Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 1/29/2018
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Oversight Hearing to Receive Testimony from Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt
Jan 30, 2018 | Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
Location: 406 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
Full Committee Hearing - Department of Energy: Management and Priorities
Jan 30, 2018 | House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
Location: 2318 Rayburn / 10:00 -
Business Meeting to Consider Various Nominations
Jan 30, 2018 | Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
Location: 366 Dirksen / 10:00 AM -
(ACC Mentioned) More Business Economists See Higher U.S. Wages, Investment
Jan 26, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA has finished work on changes to 2015 hazardous pollutant regulations that the agency says will afford about the same degree of environmental protection while saving one niche of the waste industry tens of millions of dollars. -
(ACC Mentioned) Plastics Industry Leaders Nervous as NAFTA Talks Restart
Jan 29, 2018 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
As NAFTA negotiations reopened Jan. 23 in Montreal, plastics industry officials were nervous that the Trump administration may exit the trade deal. -
(ACC Mentioned) Companies Say Profits and Wages Rise as Growth Continues
Jan 29, 2018 | CBS News/AP
Sales and profits picked up for companies at the end of last year, and more say they're paying their workers higher wages and salaries in new signs that the U.S. economy continues to improve. -
(ACC Mentioned) Antelo Strikes out on Her Own
Jan 29, 2018 | Politico Influence
By Theodoric Meyer and Marianne Levine
...The American Chemistry Council is adding two longtime Capitol Hill aides to its lobbying team. Spencer Pederson, who was previously a legislative assistant to Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), will work on transportation and infrastructure issues... -
EPA Declines Industry Bid for TSCA Chemical Reporting Delay
Jan 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA has declined the chemical industry's bid for an enforcement “grace period” for late notifications of chemicals in commerce under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), retaining the Feb. 7 reporting deadline but suggesting the agency will work.. -
Court Rejects Rehearing in HFC Case
Jan 26, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Eric Wolff
The D.C. Circuit today said it would not rehear a case overturning EPA's regulation to limit use of hydrofluorocarbons. -
Fluoride Ban Pushed by Environmentalists Now in Judge's Hands
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joyce E. Cutler
Health advocates and the EPA could find out by mid-April how much evidence a federal court in San Francisco will allow to be considered in the advocates’ bid to ban fluoride in drinking water. -
(ACC Mentioned) NAS Workshop Comes at Crossroads for EPA's Once Influential IRIS Program
Jan 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Even as GOP lawmakers and other critics push to eliminate EPA's once influential Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program, its leaders are slated to appear before an upcoming National Academy of Sciences (NAS) workshop to outline changes they have made in their first year... -
Dourson Calls on EPA to Expand IRIS Despite Program's Uncertain Future
Jan 29, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Michael Dourson, the controversial former nominee to lead EPA's toxics office, is calling on the agency to improve and expand its influential Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) chemical assessment program, even as the program faces an uncertain future with the Trump administration... -
EU Chemicals Registration Could See Substance Shortfall
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
Interpreting the apparent shortfall in new substances was “difficult for the low-volume chemicals because we had no prior data” on the extent to which some substances are used in the EU, Hansen said. -
Should We Be Scared of Teflon? a New Sundance Documentary Investigates
Jan 27, 2018 | Los Angeles Times
By Amy Kaufman
First she took on BPA. Then sugar. Now, documentary filmmaker Stephanie Soechtig is going after Teflon — the chemical that coats so many of our nonstick pans. -
Oil Boom Gives the U.S. a New Edge in Energy and Diplomacy
Jan 28, 2018 | New York Times
By Clifford Krauss
A substantial rise in oil prices in recent months has led to a resurgence in American oil production, enabling the country to challenge the dominance of Saudi Arabia and dampen price pressures at the pump. -
Oil Potential Off U.S. Coasts: Knowns and Unknowns
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
Nearly all the U.S. offshore is open for consideration of oil and gas leasing, but geologists point out not all offshore areas are likely to produce hydrocarbon riches. -
Feds Set Hearing Dates as Alaska Lawmakers Seek Plan Changes
Jan 26, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management today released a new schedule for public hearings on its proposed offshore oil and gas leasing plan for 2019-2024 after canceling four public sessions due to the government shutdown. -
Atlantic Coast Pipeline Lands Crucial State Permits
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Ballard
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a planned 600-mile natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to North Carolina, secured a pair of critical state environmental permits. -
Landowners, Frackers in Tense Faceoff in Wake of Colorado Blast
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Meenal Vamburkar
Chemicals companies are registering fewer substances than expected ahead of a May 31 deadline for submission of registration dossiers to the European Chemicals Agency, ECHA's new executive director told Bloomberg Environment in an interview. -
Ohio Gubernatorial Hopeful Kucinich Calls for End to Oil, Natural Gas Drilling
Jan 26, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
In his first major policy announcement since joining the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial primary earlier this month, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich said if he’s elected he would put an end to all oil and natural gas drilling in the state and ban underground injection wells... -
(ACC Mentioned) Authorities Clear Accident in Vinton Involving Truck Carrying Hazardous Load, Businesses Begin to Reopen
Jan 29, 2018 | KPLC
By KPLC Digital Staff
Authorities in Vinton say that an accident scene involving an 18-wheeler carrying hazardous materials has been cleared. -
Funding, Permitting Fights Loom in Infrastructure Push
Jan 29, 2018 | E&E Daily
President Trump will issue a bipartisan plea for an infrastructure package during tomorrow's State of the Union speech, even as top administration officials signaled this weekend the plan will take further aim at regulations to help make up for funding levels... -
(ACC Mentioned) Waste Storage Industry to Save Millions Under New EPA Rule
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sara Merken
Waste storage and processing facilities will save $28 million under an EPA rule to eliminate air pollution monitoring requirements on waste containers. -
(ACC Mentioned) Waste Storage Rule Changes to Result in $32m Compliance Savings
Jan 26, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA has finished work on changes to 2015 hazardous pollutant regulations that the agency says will afford about the same degree of environmental protection while saving one niche of the waste industry tens of millions of dollars. -
(ACC Mentioned) The Trump Administration Is Lifting Key Controls on Toxic Air Pollution
Jan 29, 2018 | Vox
By Umair Irfan
The Environmental Protection Agency just took a dramatic step toward deregulating some major sources of toxic air pollution, which could have huge implications for public health. -
(ACC Mentioned) Bad Science Underlies EPA’s Air Pollution Program
Jan 29, 2018 | Scientific American
By Rachel Leven
Engineer Jim Southerland was hired by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1971 to join the nascent war on air pollution. -
(ACC Mentioned) Today in Environmental Protection: 2018 Edition
Jan 29, 2018 | Esquire
By Charles P. Pierce
Meanwhile, back at the wreckage…From Reuters:The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday it was withdrawing a provision of the Clean Air Act that requires a major source of pollution like a power plant to always be treated as a major source... -
Top Environmental Group Preparing to Sue Trump’s EPA
Jan 29, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By John Bowden
A top environmental advocacy group is preparing a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), helmed by Scott Pruitt, for the agency's rollback of environmental protections under the Trump administration. -
Virginia's Cap-and-Trade Plan Passes Muster With Regional Program
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
Virginia's draft plan to join a regional cap-and-trade program is consistent with the existing framework for the nine Northeast states in it now, even though the commonwealth would use a different method for allocating its carbon emissions allowances.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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Jan 30, 2018 | Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
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Full Committee Hearing - Department of Energy: Management and Priorities
Jan 30, 2018 | House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
Witnesses:
The Honorable Paul Dabbar, under secretary for science, Department of Energy
The Honorable Mark Menezes, under secretary of energy, Department of Energy
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Business Meeting to Consider Various Nominations
Jan 30, 2018 | Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
The purpose of the business meeting is to consider the following nominations:
· Ms. Melissa Burnison to be Assistant Secretary of Energy for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs;
· Ms. Susan Combs to be Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Policy, Management, and Budget;
· Mr. Ryan Nelson to be Solicitor for the Department of the Interior; and
· Ms. Anne White to be Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management.
In addition, the Committee will ratify pending subcommittee assignments.
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(ACC Mentioned) More Business Economists See Higher U.S. Wages, Investment
Jan 26, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
Wages are increasing at more companies in the U.S. and will become even more widespread in coming months amid increased difficulty hiring skilled labor, according to a survey of business economists.
A net 48 percent of economists surveyed this month by the National Association for Business Economics said worker pay was increasing. That’s the highest in 18 years and the third-highest in NABE data to April 1982. The net share expecting bigger wage costs over the next three months reached the highest since April 2014.
“More respondents report that their firms are hiring -- and having trouble filling positions -- than in the October survey,” Kevin Swift, NABE vice president and chief economist for the American Chemistry Council, said in a statement. “Looking at 2018 as a whole, 63 percent of respondents expect their firms to increase sales, and three times as many expect hiring to increase rather than decrease.”
Capital spending rose at more firms and is expected by business economists to keep climbing. A net 37 percent reported increased investment in the latest survey, conducted from Dec. 29 to Jan. 10, up from 28 percent at the start of the fourth quarter and the strongest since July 2015. At the same time, roughly two-thirds said no changes were made to hiring or investments in anticipation of changes in U.S. economic policy.
Tight labor markets help explain why wages costs are rising. Some 39 percent reported a shortage of skilled labor, the highest percentage since the July 2008 survey.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-29/more-business-economists-see-higher-u-s-wages-investment
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(ACC Mentioned) Plastics Industry Leaders Nervous as NAFTA Talks Restart
Jan 29, 2018 | Plastics News
By Steve Toloken
As NAFTA negotiations reopened Jan. 23 in Montreal, plastics industry officials were nervous that the Trump administration may exit the trade deal.
The head of Dow Chemical Co.’s Washington office, for example, warned in an unusually direct tweet that while NAFTA needs to be updated, “withdrawing will have a large and harmful impact on the chemical, & therefore, manufacturing sector.”
Underscoring the delicate stakes, senior leaders of the plastics industry’s trade associations in Canada, Mexico and the United States all met in Montreal — the first time they have jointly attended a round of talks. The Montreal talks are the sixth and possibly last round of negotiations.
The Plastics Industry Association, the Canadian Plastics Industry Association and Mexico’s Asociacion Nacional de Industrias del Plastico A.C. made clear they believe uncertainty is hurting the industry.'Calm the market's nerves'
“A signal to the manufacturing community that progress is being made would calm the market’s nerves and give businesses the certainty they need to begin making new investments,” said Patty Long, executive vice president of the U.S. group, in a Jan. 25 statement.
The mood was not entirely gloom. The head of the American Chemistry Council, Cal Dooley, wrote Jan. 25 that he had significant concerns, but he also expressed hope that NAFTA could be modernized without being scrapped.
Industry groups have been pushing NAFTA “modernization,” by which they mean updating the language to cover topics that barely existed when it was signed in 1993, like e-commerce.
Dooley bluntly warned that leaving NAFTA would pose sizable risks to the shale-gas led boom in U.S. plastics and chemical exports.
“Withdrawing from NAFTA, and reintroducing tariffs into the North American supply chain, would erode U.S. manufacturing competitiveness and extinguish a renaissance that is expected to peak within the next decade,” he wrote in an essay published by ICIS News.
Dooley said higher tariffs would be a “significant hit” to operating margins.
“When the president talks about withdrawing from NAFTA, inserting highly controversial proposals or removing investor protections from a new agreement, he makes it difficult for his most steadfast supporters to back any reform effort,” Dooley said.Surviving a change
Some analysts say that in the end, canceling NAFTA is a change the U.S. resin industry could probably handle without major harm.
Joel Morales, executive director polyolefins Americas with consulting firm IHS Markit, suggested at the recent Plastics in Automotive conference that renegotiating or scrapping NAFTA would not have a major impact on plastics materials.
Resin from the United States would still be exported, and new duties would not make a big difference, he said at the conference, sponsored by Plastics News and held Jan. 16 in Detroit.
Mexico and Canada are the largest export markets for the U.S. plastics industry, according to the Plastics Industry Association. And the current plastics trade balance favors the United States.
The U.S. had a $10.7 billion surplus in plastics with Mexico in 2016, its largest with any country, and a $719 million surplus with Canada, its fifth-largest.
The trade advantage for the United States with Mexico was across the board: all four major industry subcategories of resins, plastic products, molds and machinery had surpluses with Mexico. Resins lead with a $6 billion surplus.
For industry overall, outside of plastics, the United States has a trade deficit with Mexico. In 2016, it hit $63.2 billion.
But the very different picture within plastics led a prominent executive in Mexico’s industry to say that the U.S. polymers sector is more at risk than Mexico.
“Americans have a lot more to lose than us in the plastics industry,” said Angel Oria, director general of Mexico City-based resin distributor Polimero y Materias Primas Internacionales SA de CV. He’s also a former leader of Anipac.
Mexico sends more finished goods like automobiles north, but the U.S. has an advantage in plastics products because it supplies components needed for final assembly in Mexican factories, Oria said in a November interview.
U.S. government statistics show the plastics products segment had a $4 billion surplus with Mexico in 2016.
Oria said NAFTA helps North American manufacturing compete with other major regions, like East Asia or Europe.
The head of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association called on negotiators to send clear signals so companies can make investment decisions.
“Right now many businesses are waiting to see how the negotiations conclude before making new investments,” said Carol Hochu, president of the Mississauga, Ontario-based CPIA, in the Jan. 25 statement. “A show of progress would give them the green light to plan for future growth.”
Plastics News Editor Don Loepp contributed to this report.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180126/NEWS/180129908/plastics-industry-leaders-nervous-as-nafta-talks-restart
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(ACC Mentioned) Companies Say Profits and Wages Rise as Growth Continues
Jan 29, 2018 | CBS News/AP
Sales and profits picked up for companies at the end of last year, and more say they're paying their workers higher wages and salaries in new signs that the U.S. economy continues to improve.
The encouraging signals come from the latest survey from National Association for Business Economics of more than 100 members at companies and industry groups. NABE, a professional association for business economists, academics and others who use economics in the workplace, released its survey on Monday.
After years of recovery following the Great Recession, the U.S. job market and economy have become so healthy that businesses say finding skilled workers is the most difficult it has been in nearly a decade.
The responses fit with recent government reports that show the economy grew at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the last three months of 2017 and the unemployment rate is at a 17-year low. Last quarter's growth was slower than the summer's pace, but economists nevertheless called it solid, and it was the 15th straight quarter that GDP has expanded.
In the survey, 47 percent of respondents said their sales rose over the past three months, up a tick from 46 percent three months earlier. Fewer companies said their sales were falling.
Finding skilled workers, however, has been getting more difficult as the economy heats up. The highest percentage of respondents, 39 percent, said they were facing shortages in skilled labor since July 2008.
Perhaps as a result of that, companies are paying their workers more. Nearly half of the surveys' respondents said their wages and salaries rose over the past three months. None said they cut pay for workers. That difference of 48 percentage points is the strongest reading for the survey since January 2000 and is the third-highest since the NABE began tracking it in 1982.
Bullishness among businesses is tempered, though. Roughly half of the survey's respondents, 51 percent, said they expect sales to increase over the next three months. But that's down from 61 percent three months earlier.
"The results of the January 2018 NABE Business Conditions Survey show widespread sales and profit gains in the fourth quarter of 2017, but also notable increases in materials costs, wages, and shortages of skilled labor," NABE Vice President Kevin Swift, chief economist of the American Chemistry Council, said in a statement.
"The panel's outlook for growth in the overall economy over the next four quarters surpasses the relatively positive assessments of the past few quarterly surveys," Swift said. "Compared to the near-term outlook three months ago, more firms expect increases in the next three months in their firms' profits, employment and capital spending. However, optimism regarding sales in the first quarter of 2018 is less widespread than it has been since 2016."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/companies-say-profits-and-wages-rise-as-growth-continues/
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(ACC Mentioned) Antelo Strikes out on Her Own
Jan 29, 2018 | Politico Influence
By Theodoric Meyer and Marianne Levine
With David Beavers
FIRST IN PI — ANTELO STRIKES OUT ON HER OWN: Cristina Antelo has left VantageKnight, the boutique lobbying firm run by Manny Ortiz, to start her own shop, Ferox Strategies. Antelo, a former principal at the Podesta Group, joined VantageKnight as chief executive in November as the Podesta Group was coming apart in the aftermath of Tony Podesta’s decision to step down as chairman. But she was also laying the groundwork to build Ferox, which has been “operating in the background” since November. (The name is “Latin for courageous, fierce, aggressive, predecessor of ‘ferocious,’” according to the firm’s Twitter account.) “I wanted to be able to focus on my own firm, my own clients,” Antelo said in an interview. She and Ortiz “have different directions that we want to be going.”
— Antelo is bringing five clients to Ferox, she said, including the liquor giant Diageo, a former Podesta client. Lucia Alonzo, who worked with Antelo at the Podesta Group and joined her at VantageKnight, is coming with her, too. The new firm won’t focus on a particular policy area, Antelo said. “I’ve always been a generalist, and I like the bigger, hairier problems, if you will,” she said.
LEFFINGWELL JOINS PECK MADIGAN JONES: Matt Leffingwell, a former director of member services and coalition on the House Appropriations Committee, is joining Peck Madigan Jones as a lobbyist. He comes from Farr, Miller & Washington, an investment firm. Before working for the Appropriations Committee, he lobbied for the ONE Campaign and served as chief of staff to Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas). In an interview, Leffingwell said he’d known a number of the firm’s lobbyists — including Jay Heimbach, Jen Olsonand Peter Madigan — for years, and that he was looking forward to working with a client base that he described as “a nice blend of household-brand-name companies and nonprofits.”
AMERICAN CHEMISTRY COUNCIL ADDS TWO: The American Chemistry Council is adding two longtime Capitol Hill aides to its lobbying team. Spencer Pederson, who was previously a legislative assistant to Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), will work on transportation and infrastructure issues. And John Seale, the legislative director for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, will lobby on security issues.
Good afternoon, and welcome to PI. We live for your tips: tmeyer@politico.comand mlevine@politico.com. You can also follow us on Twitter: @theodoricmeyerand @marianne_levine.
WHY SOME TRADE GROUPS SPENT LESS IN 2017 THAN IN 2016: PI included a list earlier this week of the biggest lobbying spenders of the fourth quarter. When we ran the numbers for the full year and compared them with the previous year, though, we noticed that a number of trade groups and companies spent less in 2017 than they did in 2016, despite the massive battles over health care and taxes. Trade groups and companies that reduced their spending in 2017 included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the National Association of Realtors; the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform; the American Hospital Association; Southern Company; and NCTA.
— What happened? Trade groups told PI the lower spending levels were in large part because 2017 wasn’t an election year. Blair Holmes, a spokeswoman for the Chamber, said in a statement that the “Chamber’s lobbying activity remained consistent with previous non-election years” and that its spending last year “reflects our extensive work on two of the business community’s top priorities: achieving pro-growth tax reform and advancing trade.” Sara Wiskerchen, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Realtors, offered a similar explanation. “NAR’s spending is typically greater in election year cycles, especially since our spending isn’t solely for national efforts — the funds are largely provided to local and state REALTOR associations in support of their local candidates, issue campaigns and for other advocacy need,” she said.
— Here are the top lobbying spenders in 2017. (A note on methodology: PI’s rankings differ slightly from the Center for Responsive Politics’ because we haven’t included subsidiary groups in our totals.)
1. U.S. Chamber of Commerce: $58.8 million (versus $75.5 million in 2016)
2. National Association of Realtors: $54.4 million (versus $64.7 million in 2016)
3. Business Roundtable: $27.4 million (versus $15.7 million in 2016)
4. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: $25.4 million (versus $19.6 million in 2016)
5. U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform: $22.7 million (versus $27.7 million in 2016)
6. American Medical Association: $20.9 million (versus $18.8 million in 2016)
7. Google: $18 million (versus $15.4 million in 2016)
8. American Hospital Association: $17.5 million (versus $18.8 million in 2016)
9. AT&T: $16.8 million (versus $16.4 million in 2016)
10. Boeing: $16.7 million (versus $17 million in 2016)
11. Open Society Policy Center: $16.1 million (versus $5.5 million in 2016)
12. National Association of Broadcasters: $15.4 million (versus $16.4 million in 2016)
13. Comcast: $15.3 million (versus $14.3 million in 2016)
14. Lockheed Martin: $14.4 million (versus $13.5 million in 2016)
15. Southern Company: $13 million (versus $13.6 million in 2016)
16. National Retail Federation: $12.9 million (versus $7.1 million in 2016)
17. Amazon: $12.8 million (versus $11 million in 2016)
18. NCTA: $12.8 million (versus $13.4 million in 2016)
19. Northrop Grumman: $11.9 million (versus $12 million in 2016)
20. Facebook: $11.5 million (versus $8.7 million in 2016)
WYNN ACCUSED OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT: The Wall Street Journal’s Alexandra Berzon, Chris Kirkham, Elizabeth Bernstein and Kate O’Keeffereport that dozens of people “who have worked at [Steve] Wynn’s casinos told of behavior that cumulatively would amount to a decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Wynn. Some described him pressuring employees to perform sex acts.” Wynn is a casino magnate who is also the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. “The idea that I ever assaulted any woman is preposterous,” Wynn told the Journal in a statement.
— “The Journal contacted more than 150 people who work or had worked for Mr. Wynn; none reached out to the Journal on their own. … Former employees said they sometimes entered fake appointments in the books to help other female workers get around a request for services in Mr. Wynn’s office or arranged for others to pose as assistants so they wouldn’t be alone with him. They told of female employees hiding in the bathroom or back rooms when they learned he was on the way to the salon. ‘Everybody was petrified,' said Jorgen Nielsen, a former artistic director at the salon.” Full story.
THE LATEST ON LEWANDOWSKI: Corey Lewandowski has seen his access to the West Wing curtailed under John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, Robert Costa and Philip Rucker report. “After Lewandowski had a lengthy meeting at the White House with Kelly this month, he went to say hello to a friend from the campaign, White House counsel Donald McGahn, according to people familiar with the incident. When Jim Carroll, a White House lawyer, saw Lewandowski sitting in the waiting area without an appointment with McGahn, he told the operative that he had to leave and offered to escort him out, the people said, requesting anonymity to describe sensitive exchanges.” Full story.
SPOTTED: At the Washington Hilton on Thursday night on the first evening of Washington Mardi Gras, according to a PI tipster: Rick Gates. (You may recall that Paul Manafort and Gates were indicted last year on charges including money laundering and failing to register as foreign agents.)
AS THE REVOLVING DOOR SPINS: “Nearly 340 former congressional staffers now work for pharmaceutical companies or their lobbying firms, according to data analyzed by [Kaiser Health News] and provided by Legistorm, a nonpartisan congressional research company,” Kaiser Health News’ Sydney Lupkin reports. “On the flip side, the analysis showed, more than a dozen former drug industry employees now have jobs on Capitol Hill — often on committees that handle health care policy.” Full story.
JOBS REPORT
— Craig Wolf, the president and chief executive of the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, will step down at the end of June, the trade group announced. There’s a search underway for his successor.
— Drew O’Brien has joined Burson-Marsteller as a managing director and the global client lead for Bank of America. He was previously an executive vice president at Weber Shandwick and before that served as an aide to former Secretary of State John Kerry.
NEW JOINT FUNDRAISERS:
Texas Senate Victory Committee (Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Great America PAC, NRSC)
NEW PACs:
CounterAct (Super PAC)
NEW LOBBYING REGISTRATIONS:
Capitol Associates Inc.: Princeton Wound Care Center
Capitol Decisions Inc.: National Association of Long Term Hospitals
Merchant McIntyre & Associates LLC: American Leprosy Missions
Merchant McIntyre & Associates LLC: City of El Campo, TX
Merchant McIntyre & Associates LLC: University of Science and Arts of OklahomaNEW LOBBYING TERMINATIONS:
American Capitol Group: EnergyNet Corporation
Green Capitol LLC: Stony Brook Millstone-Watershed Association
The Chwat Group: AANP
United Concordia Companies Inc. (dba United Concordia Dental): United Concordia Companies Inc. (dba United Concordia Dental)https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2018/01/26/antelo-strikes-out-on-her-own-084966
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EPA Declines Industry Bid for TSCA Chemical Reporting Delay
Jan 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA has declined the chemical industry's bid for an enforcement “grace period” for late notifications of chemicals in commerce under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), retaining the Feb. 7 reporting deadline but suggesting the agency will work with companies that face challenges complying with the new inventory rule.
“The statute doesn't allow for a grace period, but our primary objective is full and accurate reporting,” Jeffrey Morris, director of EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics told the Society of Automotive Engineers Government/Industry Conference Jan. 25 in Washington, D.C.
While declining to grant the request, Morris said companies that make a good faith effort but fail to comply should contact the agency. “Come in and talk with us, nobody wants any operations to shut down,” he said.
Chemical manufacturers and importers face a Feb. 7 deadline for reporting to EPA chemicals used in commerce in the last 10 years. EPA will use the reporting to craft a draft inventory of chemicals that will be subject to the revised TSCA. Processors, for whom such retroactive reporting is voluntary, have until Oct. 5 to submit their data.
During the meeting auto industry officials noted their products contain many parts containing numerous chemicals and questioned whether missed reporting from a single supplier might lead to regulatory delays in production.
Maureen Gorsen, a former director of California's Department of Toxic Substances Control, who now works for the law firm Alston & Bird, questioned whether manufacturers or importers who miss the Feb. 7 reporting deadline but met the Oct. 5 compliance date for processors' voluntary reporting may be subject to a grace period.
EPA's inventory update rule is one of three rules issued last summer that create a new framework for assessing and managing risks of existing chemicals -- those that were on the market when TSCA was first enacted in 1976 -- which were largely grandfathered under the original TSCA.
EPA finalized the inventory update rule Aug. 11, beginning a six month deadline for manufacturers or importers to report their chemicals in commerce in the U.S. over the past 10 years, ending on June 21, 2016.
Processors, who choose to voluntarily submit have until Oct. 5. Data received will support EPA's prioritization of chemicals for review under the revised TSCA.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-declines-industry-bid-tsca-chemical-reporting-delay
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Court Rejects Rehearing in HFC Case
Jan 26, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Eric Wolff
The D.C. Circuit today said it would not rehear a case overturning EPA's regulation to limit use of hydrofluorocarbons.
The court rejected a request by EPA and manufacturers to revisit its August rejection of EPA's rule phasing down use of the global-warming inducing coolant. Industry groups and the Natural Resources Defense Council had hoped to get a more favorable rule from the full circuit, which has a majority of Democratic appointees. But the court couldn't find enough votes for the rehearing.
The EPA rule was designed to implement new provisions of the Montreal Protocol, which phase down use of the HFCs globally in favor of modern coolants largely made by U.S. companies. Unless industry and EPA can get the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court, the agency will likely turn to the Toxic Substances Control Act to provide rulemaking authority or ask Congress to pass a new law to implement the treaty.
The U.S. has yet to ratify its participation in the amendment to the Montreal Protocol limiting HFCs, but the Trump administration announced it would support the treaty in a Thanksgiving Day announcement by State Department officials.
WHAT'S NEXT: Groups will have to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Fluoride Ban Pushed by Environmentalists Now in Judge's Hands
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Joyce E. Cutler
Health advocates and the EPA could find out by mid-April how much evidence a federal court in San Francisco will allow to be considered in the advocates’ bid to ban fluoride in drinking water.
A coalition of environmental health groups want the court to review the government's refusal to initiate a rulemaking to ban fluoride in drinking water, and to consider a recently released study that they say underscores the need for a ban.
The groups argue that adding the mineral to water to reduce tooth decay damages the brain, and a federal toxics law gives them the right to ask a court to review their request anew.
But, just how much evidence will be allowed under the Toxic Substances Control Act is an issue that could recur in other lawsuits groups file against the government through citizen petitions.
“Frankly, it's the statute structure and the language of the statute that is most compelling here,” Judge Edward Chen of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said during the hour-long hearing Jan. 26. “I think it's supported by the legislative history.”
The Environmental Protection Agency wants the court to limit review to only the information it had at the time it made its decision to deny the petition to ban fluoride in water. But the environmental coalition argues the judge's review should include the new information.
Chen said he'd likely rule before an April 19 hearing on Food & Water Watch's lawsuit.
New Evidence?
The September 2017 study central to the group's argument linked increased concentrations of fetal fluoride exposure to lower childhood IQs, L. Michael Connett, an attorney representing the groups, told the court.
The court clearly can hear evidence not available before the administrative hearing, and the statute specifically says “de novo” review, Connett said. “EPA's position is not only completely at odds of the plain language of de novo proceeding, but it's directly at odds with Congress's own words.”
Congress expressly stated that it viewed the district court proceeding as one where evidence would be gathered.
“EPA has failed to explain that away,” he said. There's a “fair chance” to have discovery on expert testimony.
The judge said “the question is one of scope.”
But, the agency—not the court—should see that evidence first, according to Norman L. Rave Jr., with the Department of Justice's Environment & Natural Resources Division in Washington.
Petition Filed
In November 2016, the health coalition petitioned the EPA under Section 21 of TSCA to ban fluoride in drinking water. Amendments to the law allow a party to ask a court to consider a petition that the EPA rejected. In this case, the EPA denied the group's petition, and the group sued last February.
Chen last December rejected the EPA's argument that a citizen petition must evaluate all of a chemical's conditions of use and allowed the case to proceed.
Nothing in the 2016 TSCA amendments limit a court's consideration to just the administrative record, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Safer Chemicals Healthy Families argued in a Jan. 22 friend of the court brief.
The case is Food and Water Watch v. EPA, N.D. Cal., No. 17-cv-02162-EMC, case filed 4/18/17.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127440671&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127440671&jd=127440671
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(ACC Mentioned) NAS Workshop Comes at Crossroads for EPA's Once Influential IRIS Program
Jan 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Even as GOP lawmakers and other critics push to eliminate EPA's once influential Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program, its leaders are slated to appear before an upcoming National Academy of Sciences (NAS) workshop to outline changes they have made in their first year and make the case for the program's preservation.
NAS will host Feb. 1-2 a workshop titled, "Review of Advances Made to the IRIS Process," to allow a new NAS committee to review changes to IRIS that its new director, Kris Thayer, and Tina Bahadori, the director of EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment, have implemented at the program since taking over last year.
An NAS committee has been tasked with assessing "changes that have been implemented (or plan to be implemented) by [EPA] for its [IRIS] in response to recommendations made in previous [NAS] reports," the academy's website says.
It refers specifically to the critical 2011 panel review of EPA's draft IRIS assessment of formaldehyde, which included an extra chapter outside its charge addressing concerns with and recommendations for IRIS generally, and a generally positive 2014 follow-up review urging EPA to continue its ongoing efforts to reform the program and address the concerns.
"This public workshop ... will serve as a venue for EPA to present its changes to the IRIS program and to provide an opportunity for stakeholder input on the changes to the program. The committee will base its assessment on information received at this workshop."
The workshop is expected to review the program's implementation of an approach called systematic review. This process has been recommended by NAS in its previous IRIS reports, as it seeks to provide a structured and documented process for transparent literature review and evaluation of the body of information.
Thayer, who came to EPA from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, specializes in systematic review, and has worked to train IRIS staff as well as staff in EPA's Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) office in the methods.
Bahadori has previously made the case for preserving the program, telling a panel of EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) last October that the program is unique in that it is the only federal program that provides toxicity values for both cancer and noncancer effects.
She also indicated that the program was crucial for EPA, providing toxicity values that are used to implement a host of EPA regulatory programs, including Superfund cleanups, Safe Drinking Water Act decisions, clean air standards and others, underscoring concerns from the program's supporters that eliminating or consolidating the program within TSCA will leave key offices without a source of toxicity numbers.
But she also noted that the program plans to conduct a series of speedier, less-complex reviews, acknowledging concern that many of its assessments take years to complete. And she noted that the program would be reaching out and working with non-traditional partners, including states.
Such changes won praise last fall from EPA's chartered SAB, as well as its standing Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee.
And a 2014 NAS review found the agency had made significant progress implementing recommendations from the 2011 report, including IRIS' adoption of systematic review processes.
IRIS' Future
But the workshop comes amid ongoing questions about IRIS' future. IRIS was created within EPA in the 1980s to prepare toxicology dose-response analyses of industrial chemicals that could be used agency-wide.
But it has drawn criticisms, including from industry and other regulated entities, such as the Defense Department, NASA and others, for calculating what they consider overly strict risk numbers.
It has also been targeted by Congress' watchdog agency for limited production, and a slow pace of updating existing evaluations or creating new ones, leading the Government Accountability Office to deem the program so slow as to be obsolete in 2009.
The program has not produced any draft or final documents since the Trump administration took office last year.
And an early draft of the Trump administration's fiscal year 2018 budget request proposed axing the program -- though the final presidential budget proposal sought to preserve a smaller version of the program while signaling IRIS will be devoted in part to assessing substances under the revised toxics law and other mandatory regulatory programs.
Nevertheless, lawmakers have continued to push for the program's elimination or narrowing. While Congress is struggling to finalize a budget for the government and 2018 bills have been set aside to pursue short-term budget measures, Senate report language directs EPA to defund IRIS.
Report language attached to the House budget appears to suggest that EPA should consolidate IRIS with EPA's nascent risk assessment program within its toxics office, driven by Congress' 2016 reform of the TSCA. That language directs EPA "to support the ongoing and upcoming TSCA risk evaluation workload, the Committee would support the realignment and consolidation of risk assessment resources if proposed in future budget requests."
But such calls are raising significant concerns from environmentalists and other IRIS supporters who have been worried about the program's future and any effort to merge it into EPA's new TSCA programs.
They have been especially concerned about such efforts after the Trump administration appointed Nancy Beck as EPA's deputy toxics chief. Beck is a toxicologist who formerly worked with the American Chemistry Council and before that the White House Office of Management and Budget, both roles in which she criticized numerous IRIS assessments. Many of her critics have expressed concerns that Beck would try to stifle a program that she disagreed with, even if IRIS is housed within EPA's research office and not technically within Beck's purview.
NAS Review
Even before the workshop occurs, environmentalists are urging the panel to help preserve IRIS and making the case that any decision on the program's future should wait until after the NAS review is completed.
"If some have questions about the IRIS program and its value to the nation, why not wait until this review by the nation's premier scientific body is completed before considering whether to retain, eliminate or make changes to the IRIS program? What's really going on here is that certain segments of industry and their allies in Congress and political appointees at EPA would rather IRIS not exist," Jennifer McPartland, a scientist with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), writes in a Jan. 16 blog post.
She points to widening concerns over perfluorinated chemicals known as PFAS, arguing these are a perfect example of chemicals that should be assessed within the IRIS program.
"When persistent and bioaccumulative chemicals, some known to cause cancer, are showing up everywhere from polar bears in the Arctic to drinking water in places including North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia and New York, our best scientists with the most relevant experience need to be deployed. This is no time to be talking of eliminating or cutting back IRIS -- a program specifically designed to provide scientific support in critical public health situations," McPartland writes.
Lenny Siegel, an environmentalist and member of the NAS committee that reviewed IRIS in 2014, recently submitted comments to NAS on the new workshop, which he praised NAS for its undertaking.
Noting news that a consolidation of EPA's risk assessment programs is contemplated, Siegel asks the new NAS committee to "evaluate the potential impacts of IRIS losing its independence."
Siegel, executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, reminds the committee that "the IRIS program has historically been designed to develop toxicity information independent of EPA's regulatory programs. The regulatory programs frequently develop exposure standards, such as drinking water Maximum Contaminant Levels and Indoor Air Action Levels based on IRIS's toxicity assessments as well as other factors such as practicality and cost. … I fear that the proposal to move IRIS to the TSCA program will blur the lines between toxicity assessment and practical environmental regulation. That is, factors that are important in imposing standards in the field may be inserted into toxicity assessments."
Siegel explains that since he served on the last NAS committee, he has been elected mayor of Mountain View, CA, where he is involved in deciding how to address contaminated properties within its jurisdiction. "This responsibility has made me acutely aware of the importance of basing those decisions on trustworthy toxicity studies," Siegel writes. "Please do what you can to ensure that people like me can continue feeling comfortable making decisions based upon IRIS assessments."
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/nas-workshop-comes-crossroads-epas-once-influential-iris-program
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Dourson Calls on EPA to Expand IRIS Despite Program's Uncertain Future
Jan 29, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Michael Dourson, the controversial former nominee to lead EPA's toxics office, is calling on the agency to improve and expand its influential Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) chemical assessment program, even as the program faces an uncertain future with the Trump administration considering reducing or eliminating it entirely.
“I really encourage EPA to think deeply about IRIS and how to take it to the next level,” Dourson said during a Jan. 25 interview with Inside EPA, shortly after news broke that Dourson is leaving his role at the agency as senior adviser on toxics to Administrator Scott Pruitt. Dourson took the position shortly after President Donald Trump nominated him to serve as EPA's assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
Dourson asked Trump to withdraw his nomination following prolonged opposition from Senate Democrats and a handful of Republicans, who argued that Dourson was too closely tied to industry whom he had worked with as a consultant through his non-profit group Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA) on numerous chemicals.
He subsequently left the agency earlier this month and is now pushing back against suggestions from the administration and others about shuttering the IRIS review program.
Among his ideas for expanding and improving the program are adopting toxicity values from other EPA programs, considering other federal agencies' risk assessments, and ensuring senior officials vet IRIS assessments.
Dourson, a toxicologist, was one of a handful of EPA risk assessors in the 1980s who built the agency's original IRIS program, with the goal of “pulling all of EPA's risk values together.” Dourson left EPA in the 1990s to form his own risk assessment consulting group, which he called TERA. The group merged with the University of Cincinnati two years ago, and is now known as the university's Risk Sciences Center.
Since Dourson worked on IRIS, the program was consolidated within one center in EPA's research office, known as the National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA), meaning that in recent years the program has drawn less and less on the work of scientists outside NCEA and has centralized its resources.
Asked how to take IRIS to the next level, Dourson pointed to ideas he floated to the staff four years ago, when he was among the final candidates to become the staff director of the IRIS program.
The IRIS program has “always been a great concept, and there is a lot of interest in it. There are ways to improve the system, tighten up how you put the risk values together, and be more embracing of other agency risk values,” he said, noting there are “lots of people in the agency doing risk values.”
IRIS' risk numbers have gained much criticism as they have become more influential, with the agency using the risk values to help inform air, waste, and other policies. IRIS' risk values are often referenced by other agencies and states as well. But regulated entities regularly argue that IRIS' risk values are too conservative, and will lead EPA risk managers to make decisions that are too strict.
The program's productivity and quality has also fallen under scrutiny, with the Government Accountability Office placing it on its list of government programs at risk for waste, fraud and abuse after a 2009 review that deemed its pace of production so slow as to make the program obsolete.
And the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2011 released its review of EPA's last draft IRIS assessment of formaldehyde, which included an extra chapter beyond its charge outlining recommendations to strengthen the IRIS program's approach to its work. Since then, IRIS' leaders have sought to address the recommendations, largely by adopting systematic review methodologies. A new NAS committee is set to kick off an IRIS review workshop Feb. 1-2.
IRIS' Future
The Trump administration, which has yet to release any draft or final IRIS assessments during its tenure, has indicated its interest in eliminating or cutting the program in its fiscal year 2018 budget documents.
An early 2018 budget memo from EPA's chief financial officer, released last March, proposed eliminating the program, though the final presidential budget for 2018 proposed retaining the program in a smaller form. Congress, in report language attached to its pending 2018 budget bills, suggested defunding IRIS or consolidating EPA's risk assessments programs within its toxics office.
Already, sources have raised concern about what the president's 2019 budget may contain for IRIS, and whether the Trump administration will push ahead with plans to reduce or shutter the program.
Despite this, Dourson, who attended many meetings within EPA's toxics office and advised transition officials during his short tenure at the agency, is making the case for continuing IRIS.
Asked whether IRIS should remain in the research office -- as some environmentalists have argued to better shield it from politics in program offices like toxics -- Dourson replied, “I think the important point is IRIS is a great concept to have an agency-wide group of risk values. Having your best people, it doesn't matter who does it, as long as a senior group of EPA people are vetting it, that's the important thing. How you house it, that's really more of a management thing. I didn't really get into it in the several months I was there.”
Dourson said that when IRIS was first formed, staff from NCEA, the pesticides office and water office met to discuss risk numbers the offices had crafted for various chemicals, and numbers that were agreed on were added to the IRIS database. Now, there are more people doing evaluations across the agency, such as the air and Superfund offices, he said, and he encouraged EPA to “get them all up on the system.”
He also suggested that IRIS consider including some of the more recent provisional peer-reviewed toxicity values crafted by the Superfund program.
In late 2014, agency sources told Inside EPA that Dourson and an inside candidate, Vincent Cogliano, were the top contenders for the then-open IRIS director position. Both gave presentations to IRIS staff as part of the selection process for final candidates, where Dourson first raised the ideas, which were met with concern by staff and, after the news leaked, by environmentalists.
At the time, sources told Inside EPA that Dourson's presentation and a question-and-answer session with IRIS staff raised concerns, in particular because of his proposal to boost IRIS' productivity by having external scientists -- both EPA scientists in other programs and scientists outside the agency -- produce IRIS assessments. The idea was presented as a way to address the long-standing problem of low output in the IRIS program, but doing so would likely raise conflict of interest concerns from environmentalists and others.
“I got the impression he was saying we'd work with outside groups and then have things peer-reviewed because we have too much on our plate," one agency source said at the time.
Cogliano, who now works in EPA's Office of the Science Advisor, got the IRIS director job in 2014.
Dourson now expands the idea to suggest that “at some point, it would be nice to have a federal IRIS,” including in the database risk values crafted by agencies across the federal government. He noted as an example that there are many good risk values crafted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which performs toxicological profiles similar to IRIS assessments, though they do not include cancer risk estimates.
“Newer [risk] numbers are better, they can be different [from earlier evaluations] and that is ok,” Dourson said, adding that newer numbers are generally based on newer science and therefore an improvement over older risk estimates.
Meanwhile, Dourson says he is still weighing his next professional steps. One option may be to return to the University of Cincinnati (UC). Another option appears to be re-opening TERA, as it still exists as a separate legal shell entity. Dourson also mentioned the possibility of working with UC colleagues on a big data project funded by the National Institutes of Health.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/nas-workshop-comes-crossroads-epas-once-influential-iris-program
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EU Chemicals Registration Could See Substance Shortfall
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
Interpreting the apparent shortfall in new substances was “difficult for the low-volume chemicals because we had no prior data” on the extent to which some substances are used in the EU, Hansen said.
REACH has been in place for a decade and has been through previous deadlines, so lack of awareness among companies was unlikely to be the main reason for lagging registrations, Hansen said. “The majority of companies know they have an obligation to register and are working on getting their registration dossiers in,” he said.
The U.K.'s upcoming exit from the EU and uncertainty for U.K. companies over whether their REACH registrations will remain valid also was unlikely to be a factor in the lower-than-expected number of registered substances, according to Hansen.
“We're not observing any changes in trends” that could suggest U.K. companies are deciding not to go through the expensive and complex registration process because of Brexit, he said. Under REACH, registration involves assembling detailed dossiers about the properties and hazards of chemicals and proposing tests if there is insufficient substance information.
It will be easier to see if there's been a change in terms of registrations filed by U.K. companies after the May 31 deadline, Hansen added. To date, U.K. companies have filed 13 percent of the overall total of 67,144 REACH registration dossiers.
There is likely to be a surge in registrations of new substances closer to the deadline because “preparing a registration for a substance not registered before takes more time,” Yasenov said.
If registration dossiers have been filed for fewer substances than expected by May 31, that could be an indication that companies in the EU are using fewer substances than expected in their products and processes.
Robust REACH
The objective of REACH registration is to assemble available data about the currently known risks of chemicals. The first decade of REACH has generated “a huge amount of information,” Hansen said.
“We spend a lot of time in the agency to gain knowledge from that information” to protect health and the environment, but “there is still a lot to be done to understand the effects and the risks of chemicals” and to be “truly preventative” in terms of risk management, he said.
A Jan. 22 report by the Joint Research Center, the in-house science service of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, on chemicals entering the ocean, was an example of a study showing the scale of the task in understanding the risks of chemicals, according to Hansen. The report listed 2,700 possible marine contaminants and noted most are “largely unregulated,” and their “fate and potential effects are poorly understood.”
“On the positive side, the machinery we have in Europe to work systematically on chemicals and reduce the risks where necessary is a robust machinery,” Hansen said, referring to REACH and other EU legislation on chemicals, pesticides, and biocidal substances.
The EU framework “reduces the area of uncertainty and therefore the area of potential unknown risks” from chemicals and ECHA would work to use its experience and knowledge to improve implementation of chemicals legislation globally, he said.
But “the key question which I cannot answer is how far do we still need to go” to manage chemical risks, Hansen said.
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Should We Be Scared of Teflon? a New Sundance Documentary Investigates
Jan 27, 2018 | Los Angeles Times
By Amy Kaufman
First she took on BPA. Then sugar. Now, documentary filmmaker Stephanie Soechtig is going after Teflon — the chemical that coats so many of our nonstick pans.
In her latest expose, "The Devil We Know" — which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this week — Soechtig investigates how harmful Teflon is to our health. First introduced to consumers in 1945 by the corporation DuPont, Teflon was marketed as something that could make life easier. "It was supposed to liberate women from the kitchen," Soechtig explains. " 'Look, you don't have to stay scrubbing your pans all day long!' "
Teflon would go on to become so ubiquitous that as the documentarian discovered, the chemical can now be found in the bloodstream of 99.7% of Americans. So why is that a problem? Just look at Parkersburg, W.Va., the city where DuPont was headquartered. As Soechtig explores in the film, hundreds of local residents who were exposed to the chemical — also referred to as C-8, or PFOA — through their drinking water became extremely ill, suffering from cancer, facial deformities at birth and immunodeficiency. In February, the corporation was forced to pay $670.7 million to 3,550 plaintiffs whose water had been contaminated, though it has never admitted to any wrongdoing. (The corporation, which is now owned by Dow Chemical Co., did not respond to a request for comment.)
Despite the massive class action settlement, perfluorinated chemicals like C-8 continue to turn up in our cookware — just with different names. Soechtig is no stranger to this kind of controversy: In 2009, her film "Tapped" looked into our potentially dangerous plastic water bottles, and 2014's "Fed Up" researched the link between the processed food industry and obesity. In May, a judge dismissed a $12-million lawsuit aimed at the filmmaker and producer Katie Couric over 2016's Sandy Hook documentary, "Under the Gun," in which the Virginia Citizens Defense League felt they were depicted unfairly while discussing gun control.
A few hours before "The Devil We Know" was unveiled to festivalgoers, we spoke to Soechtig about her latest film and why she feels we need to be more mindful about what we put into our bodies.
OK, so first things first: What is Teflon?
If it's nonstick, it's Teflon. There's a whole category of chemicals called perfluorinated chemicals, and C8 is just one of those perfluorinated chemicals. But if you just want to eyeball it, if it's waterproof, stain-proof or nonstick, it's got one of these chemicals that you should be avoiding. And it's not just in pans. It's in the carpets your kids are crawling on. It's in fast-food wrappers. It's in your dental floss. Because there is nobody out there saying, "These things have to meet a safety criteria," they're allowed legally into the marketplace. And I just find that infuriating. I've always been like that, even since high school.
What do you mean?
I really don't like being a victim of corporations or a lack of regulations. So that always gets me excited — "Do you know that this is happening to you, it's perfectly legal and if we just all spoke up, things could change?" I like calling out when corporations or the government are screwing us.
How did you become interested in looking into Teflon?
I read some articles about it, and to be honest, I'd been looking for a way to tell the story of chemical contamination ever since my first film, "Tapped." And that's when I learned that killer chemicals are considered innocent until proven guilty — and the onus on proving them guilty is on citizens.
So the two things that really interested me was that this chemical was in 99.7% of our bloodstreams and that it was such a personal story. I love the idea of inspiring people to take action. I feel like we're all so complacent and we always think somebody else is going to solve the problem, or that we couldn't do anything anyway. I was hoping it could be a hopeful story instead of just doom and gloom.
But it is overwhelming, thinking about all of the products out there that are potentially harmful to us.
I do think people get so overwhelmed that they just throw their hands up, but you can't for your children's sake. We have an obligation to them. The people of Parkersburg can't throw their hands up. Listen, you can't take on everything that's out there. You have to pick what you're passionate about. But I think when it comes to things you're putting on your body and eating and consuming, that should be a top priority. It really should be a top priority of our government. There would only need to be a short yet concerted effort to be made by people in order for there to be change. When you look at the effect of "Blackfish" or "An Inconvenient Truth" — how quickly the corporations responded. We vote every day with the products we buy.
Right, and what's interesting is that this is out there — the DuPont settlement was all over the news. Do you think we're turning a blind eye to the issue?
I do think that there's a pervasive idea that if it's on the shelf, it's safe. I think people believe that someone is looking out for us. This is America, this water is safe if I turn it on — this cream is safe if I put it on my skin. I think people just are blown away when they find out that no, nobody is looking out for us. The chemical regulation in this country is abysmal.
Have you always been really cautious about what you consume?
I'm hyper-aware of it. I was pregnant while we were making this film, and somebody asked me, "Did it affect everything you did?" But not really, because since "Tapped," I've been using stainless steel bottles and cooking on cast iron pans. So yeah, I'm that girl. I'll tag my friends in pictures and be like, "That Nalgene bottle you're using probably has BPA in it." I'm a real good time.
Is this truly a problem outside of Parkersburg, where the chemical was being dumped into the local water system in large quantities?
C-8 has been detected in 6 million people's water systems. It's in Milan, the Netherlands, China. They're finding this in polar bears. This is not a story about Parkersburg. This is a story about you and I.
OK, so if one was interested in avoiding nonstick chemicals, what's the plan of action?
If you're out shopping and you don't know what to buy anymore, a great resource is the Environmental Working Group. My family, personally, we've switched to cast iron pans. I always just thought of Teflon as pans, which is so annoying and misleading. On top of that, if you're on the Williams-Sonoma website, everything says "PFOA free," but there are thousands of other replacement chemicals.
If we're not demanding change, no one is going to change things. If we say we're not going to buy this product anymore, they'll change it. They're going to meet their customers' demand. It means a tiny bit of discomfort: Maybe your eggs are going to stick to your pan for a little bit. But we need to send this message that we aren't going to take it anymore.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-sundance-teflon-documentary-20180127-story.html
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Oil Boom Gives the U.S. a New Edge in Energy and Diplomacy
Jan 28, 2018 | New York Times
By Clifford Krauss
A substantial rise in oil prices in recent months has led to a resurgence in American oil production, enabling the country to challenge the dominance of Saudi Arabia and dampen price pressures at the pump.
The success has come in the face of efforts by Saudi Arabia and its oil allies to undercut the shale drilling spree in the United States. Those strategies backfired and ultimately ended up benefiting the oil industry.
Overcoming three years of slumping prices proved the resiliency of the shale boom. Energy companies and their financial backers were able to weather market turmoil — and the maneuvers of the global oil cartel — by adjusting exploration and extraction techniques.
After a painful shakeout in the industry that included scores of bankruptcies and a significant loss of jobs, a steadier shale-drilling industry is arising, anchored by better-financed companies.
With the price of West Texas intermediate crude above $65 a barrel, a level not seen in almost three years, the United States is becoming a dominant producer. It is able to outflank competitors in supplying growing global markets, particularly China and India, while slashing imports from the Middle East and North Africa.Continue reading the main storyRELATED COVERAGEOil Price Briefly Reaches $70 as Buoyant Global Economy Bolsters DemandJAN. 16, 2018Oil Exports, Illegal for Decades, Now Fuel a Texas Port Boom JULY 5, 2017OPEC Took Aim at U.S. Oil Producers, but Hurt Itself, Too JUNE 15, 2017Texas Oil Fields Rebound From Price Lull, but Jobs Are Left Behind FEB. 19, 2017
This year, the United States is expected to surpass Saudi Arabia and to rival Russia as the world’s leader, with record output of over 10 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency.
“This is a 180-degree turn for the United States and the impacts are being felt around the world,” said Daniel Yergin, the economic historian and author of “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.” “This not only contributes to U.S. energy security but also contributes to world energy security by bringing new supplies to the world.”
At the same time, the United States is becoming a major exporter of natural gas, another outgrowth of the shale revolution, undercutting Russian energy dominance over Eastern Europe.
The improving energy picture comes as the Trump administration is attempting to increase offshore drilling and loosen other regulations on fossil fuel development. But just as the surge in oil and gas production in shale fields during the Barack Obama administration had little to do with Washington, the current rise is the result of private companies responding to global markets.
Shale fields can be developed relatively quickly and at modest costs relative to the giant projects, whether on land or offshore, that were once favored by big oil companies. That makes it easier to turn investment spigots on or off to adjust to market fluctuations. Companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron are putting increasing amounts of capital in shale fields, particularly in West Texas and New Mexico.
The results go far beyond the economic, offering Washington strategic weapons once unthinkable. The United States and its allies now have a supply cushion at a time when political turmoil in Venezuela, Libya and Nigeria is threatening to interrupt flows to markets.
Only a few years ago, such threats — along with a recent pipeline failure in the North Sea and storms in the Gulf of Mexico — would have sent the price of crude soaring. Instead, the rise has been muted, and gasoline at the pump remains below $2.60 a gallon across most of the United States.
The new energy power also relieves pressure on Washington to act militarily if tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia break out into war. And it gives Washington the leeway to apply sanctions on other producers — as it has in Russia, and may in Iran or Venezuela — with far less risk to the global economy.
It is a striking contrast to the 1970s, when Arab oil boycotts forced motorists to line up for blocks to fill their tanks and the economy went into a tailspin. Even more recently, during the presidency of George W. Bush, domestic oil output was declining so rapidly that the country set a course to replace oil with biofuels like ethanol.
Many environmentalists argue that by increasing oil and gas supplies and lowering prices for consumers, shale drilling is extending the life of fossil fuels to the detriment of the environment and the development of cleaner energy.
The shale drilling revolution has remade the global energy market, with imports from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries plunging by 20 percent from late 2016 to late 2017. At the same time, exports rose by hundreds of thousands of barrels a day.
In response, Saudi Arabia led OPEC in a new direction. Instead of throttling back to support prices as the cartel had done so often, it left the market alone and even increased production for a time.
Prices fell below $40 a barrel, as the Saudis and their allies hoped to drive American operations out of business by making shale drilling uneconomical. American exploration quickly dropped, but the price squeeze made companies more innovative in the use of drilling technologies, robotics and sensors to maximize output and reduce costs.
While scores of smaller companies went out of business, the survivors lengthened horizontal wells to yield more oil, and used clever hedging and drilling strategies to maximize profits even when prices slumped.
The response surprised the global oil community. OPEC, Russia and allied producing countries changed course and began cutting back again in 2016.
Nothing like the current situation was foreseen in late 2014, when rising domestic production began weighing on global oil prices.
“OPEC missed the point,” said René Ortiz, a former OPEC secretary general and former Ecuadorean energy minister. “They thought they could recover the U.S. market by bringing the prices down. Now the U.S. has gained the leading position in the world oil market regardless of what OPEC does.”
“This displacement of Saudi oil, Nigerian oil, Libyan oil and Venezuelan oil,” Mr. Ortiz concluded, “was never anticipated.”
A week ago, OPEC leaders met in Oman to discuss a probable extension of production cuts into 2019 to support prices. Their biggest obstacle is the United States.
Technological advances unlocking oil from tight rocks like shale has led to a drilling frenzy enabling a doubling of output in a decade, transforming unlikely places like North Dakota and New Mexico into world class petroleum hubs. Pipelines are being built across Texas to serve ports where oil can be pumped onto tankers headed for China, India and other markets.
Domestic production last year averaged 9.3 million barrels a day, and the Energy Department projects that the figure will climb to 10.3 million barrels a day this year, surpassing the record set in 1970. In the meantime, since a 40-year export ban was lifted in 2015, exports of American oil have risen to roughly two million barrels a day — more than many OPEC members.
The department projects an additional increase in domestic production of 500,000 barrels a day in 2019.
Concerns over climate change as well as the growing popularity of electric cars and the eventual aging of the best shale fields will probably curb production and demand over the next few decades. But in the short term, the boom has changed the landscape.
The Energy Department projects that the recent surge will hold the price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, to $60 a barrel in 2018 and $61 a barrel in 2019 — a modest increase from $54 last year. (The Brent price rose above $70 a barrel this month, but few analysts see a return to $100-a-barrel oil.)
The emerging order in the energy realm is a stable balance of power. Saudi Arabia, which essentially runs OPEC, has put a floor under the oil price — probably around $50 a barrel — with its limits on output and exports over the last four years. But now the United States, by the sheer force of its production, the supremacy of its technology, and an unmatched pipeline, refinery and storage structure, has put a ceiling to the price.
Experts note that when oil climbs to $60 a barrel and higher, as it has lately, a drilling rush commences — the national rig count has climbed by over a third in the last year — promising to refill domestic and even global energy inventories. Only a major war or other disruption is likely to send prices soaring.
“We have all suffered these depressed prices over the last two years and we are excited to see the new prices and we will respond accordingly,” said Harald Jordan, vice president for engineering at Peak Energy, a Colorado-based producer. “You will see rig activity continue to increase.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/business/energy-environment/oil-boom.html
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Oil Potential Off U.S. Coasts: Knowns and Unknowns
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alan Kovski
Nearly all the U.S. offshore is open for consideration of oil and gas leasing, but geologists point out not all offshore areas are likely to produce hydrocarbon riches.
Industry and academic geologists told Bloomberg Environment they see a lot of potential for oil and gas discoveries beneath some U.S. federal waters, notably including the eastern Gulf of Mexico near Florida, a broad area off Southern California, and in the Arctic.
Geologists see a much more uncertain but intriguing potential along the East Coast. They offer only skeptical remarks or idle curiosity when asked about some other parts of the Outer Continental Shelf.
Arguments over whether offshore drilling should be allowed erupted anew Jan. 4 when the Trump administration proposed to open more than 90 percent of federal offshore leasing areas to oil and gas exploration through a new five-year leasing program. But statements by governors, environmental groups and others in that debate generally don't address whether there's anything to find in any given location.
There is healthy skepticism and hopefulness in the oil industry about whether such an expansion of offshore exploration will happen, Charles Sternbach, president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, told Bloomberg Environment. He had sought opinions on the subject from his “brain trust” of AAPG members who are executives in oil and seismic companies.
“There was a sense of optimism—guarded optimism,” Sternbach said.
Where to Drill? (Or Not)
Geologists said the most promising areas are the eastern Gulf of Mexico and offshore Southern California, areas where discoveries already have been made.
The Chukchi and Beaufort seas off the northern coast of Alaska look promising but especially expensive, given the rigors of Arctic sea ice and weather and the regulatory strictures. Three lease sales in the Chukchi and three in the Beaufort are included in the draft five-year leasing plan from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an Interior Department agency.
Most Alaska coasts are less promising for oil and gas.
When President Barack Obama in 2014 barred leasing in Bristol Bay off southwestern Alaska, it was accepted without a political fight because the oil industry had shown no interest in the area. That area—the North Aleutian Basin in federal offshore planning areas—was left out of the Trump administration's draft proposed plan.
Parts of the Atlantic are said to hold potential: Past exploration drilling in U.S. Atlantic waters touched several areas and found some natural gas, but most of the U.S. continental shelf in the Atlantic remains to be explored.
There has been little or no attempt to study the Pacific continental shelf off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and the northern half of California. Only slight amounts of hydrocarbons have been found onshore in the Pacific Northwest, and the offshore is virtually a blank slate. The onshore geology there does not bode well for finding oil in the offshore.
Marine sanctuaries also protect much of the near-shore coast from central California to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington.
Promise, Politics, and Florida
The eastern Gulf is the most accessible, and exploration drilling there has demonstrated good prospects for petroleum, said geologist Mark Shuster, associate director of the energy division in the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin.
It would represent a practical expansion of existing oil and gas activity in the Gulf of Mexico, according to geologists.
“The eastern Gulf of Mexico has been long known to have reserves that are just waiting to be had,” Sternbach said.
Leasing within 125 miles of the Florida coast is barred by law until 2022. The new five-year leasing plan being written by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to run from 2019 to 2024 could allow exploration in that part of the eastern Gulf after the restriction ends, but that possibility appears to be foreclosed.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Jan. 9—five days after he unveiled the draft leasing plan—that he was “removing Florida from consideration for any new oil and gas platforms” after having conferred with Gov. Rick Scott (R) of Florida.
The decision looked like a political gift, many Democrats charged, noting that Scott might challenge Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) for Nelson's Senate seat. Nelson opposes drilling off Florida.
Undeveloped California Fields
Governors, state legislators, and members of Congress from many coastal states, including California, have since asked that they be given the same consideration that Scott received.
There are 38 producing leases in federal waters off Southern California, where production platforms have stood in the Santa Barbara Channel for decades. Shuster said the next steps for development could be north and south along the coast.
A little to the north of the Santa Barbara Channel are the Point Arguello and Point Pedernales fields, the farthest north of the developed fields in the area. The Point Pedernales field is in the offshore portion of what is called the Santa Maria Basin, where there are several discovered but undeveloped fields.
There are oil seeps in the sea floor in the Santa Maria Basin, said Dan Francis, a geology professor at California State University at Long Beach. It is part of a very large territory off the Southern California coast where more oil fields could be developed, he said.
During a congressional hearing Jan. 19 on the subject of offshore exploration, Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) did not dispute the idea that there is more oil to be found off the coast of his state. It is a matter of balancing oil development against other priorities, he said, implying the balance in California tilts against more offshore oil exploration.
“We have significant reserves in California that we know are there, and we've known for decades that they're there,” Costa said. “California, Florida, and other coastal states have made determinations on how they want to balance.”
Atlantic Potential Undetermined
If new exploration along the southern portion of the Atlantic Coast were to occur, oil probably would be the key, Shuster said. The economics of development “probably wouldn't make much sense if it's just gas,” he said.
Shuster, a former Royal Dutch Shell geologist, said a sedimentary basin off North and South Carolina stands out as having potential for oil accumulations. It has not been explored other than through seismic surveys, which can map possible areas but cannot by themselves identify oil or gas accumulations.
There also is potential for oil discoveries where the outflow from rivers produces thick enough layers of sediment—spreading out from Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay and other areas.
Fifty-one exploratory wells were drilled in U.S. Atlantic waters in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Most were relatively close to the coast, leaving deeper waters above thicker sedimentary layers unexplored, said Donald Van Nieuwenhuise, director of the petroleum geoscience programs of the University of Houston.
Areas of thick sediment called the Southeast Georgia Embayment and the Blake Plateau off the Georgia and northern Florida coasts are among the best areas for Atlantic exploration, Van Nieuwenhuise said.
The coastal shelf is very wide off New England and Long Island, providing more areas for exploration in some thick sedimentary layers, Van Nieuwenhuise said. Some hydrocarbons were found in that region in the 1970s-1980s drilling.
Gas fields off the coast of Nova Scotia in Canada and oil fields farther north off Newfoundland encourage companies to consider looking off New England for hydrocarbons. Whether leasing will ever again happen there or anywhere else along the Atlantic Coast remains to be seen.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127440665&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127440665&jd=127440665
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Feds Set Hearing Dates as Alaska Lawmakers Seek Plan Changes
Jan 26, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management today released a new schedule for public hearings on its proposed offshore oil and gas leasing plan for 2019-2024 after canceling four public sessions due to the government shutdown.
BOEM announced it will convene 20 hearings in February and March in addition to the three public sessions already held on its outer continental shelf leasing plan.
But Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) is lobbying the Trump administration to vastly expand its outreach to Alaska Native groups in the 14 state regions targeted for leasing.
In a recent letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Walker welcomed proposed plans to open leasing in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas of the Alaska Arctic and in the Cook Inlet in southern Alaska.
But the governor wants BOEM to hold "formal consultations" with the state's tribal governments, the Alaska Native corporations and other stakeholders that would be affected by the proposed offshore leasing program.
Walker said state officials "feel strongly the meetings should occur in each of the areas where lease sales have been proposed."
BOEM's original proposal set a single public hearing date for Alaska on Jan. 23. Today that session was rescheduled to Feb. 21. But so far no other hearings are planned in the state.
Meanwhile, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) is asking Zinke to remove several Alaska offshore regions from the proposed five-year plan.
Murkowski, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said she continues to endorse oil and gas development in Alaska's Arctic and Cook Inlet regions. But she wants BOEM to drop leasing plans for sensitive ecological regions in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Strait from the OCS schedule. Most of those regions hold little or no oil or gas, according to an Interior Department report (Energywire, Jan. 17).
"There are certain areas that we feel are not opportune for leasing and for development," Murkowski said yesterday, according to Reuters. "Let's focus on where the
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/01/26/stories/1060072125
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Atlantic Coast Pipeline Lands Crucial State Permits
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Ballard
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a planned 600-mile natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to North Carolina, secured a pair of critical state environmental permits.
A water quality certification needed for the project to move forward in North Carolina was issued by the state Department of Environmental Quality Jan. 26. The same day, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection announced approval of a construction stormwater permit for the project.
Four major domestic energy companies—Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, and Southern Company Gas—are developing the project. The companies aim to start delivering fuel through the pipeline in late 2019, and they say the project will create thousands of jobs and result in $377 million in annual energy cost savings.
However, environmental groups call the project unnecessary and harmful to natural resources. Those groups have filed legal challenges to state and federal pipeline decisions.
Several more state and federal approvals still are needed for the project, including permits for air emissions from a compressor station, stormwater management, and erosion control in North Carolina. The project also still needs a federal discharge permit.
The developers recently announced that they will begin limited tree felling and vegetation clearing in areas planned for construction this year.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127440666&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127440666&jd=127440666
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Landowners, Frackers in Tense Faceoff in Wake of Colorado Blast
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Meenal Vamburkar
Chemicals companies are registering fewer substances than expected ahead of a May 31 deadline for submission of registration dossiers to the European Chemicals Agency, ECHA's new executive director told Bloomberg Environment in an interview.
By May 31, any company that wants to sell a chemical on the European Union market in volumes of 1 metric ton or more annually must hold a registration number under the EU's REACH law (Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 on the restriction, evaluation, and authorization of chemicals).
Companies ranging from multinational corporations like AkzoNobel NV and BASF SE to boutique dyemakers that don't register by the deadline could face enforcement action from authorities in the EU's 28 countries.
Limited Pool
The number of registration dossiers filed so far is above forecasts, but those registrations cover a relatively limited pool of previously unregistered chemicals, Bjorn Hansen said Jan. 24. Hansen has been ECHA director since Jan. 1.
ECHA made plans ahead of the May 31 deadline based on the assumption that 60,000 registration dossiers covering 25,000 chemicals would be filed. Multiple companies can hold registration numbers for the same substance.
So far, companies have only filed 14,578 dossiers relevant for the 2018 deadline, covering 6,403 chemicals, according to ECHA data updated as of Jan. 19. The deadline applies to companies selling chemicals in the EU in annual volumes of one to 100 metric tons.
But many of those substances are not new to ECHA, having been registered by companies by previous deadlines, which applied to chemicals above the 100 metric ton threshold. Of the 6,403 substances, about 4,200 were previously unregistered, ECHA spokesman Nedyu Yasenov told Bloomberg Environment Jan. 26.
Reasons Unclear
The fracking frenzy in Colorado is spurring a tense faceoff between shale drillers in the region and residents seeking a better handle on the dangers in their own backyards after a killer pipeline explosion last year.
Gov. John Hickenlooper ordered a review of oil and natural gas operations after the April blast, which destroyed a home, killed two men and injured a woman just north of Denver. Now the industry is clashing with state residents who are pushing for new rules that would mandate precise and comprehensive public mapping for underground lines.
With regulators extending the rulemaking process into next month, residents say the additional disclosure would help guarantee lines are properly cared for and support quicker emergency response if an accident occurred. The industry says it's unneeded, and could open them up to terrorist strikes.
Colorado is seeing “an affluent population collide with energy development,” which isn't necessarily the case in other parts of the country, according to Katie Bays, an analyst at Height Securities LLC in Washington. “There's very little that everyone in Colorado agrees on.“
The dispute comes as explorers are increasingly returning to the oil-rich rock of Colorado as a way to expand beyond the shale plays of Texas and New Mexico. Drilling in the Denver-Julesburg Basin northeast of Denver has doubled since mid-2016 to 25 rigs, including the recent addition of equipment searching for natural gas for the first time in two years.
Last April's explosion in the community of Firestone was triggered by natural gas leaking from a gathering line nearby, which had been abandoned but not capped. The blast was linked to one of Anadarko Petroleum Corp.’s wells and prompted the driller to close more than 3,000 wells in Colorado as a precaution.
The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission last month released a draft of new rules it's proposing in response to the governor's call for a review. The results, outlined in a September report, found more than 120,000 flow-line segments running within 1,000 feet of buildings. At the same time, more than 400 of the lines failed to pass standard testing, according to the regulators.
The new regulations, if approved, would addresses management of abandoned flow lines and add new requirements for leak detection and pressure testing. They don't include mandated public mapping, spurring protests by local landowners.
“What I'm seeing is that residents and homeowners are concerned whether the largest investment they have is safe,” said Sara Loflin, executive director of the League of Oil and Gas Impacted Coloradans, which seeks to promote oil and gas reform statewide.
A decision will come after the group revisits the issue in February, the commission said in its Jan. 9 meeting.
The fracking frenzy is crossing paths with Colorado's suburbs, as housing developments emerge in areas previously occupied by rigs and farmland. With a state law that allows entire neighborhoods to be forced into leasing the minerals beneath their properties as long as one person consents, homeowners are unable to stop development.
In contrast, many states require 51 percent of owners in a drilling area to consent. Against that backdrop, some residents and home builders are concerned about preventing another incident like the Firestone blast.
That sentiment extends to home builders, too. Pipeline location information is important in planning and development, the Colorado Association of Home Builders said this month. Disclosure would enable builders to include pipelines in their surveys and provide information to local governments and homeowners, the group said.
811 Call
The industry sees it differently. At the January hearing, oil and natural gas companies, including representatives of Anadarko, argued that public information about locations could invite terrorists to tamper with or damage lines. They have pointed to the 811 “call before you dig” hotline, which provides information on individual lines.
“We do not want to give roadmaps to those who wish to intentionally harm our energy infrastructure,” said Dan Haley, chief executive officer of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, in an emailed statement. “That would only place a far greater number of people at risk.“
Anadarko didn't immediately respond to request for additional comment.
Environmentalists and community representatives have said the 811 option falls short because it doesn't ensure local governments can plan safely, and could slow response following an emergency event. “If you want to say you're one of the safest industries, why are you fighting mapping?” Loflin asks.
Loflin says she doesn't expect the industry to concede on mapping information, and believes a legislative solution—not just a regulatory ruling—will be needed to over the industry's objections. Her group plans to work with state legislature, other resident groups and local governments top make that happen.
“At times, Colorado becomes a testing ground for what this could look like in other places,” Loftin said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127440681&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127440681&jd=127440681
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Ohio Gubernatorial Hopeful Kucinich Calls for End to Oil, Natural Gas Drilling
Jan 26, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
In his first major policy announcement since joining the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial primary earlier this month, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich said if he’s elected he would put an end to all oil and natural gas drilling in the state and ban underground injection wells often used to dispose of industry waste.
In a speech delivered in Columbus, OH, on Thursday, Kucinich said the highest priority of the state should be protecting fresh water supplies, calling his policy proposal an “economic, social and human health imperative.”
Kucinich, who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, said if elected as governor he would direct the Ohio Department of Natural Resources under the state constitution to stop issuing all drilling permits. He also would order a ban on state-wide injection wells “to protect public health and water supplies.”
The Ohio legislature now has an industry friendly Republican majority. While Kucinich’s remarks indicated that he would rely on the power of the governor’s office to achieve his policies, he told reporters that he has experience working across the aisle.
In a speech aimed largely at the perceived dangers of high-volume hydraulic fracturing, Kucinich said existing permits would be “carefully scrutinized for compliance and cancelled for any infraction.” He also said the power of eminent domain would be invoked to “acquire existing drilling sites, settle up royalties for locals, close the wells and levy a severance fee on the companies.” In addition, he threatened a “major class action lawsuit” against any producers or injection well operators that have caused injury to Ohioans or the environment.
Ohio has helped send the nation’s gas production soaring in Appalachia with Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Utica Shale drilling is underway throughout the eastern part of the state, with its current epicenter in the southeastern counties.
Ohio Oil and Gas Association spokesman Mike Chadsey called Kucinich’s speech a “throw away line from an establishment politician in front of a downtown crowd.” He said Kucinich “should come to southeast Ohio and say that when you are looking into the eyes of hard working folks relying on these opportunities to feed their kids.”
Republican Gov. John Kasich is term limited and will leave office in 2019. Most of the state’s shale boom has unfolded under his two terms in office. He took office in 2011, the same year the first commercial Utica production was reported.
The Ohio Democratic primary field includes the former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Richard Cordray; state Sen. Joe Schiavoni; Ohio Supreme Court Justice Bill O’Neill, and former state Rep. Connie Pillich.
Attorney General Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov Mary Taylor are facing off in the Republican primary.
Kucinich in his presidential campaigns had advocated for universal healthcare, banning offshore drilling and increasing renewable energy. Cordray lead a recent poll conducted by the 1984 Society, a bipartisan group founded by former state senate members. Kucinich trailed him by seven points in the poll. On the Republican side DeWine lead Taylor by a wide margin, carrying 54% of the 801 respondents who were polled.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/113180-ohio-gubernatorial-hopeful-kucinich-calls-for-end-to-oil-natural-gas-drilling
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Jan 29, 2018 | KPLC
By KPLC Digital Staff
Authorities in Vinton say that an accident scene involving an 18-wheeler carrying hazardous materials has been cleared.
Businesses in the area were shut down as a precaution, but are beginning to reopen.
West Street, from Interstate 10 to Penny Street, was closed due after the truck overturned.
Vinton Mayor Kenny Stinson says the truck was carrying Toluene Diisocyanate. According to the American Chemistry Council, Diisocyanates are a family of chemical building blocks mainly used to make polyurethane products, such as rigid and flexible foams, coatings, adhesives, sealants and elastomers.
Five businesses near the overturned truck were closed temporarily and evacuated until the spill could be cleaned up and the area deemed safe. Those included Delta Fuel, Lucky Delta, Burger King, Sonic and Cobblestone Hotel.
Vinton Fire Chief Chris Vice says there was no hazard to the public.
http://www.kplctv.com/story/37363680/truck-carrying-hazardous-materials-overturns-in-vinton-businesses-evacuated
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Funding, Permitting Fights Loom in Infrastructure Push
Jan 29, 2018 | E&E Daily
President Trump will issue a bipartisan plea for an infrastructure package during tomorrow's State of the Union speech, even as top administration officials signaled this weekend the plan will take further aim at regulations to help make up for funding levels that Democrats already say are too low.
White House Legislative Director Marc Short made the rounds of the Sunday news shows to preview tomorrow's speech, which will discuss infrastructure, the economy, trade, immigration and national security, organized around a theme of "building a safe, strong and proud America."
The initial infrastructure plan floated by the administration is to invest $200 billion of federal money over 10 years to generate $1 trillion or more in total investment after contributions from state and local governments and the private sector.
Pressed on the move to flip on its head the traditional 80/20 federal-state split that has historically funded infrastructure, Short predicted there would ultimately be Democratic buy-in for the plan.
"There's no doubt that I think Democrats in Congress will want more federal dollars for that issue," Short said on "Fox News Sunday."
"But we also have to recognize that we have a significant debt problem in our country," he said. "And so, this can't just be all federal largesse that pays for this. So, a partnership is what makes sense."
Short predicted the continued "rollback" of regulatory constraints would encourage private investment "coming in to make these projects real."
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) echoed the point on a different Fox News show yesterday, as she acknowledged the "big challenge" of how to pay for the plan.
"But the president has also laid out some important reforms to the permitting process, which would also save costs," she told Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning Futures."
D.J. Gribbin, special assistant to the president for infrastructure policy, said at the U.S. Conference of Mayors' winter meeting last week that Trump will discuss the plan tomorrow, to be followed within a week or two by the release of "principles."Energy, resource projects
A draft leaked last week hinted that energy and water projects, as well as a loan fund for Superfund cleanups, would be part of the equation.
That document also touted the creation of an "Interior Maintenance Fund" financed by mineral and energy development on public lands.
For his part, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Friday said the national parks maintenance backlog would be addressed in tomorrow's speech (E&E News PM, Jan. 26).
The president will prioritize generating $1 trillion in total investment and shortening the permitting process for infrastructure projects, but the mechanisms for achieving those goals will be left up to negotiations between Congress and the White House, Gribbin said.
Trump raised eyebrows last week when he said the plan would look to encourage $1.7 trillion in spending, but a senior administration official declined to comment Friday, telling reporters that "clarity" on the plan's cost would be forthcoming.Cuts, gas tax
Gribbin indicated that the administration would seek to cut and repurpose budgets elsewhere to pay for the $200 billion federal investment. Existing federal funding programs for infrastructure would largely remain intact, he added.
Gribbin said an increase in the gas tax, which hasn't been raised since 1993, could also be in play, though that idea remains unpopular with congressional Republicans.
"We don't support it, we don't oppose it either because we want to be neutral and keep our options on the table," he said.
Environmentalists are already bracing to defend environmental laws from being scaled back in order to expedite infrastructure projects.
"President Trump's scam infrastructure plan looks to silence impacted communities by gutting bedrock community and environmental safeguards used to fix or fight pipelines that leak, bridges that collapse, highways that segregate communities, and gas wells that seep dangerous pollution near schools, playgrounds and neighborhoods," Earthjustice senior legislative counsel Raul Garcia said in a statement Saturday.
The Center for American Progress this weekend released its own analysis showing that 10 federal environmental laws could be at risk of "fundamental changes" in the infrastructure push, including the Clean Air and Clean Water acts.
"No one should be fooled by Trump's infrastructure scam," said Christy Goldfuss, CAP's senior vice president of energy and environment policy who also served in the Obama White House's Council on Environmental Quality.
"This is little more than a Trojan horse designed to promote the interests of corporate polluters over communities and the environment."
The White House's Short rejected that argument on Fox News yesterday, even as he touted the economic effects of the Trump administration's regulatory efforts.
"The administration has no plans to gut the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act," he said. "But what you've seen really over the last year is by rolling back the burdensome regulations the previous administration had put in place, the economy has taken off. That's what we want to make sure that our economy continues to grow."State of the Union
This week will be the president's first State of the Union address. He delivered remarks to a joint session of Congress shortly after his inauguration.
Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) will give the Democratic response. Elizabeth Guzman, the first Hispanic female immigrant elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, will deliver the Spanish language response.
Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma, who is the president's nominee to lead NASA, is bringing science communicator Bill Nye to the speech (E&E Daily, Jan. 19).
Several lawmakers, including Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters of California, John Lewis of Georgia, Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Frederica Wilson of Florida, will not be attending.
Reporter Nick Sobczyk contributed.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/01/29/stories/1060072189
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(ACC Mentioned) Waste Storage Industry to Save Millions Under New EPA Rule
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sara Merken
Waste storage and processing facilities will save $28 million under an EPA rule to eliminate air pollution monitoring requirements on waste containers.
The Environmental Protection Agency's rule eases monitoring requirements for pressure-relief devices on waste containers. The final rule, to be published Jan. 29, will save the industry $4.2 million annually in addition to those initial savings.
The EPA issued the rule in response to a request from the American Chemistry Council and the Eastman Chemical Co., which is a plastics, chemical, and fibers manufacturer. The groups jointly petitioned the EPA in May 2015 to reconsider certain toxic pollutant emissions limits provisions, including monitoring requirements for portable containers.
Eastman Chemical and the American Chemistry Council filed lawsuits in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenging the air pollutants standards, which were issued March 18, 2015.
The EPA published its proposed changes to the requirements Aug. 7, 2017, which said the action would “not substantially change the level of environmental protection” provided under the standards.
The chemistry council referred Bloomberg Environment to a Sept. 21, 2017, comment letter, which stated the group's support for the EPA proposal because “relevant cost and monitoring data demonstrate that these requirements would be technically infeasible to implement, unnecessarily duplicative of existing regulatory requirements, and costly, while providing virtually no environmental benefit.”
Eastman Chemical didn't immediately respond to Bloomberg Environment's request for comment.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127440677&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127440677&jd=127440677
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(ACC Mentioned) Waste Storage Rule Changes to Result in $32m Compliance Savings
Jan 26, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA has finished work on changes to 2015 hazardous pollutant regulations that the agency says will afford about the same degree of environmental protection while saving one niche of the waste industry tens of millions of dollars.
The changes, set for publication in Monday's Federal Register as a final rule, pertain to businesses that store and treat used oil, used solvents and other wastes. The rule would drop an earlier requirement that those companies monitor the pressure relief devices used to prevent potentially perilous vapor buildups in storage containers.
That shift doesn't substantially change the level of protection furnished by the original 2015 standards but "reduces burden to this industry" by $28 million in capital costs on top of another $4.2 million in the yearly price tag for compliance, according to the rule.
EPA had published the 2015 regulations for what are technically known as "off-site waste and recovery operations" following a legally required review to decide whether an update to the previous standards was needed in light of improved technology and increased knowledge about pollutants' health effects.
The American Chemistry Council then sued, alleging that the new regulations effectively created a zero-emissions limit, contrary to a Clean Air Act requirement that EPA base standards on the best-performing sources. Under a 2016 settlement, agency officials agreed to reconsider the pressure relief device monitoring provisions. Completion of the final rule follows a timetable laid out in that agreement (Greenwire, Dec. 16, 2016).
Opposing the change was the Sierra Club, which argued that monitoring was essential to ensuring compliance.
While EPA had concluded that dropping the requirement posed only a "low" potential for hazardous pollutant releases, the agency knows that such releases had occurred in the past "and thus are likely to occur in the future," an attorney for the environmental group wrote in comments on the draft rule last September.
In pursuing the initial 2015 regulations, EPA had counted about 50 "major source" operations that would be affected, with the new standards cutting emissions of methanol, toluene and other pollutants about 200 tons per year.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/01/26/stories/1060072141
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(ACC Mentioned) The Trump Administration Is Lifting Key Controls on Toxic Air Pollution
Jan 29, 2018 | Vox
By Umair Irfan
The Environmental Protection Agency just took a dramatic step toward deregulating some major sources of toxic air pollution, which could have huge implications for public health.
Under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to regulate facilities that emit one or more of 189 hazardous air toxics like benzene, dioxin, and lead that cause health problems such as cancer and birth defects.
A facility like a chemical plant or a factory is classified as “major” by the Clear Air Act if it has the potential to emit more than 10 tons of an individual toxic chemical or 25 tons of a combination of toxics into the air per year. Those that cross this line have to deploy the “maximum achievable control technology” (MACT) to reduce pollution as much as possible with the best hardware that’s available.
Pollution sources that are regulated under this major sources standard are subject to these regulations indefinitely. But the new EPA guidance, detailed in a memo published Thursday, ends the “once in, always in” policy based on a “plain language reading” of the Clean Air Act. That means that once a pollution source brought its air emissions below the threshold for a major source, it would be held to the standard for an “area source,” or anything that isn’t a “major source,” instead.
In other words, once a “major source” reduces its pollution below the line, it doesn’t have to keep using the best equipment to continue reducing pollution. Crucially, this rating downgrade means that air pollution from some of these facilities would suddenly be completely unregulated.
The EPA did not respond to a request for comment at the time of filing.
“The possibility seems very likely that some [downgraded] sources could actually increase their emissions as long as they don’t hit the cap,” said Janice Nolen, assistant vice president for national policy at the American Lung Association, who added that changing these rules would remove an important tool for the public to enforce air quality laws.
On Twitter, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) called it perhaps “the worst environmental sin yet from the Trump [administration].”
The Environmental Protection Agency just took a dramatic step toward deregulating some major sources of toxic air pollution, which could have huge implications for public health.
Under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to regulate facilities that emit one or more of 189 hazardous air toxics like benzene, dioxin, and lead that cause health problems such as cancer and birth defects.
A facility like a chemical plant or a factory is classified as “major” by the Clear Air Act if it has the potential to emit more than 10 tons of an individual toxic chemical or 25 tons of a combination of toxics into the air per year. Those that cross this line have to deploy the “maximum achievable control technology” (MACT) to reduce pollution as much as possible with the best hardware that’s available.
Pollution sources that are regulated under this major sources standard are subject to these regulations indefinitely. But the new EPA guidance, detailed in a memo published Thursday, ends the “once in, always in” policy based on a “plain language reading” of the Clean Air Act. That means that once a pollution source brought its air emissions below the threshold for a major source, it would be held to the standard for an “area source,” or anything that isn’t a “major source,” instead.
In other words, once a “major source” reduces its pollution below the line, it doesn’t have to keep using the best equipment to continue reducing pollution. Crucially, this rating downgrade means that air pollution from some of these facilities would suddenly be completely unregulated.
The EPA did not respond to a request for comment at the time of filing.
“The possibility seems very likely that some [downgraded] sources could actually increase their emissions as long as they don’t hit the cap,” said Janice Nolen, assistant vice president for national policy at the American Lung Association, who added that changing these rules would remove an important tool for the public to enforce air quality laws.
On Twitter, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) called it perhaps “the worst environmental sin yet from the Trump [administration].”
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/26/16936104/epa-trump-toxic-air-pollution/
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(ACC Mentioned) Bad Science Underlies EPA’s Air Pollution Program
Jan 29, 2018 | Scientific American
By Rachel Leven
Engineer Jim Southerland was hired by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1971 to join the nascent war on air pollution. He came to relish the task, investigating orange clouds from an ammunition plant in Tennessee and taking air samples from strip mines in Wyoming. Among his proudest accomplishments: helping the agency develop a set of numbers called emission factors — values that enable regulators to estimate atmospheric discharges from power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants and other industrial operations.
By the time Southerland left the EPA in 1996, he was “frustrated and ticked off,” he says, because the numbers he had helped develop were being misused. The original aim had been to paint a broad-brush picture of pollution. Instead, the numbers — meant to represent average emissions from industrial activities — were incorporated into permits stipulating how much pollution individual facilities could release. This happened despite EPA warnings that about half of these sites would discharge more than the models predicted. “These factors were not intended for permits,” says Southerland, now retired and living in Cary, North Carolina.
The number of emission factors used by the EPA since Southerland’s time has proliferated and stands at 22,693. The agency itself admits most are unreliable: It rates about 62 percent as “below average” or “poor.” Nearly 22 percent aren’t rated at all. About 17 percent earned grades of “average” or better, and only one in six has ever been updated. There is a slew of common problems, such as poor accounting for emissions from aging equipment.
The upshot: in some cases, major polluters are using flawed numbers to calculate emissions of substances such as benzene, a carcinogen, and methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Regulators at times are flying blind. The factors color everything we know about air quality and many of the decisions the EPA and state environmental agencies make, from risk assessment to rulemaking.
In an email, an EPA spokeswoman told the Center for Public Integrity that the agency has been working on the problem for a decade. “EPA believes it is important to develop emissions factors that are of high quality and reliable,” she wrote.
Some experts, however, say the agency hasn’t done enough. The unreliability of the numbers has been flagged over a period of decades by the EPA’s own internal watchdog and other government auditors. “This is what tells you what’s being put in the air and what you’re breathing,” says Eric Schaeffer, former head of civil enforcement at the EPA and now executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group. “You don’t want those numbers to be wrong.”Accuracy questions
Emission factors are based on company and EPA measurements as well as external studies. They are plugged into equations to estimate total emissions from industrial activities, such as the burning of coal in boilers.
As early as the 1950s, regulators in places like Los Angeles were using emission factors to try to pinpoint the origins of dangerous smog episodes. The numbers allowed them to avoid “time-consuming, expensive testing programs and extensive surveys of individual sources,” according to a 1960 paper by the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District.
In 1965, the U.S. Public Health Service — which regulated air pollution at the time — released its first comprehensive list of factors, a document the agency would label “AP-42” in a 1968 update. The EPA, created two years later, kept revising the estimates as they became more widely used in emission inventories depicting pollution levels and sources around the country
The EPA knew early on there were problems with the numbers. In 1989, for example, the Office of Technology Assessment — a now-defunct, nonpartisan science adviser to Congress — reported many U.S. metropolitan areas had not met their goals for controlling smog-forming ozone in part because of inaccurate emission inventories. In 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, Congress gave the agency six months to make sure all emissions contributing to ozone formation were assigned up-to-date, accurate factors, and directed the EPA to review the numbers every three years thereafter.
The EPA missed both deadlines. It has failed to do at least some of the three-year reviews. It claims to have created all the necessary ozone-related factors, but questions about their accuracy remain.
For decades, government watchdogs, including the EPA’s Office of Inspector General, have pointed out deficiencies in the factors, which drive actions ranging from enforcement cases to the drafting of regulations. “We believe the status of emission factor development … is a significant weakness that impedes achievement of major air program goals,” the IG wrote in a 1996 report. The EPA’s dependence on industry studies because of funding constraints could result in factors that minimized pollution, it warned. The U.S. General Accounting Office — now the Government Accountability Office — reported in 2001 that polluters rely on the estimates even though “facilities’ actual emissions can, and do, vary substantially from the published factors.” The EPA’s IG came back with a targeted reproach in 2014, questioning the validity of factors used to estimate methane emissions from some pipelines.
Still, there was little movement. Whereas emission factors are recognized as crucial tools in understanding air quality and underpinning inventories, they tend to be forgotten. “That foundation is buried to such an extent that it’s not often appreciated,” says David Mobley, who worked on emission factors in the 1990s. “The urgency is rarely there.”Test case in Houston
Accurate pollution data matters. Consider what happened in the ozone-plagued city of Houston, a hub of oil refining and chemical manufacturing.
The city had been using emission inventories to guide its ozone-control strategy. Air monitoring by researchers in 2000 found levels of volatile organic compounds — highly reactive ozone precursors, such as benzene, known as VOCs — were 10 to 100 times higher than what had previously been estimated. The study — conducted by what was then the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, the EPA and more than 40 other public, private, and academic institutions — singled out as culprits VOCs such as ethylene, a flammable gas used mainly in the production of plastics.
Houston, it turned out, had focused on controlling the wrong emissions from the wrong sources to lower its ozone levels, says Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University. The city changed course, expanding VOC monitoring and developing rules to reduce emissions. Ozone production rates dropped by up to 50 percent in six years, Cohan and his colleagues found in a follow-up study. The study showed that reliance on emission factors alone is a bad idea, Cohan says. “We need scientists to measure these pollutants in the air to find out how much is really being emitted,” he said.
The underestimation problem surfaced at individual facilities as well, including Shell’s 1,500-acre petrochemical complex in the Houston suburb of Deer Park. A study begun by the City of Houston and the EPA in 2010 showed levels of benzene wafting from one Shell tank were 448 times higher than what the relevant emission factor had predicted. The discrepancy led to an EPA enforcement action; in a consent decree, Shell agreed to pay a $2.6 million fine and spend $115 million to control pollution from flaring — the burning of gas for economic or safety reasons — and other activities. Shell did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokeswoman told the Houston Chronicle in 2013 “the provisions of the settlement are consistent with Shell Deer Park's objectives and ongoing activities to reduce emissions at the site and upgrade our flaring infrastructure.”
Despite the findings of these studies and others, the EPA didn’t updateemission factors for the U.S. refinery and petrochemical sector until 2015, seven years after Houston had petitioned the agency to do so and two years after it was sued by environmental justice groups.Unreliable methane estimates
The low-balling of pollution isn’t limited to toxic chemicals. Many emission factors used to estimate releases of methane — a potent greenhouse gas associated with oil and natural-gas development — are “far too low,” says Robert Howarth, an ecology and environmental biology professor at Cornell University. Identifying how much methane these operations discharge can help scientists calculate the impact of natural gas — which in 2016 displaced coal as the nation’s biggest source of electric power generation — on global warming. This is crucial to preventing “runaway climate change,” Howarth says.
Much remains unknown. A 2015 study sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund found methane releases from oil and gas production and processing in the Barnett Shale Formation in northern Texas were 90 percent higher than what the EPA’s Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions had estimated.
About a third of the factors used to estimate pipeline leaks and other natural-gas emissions in the most recent inventory, for 2015, are based on a 1996 study by the EPA and an industry group then known as the Gas Research Institute. The EPA’s IG found in 2014 “there was significant uncertainty in the study data,” meaning the EPA’s assumptions on the amount of methane that spews from pipelines “may not be valid.”
The harm caused by faulty estimates extends beyond oil and gas. An emission factor designed to estimate ammonia releases from poultry farms, for example, “is probably far too low” according to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project. These emissions contribute to problems like algae blooms, which can spread rapidly and kill marine life in waterways like the Chesapeake Bay.‘Pandora’s box of problems’
The EPA, according to its spokeswoman, has begun executing a plan to improve the science that underlies emission factors and review the estimates more frequently. Among the changes: some companies now must report pollution data electronically to the agency.
The Trump administration proposed slashing the EPA’s budget by 31 percent for fiscal year 2018, although Congress has so far extended existing funding levels through a series of short-term resolutions. Progress on emission factors will hinge on “available resources,” the EPA spokeswoman wrote in an email, declining to specify a deadline for the project.
The agency said it does not intend to limit the use of emission factors to the purpose for which they were originally intended — to inform pollution inventories. That means, for example, that the numbers will still be used in permits.
Many in industry are fine with that. When the EPA asked in a 2009 Federal Register notice for suggestions on how to improve the system, companies from electric power generators to auto manufacturers argued for the status quo, saying emission factors were sometimes their only data option. Trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the American Chemistry Council argued their members should not be penalized if the EPA discovered a deficient factor had caused a permit to underestimate pollution. API said it worried that additional industry data supplied to the EPA to help it improve the numbers “could be misused for enforcement or other purposes.” Neither group responded to requests for comment.
Public health advocates, on the other hand, want more. Some companies game the system to avoid EPA permitting fees and civil penalties, says Neil Carman, clean air director for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club in Austin. “We don’t know what the emissions really are,” he says. “It’s a real Pandora’s box of problems.”
Carman and other advocates say they understand emission factors will have to be used in some circumstances, and that some types of pollution can be estimated with reasonable accuracy. They also maintain, however, that air monitoring should be more widely deployed. “Where you can do direct monitoring of emissions, that should be required,” says Schaeffer, of the Environmental Integrity Project.
Schaeffer faults the EPA for giving some companies an out. It allows operators of power plants, for example, to choose between using continuous monitoring to measure fine particles, or a combination of quarterly testing and emission factors. Some of these plants already have monitoring systems installed, Schaeffer says, but “it’s easier to mask noncompliance using emission factors.”Shining a ‘bright light’ on pollution
California’s Bay Area Air Quality Management District changed its approach after studies showed leaks from oil refineries in the area — known as fugitive emissions — were likely underrepresented in emission factors. “We decided, based on that information, that we needed additional ways to better identify fugitive emissions and to shine a bright light on those fugitive emissions,” says Eric Stevenson, the district’s director of meteorology, measurement and rules.
In 2016, the district urged refineries to install “open path” monitoring systems — which use beams of light to detect the presence of gases like benzene — and make the data available to the public in real time. Chevron installed such a system on the perimeter of its refinery in Richmond, California, in 2013.
The company didn’t respond to specific questions about the monitoring but said its focus “on running the refinery efficiently and investing in new technologies” has significantly reduced air pollution since the 1970s. Denny Larson, executive director of the Community Science Institute-CSI for Health and Justice, an environmental group that helps the public test for pollution, says the system in Richmond shows levels of chemicals in the air at a given moment and can alert residents to emission spikes that can trigger asthma attacks and other serious health problems.
“It’s showing lots of pollution has been flying under the radar that’s extremely toxic and problematic," Larson says. “We can prove what we've always known.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-science-underlies-epa-rsquo-s-air-pollution-program/
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(ACC Mentioned) Today in Environmental Protection: 2018 Edition
Jan 29, 2018 | Esquire
By Charles P. Pierce
Meanwhile, back at the wreckage…
From Reuters:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday it was withdrawing a provision of the Clean Air Act that requires a major source of pollution like a power plant to always be treated as a major source, even if it makes changes to reduce emissions. The decision to withdraw the "once-in always-in" policy is part of President Donald Trump's effort to roll back federal regulations and was sought by utilities, the petroleum industry and others…"It will reduce regulatory burden for industries and the states, while continuing to ensure stringent and effective controls on hazardous air pollutants," Bill Wehrum, assistant administrator of the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, said in a statement. The "once-in always-in" policy, which was established in 1995, has been a disincentive for power plants, factories and other major sources of pollution to pursue technological innovations that would reduce emissions, the agency said.
In short, this policy was put in place because, on the subject of pollutants, major power companies cannot be trusted to not make people sick. The Clean Air Act is one of the unalloyed triumphs of the federal regulatory system, and one of the true achievements of what used to be the Republican Party. (Ask anyone who was living in California in the 1960s why.) Of course, Bill Wehrum, and his old client base, and the people who paid his salary for decades, might disagree.
From the Environmental Defense Fund:
Since 2007, Wehrum represented many members of the pollution-heavy oil and coal industries that EPA is statutorily required to regulate while working as a lobbyist and attorney at the Washington office of Hunton & Williams. In those 31 lawsuits, he represented clients including the American Petroleum Institute, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, American Chemistry Council, and Utility Air Regulatory Group. Wehrum represented major polluters in at least two matters concerning EPA’s Air Office as recently as this summer – defending EPA Administrator Pruitt’s unlawful suspension of oil and gas pollution standards, and attacking urgently needed protections against chemical disasters like those that followed Hurricane Harvey.
Wehrum also flagrantly rejects a core statutory duty of the office he will now lead – the Air Office’s obligation to protect Americans from dangerous climate pollution. In 2013, Wehrum told Law360 that he “continue[d] to believe, that Congress never intended the EPA to address an issue such as climate change under the Clean Air Act” – six years after the Supreme Court ruled otherwise.
I still await the answer to this philosophical question: How many foxes have to be in a henhouse before it is simply a foxhouse?
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a15897142/epa-power-plant-pollution-regulation/
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Top Environmental Group Preparing to Sue Trump’s EPA
Jan 29, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By John Bowden
A top environmental advocacy group is preparing a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), helmed by Scott Pruitt, for the agency's rollback of environmental protections under the Trump administration.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) President Rhea Suh told supporters in a note obtained by the Washington Examiner on Saturday that the federal court system is the best "antidote" to Pruitt's policies.
"It's a new year, but EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wants to roll back the clock on environmental protections and drag us back decades," Suh wrote in the letter to supporters.
"The best antidote to Pruitt's illegal attacks on our environment? Federal court," she adds. "We're gearing up to file suits on dozens of fronts in the year ahead."
In a tweet Saturday, the group also quoted former EPA chief Carol Browner, who attacked Pruitt's leadership of the agency.
"Under Pruitt, what [the EPA is] doing is conscientiously tearing the place down," Browner said.
In the note, Suh notes a number of priorities for the NRDC in the year ahead, including preventing Pruitt from "greenlighting" neonicotinoid pesticides, which some scientists say pose a risk to pollinating insects such as bees.
The NRDC joined a number of groups last year in an unsuccessful push against President Trump's "one in, two out" executive order, which directs federal agencies to repeal two regulations for each new one they issue.
“President Trump’s order would deny Americans the basic protections they rightly expect,” Suh said in a statement last year. “New efforts to stop pollution don’t automatically make old ones unnecessary.”
“When you make policy by tweet, it yields irrational rules,” she added. “This order imposes a false choice between clean air, clean water, safe food and other environmental safeguards.”
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/371056-top-environmental-group-preparing-to-sue-trumps-epa
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Virginia's Cap-and-Trade Plan Passes Muster With Regional Program
Jan 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
Virginia's draft plan to join a regional cap-and-trade program is consistent with the existing framework for the nine Northeast states in it now, even though the commonwealth would use a different method for allocating its carbon emissions allowances.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has reviewed Virginia's draft regulations and concluded that they appear as stringent as the nine-state plan and consistent with recent changes in the RGGI carbon emissions cap after 2020, Lois New, director of the Office of Climate Change at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, told a Jan. 26 RGGI webinar for stakeholders.
The Virginia regulations would set a yet-to-be-determined emissions base budget in 2020 and then lower emissions by 3 percent per year through 2030.
The draft regulations are expected to be approved later this year, with the program effective in 2020, according to Michael Dowd, director of the Air and Renewable Energy Division of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
Virginia would be the second largest state in the program, as measured by carbon emissions, after New York.
The power sector generated 34 million tons of carbon emissions in Virginia in 2016, according to Dowd's presentation to the webinar. He said 33 sources with 123 units would be covered by the Virginia regulations. Dominion Energy, the largest power company in the state, has about 18 sources that would be covered under the Virginia program.
The big difference between the Virginia plan and RGGI involves how carbon allowances are allocated. Virginia will use a so-called consignment auction model in which allowances are allocated for free to electric power companies. The companies would then be required to consign the allowances to the quarterly RGGI auction for sale.
Electric power companies in the nine RGGI states, on the other hand, are required to purchase the allowances at auction.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127440672&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127440672&jd=127440672
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