has shown a willingness to confront members of the public with whom he disagrees. During his time as chairman, Chatterjee criticized actor James Cromwell, a longtime environmental activist, in personal Facebook posts that critics described as unusual behavior for the nation’s head energy regulator, Utility Dive noted.
The third Republican on the commission, Robert Powelson, served as a leading advocate for Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry in his prior role as a commissioner on the state Public Utility Commission. Powelson has not been shy about his support for gas production, or his antipathy toward environmentalists, the Energy and Policy Institute, an industry watchdog group, wrote in a profile of Powelson. Speaking in March at a gas industry conference, Powelson said environmental advocates were on a “jihad” to keep natural gas from reaching markets.
Unlike other top Trump appointees, McIntyre’s arrival at FERC generated positive buzz from both industry and some environmental groups. Observers pointed out that McIntyre’s affable manner stood in contrast to the abrasive demeanor of Trump and many of his acolytes in Washington.
“If there are two things that can be said of President Trump’s appointees, it is that that they are often ill-qualified for the positions that they are given, and that they attract opposition due to extreme and obvious political views,” PV Magazine, a publication that covers the solar industry, reported last summer. “Kevin McIntyre is an exception to both of these.”
The magazine noted that McIntyre has worked on a number of cases before the agency, including those involving approval of gas pipelines and mergers and acquisitions. “And while he is a member of the Republican Party, little has been published regarding his political and energy policy views,” it said.
Immediately upon taking over as chairman, McIntyre requested a 30-day extension to make a decision on Perry’s controversial proposal to support coal-fired and nuclear power plants. On December 8, Perry granted McIntyre’s request for the extension on the Department of Energy’s so-called Grid Resiliency Pricing Rule. McIntyre said the extension was needed simply because he had just been sworn in and needed more time to review the proposal.
At his first public meeting as chairman on December 21, McIntyre said FERC would review its policies on certification of natural gas pipelines, an announcement that gave some hope to environmental groups and landowners who believe the agency’s 1999 policy statement on pipeline reviews lends itself to the “rubber-stamping” of applications.
“In very encouraging news, the chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission today announced that FERC will revisit its 1999 Statement of Policy for evaluating whether to approve proposed interstate gas pipelines, a policy that has remained unchanged for almost two decades even though the energy industry is far different now,” Montina Cole, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Energy and Transportation Program, said in a statement.
McIntyre did not promise any major changes to how the agency reviews pipeline applications. In comments since taking over as chairman, though, he has stated his desire to make the agency’s deliberations more transparent so that energy companies awaiting decisions and the public are not left in the dark.
Maya van Rossum, the head of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, was not impressed with McIntyre’s planned review of the agency’s pipeline approval process.
“The recent comments by Commissioner Chatterjee disparaging states’ rights and Commissioner Powelson talking about communities opposed to pipelines as jihadists support my concerns,” van Rossum said in a statement.
Until the review of its pipeline policies is completed, the agency is likely to continue its practice of approving almost every natural gas infrastructure application it receives from companies. Even if McIntyre works to protect the agency from White House interference, FERC will remain a political organization for its role in promoting the delivery and use of fossil fuels, according to Lee Stewart, an organizer with Beyond Extreme Energy.
“At a time when the impacts of fossil fuels on the climate are devastatingly clear… FERC must be active about ushering in a just transition off fossil fuels,” Stewart said.
https://thinkprogress.org/ferc-chairman-tied-to-industry-34a9af1be02d/
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US FDA Bans 24 Substances from Healthcare Antiseptic
Jan 8, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a final rule, banning 24 antibacterial active ingredients from use in over-the-counter healthcare antiseptics, including triclosan and several iodine-based compounds.
Manufacturers have not submitted any data to support the substances as safe for use, the agency says. Under the final rule, the ingredients have been classified as not generally recognised as safe and effective (Gras/GRAE) for use. This means antiseptic products containing them will require approval as new drugs.
Manufacturers will have a year to comply with the rule by removing products from the market, or by substituting their antibacterial active ingredients.
The 24 substances are:
chlorhexidine gluconate
cloflucarban
fluorosalan
hexachlorophene
hexylresorcinol
iodophors (iodine-containing ingredients)
iodine complex (ammonium ether sulfate and polyoxyethylene sorbitan monolaurate)
iodine complex (phosphate ester of alkylaryloxy polyethylene glycol)
iodine tincture USP
iodine topical solution USP
nonylphenoxypoly (ethyleneoxy) ethanoliodine
poloxamer—iodine complex
undecoylium chloride iodine complex
mercufenol chloride
methylbenzethonium chloride
phenol
secondary amyltricresols
sodium oxychlorosene
tribromsalan
triclocarban
triclosan
triple dye
combination of calomel, oxyquinoline benzoate, triethanolamine and phenol derivative
combination of mercufenol chloride and secondary amyltricresols in 50% alcohol
Scope
The final rule will affect healthcare personnel hand washes and rubs, surgical hand scrubs and rubs, and patient antiseptic skin preparations. It does not apply to consumer antiseptic washes and rubs, first-aid antiseptics or those used by the food industry.
However, last year a similar FDA review of consumer antiseptic wash products led to the banning of 19 ingredients, including triclosan and triclocarban.
The FDA has deferred rulemaking for one year on six other ingredients. These are:alcohol;benzalkonium chloride;benzethonium chloride;chloroxylenol;isopropyl alcohol; andpovidone-iodine.
This is to allow for the development and submission of new safety and effectiveness data on them.
https://chemicalwatch.com/62906/us-fda-bans-24-substances-from-healthcare-antiseptics
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Are Toxic Chemicals at Air Force Bases Leading to Cancer, Low Birth Weight?
Jan 8, 2018 | CBS News
For 25 years, Dan Cruz delivered mail at the Peterson Air Force Base and drank the water. Then came cancer – thyroid, prostate, testicular – he said never before seen in his family.
"I'm the only one that's been diagnosed with cancer not once, not twice, but three times. People on my route… cancer has come upon them and sometimes stage 4," Cruz told CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen.
The cause could be firefighting foam used since the 1970s at Air Force bases and airports across the country, something meant to save lives that may have harmed them instead. The foam contains highly fluorinated chemicals, known as PFCs. It is suspected of causing some cancers and underweight births.
Mica Ullum has lived near Peterson Air Force Base for a quarter century, in a town where the foam has contaminated the water. Sadie, one of three children born to Mica, was born premature, weighing a mere one pound six ounces. She spent 94 days in the neonatal intensive care unit. Mica's four other pregnancies ended in miscarriage or death.
"With what you know now, do you think any of this has to do with the effects, potential effects, of what's in the water?" Petersen asked."Possibly, yeah," Ullum responded.
"Why?"
"Because if you continue to pump poison into your body, something has to respond," Ullum said.
Peterson is one of 190 Air Force bases where PFCs may have leached in the ground and surrounding areas. One study based on EPA's test results shows as many as six million people may be exposed nationwide to PFCs in their drinking water at higher levels than the EPA now deems safe.
But the more than 60,000 people in the communities near Peterson Air Force Base may be America's hardest-hit. The EPA said anything over 70-parts per trillion could be dangerous. Some water they tested here had over 1,300 parts per trillion. Additionally, according to a proposed class action lawsuit filed against the foam manufacturers, it has caused serious medical conditions in hundreds of residents.
One foam manufacturing company, 3M, said there is no merit in the health claims, adding they "sold these products with instructions regarding their safe use and disposal...acted responsibly at all times...and will vigorously defend this lawsuit."
But the Air Force has responded, spending more than $4 million to provide bottled water and filtration systems. Air Force firefighters now train with water, and for real fires it uses a different fluorinated foam, still containing another type of PFCs, but believed to be safer.
But some of those who have studied the new foam say the Air Force may have traded one evil for another.
"Our chemical regulation system makes us all guinea pigs… because chemicals are assumed safe until proven guilty and they go out into the world… and we are exposed to them with no health information," said Arlene Blum, researcher at the University of California Berkeley.Mark Correll is deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for environment safety and infrastructure.
"Is it possible that you've replaced this with something that could still have a long-term problem down the road?" Petersen asked him.
"I've got to rely on the Environmental Protection Agency and on the health agencies… to tell us whether or not that's going to be a problem in the future," Correll said.
But for now, "We're going to treat it as if it were any other hazardous material… so that we can prevent contamination in the ground water and in the soil by cleaning it up immediately," Correll said."Why would you do that if it's deemed to be safe?" Petersen asked.
"What we're saying is these still are chemicals that have potentially toxic side effects," Correll said.
Cruz worries more illnesses may lie ahead because of something as ordinary as a drink of water.
"If someone had told you this 25 years ago and you had never had any of this water, do you think you'd be healthy now and not going through these cancers?" Petersen asked him."I think I would—would have been perfectly healthy. I don't-- I don't believe that I would've-- gotten any-- any of the-- of the cancers at all," Cruz said.
This area will be part of a federal study of contamination near military bases around the country, which will hopefully outline just how bad and just how far this contamination may have reached into the lives of millions of people.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-force-base-epa-toxic-chemicals-pfc-cancer-low-birth-weight/
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Week Ahead: House GOP Looks to Revamp Energy Department
Jan 8, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
House lawmakers will return from their holiday vacation and kick off their efforts to reorganize the Department of Energy (DOE).
The House Energy and Commerce Committee's energy subcommittee has scheduled a Tuesday hearing to gather input on "modernization" of the DOE.
GOP lawmakers say that they want to transform the department, bringing it out of the energy scarcity focus from decades ago and enabling it to solve 21st century problems in the energy sphere.
The committee has been working since early last year on the DOE reorganization effort, with Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) taking the lead.
"The nation's energy landscape has changed dramatically since the Department of Energy was created in the 1970s amid energy scarcity and global market turmoil," subcommittee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in a statement.
"It's time we flip the script on the department and ensure its mission can meet 21st Century challenges — from its continuing nuclear security responsibilities to the geopolitical benefits of energy abundance to the emerging threats of the cyber age," he said. "I'm looking forward to next week's hearing as the committee continues to examine ways to modernize DOE through mission alignment and appropriate authorizations."
The hearing will be organized into two panels, one of administration officials and one of outside experts.
The Trump administration will be represented at the event by Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, Under Secretary for Science Paul Dabbar, Under Secretary for Nuclear Security Frank Klotz and Under Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes.
Elsewhere in the House, the Natural Resources Committee will start debating a proposal to lock in President Trump's decision last month to greatly reduce the size of the Bears Ears National Monument, with a Tuesday hearing.
The bill by Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) would codify the two national monument units that remain after the rollback — about 15 percent of the original size — and make them their own monuments: Shash Jáa National Monument and Indian Creek National Monument.
It would also formalize a role for a council of nearby American Indian tribal representatives to help manage the monuments and would prohibit mineral development in the area. The coalition of five tribes that pushed for the original Bears Ears monument oppose the bill.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/367677-week-ahead-house-gop-looks-to-revamp-energy-department
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Greens Divided on Promised FERC Review
Jan 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sam Mintz
A big policy announcement from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has split environmental groups down the middle.
New FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre said at his first public meeting in charge of the agency that he wants to lead a review of FERC's nearly 20-year-old policy guidelines for issuing pipeline certificates.
"Let's dust off the existing playbook, take a fresh look at it and ask ourselves the really hard questions around it," he said last month (E&E News PM, Dec. 21, 2017).
The review, which has not taken any formal shape yet, is an unexpected first move from the Republican agency head, who has a significant amount of control over the agenda and direction of FERC.
Some observers have read it as a nod to Democrat Cheryl LaFleur, the longest-serving current commissioner, who said in an October dissent in which she voted against two pipelines — the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast projects — that FERC should revisit its methods for determining whether projects are in the public interest (Energywire, Oct. 16, 2017).
LaFleur said in an interview last week she spoke to McIntyre prior to the announcement.
"I did talk to him about it before he made the announcement. It has been something that I, along with others, have asked for. But I think, as he said [at the meeting], that it is part of a larger imperative that he feels to take a look at how we do our work and our processes."
Reviewing the 1999 policy statement has also been a recent priority of environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, which commissioned a report from noted analyst Susan Tierney in November noting the changes that have taken place in the natural gas industry since it was published.
"I would say that there's a lot that happened in the last 18 years, and it sure makes sense to get out the evidence and information and let FERC decide whether the policy needs change. We certainly say it does," said John Moore, who runs the environmental group's Sustainable FERC Project.
He called the review "overdue."
But other environmental groups, citing a history of decisions from FERC, reacted to the announcement very differently.
"Anyone who is saying this bodes well for communities, the environment and FERC review of pipelines has their head in the sand," said Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper, in a statement.
"I simply do not believe this review will be good for those concerned about the proliferation of fracked gas pipelines and those who suggest otherwise are not paying attention to the facts, recent or otherwise," she added. "I believe this process will be used to further advance pipelines and further empower pipeline companies and it will be very bad for states' rights, people's rights, property rights and the environment."
GOP members of Congress have pushed legislation in the direction van Rossum worries about, streamlining the application process, giving FERC more authority over state agencies and, Democrats say, weakening environmental reviews (E&E Daily, July 20, 2017). That bill has passed the House.
So McIntyre's announcement has stoked fears in some circles that FERC will lean that way, too.
"This is going in the direction of how to streamline and expedite approvals, not the other way around," wrote Joe McMonigle, a consultant and former chief of staff at the Department of Energy, on Twitter in December.
NRDC's Moore acknowledged it's an "open question" where the review will lead.
"Is there a risk it could go in the other direction? Of course," he said, citing the fact FERC has approved hundreds of pipelines and rejected only two since the policy was written in 1999.
But, he said, "FERC isn't quite as partisan as the rest of the administration and many other agencies. ... There's a general hope that FERC will continue on a relatively fact-based manner."
LaFleur said she thinks different commissioners will tackle the issue from their own angles.
"I truly take in good faith Chairman McIntyre's statement that he has an open mind on this. But I believe aside from the commissioners, people who file comments in the docket, some will say, 'We're so glad you are doing this, do it faster,'" she said. "I think faster would be great, too; it's not like I want it slower. I do think we'll get a wide range of views."
For its part, one natural gas industry group says the policy statement has served the public well.
"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," said Don Santa, CEO of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, in a statement. Santa declined to comment further for this story.
LaFleur also called the announcement a "marriage of my interest and [McIntyre's] interest."
"He's said he's interested in taking a fresh look at some of our processes, and there were a lot of places he could go, and this seemed like a good place to start. I agree with that."
She acknowledged, though, the process will bring challenges.
"The strength of my view that we should take a look at this does not reflect the sense that I have the perfect answer for how we should do it," LaFleur said. "It's much easier to explain the potential shortcomings of our current process than to quickly outline a new one, particularly one that would lead to our getting orders out and making decisions about these things."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/01/08/stories/1060070365
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Oil and Gas Heavyweight Joins Defense of BLM's Methane Rollback
Jan 8, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The nation's largest oil and gas lobbying group is adding its might to a new legal battle over the Trump administration's decision to sideline an Obama-era rule for methane emissions from oil and gas development on public lands.
The American Petroleum Institute on Friday moved to intervene in litigation from states and environmental groups that say the Interior Department illegally rolled back the Bureau of Land Management's methane venting and flaring rule.
"The industry will be directly and profoundly damaged if the suspended provisions of the Venting and Flaring Rule take effect because those provisions arbitrarily limit — and in many cases outright prohibit — the venting and flaring of economically unrecoverable gas from API members' BLM-managed oil and gas leases," API lawyers told the California court handling the case.
The lawsuit is in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which has previously sided with California, New Mexico and an environmental coalition in a dispute over earlier Trump administration efforts to freeze the regulation (Energywire, Oct. 5, 2017).
The Obama-era rule would restrict methane emissions from oil and gas sites on public and tribal lands and require operators to monitor and repair leaks of the potent greenhouse gas. BLM in December suspended the standards until early 2019, concluding that the rule may conflict with President Trump's "energy independence" executive order issued last year.
Supporters of the rule promptly sued over the suspension (Energywire, Dec. 20, 2017). The Independent Petroleum Association of America and Western Energy Alliance days later moved to join the case in defense of the suspension.
Those two groups led the initial legal challenge to the Obama administration's rule in 2016. API filed a friend-of-the-court brief in that case but never intervened.
Industry lawyers have maintained that the Obama rule exceeded BLM's authority, amounting to an air quality regulation that should be reserved to U.S. EPA, states and tribes. The Interior Department is considering rewriting or rescinding the rule during the one-year suspension period (Energywire, Jan. 2).
"Requiring BLM to immediately implement standards that the agency now acknowledges constitute inappropriate regulatory overreach would cause serious and irrevocable financial consequences for API members who lease, produce, transport, pay royalties on, or are otherwise involved with federal or Indian oil and gas," API's Friday filing says.
Supporters of the rule say it meets BLM's Mineral Leasing Act mandate to avoid waste of natural resources. Methane is the primary component of natural gas, but excess is often burned off when sites lack sufficient infrastructure to capture it.
The Obama administration estimated that the rule would generate up to $14 million in additional annual royalties.
The legal battle over the suspension is one of many currently waged by environmentalists and others supportive of Obama-era regulations. They say the new administration hasn't offered adequate justification for the reversals. The methane case could ultimately land at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/01/08/stories/1060070315
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Critics Prepare for War Against Trump Drilling Plan
Jan 8, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, as Newton's third law of motion goes. What's true for physics occasionally holds for politics as well.
The Trump administration proposed last week to open up nearly all federal waters of the continental United States to offshore drilling. The move is arguably the most aggressive pro-oil industry push by the new presidency to date, though the Department of the Interior stressed that a final decision on where drilling will be permitted has yet to be made.
As expansive as Interior's action is, environmentalists are now promising an equally aggressive reaction against the measure. Officials can expect vigorous protests at the forthcoming public hearings on Interior's proposal for revising the current five-year offshore drilling lease schedule.
The proposed lease sale envisions auctioning off rights to explore for oil and natural gas in some 90 percent of the U.S.'s federally controlled territorial waters and the exclusive economic zone. The plan would permit drilling rigs access to the entire Atlantic basin from Key West to the tip of Maine, and almost all the West Coast, including California (Greenwire, Jan. 4).
The only region excluded from the proposal is an area off the northern Aleutian Islands in Alaska, a zone made off-limits by an executive order of former President George W. Bush. Interior acting Assistant Secretary Katherine MacGregor said executive orders by the Obama administration excluding portions of the Atlantic Ocean to drilling were made null and void by a reversing executive order signed by President Trump in April 2017.
"Those [protections] were overturned in President Trump's executive order last April," MacGregor said in a call with reporters on Interior's announcement.
The announced revised offshore leasing plan drew the near universal ire of environmentalists throughout the nation, as well as opposition from multiple state governors.
"Today's announcement by the Trump administration willfully ignores coastal governors, communities, businesses, and elected leaders up and down the coast who've made it clear they don't want drilling off their shores," said Sierra Weaver, attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, in a statement.
SELC notes that the Interior proposal ignores requests by the governors of coastal Atlantic states that areas off their coastlines be removed for consideration from the forthcoming revised five-year plan. SELC will fight, Weaver promised. "In 2016, southern communities along the Atlantic coast successfully fought off an attempt to bring offshore drilling to their coasts, and they will do the same again."
Gabby Brown, deputy press secretary at the Sierra Club, confirmed that numerous groups are plotting their response. Protests can be expected, including at or near the sites of the some two dozen public hearings to be held nationally by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
"We and our partners are definitely planning to organize around the public hearings," Brown said. "There's already a lot of energy in coastal states around making sure Interior gets the message loud and clear that there's strong, bipartisan opposition to drilling among coastal communities."Roughshod over public opinion
The Consumer Energy Alliance and National Ocean Industries Association praised Interior's offshore leasing proposal, formally announced by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke last Thursday.
A greater assortment of organizations sent out letters condemning the move, including Sierra Club, SELC, NextGen America and more. Sixty-four organizations combined forces in one joint declaration against the proposal. The environmental groups said past leasing plans were at least carefully thought out, "whereas the Trump Administration's hastily concocted proposal is rife with unsubstantiated claims, faulty economics, and runs roughshod over documented public opinion."
Lawsuits are likely along with public protests at hearings and at other organized events.
Protest action has stymied efforts to expand the natural gas pipeline network in the Northeast and has delayed by several years a proposal to build a large new crude oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Violence at public hearings in Canada over a separate oil pipeline proposal forced a suspension of those hearings and led to the eventual resignation of Canada's entire National Energy Board.
Other efforts have failed to stop petroleum industry projects. Physical efforts to halt work on an oil pipeline segment from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast ended with arrests and restraining orders slapped on the protestors. That line is now up and running.
BOEM is inviting public comment online and has scheduled 23 public hearings. The first one will be held in Annapolis, Md., on Jan. 16. Others are to be held in Richmond, Va.; Baton Rouge, La.; Anchorage; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Washington, D.C. before the final public hearing in Atlanta on Feb. 28.
MacGregor and Zinke stressed in their announcement that no final decision will be taken before careful consultations are conducted with opponents of the plan, including coastal governors and congressional delegations.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/01/08/stories/1060070309
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Supreme Court Declines To Hear Two Cases Testing Key Air Act Mandates
Jan 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
The Supreme Court without comment is declining to hear two appeals testing key Clean Air Act mandates, including litigation over when states can rely on preexisting air pollution controls to meet requirements for “contingency measures” to cut emissions, and a suit over when EPA must review the jobs impacts of its air rules.
The justices' decision to reject the cases in its Jan. 8 orders list lets stand a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit decision that says states cannot rely on already implemented air controls as contingency measures.
And it lets stand a separate 4th Circuit ruling that said a provision in the air law saying that EPA must review the employment impacts of rules issued under the statute was too broad to enforce via a citizen suit.
In the contingency measures case, Arizona v. Sandra L. Bahr, et al., the state in its petition for a writ of certiorari had asked the court to review a 9th Circuit ruling that prohibits early steps as contingency measures, which states are required to apply when certain deadlines to attain national ambient air quality standards are missed.
The 9th Circuit's Sept. 12, 2016, 2-1 ruling agreed with Arizona citizens that states cannot rely on measures they have already taken to curb air pollution, such as paving dirt roads, to qualify as contingency measures. Citizens argued that such measures must be new and separate from what states have already done. But Arizona says this serves as a “perverse incentive” for states to delay measures to clean up the air.
As a result of high court's the ruling, states within the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction -- Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington -- will not be allowed to cite early emissions-reduction actions if required to impose contingency measures. This is an issue especially in California, which experiences higher levels of air pollution than other states.
But under EPA's “regional consistency” policy, agency regions outside the 9th Circuit will be able to accept early contingency measures in states' air law implementation plans. The policy says if a specific circuit issues a ruling, EPA regions located outside of that circuit do not have to adhere to the ruling.
While EPA backed Arizona at the appeals court level, the agency argued against high court review, claiming the appellate ruling does not present any unmanageable problems.
Arizona claimed in briefing that EPA changed its position merely to avoid the possibility of an adverse nationwide ruling from the high court, and that the agency is content to limit a bad ruling to the 9th Circuit states.
The Supreme Court's decision to reject consideration of Bahr further leaves in place what Arizona says is a Circuit split with the 5th Circuit's 2004 ruling in Louisiana Environmental Action Network v. EPA, in which that court allowed preexisting air pollution controls to qualify as contingency measures.
Jobs Review
Meanwhile, the high court's order leaves in place a unanimous 4th Circuit decision from June 29 that held the air law's requirement that EPA periodically review the employment impacts of its rules is too broad to enforce through a citizen suit, a legal option that the appellate court said is meant for “discrete” responsibilities instead of programmatic ones.
In Murray Energy, et al., v. EPA, coal companies led by Murray Energy said EPA has long neglected its statutory duty under section 321(a) of the air law to perform "continuing evaluations of potential loss or shifts of employment which may result" from air rules and their implementation, and sought a court order forcing it to conduct those studies, with an enforceable deadline.
But writing for the 4th Circuit panel, Circuit Judge Henry Floyd said EPA has “considerable discretion in managing its Section 321(a) duty. The agency gets to decide how to collect a broad set of employment data, how to judge and examine this extensive data, and how to manage these tasks on an ongoing basis. A court is ill-equipped to supervise this continuous, complex process.”
While Murray is hoping that the studies will bolster its push for deregulation, some have argued that a win for the firms would be useful to environmentalists who could sue EPA over what they see as an unlawful pattern of regulatory rollbacks, rather than targeting discrete, individual actions.
For instance, Department of Justice environment chief Jeffrey Wood in 2017 told reporters that EPA has continued to fight the suit in part because if Murray succeeds the precedent would provide a new tool for environmental groups to block the administration's agenda.
EPA has said that allowing citizen suits over vaguely defined mandates like section 321(a) would force judges to micro-manage its operations, contrary to the intent of Congress. Moreover, EPA recently declared that it will pursue a jobs study voluntarily.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/supreme-court-declines-hear-two-cases-testing-key-air-act-mandates
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Greens Push for Court Order on Ozone Designations
Jan 8, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
After U.S. EPA penciled in an April 30 deadline for making all remaining compliance decisions for its 2015 ground-level ozone standard, environmental and public health groups want a federal judge to etch it in stone.
On Friday, attorneys for the American Lung Association and almost a dozen other organizationsrequested a court order to make the April 30 date legally binding; they also asked U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam of the Northern District of California to require the area attainment designations to take immediate effect for enforcement purposes. While there typically would be some lag time, the protections that flow from the attainment designations "are already months overdue," they wrote.
"Further delay through the artifice of a delayed effective date would exacerbate plaintiffs' injuries," they wrote.
Ozone, a lung irritant that is the main ingredient in smog, is linked to asthma attacks in children and worsened breathing problems for people with emphysema and other chronic respiratory diseases.
After EPA tightened its ground-level ozone standard to 70 parts per billion in October 2015, all attainment designations — which start the clock for states to come up with cleanup plans for areas that fall short — were due in October 2017.
EPA missed that date. Although the agency in November then declared the bulk of the country effectively in attainment, it has yet to make final decisions for Houston, Cincinnati and other areas that are unlikely to meet the tighter threshold.
In their suit, filed early last month, the American Lung Association and the other plaintiffs had initially sought a court order giving EPA six months to finish the job (Greenwire, Dec. 5, 2017). In a Friday notice, however, agency officials said they intend to make the remaining designations by the end of April or somewhat ahead of that six-month schedule (Greenwire, Jan. 4).
In addition, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt could shortly provide more detail on his plans in responding to a court order in a related passel of litigation pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Many of the same environmental and public health groups, along with a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general, had brought those suits last summer after Pruitt initially imposed a blanket one-year delay in all attainment designations on the grounds that the agency needed more information before making final decisions.
Pruitt dropped that bid in August after those suits were filed. EPA is now seeking to have the litigation dismissed as moot.
The plaintiffs instead want the appeals court to keep their suits alive until EPA actually makes the attainment designations. Last month, the court instructed the agency to report "with precision and specificity" by this Friday on its timetable for making the attainment decisions (Greenwire, Dec. 20, 2017).
A three-judge panel set the Jan. 12 deadline after the agency suggested in a list of regulatory priorities that the blanket extension remained in place, notwithstanding Pruitt's August announcement that he was dropping it.
EPA officials have so far offered no explanation in court for the apparent discrepancy, but the plaintiffs seized on it as grounds for keeping their respective suits in play.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/01/08/stories/1060070363
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Another Way Greens Might Pick a Climate Fight
Jan 8, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Robin Bravender
Environmentalists are strategizing about how to prod U.S. EPA to crack down on carbon dioxide.
Some are considering an attempt to push EPA to set national emissions limits for greenhouse gases. It's an approach that could potentially give the left some leverage in its campaign for significant emissions cuts, but it's one that the Obama administration avoided and that many air experts call unworkable.
At issue: Should EPA regulate greenhouse gases under a section of the Clean Air Act that requires the agency to set national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for harmful pollutants, like ozone and lead?
Yes, according to some environmentalists.
In 2009, the environmental groups Center for Biological Diversity and 350.org petitioned EPA to cap atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at 350 parts per million — a level the groups and some scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst effects of global warming (Greenwire, Dec. 2, 2009).
The CO2 concentration in the planet's atmosphere has since surpassed 400 ppm during the annual low point of the Earth's CO2 cycle, and isn't expected to dip below that threshold anytime soon (Climatewire, Sept. 29, 2016).
The petition languished at EPA as the Obama administration moved to regulate greenhouse gases under other parts of the Clean Air Act, but groups may press the issue under Trump.
"We're not forgetting about it," said Vera Pardee, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity.
"What we are actively doing is looking at how this situation unfolds and what tools are the right ones to use at what point," she added.
While EPA's Clean Power Plan was issued under a Clean Air Act section that sets industry-specific standards, a NAAQS could provide a more comprehensive way to limit emissions, Pardee said.
"One of the benefits of an NAAQS that it has over other ways to handle this issue is that it's science-based; the standard needs to be adequate to the problem," she said. "You have an advantage that you don't necessarily have with any other way of tackling the issue."'Hell will freeze over'
Many don't think it's the best route for EPA climate rules.
Former Obama EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in 2009, "I have never believed and this agency has never believed that setting a national ambient air quality standard for greenhouse gases was advisable" (Greenwire, Dec. 8, 2009).
David Bookbinder, who was chief climate counsel at the Sierra Club in 2009, told E&E News after the NAAQS petition was filed that year: "Despite global warming, hell will freeze over before there's a NAAQS for CO2."
Asked last week whether he stands by that statement, Bookbinder, now chief counsel at the libertarian Niskanen Center, said, "Absolutely."
Among the problems with setting an NAAQS for CO2 is that "it's not clear how you would ever measure attainment," Tom Lorenzen, a partner at Crowell & Moring LLP, said last week.
"The problem is that because this is a global pollutant, we could basically reduce our carbon emissions to zero in this country and still not reach that level because of everybody's contributions," added Lorenzen, a former Justice Department attorney who is fighting the Clean Power Plan in court. "Would you, by setting an NAAQS, be driving the United States toward a point where we really can't function because we've had to eliminate all CO2 emissions and on a very tight time frame?"
Pardee said those issues can be worked on.
"There is a potential of setting the form of a standard that would ratchet the standard down over time, that needs to be thought through carefully," she said. "But there are ways of managing that issue so that there could be a phase-in of the standard if we get to that point."
David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said his group has been focused on EPA climate rules including vehicle standards and regulations for power plants and other stationary sources.
"The Clean Air Act has a bunch of different approaches, most of which are focused on reducing pollution from particular categories of sources and doing so with the best available control technology," he said.
The Center for Biological Diversity and NRDC are among the many environmental groups defending the Clean Power Plan in the court battle that's now stalled as EPA moves ahead with its repeal.
"No one is giving up on the Clean Power Plan," Pardee said. "We have been litigants forever with all of our [nongovernmental organization] friends to push the plan into reality."
An EPA spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about the Trump administration's position on the NAAQS petition.
EPA could respond to the petition on its own — although experts say that's unlikely. If EPA did respond, the agency could reject the petition — setting up a possible court battle if environmentalists challenge that rejection. A more likely scenario: The green groups could ask a court to force EPA to respond to the petition, arguing that the agency's response time constitutes an unreasonable delay.
An unreasonable delay claim would be tough to prosecute, Lorenzen said, given that the Clean Air Act doesn't offer a date by which EPA must respond. "It would be a steep, steep climb," he said.
But Pardee said her group still views it as a "tool in the toolbox."
The "fight to get rid of greenhouse gases that come from fossil fuels is the fight of a lifetime, and the countervailing forces are so ubiquitous that whatever path you travel on, you're going to have resistance," she said.
"It just can't be that [EPA Administrator Scott] Pruitt can get us to a situation where we don't have a Clean Power Plan and we don't have an NAAQS and we don't have any other controls."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/01/08/stories/1060070323
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EWire: EPA Hopes to Finish CPP Replacement This Year
Jan 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
Trump EPA officials are planning to complete a replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) utility greenhouse gas rule this year, according to a news report, a move that could give the Trump administration time to defend the regulation in court.
Politico has the news, reporting that the strategy could help the Trump EPA avoid the fate of the prior administration's rule, “which was held up in court and is now being rescinded by a new administration that opposed the original carbon dioxide regulation.”
Agency air chief Bill Wehrum signaled quick action on the issue in December, when he told EPA's air advisers that a CPP replacement rule is “on a fast boat,” just days after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt pledged for the first time to issue a replacement. The decision to issue a new rule sides with industry groups, which are seeking regulatory certainty, over hard-line conservative groups that want to scrap all EPA climate rules.
The administration in its latest semi-annual regulatory plan also said it would publish a proposed replacement rule in June. That would give agency officials six months to take comment on the plan, hold a public hearing and conduct inter-agency review before finalizing the rule.
EPA is taking comment through Feb. 26 on its advance notice of proposed rulemaking, which floats several options for a much narrower CPP that would focus largely on improving coal plants' efficiency.
In a separate process, the agency hopes to finalize its proposal to rescind the CPP by October. Trump officials argue that the Obama-era rule was unlawful because it based GHG targets on actions taken “beyond the fenceline” of regulated coal plants.
However, a move by the Trump administration to advance a CPP replacement could ultimately end calls by conservatives for EPA to reconsider its landmark GHG endangerment finding, given that such a rule would depend on that finding. Politico quotes multiple conservative lawyers as saying the agency “would have a hard time fighting the finding after writing a rule precipitated by it.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-epa-hopes-finish-cpp-replacement-year
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Carper Probes EPA Efforts to Ease Enforcement
Jan 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the top Democrat on the Senate environment committee, is asking EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to answer a series of questions about steps the agency has taken to ease enforcement in ways the senator says “may enable regulated industry to violate air and water pollution rules and to avoid accountability for any such violations.”
Carper's Dec. 21 letter cites press reports to note a downturn in enforcement actions initiated by the agency under Pruitt and also refers to a Dec. 7 memo Pruitt signed that says EPA will no longer “second guess” industry emissions projections for when new source review (NSR) permits are required. Carper writes that he is “troubled” that EPA seems to be moving away from using its own data to determine if the Clean Air Act violations are occurring.
The senator says the NSR memo is “even more shocking” because in it EPA adopted the position of Detroit Edison (DTE) in litigation that was pending before the Supreme Court, where EPA had previously taken the position that DTE had violated NSR.
It is also shocking, he says, because DTE was represented in that case by a law firm where air chief Bill Wehrum and senior counsel David Harlow most recently worked before coming to EPA. He asks whether either had a role in drafting the memo, which he calls “an abdication of [EPA's] Clean Air Act enforcement responsibilities and is akin to allowing industry to design, write and grade its own take-home air pollution exam.” He asks Pruitt for all documents, dating back to the transition team, related to the development of the memo.
And Carper also questions the impact of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' ban on settlements containing payments to third-parties to EPA's supplemental environmental projects (SEPs) program, calling it “distressing that the Administration appears to be abandoning the use of certain enforcement tools that help to improve environmental quality.”
He asks Pruitt to provide the number of requests for information each regional office sent between 2009 and 2016, as well as that information starting in 2017. He also asks for a copy of a memo that set forth an alleged policy requiring employees to get permission to send such requests.
Carper further asks for quarterly reports from 2009 to 2017 on the number of judicial enforcement referrals sent by EPA regions and headquarters; a list of every notice of violation issued by the Obama EPA that was not concluded by the end of that administration, and asks that it be updated quarterly. He wants a similar list of every Obama-era consent decree that was not entered in court by the end of the administration.
On SEPs, he asks Pruitt to confirm whether the Sessions ban prohibits SEPs. The Department of Justice has said that SEPs are not subject to the ban, though it has also moved to retroactively cancel mitigation projects, which are similar to SEPs. It has also said it is issuing clarifying guidance on SEPs, but has not released any guidance documents since making that statement last summer.
Carper seeks answers to his questions by Jan. 26.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/carper-probes-epa-efforts-ease-enforcement-0
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