AM ACC 2/1/2018

Industry and Association News

1. (ACC Mentioned) Whole Foods Leads Wrap Campaign in Greenwich

   Jan 31, 2018 | Greenwich Time

   By Jennifer Turiano
   
   
   As Greenwich activists shine a spotlight on plastic pollution, the town’s Whole Foods Market announced it’s sent almost three tons of plastic film and wrapping to be recycled this past year.
2. BASF and LIVS Collaborate to Take Skin Sensitisation Test to China

   Feb 1, 2018 | Chemical Watch

   US NGO the Institute for In Vitro Sciences (IIVS) and German chemical company BASF are working together to import an alternative skin sensitisation test into China.

LCSA News

3. (ACC Mentioned) On Eve of NAS Review, ACC Questions IRIS' Future Due to Lack of Reforms

   Jan 31, 2018 | Inside

   By Maria Hegstad
   
   
   As the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) prepares to review EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a top American Chemistry Council (ACC) official is critiquing the chemical assessment program for not adopting prior NAS advice on reforming IRIS...
4. Reminder: TSCA Inventory Active Status Reporting Due February 7

   Feb 1, 2018 | Lexology

   By Cynthia L. Taub, Sara Beth Watson and Brady Cassis
   
   
   The time frame is closing for chemical manufacturers and importers to make their filing via EPA’s Central Data Exchange (CDX) for the TSCA Inventory active/inactive status. Chemical manufacturers and importers have until Wednesday, February 7 to comply...

Chemical Management News

5. (ACC Mentioned) Interagency Group on PFAS Could Aid in States' Call for Unified Approach

   Jan 31, 2018 | Inside EPA

   By Suzanne Yohannan
   
   
   A White House-sponsored interagency group that has been meeting since last March could potentially provide the unified federal approach on the risks posed by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of emerging contaminants...
6. (ACC Mentioned) Coalition Calls for Transparency in IARC Reporting

   Feb 1, 2018 | Beef Magazine

   By Amanda Radke
   
   
   A few years ago, you may recall how the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) made the dangerous conclusion that red meat increases cancer risk.
7. Update: Almost Three-Fourths of Medi-Cal Toddlers Miss Annual Lead Tests Required by Law

   Feb 1, 2018 | Environmental Working Group

   By Susan Little
   
   
   In September, EWG reported that each year about a third of California toddlers enrolled in Medi-Cal don’t receive lead testing required by law. But the problem is much worse than we estimated.
8. EU Commission: REACH Review Report Due 'Within Weeks'

   Jan 31, 2018 | Chemical Watch

   The European Commission's long-awaited report on the second five-year evaluation of REACH will be published "in the coming weeks", a Commission spokesperson has said.
9. EU Advises WTO of Draft SVHC Decision on 3-Benzylidene Camphor

   Feb 1, 2018 | Chemical Watch

   The European Commission has notified the WTO of a draft implementing Decision on the identification of 3-benzylidene camphor as a substance of very high concern.

Energy News

10. Shale Sends U.S. Output Past Historic 10 Million-Barrel Mark

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Jessica Summers
    
    
    U.S. oil production surged above 10 million barrels a day for the first time in four decades, another marker of a profound shift in global crude markets.
11. Enterprise Moving Ahead on Us Gulf Coast Ethylene Export Terminal

    Feb 1, 2018 | Platts

    By Kristen Hays
    
    
    Enterprise Products Partners on Wednesday announced plans to move ahead on a new joint-venture ethylene export terminal on the US Gulf Coast, the latest major project to emerge from the US natural gas shale boom.
12. Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks Were Fast. It Could Get Messy in Court.

    Feb 1, 2018 | New York Times

    By Coral Davenport
    
    
    As the head of the federal agency controlling billions of acres of public lands and waters, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has spent the past year making bold policy proclamations to advance President Trump’s energy agenda: He would open coastal waters to drilling, shrink national monuments,
13. GOP Tax Cut Could Unlock Billions for Utility Infrastructure

    Feb 1, 2018 | PoliticoPro

    By Darius Dixon
    
    
    Last year’s tax overhaul is about to unlock a multibillion-dollar pot of money for electric and gas utilities — and it could help pay for a massive buildout of energy infrastructure.
14. Trump Admin Mulls Deep Cuts to Clean Energy Programs

    Jan 31, 2018 | E&E News PM

    By Hannah Northey
    
    
    The White House is considering a fiscal 2019 budget proposal that would cut funding by 72 percent for the Department of Energy's renewables and energy efficiency programs from current levels.
15. Total Makes Its Largest Oil Discovery in the Gulf of Mexico

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Amanda Jordan
    
    
    Total SA said it made its largest discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, finding crude in the Ballymore field deep offshore.

Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Transportation and Infrastructure News

16. (ACC Mentioned) Infrastructure Plan Could Benefit DowDupont, Other Chemical Firms

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Adam Allington and Tiffany Stecker
    
    
    DowDupont, Westlake Chemical and RPM International are among the U.S. chemical companies that would be well-positioned to benefit from an infrastructure package that President Donald Trump pitched in his State of the Union address.
17. Trump Previews Infrastructure ‘Fix,’ Touts Energy Boom

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Abby Smith
    
    
    President Donald Trump, in his first State of the Union address, previewed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan that would speed project permitting and approval processes.

Environment News

18. Court Puts Litigation over Haze Rule on Hold

    Jan 31, 2018 | E&E News PM

    By Sean Reilly
    
    
    Legal proceedings in a jumble of challenges to U.S. EPA's latest regional haze reduction regulations are now on hold while the agency retrenches.
19. E.P.A. Blocks Obama-Era Clean Water Rule

    Feb 1, 2018 | New York Times

    By Coral Davenport
    
    
    The Trump administration has formally suspended a major Obama-era clean water regulation ahead of plans to issue its own version of the rule later this year.
20. EPA to Issue Environmental Permits Within Six Months, Pruitt Says (1)

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Amena H. Saiyid
    
    
    Environmental permitting decisions will be made within six months under a program the EPA plans to launch at the end of the year, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said Jan. 31.
21. States Explore Carbon Taxes, But Same Roadblocks Remain (1)

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Adrianne Appel
    
    
    A nine-state coalition of lawmakers wants to sell states on a carbon tax, but the efforts face the same Republican opposition that have made it a non-starter at the federal level.
22. American Meteorological Society Asks Trump to Check Government Agencies for Climate Change Information

    Jan 31, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire

    By Brett Samuels
    
    
    The American Meteorological Society pushed back against President Trump’s claims about global warming, and directed him to government resources to find “credible and scientifically validated information.”

Industry and Association News

1. (ACC Mentioned) Whole Foods Leads Wrap Campaign in Greenwich

   Jan 31, 2018 | Greenwich Time

   By Jennifer Turiano

   As Greenwich activists shine a spotlight on plastic pollution, the town’s Whole Foods Market announced it’s sent almost three tons of plastic film and wrapping to be recycled this past year.

   And although this is the only store in town participating in the Wrap Recycling Action Program, it is one of almost 20,000 stores nationwide.

   “In 2017 Greenwich sent back about 850 bags full of stretch plastic to be recycled,” said Tina Clabbers Feigley this week, a representative for Whole Foods Market. “Each bag weighs about seven pounds, so an estimated 5,950 (pounds) — or close to three tons — of stretch plastic was recycled.”

   This region sends its collected plastic wrap and bags to a Connecticut distribution center. From that central location, it goes to the decking company Trex. Plastics accepted include those which protect newspapers and dry cleaning; case overwrap; single-use plastic grocery bags; plastic bread, potato and vegetable bags; and wrapping for bulk toilet paper and paper towel rolls, and others.

   The American Chemistry Council’s Flexible Film Recycling Group started WRAP a few years ago to help increase the recycling of this type pf plastic and spread awareness. Connecticut launched its statewide WRAP campaign in early 2017 and is approaching it’s first anniversary.

   More information on WRAP can be found at www.plasticfilmrecycling.org

   “Generally speaking, grocery and retail stores have been collecting plastic film... for some time,” said ACC spokesperson Sarah Lindsay. “Many of these stores — more than 18,000 in the U.S. — also provide collection bins in the front of their stores for customers to drop off their plastic bags, wraps and film for recycling.

   “However,” said Lindsay, “many consumers do not know about recycling plastic film at grocery and retail stores. A 2017 survey found that only half of Connecticut residents knew to bring plastic bags and wraps to these stores for recycling.”

   Whole Foods Market resource management said they did not know the Greenwich location was the only grocery store in town participating in the project.

   But “it’s a great program for us,” said Feigley, “because we divert plastic from landfills and we make a small revenue from recycling plastic bags.”

   https://www.greenwichtime.com/local/article/Whole-Foods-leads-WRAP-campaign-in-Greenwich-12540451.php
   

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2. BASF and LIVS Collaborate to Take Skin Sensitisation Test to China

   Feb 1, 2018 | Chemical Watch

   US NGO the Institute for In Vitro Sciences (IIVS) and German chemical company BASF are working together to import an alternative skin sensitisation test into China.

   BASF developed the LuSens test, which detects chemicals with the potential to act as skin sensitisers. The IIVS later took part in an inter-laboratory study led by BASF to assess the method's reproducibility and accuracy.

   "This is a cell-based assay which can be difficult to import into certain countries," said Erin Hill, president of the IIVS. "In general it's difficult to import cells into countries, US included. But for some countries, such as Brazil and China, it is almost impossible. Therefore you must work collaboratively with the import authorities to achieve it." 

   BASF will import the cells, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine in Beijing. The Chinese Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) National Institute of Food and Drug Control will then distribute the cells to government testing laboratories, including a new alternatives laboratory in Zhejiang.

   "BASF has graciously offered to provide training on LuSens in China, but also welcomes Chinese scientists to their alternatives laboratory in Ludwigshafen, Germany," said Dr Hill.

   LuSens is a reporter gene bioassay that uses a human keratinocyte cell line. Similar to the KeratinoSens assay, it now comes under the same OECD test guideline (442D), and is licence-free.

   BASF and the IIVS have worked together for several years. In 2012, BASF provided lab equipment (opacitometers) for the bovine corneal opacity and permeability assay (BCOP), which tests for eye irritants. The IIVS then placed the units at its training labs in China.

   "Our future plans include helping to build capacity and proficiency in alternative methods to government scientists – a key step the CFDA has stated must be achieved before regulations can change," said Dr Hill.

   In 2017, the IIVS helped to train staff at the Zhejiang Institute for Food and Drug Control's new alternatives lab, which opened last November.

   https://chemicalwatch.com/63574/basf-and-iivs-collaborate-to-take-skin-sensitisation-test-to-china
   

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LCSA News

3. (ACC Mentioned) On Eve of NAS Review, ACC Questions IRIS' Future Due to Lack of Reforms

   Jan 31, 2018 | Inside

   By Maria Hegstad

   As the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) prepares to review EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a top American Chemistry Council (ACC) official is critiquing the chemical assessment program for not adopting prior NAS advice on reforming IRIS, though the official stops short of taking a position on whether IRIS should continue.

   "If nothing changes in the IRIS assessment program, I don't see the value of doing that," Mike Walls, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs at ACC, said in an exclusive Jan. 24 interview with Inside EPA. "The ongoing discussion" about the program, including the NAS review slated to take place Feb. 1-2 "provides an opportunity for Congress and EPA to consider the ongoing role of IRIS," he said.

   But Walls said that ACC, whose staff have long criticized IRIS assessments and the program itself, has "not taken a position" on whether the IRIS program should be ended. Instead, Walls pointed to ACC's priority: fully funding and implementing Congress' 2016 update of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

   "We've been clear that a priority for this administration has to be to provide appropriate resources for the TSCA amendments. The proposed budget has done exactly that," Walls said. "We certainly focused our attention in the appropriations process in ensuring that EPA has the funding that's required to carry out its statutory mandates."

   IRIS, a program that agency leaders created in the 1980s to ensure various agency programs and regions were using consistent, quality risk numbers in their decision-making does not have a direct statutory mandate. Instead, the risk values that it generates are used by EPA risk managers to make decisions and carry out other statutory mandates.

   Walls adds, "I think it's up to EPA management to determine whether other existing programs are returning value that they ought to have."

   IRIS watchers inside and outside the agency are preparing for potential major changes to the IRIS program under the Trump administration, based in large part on fiscal year 2018 budget documents from the executive and Congress. Early fiscal year 2018 budget memos proposed eliminating IRIS, but the final budget proposal retained the program although in smaller form.

   Report language attached to the pending FY18 bills in the House and Senate, propose de-funding IRIS entirely or consolidating EPA's risk resources in the nascent TSCA program. Both proposals have led to outcry from environmentalists, who argue that moving IRIS from EPA's research office to the toxics office could further politicize the program, which was placed in the research office to distance it from such concerns.

   Sources inside and outside the agency raise concerns that if IRIS is subsumed in the TSCA program, IRIS' traditional EPA clients -- the air, water and Superfund offices -- will be left without a source of risk values, particularly as the Trump EPA's final implementing rules for the new TSCA program propose generally not considering legacy uses of chemicals in evaluations.

   Asked about this concern, Walls told Inside EPA that he "can't comment on the degree to which other [EPA program] offices use IRIS values. If they are using outdated information, that hasn't been shown to conform with best available science, what are they getting?"

   Walls said that his and ACC's members companies' concerns remain with the quality of IRIS assessments. He argued that the program has yet to "really implement the NAS recommendations from the 2011 and 2014 [reports]," referring to prior advice on how to reform and improve IRIS.

   For example, in 2011 NAS suggested, among other recommendations, that EPA make assessments more rigorous by standardizing its "approach to using weight-of-evidence guidelines" and more transparent by printing standardized evidence tables in the assessments.

   NAS' 2014 report generally praised EPA for its efforts to implement the recommendations, and encouraged EPA to continue its efforts to adopt a systematic review process, which the committee viewed as central to both increasing the quality of the analyses and its transparency. The report also encouraged EPA to complete its then-pending IRIS assessment handbook and to include uncertainty analyses and risk ranges in the IRIS assessments.

   "And you know, just in the draft assessments that came out in 2017, the draft assessments for [ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE)] and tert-butanol . . . neither those drafts nor the final benzo(a)pyrene assessment [released] in January 2017 deal with how to address the essential question of weight of evidence of the data," Walls said.

   The assessments Walls references are the last released under IRIS, though EPA is slated to publish in the Jan. 31 Federal Register its draft IRIS assessment plan for uranium.

   The ETBE and tert-butanol assessments are the only IRIS values formally released since the transition to the Trump EPA, which followed shortly after the appointment of new staff leaders for IRIS: Tina Bahadori as director of the National Center for Environmental Assessment and Kris Thayer as director of IRIS. Thayer, who Bahadori recruited from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, specializes in systematic review.

   Asked if EPA's lack of a political nominee leading the research office could be part of the reason for its lack of output in the past year, Walls replied, "The process for filling positions is what it is. I have no knowledge that the lack of folks in those positions is slowing things down. This is not a new problem -- we've seen it since at least 2011."

   But Walls also said that just releasing more assessments does not address his concerns. Instead, he said, "Stakeholder engagement is key to any future for the IRIS program. That starts with the [chemical] nomination process. How they engage in [the chemical] prioritization and nomination process."

   Further, Walls said that EPA's handbook guiding how IRIS assessments are conducted needs to be updated and released in draft form for public comment, the systematic review process should be documented and "stakeholder feedback ought to be sought" upon it. Walls also wants IRIS to address stakeholder comments in their documents.

   Thayer and Bahadori have given a series of presentations since August, describing their efforts to train IRIS staff in systematic review approaches, apply these to ongoing assessments, and also train staff elsewhere in the agency on the methods. Five IRIS staff have been embedded in the toxics office to assist them with systematic review approaches, Bahadori said in a presentation before EPA's Science Advisory Board last fall.

   Thayer and IRIS staff presented a number of the new systematic review tools in multiple presentations at the annual Society for Risk Analysis meeting last December, and also highlighted the expansion of the Health and Environmental Research Online (HERO) database, which contains summaries of all studies referenced in IRIS assessments to the toxics office.

   Asked whether he had concerns that the IRIS staff are training toxics office staff, Walls said, "I have no direct knowledge of that. It's interesting to me that one of the things that we've called for in the IRIS program is the systematic review process should be documented and the subject of public comment. If [EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT)] is adopting [IRIS' systematic review process, it] should be the subject of public comment. Early in OPPT's guide on risk evaluation there was some mention of systematic review; it would be important to make that available. I don't have an opinion on IRIS folks providing training on it."

   https://insideepa.com/inside-epa/eve-nas-review-acc-questions-iris-future-due-lack-reforms
   

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4. Reminder: TSCA Inventory Active Status Reporting Due February 7

   Feb 1, 2018 | Lexology

   By Cynthia L. Taub, Sara Beth Watson and Brady Cassis

   The time frame is closing for chemical manufacturers and importers to make their filing via EPA’s Central Data Exchange (CDX) for the TSCA Inventory active/inactive status. Chemical manufacturers and importers have until Wednesday, February 7 to comply with a key requirement mandated under the new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) “inventory reset” rule.

   Under the reset rule, companies must provide “retrospective notice” to EPA if they manufactured, imported, or processed chemical substances on the TSCA Inventory for nonexempt commercial purposes during a 10-year “lookback period” between June 21, 2006 and June 21, 2016. The reporting clock began running with the publication of the final rule on August 11, 2017, meaning chemical manufacturers and importers have 180 days – until February 7, 2018, to submit electronic notice to EPA, and chemical processors have 420 days – until October 5, 2018, to submit supplemental reports to EPA.

   There are several key exemptions to the reporting requirement. Chemicals reported under the 2012 or 2016 Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) cycles are exempt from the retrospective notice requirement, unless certain Confidential Business Information (CBI) issues are relevant. Substances added to the TSCA Inventory since June 21, 2016 are also exempt. In addition, a manufacturer does not have to submit a retrospective notice if it obtains a CDX receipt from another company that notified on the same substance. However, even if a chemical was reported for the CDR or by another manufacturer, a company that wants to maintain a CBI claim for the chemical identity must still submit to make the CBI claim. The goal of the inventory reset rule is for EPA to be able to designate every substance in the TSCA Inventory as either “active” or “inactive” in commerce. If EPA receives notice from a manufacturer or importer during this 180-day period, it will designate a chemical as “active” on the Inventory.

   The initial “retrospective reporting” period applies to manufacturers and importers, but processors also need to monitor to ensure the substances they are processing are designated as “active.” If a processor is currently processing a substance that EPA deemed “inactive,” it may file a supplemental report in an “extended submission period” to ensure that the substance is re-designated as “active.” This provision allows processors time to review the interim “active” and “inactive” designations EPA will make based on CDR and manufacturers’ submissions and to correct any gaps.

   EPA publishes a running draft list of "active" substances that have been reported under the inventory reset rule and, in March, will publish a complete draft inventory with substances that are reported as “active” by February 7.

   https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f44b86c7-8d29-4b11-909f-b15d396cff28
   

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Chemical Management News

5. (ACC Mentioned) Interagency Group on PFAS Could Aid in States' Call for Unified Approach

   Jan 31, 2018 | Inside EPA

   By Suzanne Yohannan

   A White House-sponsored interagency group that has been meeting since last March could potentially provide the unified federal approach on the risks posed by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of emerging contaminants, that state drinking water regulators are seeking, says an official with a group that represents the regulators.

   But in an interview with Inside EPA, the official suggested that federal officials also should invite states to attend an upcoming interagency meeting to provide their perspective on the issue.

   The interagency group, which includes EPA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies, is planning to convene in February at a meeting titled "Federal Information Exchange on PFAS," according to a Jan. 10 letter from the director of the federal Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) to Robert Bilott, an attorney who represents plaintiffs harmed by PFAS and has long pushed EPA to address the threat of drinking water contaminated with the substances.

   According to the letter, the meeting is sponsored by the Toxics and Risks Subcommittee of the White House's National Science and Technology Council Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Sustainability, which is co-chaired by EPA, NIH and the Defense Department.

   Agency representatives at the meeting "will share emerging impactful data and improve understanding of the science behind decision-making regarding PFAS," the letter says. "This meeting aims to establish a foundation of common knowledge across federal agencies, and to facilitate future information-sharing across federal agencies," it says.

   Signed by Patrick Breysse, director of ATSDR and the National Center for Environmental Health, the letter responds to Bilott's threats, raised in previous correspondence, to sue the agencies under the federal Superfund law to advance a nationwide PFAS health study and testing.

   PFAS comprise a class of chemicals emerging as a major contamination concern due to its presence in drinking water systems. The chemicals have widely been used in non-stick cookware, fire-fighting foam, waterproof rain gear and in other applications. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in particular, has been linked to adverse health effects, including several types of cancer.

   While EPA in 2016 set health advisory levels for two PFAS -- PFOA and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) -- at 70 parts per trillion, the agency stopped short of setting an enforceable drinking water standard and provided limited guidance to states and public water systems on how to use the advisory levels.

   Instead, the agency is leaving it up to states to shoulder the responsibility for what may become a patchwork of standards even as public pressure to address the issue grows.

   States' Concerns

   But states recently pushed for more clarity and uniformity from EPA and other federal agencies, with the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) asking EPA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to address a number of concerns related to PFAS.

   Among the suggestions, ASDWA asks federal agencies to form a working committee with states to address a list of recommendations covering all aspects of drinking water programs. As a second step, it also calls on the federal government to develop a unified message on PFAS.

   The interagency group referenced in the letter to Bilott could possibly provide a unified voice from the federal government on appropriate risk levels and risk management, an official with ASDWA says, when asked about the interagency group.

   The source adds that bringing in state regulatory associations for a short time at the end of the February meeting, for instance, would fill in "the part missing."

   ASDWA in its Jan. 12 letter to EPA and CDC raises concerns over differing state interpretations of EPA's health advisories for PFOA and PFOS, noting the advisories are unclear on what actions public water systems should take to protect susceptible populations. Further, state drinking water programs have had to determine alone how to handle both the advisories and occurrence data from the Safe Drinking Water Act Third Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule.

   "The result has been some confusion on appropriate actions and a lack of consistent responses from state to state," ASDWA says. "As the number of PFAS compounds and PFAS contaminated sites continues to grow, so will the complexity and urgency of this problem," it says.

   Bilott says the response from Breysse does not satisfy the concerns he earlier raised over the need for federal health agencies to conduct PFAS studies. He did not elaborate.

   Bilott in September letters had pressed EPA and ATSDR for a national study of health impacts from PFAS. He warned that the agency's continuing failure to conduct a study would provide a basis for national class action litigation. And in December, he wrote to federal health agencies asking whether, given defense authorization legislation authorizing a PFAS study, the agencies now plan to move forward with studies of health impacts from PFAS or whether he will be forced to sue them to conduct the study.

   Authorizing Language

   Breysse's Jan. 10 letter says that the authorizing language signed into law as part of the fiscal year 2018 defense bill to allow CDC and ATSDR to further address PFAS contamination "is great progress for confronting PFAS contamination concerns," but notes that they have yet to receive any appropriations language or funding to trigger the study.

   "In the meantime, we have begun internal discussions about implementation of the new law and are assessing the most appropriate and effective designs for a national study," he says.

   Breysse also gives Bilott an update of an ongoing study examining the blood serum of firefighters for PFAS. Bilott previously asked whether the defense act-mandated study will include testing of firefighters and emergency responders, who may have been exposed through firefighting foams that contained PFAS or through gear.

   ATSDR is also updating its toxicological profile for perfluoroalkyls, Breysse says. After internal review, the revised toxicological profile will be released for public comment, he adds.

   And the industry group American Chemistry Council announced Jan. 18 in a "SmartBrief" on its website that it plans to form a PFOA/PFOS panel within its Chemical Products and Technology Division in order to "actively engage in regulatory advocacy" on the two chemicals at both federal and state levels. The aim also is to "promote sound science regarding potential exposures and toxicity of PFOS and PFOA, among other activities." 

   https://insideepa.com/daily-news/interagency-group-pfas-could-aid-states-call-unified-approach
   

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6. (ACC Mentioned) Coalition Calls for Transparency in IARC Reporting

   Feb 1, 2018 | Beef Magazine

   By Amanda Radke

   A few years ago, you may recall how the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) made the dangerous conclusion that red meat increases cancer risk. Of course, one had to take that announcement with a grain of salt — first, because an entire library of research presented to the committee that said otherwise was largely ignored; and second, because IARC also concluded that following a review of 900 items, including coffee, sunlight, air and night shift work, only one was found to “probably” not cause cancer. By the one, the single item that IARC cleared was a chemical in yoga pants. Insert eye roll here.
   

   Following IARC’s announcement that beef was “carcinogenic to humans,” many scientists were quick to criticize the classification. What’s more, after feeling the push back for putting beef in the same class as cigarettes, it was revealed that the World Health Organization wasn’t exactly confident in this classification.

   Commenting at the time the initial report was released, Steve Kay, for Cattle Buyers Weekly, said “WHO is eating a little humble pie. It offers what it calls a follow up and clarification on its recommendations regarding meat consumption. This comes after the global media uproar over the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report on red and processed meats. The WHO says there are shortcomings with the IARC’s classifications which allow the results to be misinterpreted. The WHO has also distanced itself from comments made by IARC panel members earlier in the week saying that processed meats should be avoided. The WHO will further look at the place of processed meat and red meat within the context of an overall healthy diet in 2016, it says.”

   As a result of some of IARC’s more outlandish conclusions, in 2017 the American Chemistry Council (ACC) launched the Campaign for Accuracy in Public Health Research (CAPHR). The campaign focuses on education and outreach initiatives to promote credible, unbiased and transparent science as the basis for policy decisions and to reform IARCs’ Monographs Program.

   According to a recent press release, “CAPHR has been steadfast in our efforts to shine light on the deficiencies, misinformation and consequences associated with the Monographs Program, which evaluates cancer hazards and produces reports, or Monographs, on its findings. We’ve been encouraged by the increased scrutiny into IARC’s carcinogenic classification that has evolved over the past year.

   “One thing is clear: the public, regulators and organizations alike are becoming increasingly concerned and weary over the alarmist headlines generated by the Monographs Program’s lack of transparency and balance in assessing cancer hazards.”

   To mark the one-year anniversary of the launch of this campaign, a CAPHR Coalition has been established, which brings together a diverse group of industry partners and businesses that would like IARC to reform its programming to consider a substance’s risk, not just hazard; to require reliance on weight of evidence; to establish standard criteria for selecting studies; to increase transparency and utilize input from stakeholders; to explain conflicts of interest; and to improve Monograph releases.

   “Manufacturers, governments, and individuals around the world are prioritizing transparency as a means to build trust, promote inclusion and ensure smart policies,” said Linda Dempsey, vice president of international economic affairs policy at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), a CAPHR Coalition partner, in the press release. “IARC’s Monographs Program, however, is blatantly pursuing a policy of secrecy and exclusion, prohibiting participants and observers from discussing how Monograph conclusions are reached, even threatening lawsuits against those who reveal information about the proceedings. These systematic efforts to conceal information and intimidate those with concerns directly contradict the values of IARC, the World Health Organization, and the member states that support their work.”

   I appreciate the work of the ACC, CAPHR and the Coalition in demanding honest reporting, transparent research and honest conclusions that will responsibly guide public policy to improve human health and reduce our cancer risk.

   Concluding that a nutrient-rich food like beef is similar to the addicting and damaging effects of cigarettes is not only ridiculous, but it’s incredibly irresponsible. A reform in IARC’s methodology and classification system is needed, and in the meantime, the cattle industry will continue to debunk the erroneous and damaging beef and cancer association.

   http://www.beefmagazine.com/outlook/coalition-calls-transparency-iarc-reporting
   

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7. Update: Almost Three-Fourths of Medi-Cal Toddlers Miss Annual Lead Tests Required by Law

   Feb 1, 2018 | Environmental Working Group

   By Susan Little

   In September, EWG reported that each year about a third of California toddlers enrolled in Medi-Cal don’t receive lead testing required by law. But the problem is much worse than we estimated.

   EWG’s new analysis of state records shows that between 2012 and 2016, almost three-fourths of 1- and 2-year-olds enrolled in the state-run low-income health insurance program were not tested for lead in their blood.

   This new calculation is especially alarming because Medi-Cal children are seven times more likely to be lead-poisoned than children from higher-income families. If children with high blood lead levels are not identified through testing, they cannot receive treatment.

   These figures are culled from Medi-Cal billing data from the California Department of Health Care Services. The previous estimate was based on incomplete data from the Department of Public Health, obtained through an open records request. The Department of Health Care Services released its billing data at the request of Assembly Member Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, co-author of a bill signed into law last fall to expand lead testing.

   The new Medi-Cal billing data show that in the fiscal years 2012 to 2016, an annual average of about 529,000 toddlers enrolled in the program did not receive required lead tests. That means that during that time period, an average of only 28 percent of children in the program were tested.

   Federal law and federal and state regulations require all children receiving Medicaid, called Medi-Cal in California, to be tested for lead exposure when they are 12 and 24 months old. EWG’s earlier investigation found that for decades California has fallen short of compliance.

   The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agree that there is no safe level of lead in children. Lead is a carcinogen, harms kidney function, and has been linked to delayed growth. 

   Lead also damages children’s brains. Even minute amounts of lead in the bodies of very young children cause harm to their central nervous systems. Damages caused by lead carry into adulthood, and recent studies demonstrate that adults who had elevated blood lead levels as children have smaller brains, lower IQs and lower socio-economic status. 

   Lead poisoning can threaten children of any socioeconomic status, but those from lower-income families are more likely to live in older housing with lead paint or face exposure from other sources, such as factories and freeway traffic. According to the Department of Public Health, 88 percent of California children who are lead poisoned are enrolled in Medi-Cal.

   California defines a case of child lead poisoning as when a child has a tested elevated blood lead level of at least 14.5 micrograms per deciliter of blood, or two consecutive tests of an elevated blood lead level of at least 9.5 micrograms per deciliter of blood.

    The new data show that the state’s failure to ensure lead testing for toddlers on Medi-Cal is an ongoing crisis that demands urgent attention. EWG is working with lawmakers in Sacramento to determine if more legislation is needed in this year’s session to safeguard children’s health. In addition, the Assembly’s Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials, chaired by Quirk, plans to hold an oversight hearing Feb. 13 to examine why California continues to struggle to lead-test its Medi-Cal toddlers.

   https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2018/01/update-almost-three-fourths-medi-cal-toddlers-risk-lead-exposure#.WnLsW3aWbIU
   

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8. EU Commission: REACH Review Report Due 'Within Weeks'

   Jan 31, 2018 | Chemical Watch

   The European Commission's long-awaited report on the second five-year evaluation of REACH will be published "in the coming weeks", a Commission spokesperson has said.

   And at today’s REACH 2018 Stakeholders' Day in Helsinki Echa's director of registration Christel Musset said the latest the agency has heard from the Commission is that publication is expected "by the end of February or in March".

   The Commission had initially aimed to conclude the review in June last year, in time to mark the tenth anniversary of REACH. The report has since suffered three delays – the last deadline was this January – with "workload and time issues" cited.

   The spokesperson told Chemical Watch the Refit review "is a very comprehensive evaluation, affecting several policy areas". Work is in its final phases, the spokesperson said.

   The report on the first five-year REACH Review was delayed by eight months and was finally published in February 2013.

   This second review is also eagerly awaited as it precedes the last registration deadline at the end of May. It is carried out under the EU’s Better Regulation agenda. This considers criteria such as efficiency and effectiveness, and can lead to implementing regulations to amend specific provisions in REACH, and changes in Echa's guidance.

   Non-REACH refit delay

   The parallel review on the regulatory fitness of European chemicals legislation, excluding REACH, has also been pushed back.

   This report, which concerns CLP and a number of other pieces of chemicals legislation, has experienced several delays. The most recent deadline was the middle of this year, but the Commission spokesperson said it is now "expected for the end of 2018".

   The delays are partly because the EU executive is examining a vast amount of information generated through stakeholder consultations. It has also commissioned consultants to undertake dozens of studies, the results of which will feed into both reviews.

   https://chemicalwatch.com/63563/eu-commission-reach-review-report-due-within-weeks
   

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9. EU Advises WTO of Draft SVHC Decision on 3-Benzylidene Camphor

   Feb 1, 2018 | Chemical Watch

   The European Commission has notified the WTO of a draft implementing Decision on the identification of 3-benzylidene camphor as a substance of very high concern.

   The Commission says it has acted because of the substance's endocrine disrupting properties with probable serious effects to the environment. Once the decision is adopted, 3-benzylidene camphor – also known as 1,7,7-trimethyl-3-(phenylmethylene) bicyclo[2.2.1]heptan-2-one – will be placed on the candidate list.

   It has in the past been used as a UV absorber in sunscreen and in whitening products. However, in 2015 the EU banned its use in cosmetics.

   In February 2016, Germany submitted an Annex XV dossier to Echa on the substance and that June a majority of the agency's Member State Committee backed the SVHC proposal. A minority requested more conclusive evidence.

   The Commission has now decided to proceed with the i

   https://chemicalwatch.com/63575/eu-advises-wto-of-draft-svhc-decision-on-3-benzylidene-camphor
   

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Energy News

10. Shale Sends U.S. Output Past Historic 10 Million-Barrel Mark

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Jessica Summers

    U.S. oil production surged above 10 million barrels a day for the first time in four decades, another marker of a profound shift in global crude markets.

    The milestone comes weeks after the International Energy Agency said the U.S. is poised for “explosive” growth in oil output that would push it past Saudi Arabia and Russia this year. New drilling and production techniques have opened up billions of barrels of recoverable U.S. oil in shale rock formations in the past 10 years, reversing decades of declining output and turning the nation into an exporter.

    The news also comes after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided last year to extend an agreement with several non-OPEC members to curb output in response to a global supply glut fed in part by shale.

    That agreement was finally showing signs of working, with prices emerging from a three-year downturn. After falling near $26 a barrel in 2016, the global benchmark oil price climbed above $70 a barrel in January, and the U.S. price is following suit. Yet, increasing output from the U.S. may threaten rising prices.

    “You are starting to see a little bit of a shift in market sentiment on oil given the fact that production is really starting to ramp up,” Joseph Bozoyan, a portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management LLC in Boston, said by telephone. “These U.S. production numbers are starting to take the wind out of the sails of the crude oil market.”

    Nationwide output climbed to 10.038 million barrels a day in November, the Energy Information Administration reported Jan. 31. That's the highest level since November 1970 in monthly data collected by the U.S. agency since 1920. It comes with West Texas Intermediate crude selling for about $64 a barrel, a price that could spur even more drilling.

    The Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, the engine room for shale production and acquisitions since the oil-price crash, is expected to comprise almost 30 percent of output this year. Exxon Mobil Corp. is spending billions to triple output by 2025 from the Permian, where its costs are as low as $15 a barrel.

    Production from Texas, which also included the Eagle Ford play, contributed 3.89 million barrels a day to the November figure, the most of any state. Production from the Gulf of Mexico and North Dakota, where the Bakken shale lies, were close behind.

    Weekly EIA data released Jan. 31 showed U.S. production at a record 9.92 million barrels a day last week.

    U.S. production is forecast to average 10.3 million barrels a day this year, and 10.9 million in 2019, the EIA has previously said in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook. That's a number that challenges daily production of just less than 10 million barrels by Saudi Arabia in December and almost 11 million by Russia last year.

    —With assistance from Michael Roschnotti.

    http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127705838&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127705838&jd=127705838
    

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11. Enterprise Moving Ahead on Us Gulf Coast Ethylene Export Terminal

    Feb 1, 2018 | Platts

    By Kristen Hays

    Enterprise Products Partners on Wednesday announced plans to move ahead on a new joint-venture ethylene export terminal on the US Gulf Coast, the latest major project to emerge from the US natural gas shale boom.
    
    Enterprise and its partner, London-based Navigator Gas, said the 1 million mt/year facility with 30,000 mt of refrigerated ethylene storage on site would start up in the first quarter of 2020, after more than 11 million mt/year of new and expanded ethylene capacity in Texas and Louisiana is slated to have begun operations between 2016 and 2019.
    
    Nearly 6 million mt/year more in expansions and newbuilds in those states is planned in 2020 and beyond, with much awaiting final investment decisions.
    
    "The resulting rapid growth in the supply of US ethylene, combined with increased demand from international markets, like Asia, creates an ideal scenario in which markets abroad are able to diversify their supply by accessing cost-advantaged feedstocks made possible by the shale revolution in the United States," Enterprise CEO Jim Teague said in a statement.
    
    Enterprise has discussed plans to export ethylene for more than a year, after starting up ethane and polymer-grade propylene export terminals on the Houston Ship Channel in 2016. While the company said Wednesday that the location and final investment decisions for the terminal are subject to reaching acceptable arrangements with local tax authorities, Teague said in October 2016 that Enterprise could build it next to its ethane export facility at Morgan's Point on the ship channel.
    
    During the company's quarterly earnings call Wednesday, Teague said the facility could be built at a location other than Morgan's Point "if we get a tax abatement that's better somewhere else and there's another location we could put it."
    
    Enterprise and Navigator, which owns and operates the world's largest fleet of Handysize and midsize liquefied gas carriers, signed a letter of intent in July to jointly develop the terminal on the ship channel.
    
    US crude oil prices were in the mid-$40s/b at that time, but surpassed $60/b in late December, widening ethane's advantage over other ethylene feedstocks.
    
    "When crude goes up, natgas doesn't, and it makes this a heck of a lot more attractive than it was at this time last year," Teague said on the call.
    
    ENTERPRISE TO CONVERT CAVERN, BUILD PIPELINE
    
    That announcement came three months after Enterprise said it would convert a 5.3 million-barrel ethane cavern at its natural gas liquids and petrochemical hub in Mont Belvieu, Texas, to hold ethylene. Enterprise said Wednesday that storage facility would begin service in Q1 2019, later than the initial startup target of mid-2018.
    
    Enterprise also said in April that the company would build a new 24-mile, bidirectional pipeline connecting Mont Belvieu to Bayport, Texas, near the mouth of the ship channel where multiple producers have ethylene pipelines run by Shell, Chevron, LyondellBasell, Ineos and Flint Hills Resources. The company said Wednesday the pipeline would start up in 2020.
    
    Plans for the ethylene cavern and pipeline were precursors to pulling the trigger on an ethylene terminal as Enterprise sought to secure export customers with long-term contracts, according to a source familiar with company operations.
    
    Enterprise said Wednesday that the ethylene terminal is supported by long-term contracts with anchor customers that include Flint Hills Resources and a major Japanese trading company. Enterprise did not disclose the project's cost.
    
    "We think we're going to add to the current level of commitments," Teague said during Wednesday's call.
    
    Norwegian chemical company Odfjell also has been seeking customer commitments for a 750,000 mt/year, $250 million to $300 million ethylene export project at its terminal about five miles south of Enterprise's ethane export terminal near the mouth of the ship channel. Odfjell originally planned to make a final investment decision in mid-2017, but pushed FID to early 2018. A company source said this week those efforts were ongoing.
    
    The US currently has one ethylene export terminal, operated by Targa Resources at its ship channel terminal, and it is contracted to Mitsubishi Chemical. The facility has a loading capacity of 1,000 mt/d, so it takes about 10 days to load a Handysize vessel.
    
    The proposed Odfjell terminal, by contrast, would fill a Handysize vessel in 24 hours at 21,600 mt/d. Enterprise's project will be able to load 24,000 mt/d, the company said Wednesday.
    
    INFRASTRUCTURE RAMPS UP
    
    Of eight new crackers and 14 new polyethylene plants in Texas and Louisiana starting up through 2019, two crackers and six PE plants began operations in 2017. Two more crackers had been slated to start up last year as well, but were delayed to 2018 because of Hurricane Harvey-related flooding.
    
    In second and potentially third waves beyond 2019, more derivative plants are expected along the Gulf Coast alongside additional ethylene capacity. 
    
    As the new infrastructure ramps up, there could be times when derivative plants reduce rates or shut down for maintenance, unplanned outages or bad weather that does not affect crackers. Rather than cut ethylene production during such downstream interruptions, an ethylene export terminal would allow crackers to run full-tilt regardless of operational status of polyethylene units, Teague noted in Wednesday's statement.
    
    "This export terminal will also offer diversification opportunities for domestic petrochemical producers who will not have to rely solely on the export market for derivatives like polyethylene," he said.
    
    Some industry players have been skeptical of whether enough excess ethylene will be consistently available to make an export terminal viable, and have questioned whether it's more cost efficient to just export polyethylene.
    
    But Odfjell sees potential in addition to Enterprise. Energy Transfer Partners executives also have said ethane or ethylene export projects are possible at its Nederland, Texas, crude oil terminal about 78 miles east of the ship channel or its LNG facility in Lake Charles, Louisiana, but have not disclosed further detail.
    

    https://www.platts.com/latest-news/petrochemicals/houston/enterprise-moving-ahead-on-us-gulf-coast-ethylene-10203763
    

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12. Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks Were Fast. It Could Get Messy in Court.

    Feb 1, 2018 | New York Times

    By Coral Davenport

    As the head of the federal agency controlling billions of acres of public lands and waters, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has spent the past year making bold policy proclamations to advance President Trump’s energy agenda: He would open coastal waters to drilling, shrink national monuments, lift Obama-era fossil fuel regulations and reduce wildlife protections.

    But legal experts say many of the moves were made without fully considering the laws and procedures governing changes like these, making them vulnerable to legal challenges that could delay or block them. They say many of the proposals may follow the fate of other bold and hasty moves by the Trump administration, such as the attempts to limit travel from countries with sizable Muslim populations on security grounds.

    “They’re acting in a hurry, appealing to the base, and trying to seem decisive,” said Patrick Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School. But, he added: “They’re not following the prescribed steps of the law. They’re creating errors for themselves as they go, sowing the seeds for the legal attacks.”

    It is not unusual for major policy changes to be hit by lawsuits from opponents. The Obama administration’s own environmental regulations were sometimes controversial because they relied on creative interpretations of decades-old laws to rein in smokestack pollution or stop oil, gas and coal exploration.

    Some Obama-era rules have been blocked or delayed by courts. But there is one big difference, Mr. Parenteu said. Even though some rules “pushed the edges of legal authority,” the Obama administration mustered a stronger defense by assembling “thousands of pages of support and technical analysis, laid out in mind-numbing detail,” he said. “Here, you have much more ad hoc, knee-jerk decision-making.”

    A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment on the legal foundations for Mr. Zinke’s moves.

    Among the most at-risk moves by Mr. Zinke thus far, Mr. Parenteau and other legal experts said, was a January announcement, made public via Twitter, to exempt Florida from a plan announced a week earlier to expand offshore drilling. The decision was perceived as a political move to help Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, who is expected to run for Senate this year.

    The Trump administration’s initial plan to open up the Atlantic, Pacific and Alaskan coasts to drilling, though controversial, largely adhered to the requirements of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which governs opening waters to offshore drilling. But the decision to exempt Florida, without holding legally required public hearings or providing a scientific justification, may have thrown the broader drilling plan into question, experts say.

    Lynn Scarlett, who served as deputy Interior Secretary under George W. Bush, said that the Florida reversal could well result in other coastal states successfully making the case that they should also be exempt from drilling, thus closing off many of the waters that Mr. Trump intended to open to drilling.

    “There’s the phrase, ‘haste makes waste,’’’ said Ms. Scarlett. “In policy decisions like this, doing your homework, carefully following the legal procedures, strongly enhances the prospect that the changes one is seeking will prevail.”

    The Florida exemption, she said, was “out of sync with the approach that’s delineated in the law.”

    Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina said that his state would sue the Trump administration if it did not receive an exemption. “If you base it on the criteria for Florida, you’re going to get the same result when it comes to North Carolina,” Mr. Cooper, a Democrat, said in an interview.

    Trump administration policymakers “have the legal right to open up the entire coast to drilling, if they follow the process,” said David Hayes, the deputy Interior Secretary under the Obama administration. “His lawyers must be cringing,” he said of Mr. Zinke. “They may have shot themselves in the foot.’

    Privately, oil executives who are pleased with Mr. Trump’s desire to strip away regulations have expressed frustration at the Interior Department’s methods, worrying that they could bog down the efforts in a legal morass. “What’s important is, let’s step back and go back to regular order, and let the process run its course,” said Jack Gerard, head of the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies on behalf of oil companies.

    James Connaughton, a senior White House environmental official in the George W. Bush administration, said it was typical for new administrations to stumble over the Byzantine legal requirements of environmental policy in its early days. “It’s just taking longer in this administration, because of delays in getting appointees in place, and delays in meaningful engagement with career civil servants,” he said. “It requires the force of individuals that know what they’re doing, to check the boxes of legislation and regulation,” he said.

    Ms. Scarlett noted that haste may also undermine or delay the Interior Department’s proposal to change an Obama-era plan to protect the habitat of the sage grouse, a bird that roams millions of acres in 11 states, including areas potentially rich in oil and gas deposits.

    The Obama-era plans “had been exhaustively developed, with lots of input, including by governors,” Ms. Scarlett said. “By going back to the drawing board, even if the idea is to benefit economies of states, it’s just injecting more delay and uncertainty into the picture.”

    On other moves, Mr. Zinke may have bypassed requirements of the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, which requires that federal-agency decisions that could have an environmental impact on the nation’s air, water, or pristine wildlife habitats must include a scientific analysis detailing the effects.

    Last week, Mr. Zinke approved a land swap allowing the construction of a long-contested road through Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a decision made under the Obama administration. The earlier decision was based on a four-year scientific analysis concluding that the road would irreparably harm critical waterfowl habitat.

    In reversing the decision, Mr. Zinke offered no new public scientific analysis supporting the change. Traditionally, findings like those would be publicly available.

    Speaking to reporters last week, Mr. Zinke said, “We looked at everything,” adding: “There is no significant issue the Department of Interior has found environmentally.” Asked for a copy of the findings, Mr. Zinke suggested making a Freedom of Information Act request.

    A lack of new scientific analysis could provide an opening for opponents challenge the road. “To take action to start building the road requires an environmental-impact statement,” said Sally Jewell, the Interior Secretary in the Obama administration, who opposed the road based on the Obama-administration environmental findings. “The law requires the analysis, and they haven’t done one.”

    “The agency will have to justify its changes to the courts,” said Jeffrey Lubbers, a professor of administrative law at American University. “If the previous action by the Obama administration was made based on findings of fact,” he said, then reversing it “will have to be justified by saying, ‘those facts are no longer true.’ And that will be difficult to do.”

    Experts say that Mr. Trump’s efforts to roll back protections on national monuments could hit legal roadblocks as well. Last year Mr. Trump announced that, based on a recommendation by Mr. Zinke, he intends to slash the size of two Utah monuments, Bears’ Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, by about two million acres, partly to allow mining.

    Legal experts say that the language of the Antiquities Act is unclear on whether a president can shrink a monument created by a predecessor. But there are clear legal restrictions on opening the monument up to mining, said Mark Squillace, an expert on natural resources law at the University of Colorado Law School.

    In the case of Grand Staircase, he said, a land management plan approved under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 specifies that “mining and mineral leasing is not allowed under the original boundaries of the monument,” he said — the key words being, original boundaries. That language could ultimately prevent mining on lands there, Mr. Squillace said.

    Last week, California filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department over its plan to undo an Obama-era regulation on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on public lands. The rule requires fracking companies, which extract oil and gas by injecting a cocktail of chemicals into the ground, to follow stricter standards on cleaning up waste and to disclose at least some of the chemicals they use.

    California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, said the rollback violated the law by failing to consider the environmental impacts of fracking, such as the possible contamination of underground water tables. “They’re making moves that are big and bold, and they’re breaking the law,” Mr. Becerra said in an interview. “The rules have to go through a process. You can’t just unwind them by fiat.”

    Lisa Friedman contributed from Washington and Alan Blinder from Atlanta.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/climate/trump-zinke-environmental-rollback.html
    

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13. GOP Tax Cut Could Unlock Billions for Utility Infrastructure

    Feb 1, 2018 | PoliticoPro

    By Darius Dixon

    Last year’s tax overhaul is about to unlock a multibillion-dollar pot of money for electric and gas utilities — and it could help pay for a massive buildout of energy infrastructure.

    This largely unnoticed side effect of the new law, H.R. 1 (115), could free up many tens of billions of dollars that utilities have collected from customers for years — “deferred” money set aside to pay future years’ taxes for projects like transmission lines and power plants. Thanks to the bill’s massive reduction in corporate tax rates, much of that may now be able to go toward other investments, such as modernizing and strengthening the nation’s pipelines and electric grid.

    The windfall is expected to set off a debate in dozens of states about how to spend the money — and whether some of it should go to reducing customers’ rates. It’s also stirring interest among environmental groups, which could push to use a chunk of the cash to build wind or solar projects or retrain displaced coal workers.

    “This deferred income tax pool is big money,” said David Springe, executive director of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, a trade association. “This is where all the money is. That is why the utilities really care.”

    The deferred money is separate from the immediate boost to earnings that utilities will see from the cut in their corporate income taxes. That increase was already expected to see customers’ electric and gas bills drop in many states — for instance, shaving $82 million off rates for Exelon’s Baltimore Gas and Electric and $280 million a year for customers of New Jersey-based PSEG.

    But those numbers are probably a fraction of the money that the utilities are holding in their deferred tax balances. PSEG estimates it will have at least $1.8 billion in its deferred tax pool to spend on rate cuts or infrastructure upgrades, and bigger utilities have amassed even larger sums. American Electric Power’sregulatory filings list $4.4 billion, while NextEra Energy’s sits at $4.5 billion. Others will start rolling out their “excess” figures over the next several weeks as they file annual financial reports to the SEC.

    Because the deferred taxes represent money the utilities have already collected, power and gas suppliers are likely to argue to state utility commissioners that at least some of those funds should go toward new projects they can show will benefit consumers.

    “That’ll be the commissioners’ challenge,” said Greg White, a former Michigan energy regulator who is executive director of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. “What’s the right balance of appropriate rate treatment — rate reduction — versus allowing the utility to use that working capital for other projects?”

    Since no new burden would be placed on ratepayers, it may be easy for utilities to make that case.

    “I expect that a lot of utilities will argue that the tax savings will be an opportunity to invest in infrastructure without having to come back and ask for rate increases to recover those costs,” White said.

    The utilities accrue the large sums because they generally don’t pay off a transmission line, power plant or other expensive project in a single year, so as to not impose a rate shock on customers’ bills. Instead, they work with state regulators to spread out those costs — and the federal taxes — over decades. Because consumers are already on the hook for those existing, decades-long payment schedules, the tax bill’s 40 percent drop in corporate tax rates means utilities are on track for a sizable over-collection from customers.

    In some states, early signs point to efforts to direct that money toward investments ranging from upgrading the electric grid to retraining workers.

    “Some commissions may say, 'We want to give it all back and we’re going to do it over 10 years,'” said Casey Herman, who leads PricewaterhouseCoopers’ U.S. power and utilities advisers unit. “Or they may say that this is a unique opportunity for us to implement something we wanted to implement but it wasn’t affordable to our customers before.”

    If natural gas and water utilities were rolled in with the electricity sector, Herman said the deferred tax balances would add up to hundreds of billions of dollars. The Edison Electric Institute, a trade group of investor-owned power utilities, estimates that deferred tax balances across the power industry alone total around $165 billion, although the portion that is “excess” under the new tax rate is not yet known.

    “It’s up to the utilities commissions to decide what to do, and the default position is to just reduce the rates,” said John Finnigan, a senior regulatory attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, but there’s no reason that the money couldn’t be used investing in the grid, energy efficiency or renewable energy.

    The International Energy Agency has estimated the U.S. power grid would need $2.1 trillion in new investments between 2014 and 2035 to accommodate the transition to newer energy sources, such as wind or solar.

    Most utilities keep a to-do list of projects, said Eric Grey, the Edison Electric Institute’s director of government relations, so the money freed up because of the tax change is “going to fuel our member companies to move forward with those advancements in infrastructure.”

    Two factors have really driven a spike in deferred tax balances over the past 15 years: a dramatic increase in capital spending on infrastructure, and the generous bonus depreciation incentives put into place after the 2008 recession that gave companies bigger write-offs for equipment purchases.

    “Since 2004, we’ve almost been in this super-cycle as far as a build cycle that has tripled [capital expenditures] to somewhat north of $100 billion,” Grey said. “At the end of the day, it’s our customers’ money. It’s our due diligence to make sure that that goes back to them whether that’s in rates or in infrastructure that is needed by them.”

    And it’s the state utility commissions that will ultimately navigate the currents of local politics, long-term energy planning, business concerns and their own legal boundaries on what to do with the deferred tax windfalls.

    For big utilities, the issue gets complicated by their spread across multiple jurisdictions. Ohio-based AEP, for example, has to sort out how its $4.4 billion return plays out in the 11 states it operates in.

    Even state-backed consumer advocate offices, which tend to negotiate for less spending, aren’t unified in pushing to translate every excess dollar into rate deductions.

    “My membership probably leans more towards drawing that money back,” NASUCA’s Springe said, but “every state is going to be different and in every one of those states the consumer advocate may or may not have the same view as the utilities.”

    Still, the large amount of money expected to be freed up may give utilities and regulators the ability to cover a lot of their bases.

    “I struggle to think that a state would simply take all of that money and use it for some particular project, then you’re not getting any rate reductions,” he said.

    EDF’s Finnigan said his group will advocate for particular projects at state commissions once utilities start saying how much money is at stake. But as this unfolds in every state over the next year or so, his group plans to focus on nine states, particularly those with the largest greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, such as California, Texas, Ohio and New York, he said.

    Even critics of President Donald Trump’s energy and environmental policies see the deferred tax money as a silver lining of the GOP law. The Sierra Club is pondering a strategy for using the excess tax funds to retrain coal power plant workers at sites slated for closure in rural areas.

    “The Trump administration is not offering a coherent policy for economic transition for coal communities. Instead, it’s giving them false promises that coal’s getting revived,” said Bill Corcoran, the Western director of the group’s Beyond Coal campaign. “In that gap … or even an acceptance that the transition is happening, we should strive to make use of this tax bill.”

    Charging utility consumers to retrain power plant workers facing job losses isn’t without precedent. Last month, California regulators approved a plan to close the state’s last two nuclear reactors by 2025. But the deal included $223 million for a retention and retraining program for plant employees who are being forced to move on. Corcoran also pointed to the pending closure of a coal-fired power plant in Washington state where the owner, TransAlta, agreed to pour $55 million into a local economic development fund.

    “It’s important to have robust models for that transition,” Corcoran said, noting coming coal plant closures in New Mexico, Colorado and Montana.

    “We want to make sure that in the understandable rush to return money to ratepayers that important community questions aren’t missed in the process,” he said. “This moment is a prod to have that conversation.”

    https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/01/gop-tax-cut-could-unlock-billions-for-utility-infrastructure-313872
    

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14. Trump Admin Mulls Deep Cuts to Clean Energy Programs

    Jan 31, 2018 | E&E News PM

    By Hannah Northey

    This article was updated at 5:05 p.m. EST.

    The White House is considering a fiscal 2019 budget proposal that would cut funding by 72 percent for the Department of Energy's renewables and energy efficiency programs from current levels.

    The portion of the proposal viewed by E&E News would slash funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy from an enacted level of about $2 billion for the current fiscal year to just $636 million in fiscal 2018 and a little more than $575 million in fiscal 2019.

    The administration is also proposing to cut the number of full-time employees from 680 in the enacted 2017 levels to 458 in fiscal 2018 and to 450 in fiscal 2019.

    The document also suggests substantial staff cuts — going from 680 in the enacted 2017 budget to 450 in fiscal 2019.

    Congress pushed back last year against a host of proposed steep cuts to DOE programs in Trump's initial budget request. The new draft proposal will serve as a starting point for broader discussions on Capitol Hill.

    DOE didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration plans to release its fiscal 2019 budget proposal Feb. 12, according to the Office of Management and Budget (Greenwire, Jan. 24).

    https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/01/31/stories/1060072557
    

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15. Total Makes Its Largest Oil Discovery in the Gulf of Mexico

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Amanda Jordan

    Total SA said it made its largest discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, finding crude in the Ballymore field deep offshore.

    “This major discovery gives us access to large oil resources and follow-on potential” in the surrounding area, the French energy giant said Jan. 31. The well was drilled to 8,898 meters (29,200 feet) and encountered 205 vertical meters of oil-bearing rock.

    Total overhauled its exploration strategy three years ago after an almost four-year push for big new finds proved unsuccessful. In September it struck an exploration accord with Chevron Corp. in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, agreeing to hold stakes of as much as 40 percent in wells across seven prospects. Total's investment in Ballymore was part of that deal.

    “Ballymore is the largest discovery by Total in the prolific Gulf of Mexico and bolsters our new exploration strategy put in place since 2015,” Kevin McLachlan, senior vice president of exploration at Total, said in a statement.

    Located in a water depth of about 2,000 meters and 120 kilometers from the Louisiana coast, the Ballymore prospect covers four blocks in the Norphlet play, including Block MC 607 where the discovery was made. A sidetrack well is under way to confirm the potential of the find.

    http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127705840&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127705840&jd=127705840
    

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Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Transportation and Infrastructure News

16. (ACC Mentioned) Infrastructure Plan Could Benefit DowDupont, Other Chemical Firms

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Adam Allington and Tiffany Stecker

    DowDupont, Westlake Chemical and RPM International are among the U.S. chemical companies that would be well-positioned to benefit from an infrastructure package that President Donald Trump pitched in his State of the Union address.

    “This proposal further demonstrates that this administration fundamentally understands the business of business,” DowDupont said in a statement. “Dow and the chemical industry, as well as countless U.S. workers and citizens, will benefit from the President's proposal to invest in our infrastructure.”

    Higher spending on infrastructure would juice sales for chemical-based products, such as piping, coatings, and concrete additives that are critical to meeting modern performance standards, said a Bloomberg Intelligence report released Jan. 30, the day of Trump's address.

    “Yesterday's concrete, steel, and glass meet modern expectations with today's chemicals,” said Jason Miner, senior global chemicals analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence and co-author of the report.

    More than 20 percent of Westlake Chemical's sales are tied to the U.S. construction industry, according to a Miner's analysis of company filings. About 15 percent of DowDupont's sales and 10 percent of RPM International's sales are tied to the sector.

    Small Firms, Biggest Boost

    Miner also pointed out that small, specialty chemical companies focusing on a small portfolio of products such as gases, solar, and battery materials, could see the biggest boost.

    “Assuming transportation moves the fastest, concrete additives, polyvinyl chloride resins (PVC) and adhesives would join coatings to be among the earliest to capture new sales,” according to the Bloomberg Intelligence report.

    The current economic momentum—combined with tax reform—is already factoring into spring demand forecasts for concrete additives.

    “There is little doubt that the near-term outlook for construction and cement consumption in 2018 and 2019 remain favorable,” said Ed Sullivan, senior vice president and chief economist for the Portland Cement Association, the main trade group representing cement companies. 

    Permitting Process Needs Fix

    In a speech that largely avoided specifics, Trump did call for shrinking the permitting process for federal infrastructure projects.

    Trump said any infrastructure plan should include a goal of getting the permitting window down to “no more than two years, and perhaps even one.”

    The process currently can take anywhere from five to 10 years—a situation that former President Barack Obama also tried to address through a 2012 executive order instructing agencies to use better technology and work concurrently on their reviews in order to cut down on approval times.

    “There are a lot of regulatory hurdles just to do some basic stuff,” said Chris Bryant, a senior regulatory consultant at Bergeson & Campbell , a Washington, D.C., law firm specializing in chemical regulatory issues.

    A gauntlet of federal, state, and local regulations includes many costly redundancies, Bryant told Bloomberg Environment.

    “Everything from the Clean Air Act, to the Endangered Species Act, New Source Review, to the Clean Water Act—there can be well over 20 different types of permits for just one infrastructure project,” said Bryant.

    But others maintain that the infrastructure needs in the U.S. are not because of environmental reviews or permitting.

    “Our problem is cash,” said Scott Slesinger, legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The solution is the political will to appropriate the needed dollars. Environmental reviews and permitting are scapegoats.”

    NEPA Seen As Hurdle

    The biggest challenge from a regulatory standpoint, said Bryant, is the National Environmental Policy Act. It essentially requires federal agencies to evaluate the “social and economic effects of their proposed actions” before they start any major development.

    “I don't think anyone is going to argue against laws that are going to safeguard the health and safety of American lives and our environment,” Bryant said. “But this has been an issue among our clients for a really long time, and I'm a pro-regulation guy.”

    Some caution that any steps that would speed the permitting process be founded on market-based solutions.

    “In particular, these policies should ensure that all federally funded infrastructure projects require an open, competitive bidding process for all materials,” said Scott Openshaw, a senior director with the American Chemistry Council.

    Show Me the Money?

    Notably, Trump did not ask Congress to allocate $1.5 trillion toward his infrastructure ambitions, but to produce a bill that “generates” that amount.

    That turn of phrase could presage an eventual conflict over cost-shifting funding from other social projects to pay for infrastructure and seeking significant money from the states—moves Democrats are likely to oppose. But even getting to that fight may be a long way off, if not unreachable.

    “There isn't enough time for Congress to agree on such a broad package before they turn their attention to the 2018 elections, not to mention coming to a bipartisan agreement over budget concerns,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nathan Dean told Bloomberg Environment. “All of this infrastructure talk in Washington is going to have little impact on total U.S. infrastructure growth in 2018.”

    http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127705818&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127705818&jd=127705818

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17. Trump Previews Infrastructure ‘Fix,’ Touts Energy Boom

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Abby Smith

    President Donald Trump, in his first State of the Union address, previewed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan that would speed project permitting and approval processes.

    Trump also touted his administration's deregulatory push as a boon to the energy industry—though he didn't mention any specific regulatory rollbacks.

    Beyond roads and bridges, the administration's infrastructure plan is expected to touch on funding for drinking water systems and cleanup of contaminated Superfund sites—though Trump didn't mention those issues specifically in his address. In his Jan. 30 speech, Trump urged Congress to reach a deal to provide the public with reliable infrastructure.

    “Every federal dollar should be leveraged by partnering with state and local governments and, where appropriate, tapping into private sector investment—to permanently fix the infrastructure deficit,” Trump said.

    Trump's infrastructure pledge drew criticism from Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, indicating a split over how much the federal government should fund infrastructure.

    “President Trump is saying he has a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan. He actually has an infrastructure plan with only $200 billion in federal funding over 10 years,” Pallone said in a tweetafter the speech. “He expects states, localities, and the private sector to come up with $1.3 trillion on their own.”

    Trump Calls for Faster Permitting

    Trump outlined his infrastructure plan in broad strokes, without touching on policy specifics, but suggested the administration is working to incorporate some industry requests.

    For example, industry wants any infrastructure package to include changes to speed project permitting. In particular, industry and manufacturing groups are looking for “one final federal action” on permitting decisions—consolidating approval authority to one lead federal agency.

    “Any bill must also streamline the permitting and approval process—getting it down to no more than two years, and perhaps even one,” Trump said.

    Trump, in his speech, criticized the amount of time it currently takes to get infrastructure projects off the ground.

    “We built the Empire State Building in just one year. Isn't it a disgrace that it can now take 10 years just to get a minor permit approved for the building of a simple road?” Trump said.

    Republican lawmakers cheered Trump's infrastructure push.

    “America's roads, bridges, dams, highways, and ports are crucial to the nation's success,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement. “We need a robust, fiscally responsible infrastructure bill that makes it easier to start and finish projects more quickly.”

    Environmental groups, however, fear the administration's push for quicker permitting signals further rollbacks—including undercutting reviews of projects’ environmental impacts.

    How Much Federal Money?

    Trump also didn't specify where the federal dollars for the infrastructure plan would come from.

    Some Democrats in the chamber questioned “Where's the money?”, loud enough to be heard by reporters watching the speech in a gallery above the House floor, as Trump discussed his infrastructure plan.

    Administration officials have said they will leave those decisions up to lawmakers.

    “We are open to ideas to come up with ‘pay fors,’ but we will not start there,” DJ Gribbin, a special assistant to President Donald Trump for infrastructure policy, told a recent meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

    Gribbin told the mayors, however, that the White House wouldn't support cuts to core infrastructure programs that already exist, such as the Transportation Department's highway trust fund or the Environmental Protection Agency's state revolving loan funds.

    Coal-state Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (W. Va.), expressed initial support for Trump's broad vision for an infrastructure plan. He told reporters he'll have to see “where the money's coming from and how [Trump] intends to pay for” the infrastructure plan, “but it sounds good.” 

    Regulatory Cuts Touted

    Trump also touted his deregulatory agenda, saying his administration has “eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in the history of our country.”

    EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, in a statement released after the speech, said the agency is implementing Trump's agenda to protect the environment and grow the economy.

    Pruitt highlighted the EPA's effort to repeal the Clean Power Plan regulation to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and the Waters of the U.S. rule that defined what waterways fall under federal jurisdiction. However, the process of rescinding those Obama-era regulations is not complete and will be the target of legal challenges.

    In particular, Trump pointed broadly to the efforts his administration took to free up energy production.

    “We have ended the war on American energy — and we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal,” Trump said. “We are now very proudly an exporter of energy to the world.”

    Democrats noted that Trump's first State of the Union had a missing element: climate change. The president boasted of energy production, but didn't mention the need to switch to clean and renewable energy, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), told reporters.

    Trump has “chained himself to a highly polluting process that is damaging rural America,” Merkley said. “It's damaging our forests, it's damaging our farming, and it's damaging our fishing. So he's certainly hurting a lot of people.”

    http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127705826&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127705826&jd=127705826
    

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Environment News

18. Court Puts Litigation over Haze Rule on Hold

    Jan 31, 2018 | E&E News PM

    By Sean Reilly

    Legal proceedings in a jumble of challenges to U.S. EPA's latest regional haze reduction regulations are now on hold while the agency retrenches.

    At EPA's request, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit yesterday put the consolidated litigation into open-ended abeyance, with status reports required every 90 days. EPA had sought the pause earlier this month after deciding to embark on a new rulemaking that could replace sizable chucks of the amended regional haze rule published early last year (Greenwire, Jan. 19).

    "To the extent that EPA's rulemaking results in final action that modifies provisions of the rule under review, it is possible that such changes could narrow or eliminate issues before the court," agency lawyers wrote in their Jan. 19 motion for abeyance.

    The amended regulations are facing a total of 11 lawsuits. EPA is undertaking the rulemaking after the state of Alaska, the Utility Air Regulatory Group and other industry plaintiffs sought administrative reconsideration of last year's rule. Although EPA isn't acting on those petitions at this point, it will issue final guidance that could address "some or all" of the issues raised in them, EPA chief Scott Pruitt said this month.

    Environmental groups involved in the litigation did not oppose the abeyance motion.

    The regional haze program, dating back to 1999 in its current form, seeks to restore visibility in 15 national parks and wilderness areas — the bulk of them in the West — to natural conditions by 2064. The amendments added last year are intended in part to bring federal land managers earlier into the haze reduction planning process; they also delayed the deadline for states to submit their next round of regional haze implementation plans from this year until 2021.

    EPA's first status report to the court is due April 30, according to yesterday's order.

    https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/01/31/stories/1060072539
    

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19. E.P.A. Blocks Obama-Era Clean Water Rule

    Feb 1, 2018 | New York Times

    By Coral Davenport

    The Trump administration has formally suspended a major Obama-era clean water regulation ahead of plans to issue its own version of the rule later this year.

    President Trump has taken aim at the bitterly contested rule, known as Waters of the United States, since his campaign, calling it “one of the worst examples of federal regulation.” Among Mr. Trump’s first actions in office was an executive order directing his Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, to begin the legal process of rescinding the ruleand replacing it with a more industry-friendly alternative.

    On Wednesday, Mr. Pruitt took a major step toward completing that task, filing the legal documents required to suspend the Obama rule for two years. The rule was set to be implemented in the coming weeks, following a Supreme Court decision last week that gave jurisdiction of the matter to district courts.

    Having suspended the water rule, Mr. Pruitt is now crafting a Trump administration version, which is expected to include much looser regulatory requirements on how farmers, ranchers and real estate developers must safeguard the streams and tributaries that flow through their property and into larger bodies of water.

    The Obama clean water regulation, which would have limited the use of pollutants like chemical fertilizers that could run off into small streams, came under fierce criticism from the rural landowners that make up a key component of Mr. Trump’s political base.

    “Today, E.P.A. is taking action to reduce confusion and provide certainty to America’s farmers and ranchers,” Mr. Pruitt said in a statement. “The 2015 WOTUS rule developed by the Obama administration will not be applicable for the next two years, while we work through the process of providing long-term regulatory certainty across all 50 states about what waters are subject to federal regulation.”

    Mr. Pruitt told a conference of state agricultural commissioners that he intends to issue a draft proposal of replacement water regulations in the spring and to finalize new rules this year, according to Politico.

    The Waters of the United States rule, designed to limit pollution in about 60 percent of the nation’s bodies of water, was put forth by the E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers in 2015. It had extended existing federal protections of large bodies of water, such as the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, to smaller bodies that flow into them, such as rivers, small waterways and wetlands.

    Issued under the authority of the 1972 Clean Water Act, the rule has been hailed by environmentalists. But farmers, ranchers and real estate developers oppose it as an infringement on their property rights.

    Republicans in farm states cheered the administration’s move on Wednesday.

    “The Obama administration’s outrageous Waters of the United States rule would have put backyard ponds, puddles, and farm fields under Washington’s control,” said Senator John Barrasso, the Wyoming Republican who is chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “Today’s action will give Wyoming’s ranchers, farmers, small businesses, and communities clarity.”

    Environmentalists, meanwhile, assailed the move and vowed to sue the administration.

    “The Clean Water Rule protects the bodies of water that feed the drinking water supply for one in three Americans,” said Jon Devine, a senior attorney with the National Resources Defense Council. “E.P.A. Administrator Scott Pruitt is racing the clock to deny protections for our public health and safety. It’s grossly irresponsible, and illegal — and we’ll challenge it in court.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/climate/trump-water-wotus.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience
    

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20. EPA to Issue Environmental Permits Within Six Months, Pruitt Says (1)

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Amena H. Saiyid

    Environmental permitting decisions will be made within six months under a program the EPA plans to launch at the end of the year, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said Jan. 31.

    “Every permitting decision we make will be made within six months,” Pruitt told a gathering of state agriculture officials in Washington.

    The administrator's remarks came a day after President Donald Trump announced his intention to move ahead with plans to streamline permitting for infrastructure projects, tying in with his $1.5 trillion plan to revamp the nation's infrastructure.

    Pruitt said he appointed Henry Darwin, the Environmental Protection Agency's chief operating officer, to determine how long the agency takes to issue permits.

    “It wasn't good” what Darwin uncovered, Pruitt said, adding there was no data indicating how long it takes the EPA to issue permits.

    The agency issues permits to regulate how much pollution is released into the soil, water, and air, and also permits determining the safety of applying federally registered pesticides.

    Inconsistency Among Offices

    The EPA's regional offices aren't all on the same page and are often inconsistent when it came to implementing policies, Pruitt said. “We are working to improve consistency across all programs and offices,” he said.

    The Environmental Council of the States, which has been working with the EPA on this program, didn't respond to requests for comment.

    The EPA issues water pollution permits in the District of Columbia, Idaho, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and its territories. Other states may issue their own.

    “It isn't clear though whether this program will apply to the permits that states are authorized to issue,” Julia Anastasio, executive director for the Association of Clean Water Administrators, told Bloomberg Environment.

    The EPA, however, has asked state water officials that did engage in streamlining their permitting programs to share their experiences.

    (Updates with comment from Julia Anastasio of the Association of Clean Water Administrators)

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21. States Explore Carbon Taxes, But Same Roadblocks Remain (1)

    Feb 1, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Adrianne Appel

    A nine-state coalition of lawmakers wants to sell states on a carbon tax, but the efforts face the same Republican opposition that have made it a non-starter at the federal level.

    No state has yet adopted a carbon tax, but the idea is being pursued in Washington with the backing of Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and has been suggested in Massachusetts where Gov. Charlie Baker (R) is a steadfast opponent. But carbon tax backers hope that the fact that states are even discussing it means the idea is viable as they look for ways to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the most economic way possible.

    “Politically, the fact that legislators are doing this in a number of states gives the idea gravitas. You can't dismiss carbon pricing as marginal,” Massachusetts Sen. Michael Barrett (D), a member of the coalition, told Bloomberg Environment Jan. 31.

    In addition to Massachusetts, other lawmakers in the new Carbon Costs Coalition are from Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

    Advocates say carbon taxes, used in 61 nations including Canada, can be highly effective in shifting societies toward clean energy use. Carbon taxes “not only provide incentives for people to not emit pollution, but they also provide incentives for people to innovate,” Joseph Stiglitz a Columbia University economist who advocates for carbon taxes globally, told Bloomberg Environment in a Jan. 30 interview.

    Though some state lawmakers are considering carbon taxes, they face the same Republican headwinds—President Donald Trump came out against a carbon tax as a candidate in May 2016—that have stalled Democrats at the federal level.

    States Ponder But Roadblocks Remain

    Washington is the furthest along. A plan backed by Inslee would impose a $20 per ton fee on carbon emissions from power plants and transportation fuels beginning July 1, 2019. The tax would raise an estimated $3.3 billion over four years.

    Democrats control both legislative chambers, but Republican support is needed to pass the plan. Working in Inslee's favor is the possibility that a broad coalition of groups in the state would try and pass a carbon tax by ballot measure if the legislature does not act, which could force the two parties to negotiate.

    Other state efforts face sterner opposition. In Massachusetts, Senate lawmakers are drafting an omnibus energy bill with a carbon tax provision that would allow Baker to choose whether to spend the revenue or rebate it to consumers. However, Baker thinks a carbon tax would “adversely impact businesses’ and families’ utility bills,” Brendan Moss, spokesman for Baker, told Bloomberg Environment Jan. 31.

    Though Vermont lawmakers joined the Carbon Costs Coalition, Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott also opposes a carbon tax in his state and New England in general. A regional tax would put the entire New England states at a disadvantage because its energy costs are among the highest in the nation, Scott said in a Jan. 25 letter to lawmakers who favor a carbon tax. 

    Resilience, Fairness Selling Points

    Carbon tax advocates hope to sell the measure to state legislators as a way to help companies prepare for the risks of climate change or as a way of ending historic subsidies for fossil fuels.

    “Businesses know that climate change is a risk to their bottom line,” Christine Blackburn, policy director of the American Sustainable Business Council, told reporters Jan. 31. Almost 1,400 businesses have internal carbon “tax” systems or are about to implement one, Blackburn said.

    Imposing a tax on carbon emissions is an issue of fairness, Washington Sen. Reuven Carlyle (D), told reporters.

    Washington has five oil refineries that earn $16.3 billion in profits, yet pay a total of just $200 million in taxes, Carlyle said. “We need to talk about the massive subsidies of the petroleum industry in our country,” Carlyle said.

    (Updates throughout with additional reporting)

    http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127705821&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127705821&jd=127705821

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22. American Meteorological Society Asks Trump to Check Government Agencies for Climate Change Information

    Jan 31, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire

    By Brett Samuels

    The American Meteorological Society pushed back against President Trump’s claims about global warming, and directed him to government resources to find “credible and scientifically validated information.” 

    “There is a wealth of comprehensive and accurate information on climate change available to you and your staff within government agencies, as well as from experts in academic institutions and other organizations,” Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society, wrote Tuesday in a letter to Trump.

    In an interview aired Sunday night with ITV News, Trump disputed arguments that the planet is getting warmer by saying the polar ice caps are “at a record level.”

    “I mean, look, it used to not be climate change. It used to be global warming. That wasn’t working too well because it was getting too cold all over the place,” Trump said.

    A NASA report last year found that the sea ice extent on both poles had reached the lowest levels since the data began to be recorded in 1979. 

    “Unfortunately, these and other climate-related comments in the interview are not consistent with scientific observations from around the globe, nor with scientific conclusions based on these observations,” Seitter wrote in his letter. 

    He suggested Trump could find accurate information on the climate through NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

    Trump has repeatedly voiced skepticism about climate change. He has referred to it as a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese, and last month questioned global warming amid a cold snap in the eastern United States.

    http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/371714-american-meteorological-society-asks-trump-to-check-government
    

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