Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 2/9/2018
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(ACC Mentioned) The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Court Decision
Feb 8, 2018 | Wesleyan Argus
By Tara Joy
On Jan. 21, 2010, the Supreme Court issued the infamous Citizens United ruling. Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission was a highly controversial case which determined that any person or corporation can donate unlimited amounts of money... -
EPA to Close Las Vegas Research Office
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brenna Goth
The EPA's scientific research branch will close its Las Vegas location by the fall, agency officials confirmed Feb. 8. -
EPA Claims 'Proportional' TSCA Fees Rule But EDF Faults Cost Estimates
Feb 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
EPA has issued a proposed a rule allowing the agency to collect industry fees to help defray costs of implementing aspects of the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), claiming to have answered industry calls for fees that are proportional to the agency's costs -
Chemical Makers to Pay EPA $20 Million Yearly for Reviews Under Proposal
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The U.S. chemical sector would pay about $20 million annually to help defray the EPA's costs for reviewing chemical products under a proposed rule. -
Fluoride Ban Case Can Include New Evidence, Judge Rules
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sara Merken
Environmental health advocates will be able to use new information in their fight to ban fluoride in drinking water, a federal court in San Francisco has ruled. -
Overwhelming Local Support for EPA Chemical Assessment Program: Communities Impacted by PFC Contamination Urge Congress to Maintain Critical Program
Feb 9, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Samantha Lovell
Today, a letter signed by more than 100 people was submitted to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees urging Congress to protect the EPA Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program. -
DuPont Faces Ohio Lawsuit Over Teflon Chemicals in Water
Feb 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Ebert
DuPont Co. allegedly dumped tons of toxic chemicals used to make Teflon into Ohio's air and water, the state said in a lawsuit. -
Clothing Companies in the EU Face Toxics Limits in Textiles
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
Thousands of companies selling clothing and shoes would be affected by a draft European Union regulation that would limit the presence of 33 hazardous substances in garments, footwear, and textiles. -
U.S. Oil Reserve Would Fall Nearly in Half Under Budget Deal
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter and Catherine Traywick
The U.S. is poised to sell half its emergency oil reserves to help pay its bills, something critics said defies the reason the stockpile was created decades ago as a hedge against supply disruptions. -
JCT: Energy Tax Provisions Cost $11B
Feb 8, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Nick Juliano
Energy tax credits in the budget deal Congress is considering will cost about $11billion over the next decade, according to estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation released Thursday. -
Energy Committee 'Teed up' to Work on Package
Feb 9, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Sam Mintz
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is preparing to push for energy infrastructure provisions to be part of the massive infrastructure package set to be proposed by the Trump administration next week and considered by Congress over the coming months. -
Ongoing Power Sector GHG Cuts Could Frustrate Pruitt's CPP Agenda
Feb 9, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
New EPA data shows the power sector is three-quarters of the way toward meeting the greenhouse gas targets of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) -- over a decade ahead of the rule's 2030 deadline and just three years after it was issued... -
Trump 'Energy Dominance' Policy Pits Washington Against Moscow
Feb 9, 2018 | Reuters
By Timothy Gardner
Last July, U.S. President Donald Trump stood beside his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, in Warsaw and promised to help wean the nation off Russian energy imports. He offered U.S. fuel as an alternative, “so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier.” -
California Seeks to Thwart Trump's Offshore Oil-Drilling Plan (1)
Feb 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
A Trump administration plan to open coastal waters for drilling is running into trouble in California as the state takes steps to ensure that oil from any new offshore leases can't be brought ashore. -
Interior Methane Waste Rule Change Clears OMB
Feb 8, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre
The Interior Department’s proposed change to an Obama-era rule on methane emissions has cleared the Office of Management and Budget, according to OMB's website, indicating an official announcement could come soon. -
Ex-Microsoft VP Tapped for Federal Chemical Security Position (1)
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
A former Microsoft Corp. vice president will be responsible for securing reauthorization of a chemical security program later this year if confirmed by the Senate for a Homeland Security Department post. -
Dems Call for $1 Trillion Federal Investment in Infrastructure
Feb 9, 2018 | The Hill - Transportation
By Mallory Shelbourne
House Democrats on Thursday called for $1 trillion in federal dollars for an infrastructure overhaul, a proposal that comes just days ahead of the announcement of President Trump’s long-awaited infrastructure proposal. -
Union Pacific Signals It Will Not Make 2018 Federal Deadline to Fully Operate Key Crash-Prevention System
Feb 8, 2018 | Sacremento Bee
By Tony Bizjak
Union Pacific Railroad, the largest freight carrier in California and the West, revealed this week that it will not meet this year’s deadline to have a federally mandated crash-prevention system fully up and running. -
Trump Admin Touts Enforcement Data and Draws Fire
Feb 9, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly and Amanda Reilly
U.S. EPA, its enforcement record under close scrutiny since President Trump took office, today released numbers for last year that a top official touted as evidence of the agency's commitment to ensuring compliance with environmental laws. -
Rise in E.P.A. Penalties Against Polluters Comes With an Asterisk
Feb 9, 2018 | New York Times
By Eric Lipton and Danielle Ivory
The Trump administration has released data showing a large increase in penalties against polluters, as well $20 billion in commitments from companies to correct problems that have caused environmental damage. -
Environmental Enforcement Increasingly Left to the States
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz and Jennifer Lu
The EPA is conducting fewer inspections of polluting industries and leaving more of that work to states, part of an ongoing trend in environmental enforcement, according to annual data released Feb. 8. -
EPA's Scott Pruitt Asks Whether Global Warming ‘Necessarily Is a Bad Thing’
Feb 8, 2018 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney
As head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt has repeatedly questioned the scientific consensus that rising levels of carbon dioxide from human-fueled activity are warming the planet. -
Sierra Club Sues EPA over Air Permitting Policy Change
Feb 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
Sierra Club is suing EPA over the agency’s denial of the group’s challenge to a Utah power plant’s air permit, in a case that will test a key change in policy by the Trump EPA in which the agency makes it more difficult to challenge underlying provisions of Clean Air Act “Title V”...
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(ACC Mentioned) The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Court Decision
Feb 8, 2018 | Wesleyan Argus
By Tara Joy
On Jan. 21, 2010, the Supreme Court issued the infamous Citizens United ruling. Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission was a highly controversial case which determined that any person or corporation can donate unlimited amounts of money to support a candidate’s campaign, though not directly to the candidate. The decision caused great controversy at the time—Obama himself criticized it in the 2010 State of the Union—but in the years since, the outrage appears to have died down. To a certain extent, this is understandable. The American public has a notoriously short memory, and under the current administration, it feels like a new threat to democracy emerges every week. Who has time to worry about an eight-year-old court case? In fact, while it’s easy to forget or ignore the substantial power of the Supreme Court, its decisions can have effects that long outlast those of any one presidential administration. Citizens United was just such a decision. The court’s ruling was based on flawed and dangerous logic, and continues to threaten our democracy for both ideological and practical reasons.
At the heart of Citizens United were the ideas that money constitutes free speech and that corporations qualify as people, and thus both are entitled to First Amendment protections. The decision to allow corporations to spend money in elections rested on the idea that corporations are people and deserve the same rights to free speech as people. But are they really? Unlike a person, a corporation has a multitude of people behind it, both owners and shareholders, who can’t possibly all have a single viewpoint on politics. Also unlike a person, a corporation’s only real goal is financial gain, leading them to try to elect the people who will help them make money, and not the people who will work to benefit their constituents. Given these two facts, it seems obvious that corporations are very different from people. But it’s not just common sense, there’s an objective legal difference as well. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in a different case about corporate rights, corporate law considers a corporation and the person or people who own it to be two distinct entities. If you’re mad at Walmart, you can sue Walmart, but you cannot sue Walmart’s CEO, because they’re separate entities. And if they’re separate entities, their beliefs should remain separate as well.
Also problematic is the claim that money is a form of speech, and thus cannot be regulated by the law. Aside from giving a disproportionate platform for “free speech” to those with excess money (who frankly, have enough advantages already), the idea of money as speech has been inconsistently and unfairly enforced by the court. While happy to protect big donors, the Supreme Court has been less sympathetic to individuals soliciting donations, illustrating how the legal protections of money in politics only exist as long as they favor the ridiculously rich.
Aside from the ideological arguments against Citizens United, there are several concrete consequences of the ruling, the most important of which is that the case increased the role that money plays in elections. When anyone is suddenly allowed to spend as much money as they want on a candidate, they inevitably spend more money. And if when politicians see huge donations being poured into their opponents’ campaigns, they inevitably feel pressure to keep up, or else risk having their own message drowned out. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, in 2014, successful Senate candidates raised an average of 33,000 dollars a day for six years. The amount of money spent on elections has more than doubled since 2010. This means politicians are forced to spend more time courting potential donors and less time actually trying to represent their constituents. If money is important to politicians, whoever gives them the most money will be the most important. This means that the people—and companies—with the most money have the loudest voice, far outstripping the rest of us. Let’s look at the case of Joe Manchin. In 2010, the American Chemistry Council spent corporate money from its general treasury on campaign ads promoting Joe Manchin’s bid for Senate. Once elected, Manchin went to work as a loyal ally of the industry. One of his first acts as senator was to co-sponsor an amendment to bar the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases—a position being pushed at the time by the ACC. This isn’t a coincidence. A 2014 study conducted at Princeton found that the opinions of the average American have generally had a negligible impact upon public policy. However, economic elites and politically active companies have had plenty of representation and influence on policy.
The power of a democracy, which depends on the power of its citizens, is manifested most directly in elections. But when some have more money than others, when some people matter more to politicians than others, the power of elections is compromised. The Supreme Court made the wrong decision in this case, a decision based on fundamentally flawed ideas about free speech and who deserves it, and as more time passes, we should be getting more concerned, not less.
Tara Joy is a member of the class of 2020. Tara can be reached at tjoy@wesleyan.edu.
http://wesleyanargus.com/2018/02/08/the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-court-decision/
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EPA to Close Las Vegas Research Office
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brenna Goth
The EPA's scientific research branch will close its Las Vegas location by the fall, agency officials confirmed Feb. 8.
The agency is consolidating Office of Research and Development operations in the city to other facilities in Cincinnati, and in Research Triangle Park in Durham, N.C., EPA Spokeswoman Liz Bowman told Bloomberg Environment in a statement.
Las Vegas staff, now working in a leased building, can choose to relocate by this summer, she said.
“This decision will save taxpayer dollars and streamline layers,” Bowman said.
Las Vegas is one of a few locations in the country to host an EPA National Exposure Research Laboratory, which focuses on environmental exposures to chemicals, pathogens, and other contaminants. The agency's Office of Research and Development runs environmental health research and engineering programs in various locations around the country.
The EPA is now consolidating facilities and moving out of leased space, under priorities set by the Obama Administration, EPA officials said. Using owned space more efficiently was cited as a cost-saving measure in a 2015 report on the agency's laboratory portfolio, based on internal and external reviews.
All employees will move out of the Las Vegas space by Sept. 30, according to the agency. Staff can relocate, retire, or leave the agency, representatives said.
The EPA will pay staff-relocation costs, according to the agency. A representative did not say how many employees are affected.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127963978&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127963978&jd=127963978
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EPA Claims 'Proportional' TSCA Fees Rule But EDF Faults Cost Estimates
Feb 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
EPA has issued a proposed a rule allowing the agency to collect industry fees to help defray costs of implementing aspects of the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), claiming to have answered industry calls for fees that are proportional to the agency's costs, though an environmentalist says EPA is underestimating those costs.
“We're going to need to look at it a lot more closely but it does look at first blush that EPA is underestimating the costs associated with information management,” says Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
EPA Feb. 7 issued a pre-publication version of the proposed rule which says that in crafting a methodology for assessing industry fees to support reviews of new and existing chemicals and other activities under TSCA, the agency considered industry calls for fees to be proportional to the costs EPA incurs in conducting a review.
Industry “commenters felt that EPA should charge fees that are proportional to EPA costs for undertaking the activities,” the proposed rule says. “This was consistent with one [of] the considerations that EPA applied in setting the proposed fees -- equity as determined by proportionality between EPA costs and the fee associated with each activity.”
But EDF's Denison says that while EPA articulates proportionality as a principle underlying its proposed fees rule, the agency violates that principal by underestimating its costs and thereby undercutting the industry fees.
He said his group will closely examine the issue, especially as it relates to costs associated with data management, noting tasks such as collecting and publishing data, as well as determining what information is eligible for protection as confidential business information (CBI).
He also says that EPA's rule underestimates the costs of conducting industry-requested chemical reviews of existing chemicals, resulting in lower fees, and that the agency fees for chemical testing are only a tiny fraction of its costs.
EPA is seeking public input on the proposed rule for collecting industry fees to support a variety of tasks under the new law, including reviews of new and existing chemicals. EPA says it will begin collecting fees in fiscal year 2019 and will adjust the schedule for inflation every three years.
The agency is also asking for input on its methodology for crafting those fees, and on two other alternative methodologies for calculating fees.
EPA is seeking comment on the proposed rule for 60 days following its upcoming publication in the Federal Register.
While environmentalists are suggesting EPA has driven down industry fees by low-balling its costs, the agency is proposing steps to ease burdens on processors and small businesses. For example, the agency is limiting fees on processors, and broadening a prior TSCA regulatory definition of small businesses that are eligible for reduced payments under the rule.
Nonetheless, EPA's proposed rule asserts that its “proposed fee methodology is intended to fully recover the amount specified in the statute per TSCA section 26(b)(4)(F).”
EPA 'Moved Swiftly'
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt hailed the release of the proposed rule as the latest milestone that the agency has reached in its implementing the revised TSCA, though some industry officials have expressed concern that delays in issuing the fees could slow TSCA implementation by limiting resources.
Pruitt seeks to counter such concerns in a Feb. 8 statement. “EPA has moved swiftly to implement the amended TSCA requirements,” he says. “Our proposed TSCA fees rule ensures we have sufficient resources to review chemicals for safety with the highest scientific standards.”
The EPA statement says that fees would go toward assessing risks of existing chemicals; collecting and reviewing toxicity and exposure data and other information; reviewing CBI; and, determining in a timely and transparent manner whether new chemicals are safe before they enter the marketplace.
The revised TSCA allows EPA for the first time to establish a fee structure to defray the costs of reviewing new chemicals and a range of actions related to existing chemicals by collecting user fees from chemical manufacturers and processors.
Under the law EPA may collect up to 25 percent of the costs of implementing several key programs under the chemical safety law, or up to $25 million, whichever number is lower.
TSCA also requires that industry pay 100 percent of the costs of risk reviews that companies request, unless the chemical is on the agency’s 2014 TSCA work plan, in which case the company making the request must pay 50 percent.
The work plan was an Obama-era attempt to review chemicals using the agency's limited authority under the original 1976 law. Limitations of that law led to the revised TSCA that expanded the agency’s oversight on chemicals.
In a Jan. 31 meeting with White House Office of Management & Budget officials reviewing EPA's proposed fees rule, EDF reiterated calls for a rule that assesses industry fees in direct proportion to the effort EPA will expend on a particular activity under the law.
Environmentalists also asked that EPA clarify that the agency will determine the scope of a review, including the chemicals' uses under consideration, rather than allow industry to define the scope by its request.
In the final rule, EPA says that it considered a similar industry call that fees be proportional to the agency's effort expended in the review, but the rule appears silent on how the scope of the review should be set.
Additionally, EPA says that its rule will fully cover the costs allowed by Congress, including that it would defray approximately 25 percent of the costs to carry out the activities specified in TSCA section 26(b), as well as 50 percent or 100 percent of the costs of risk evaluations requested by manufacturers, depending on whether the chemical was or was not subject to prior reviews under the agency's TSCA workplan program.
But Denison argues that the rule appears to charge only 3.5 percent of the agency's costs incurred in issuing test orders, as opposed to the 25 percent level, and that the agency estimates industry-requested risk evaluations as costing only two-thirds of an EPA initiated assessment, which undercuts the fees for the industry-requested reviews.
Business Fees
EPA is proposing several steps to reduce costs to certain businesses. For example, EPA charges processors fees only for certain requests under section 5, which deals with new chemicals, but not for other requests.
“Although EPA has authority to collect fees from both manufacturers and processors of chemical substances, EPA is proposing to focus fee collection on manufacturers,” the rule says, noting that trying to identify processors for other fee-triggering actions would be too burdensome.
“Furthermore, EPA expects that manufacturers required to pay user fees will have a better sense of the universe of processors and will pass some of the costs on to them,” the proposed rule says.
Additionally, EPA is seeking comment on a proposed approach for expanding the number of small businesses that would qualify a business for reduced fees based on a threshold revenue level. The agency is also seeking comment on an alternative approach that would define a small business using an employee-based size standard.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-claims-proportional-tsca-fees-rule-edf-faults-cost-estimates
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Chemical Makers to Pay EPA $20 Million Yearly for Reviews Under Proposal
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The U.S. chemical sector would pay about $20 million annually to help defray the EPA's costs for reviewing chemical products under a proposed rule.
The rule, issued Feb. 8, is one of several actions the Environmental Protection Agency has completed or will take in early 2018 to continue implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act amendments of 2016, said Nancy Beck, the EPA's deputy assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention.
The EPA's proposed fees range from $4,700 to $2.6 million, depending on the specific task and the amount of time and effort involved. Small businesses would pay 80 percent less for most of these fees, the agency said.
“Our proposed TSCA fees rule ensures we have sufficient resources to review chemicals for safety with the highest scientific standards,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement.
The EPA plans to publish the fee rule the week of Feb. 12, Beck said.
Beck highlighted recent milestones and previewed coming efforts during a webinar hosted by Bloomberg Environment and Bergeson & Campbell P.C.
Three Types of Fees
Amended TSCA allows the agency to collect three general types of fees from chemical manufacturers, importers, and processors to review toxicity, exposure, and other information.
One group of fees, which range from $4,700 to $16,000, would help defray costs that the EPA incurs as it reviews new chemicals before they can be made or sold. These fees apply to decisions the agency's new chemicals program makes. They also would be charged when the EPA reviews a new use of a previously regulated chemical.
A second group of fees would range from $9,800 to $22,800. The EPA would charge these when it reviews toxicity, exposure, or other information that companies provide in response to an agency rule, order, or consent agreement.
The third group of fees would apply to industry-requested risk evaluations the EPA conducts of a chemical that is or has been in commerce. These fees range from nearly $1.4 million to $2.6 million.
The TSCA amendments require companies to pay 50 percent to 100 percent of the agency's cost, depending on the chemical and the amount of analysis the agency already has done for it.
Lynn Bergeson, managing partner at the law firm Bergeson & Campbell P.C., was pleased the proposed rule has been released.
“Glad to see the 80 percent reduction for small businesses and the diversity of options that EPA has identified,” Bergeson told Bloomberg Environment.
Like many other policy analysts Bloomberg Environment contacted, Bergeson said she needed more time to review the agency's proposals.
Spokeswomen for the Albemarle Corp. and Arkema Inc. also said their companies needed time to evaluate the agency's proposal.
Avoiding Data Collection?
Richard Denison, lead senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, said he was struck by the scarcity of agency plans to issue orders, rules, or consent agreements to obtain chemical data.
The EPA estimated that each year it will work on 10 orders seeking data and one regulation requiring it. The agency also estimated it will negotiate one enforceable consent agreement with chemical companies each year.
Denison told Bloomberg Environment it's “preposterous” that nearly two years after Congress amended TSCA, the agency has yet to use its data-collection authorities once. Retired EPA chemical staff have said that one of the long-standing problems with the original law was that the agency could not get needed toxicity and other environmental data to make chemical decisions,
The EPA seems to be doing everything it can to avoid requiring chemical companies to provide data, though the agency has extensive experience showing that chemical manufacturers do not provide information voluntarily, Denison said.
Most recently, the agency received negligible data after asking chemical manufacturers to provide exposure information for five persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Environment.
TSCA requires the agency to make a wide variety of decisions about new and existing chemicals, Denison said. It also requires the agency to use best available science to make those decisions, he said.
If the agency fails to use information-collection tools the law provides to get the information it needs to ensure chemicals are safe, the EPA will set itself up to have its final decisions challenged in court, Denison said. Those challenges could come from companies as well as environmental, health, and labor groups, he said.
Beck said the EPA is still thinking about how to use its data-collection authorities.
The agency also is working on a wide range of other chemical analyses, rules, policies, and guidances, she added.
Current Chemical Count: 28,266
These include reviewing the thousands of chemical notifications the agency received by Feb. 7 from chemical manufacturers and importers, Beck said. There were 28,266 chemicals known to be on the U.S. market as of Feb. 7, according to information the EPA provided to Bloomberg Environment.
That total includes notices the EPA received from about 500 chemical manufacturers and importers.
The agency will review the information to ensure its accuracy and to eliminate duplicates, Beck said. She expects the EPA to release a draft inventory of chemicals on the U.S. market in a couple of months.
Chemical processors can then review the draft inventory to make sure it includes any chemicals they've used since June 2006, she said.
Processors have until Oct. 5 to let the EPA know if any of their chemicals need to be added to a final active inventory the agency will prepare.
The EPA plans to host a webinar to help processors understand what to do if they want to notify the agency about a chemical they've used, the agency said.
Amended TSCA required chemical manufacturers and importers to notify the EPA about any chemical they had made or imported between June 21, 2006, and June 21, 2016, the date TSCA was amended.
The law required this to solve a problem: The EPA does not know how many chemicals have recently been made or sold in the U.S. Once the agency completes its inventory update, it will have two lists: a registry of chemicals active in commerce, and a record of those that are dormant.
Only chemicals on the active list can continue to be made, imported, or used under the law.
Confidential Business Information
In other efforts, Beck said, the EPA plans to release later this year guidance explaining to states, tribes, local governments, and other designated groups what they would have to do to access toxicity and other information that traditionally has been kept out of the public's eye.
The amended law requires the EPA to make such information available provided trade secrets are protected. The goal is to make sure doctors, nurses, emergency responders, and others have information they need when an emergency happens.
—With assistance from Tiffany Stecker.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127963977&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127963977&jd=127963977
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Fluoride Ban Case Can Include New Evidence, Judge Rules
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sara Merken
Environmental health advocates will be able to use new information in their fight to ban fluoride in drinking water, a federal court in San Francisco has ruled.
The court on Feb. 7 denied the Environmental Protection Agency's motion to limit review to information the agency had when it made its decision to deny a petition filed by the coalition of health groups to ban fluoride in water.
Some municipalities add fluoride to water in an effort to prevent tooth decay, but the advocates say it may have adverse developmental health effects.
The groups had asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to consider new evidence from a recent study that they say emphasizes the need for a ban, arguing the Toxic Substances Control Act gives them the ability to ask a court to review new information.
The amount of evidence allowed under TSCA is an issue that could recur in other lawsuits filed by citizens against the government. The court said the text, structure, and legislative history of TSCA make it clear that Congress did not intend to impose a limitation in review of Section 21 citizen petitions.
Food & Water Watch petitioned the EPA under Section 21 of TSCA to ban fluoride in drinking water, and amendments to the law say that a party can ask a court to consider a petition rejected by the EPA. The groups sued the EPA in February 2017 when the agency denied the petition.
The group wants the court to consider a study published in September 2017 that links increased concentrations of fetal fluoride exposure to lower IQs in children.
A hearing is scheduled for April 19 on Food & Water Watch's lawsuit.
The case is Food & Water Watch v. EPA, N.D. Cal., No. 17-cv-02162-EMC, case filed 4/18/17.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127963982&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127963982&jd=127963982
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Feb 9, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Samantha Lovell
Today, a letter signed by more than 100 people was submitted to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees urging Congress to protect the EPA Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program. The signatories come from dozens of communities across the country impacted by PFC contamination in drinking water. EPA’s IRIS program develops critical assessments of chemicals, like PFCs, that support a wide variety of decision-making from clean-up levels at contaminated sites to setting standards that ensure clean drinking water.
As we have blogged about previously, IRIS is a non-regulatory program within EPA’s science arm that produces top-tier chemical hazard assessments used across EPA program and regional offices, other federal agencies, and state and local governments to protect public health. IRIS scientists are also called on during emergency and other rapid response situations, when technical expertise is paramount and time is of the essence.
In November, the Senate Appropriations committee Chairman posted a FY2018 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies bill that would eliminate this vital program.
The letter voices the concerns of community members facing health effects from exposure to PFCs:
Many of us are suffering from high levels of PFCs in our blood, from living without drinkable running water, from ulcerative colitis and other diseases known to be caused by PFCs, and from the loss of loved ones to cancer. Dozens of communities like ours around the country fear that the perfluorinated chemicals in local rivers, streams, and wells is as bad a threat as the ones that devastated Parkersburg, WV and Hoosick Falls, NY.
The IRIS program is critical for understanding the health impacts posed by chemicals like PFCs and for providing scientific guidance to resource-strapped state and local governments. There is no room for eliminating or otherwise undermining the IRIS program.
The letter demonstrates broad local support for IRIS including the scientific support it provides in critical public health situations.
We hope that the committee members take steps to protect the public health of communities across the country by ensuring the IRIS program remains intact, maintains its scientific independence from regulatory parts of the agency, and is sufficiently resourced.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/02/08/overwhelming-local-support-for-epa-chemical-assessment-program-communities-impacted-by-pfc-contamination-urge-congress-to-maintain-critical-program/#more-7446
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DuPont Faces Ohio Lawsuit Over Teflon Chemicals in Water
Feb 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Alex Ebert
DuPont Co. allegedly dumped tons of toxic chemicals used to make Teflon into Ohio's air and water, the state said in a lawsuit.
From 1950 to 2013, the Parkersburg, W.Va., DuPont plant discharged “hundreds of thousands of pounds” of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) into the environment near the West Virginia-Ohio border. The PFOA eventually made its way into the Ohio River and people's bloodstreams, Ohio alleged in its Feb. 8 complaint.
PFOA has been linked to many maladies, including cancer.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) alleged that DuPont knew the chemicals were toxic but intentionally released them and concealed the dangers of PFOA from the government and public. A 2017 study by the University of Cincinnati found discharges of PFOA into the Ohio River came from DuPont's plant, and the chemicals were linked to “widespread exposure” among people living along the river.
“We believe the evidence shows that DuPont kept releasing this chemical even though it knew about the harm it could cause,” DeWine said in a Feb. 8 statement. “We believe DuPont should pay for any damage it caused, and we're taking this action to protect Ohio, its citizens, and its natural resources.”
This complaint is one of myriad government actions taken recently, citing growing concerns about health risks posed by high levels of PFOA chemicals in drinking water and groundwater. The chemicals are being monitored and discovered most frequently near chemical plants and military bases that used the compounds to make nonstick, waterproof, and fire-retardant products.
The state also sued Chemours Co., a chemical company that spun off from DuPont in 2015, and currently runs the Parkersburg plant. The suit follows a Jan. 11 letter from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requesting more tests at the plant for another chemical known as GenX.
In that letter, the EPA referenced a 2017 agreement between the EPA, DuPont, and Chemours to provide temporary drinking water to residents surrounding the plant due to concerns about PFOA in the local wells.
DuPont declined to comment. Chemours didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case is Ohio v. E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co., No. 18-OT-32, 2/8/18.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127963987&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127963987&jd=127963987
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Clothing Companies in the EU Face Toxics Limits in Textiles
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
Thousands of companies selling clothing and shoes would be affected by a draft European Union regulation that would limit the presence of 33 hazardous substances in garments, footwear, and textiles.
The chemicals restricted by the draft rule, issued under the EU's REACH chemicals law, are all proven to be carcinogenic, mutagenic, and reprotoxic (CMR). These include cadmium, chromium IV, and arsenic and their compounds, formaldehyde, and a number of phthalates.
Products affected would include clothing, sportswear, bags, bed linens, and furniture—things that may come in contact with skin, according to the draft regulation.
The EU did not say what specific companies sell clothing or other products with these substances.
“Well-performing companies should not have difficulties” in complying with the potential limits because they have probably phased out the hazardous substances from their products already, Mauro Scalia, sustainable business manager of the European Apparel and Textile Confederation, told Bloomberg Environment Feb. 8.
But less well-prepared companies “might have challenges,” and it was unclear to what extent smaller companies in particular were aware of the draft regulation, Scalia said.
The Nordic Council of Ministers recently released guidance for small and medium-sized companies on EU and Nordic country chemicals-in-textiles rules aimed at helping foreign factory suppliers comply.
For each substance or group of substances, the regulation would set a concentration limit. For example, the limit for formaldehyde would be 75 miligrams per kilogram.
The chemicals have various applications in textiles, including as pigments, flame retardants, preservatives, and anti-wrinkle treatments.
From Voluntary to Mandatory
The European Commission—the EU's executive arm—initially planned to propose a REACH restriction on CMRs in textiles in 2015, which would have covered 286 chemicals. However, “many of those substances were actually not used, at least in Europe,” and the list was fine-tuned, Scalia said.
REACH (Regulation (EC) No. 1907/2006 on the restriction, evaluation and authorization of chemicals) is the EU's overarching chemicals law. Restrictions, or specific limits on the presence of substances in products, are contained in the regulation's Annex XVII. Restrictions apply to products whether manufactured in, or imported into, the EU, including garments bought on the Internet.
The effect of the regulation would be that “what used to be up to voluntary decisions by companies is now restricted by law,” Scalia said.
The draft regulation was “a very welcome initiative” that could have a “potential significant impact for consumer health,” Pelle Moos, chemicals officer with the European Consumer Organization, told Bloomberg Environment Feb. 8.
The approach taken by the draft regulation—to restrict a broad set of substances—should be followed by similar initiatives on allergenic substances and endocrine disrupting substances in textiles, Moos said.
Comments on the EU draft regulation can be submitted through March 8, after which the European Commission would finalize and formally propose the regulation.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127963991&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127963991&jd=127963991
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U.S. Oil Reserve Would Fall Nearly in Half Under Budget Deal
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter and Catherine Traywick
The U.S. is poised to sell half its emergency oil reserves to help pay its bills, something critics said defies the reason the stockpile was created decades ago as a hedge against supply disruptions.
The spending deal making its way through Congress calls for selling 100 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by 2027. Combined with other sales approved last year, that would mean the volume of oil in the reserve would fall by 45 percent, to about 303 million barrels.
“This is the biggest non-emergency sale in American history,” said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners in Washington. “This is nothing short of liquidation of a safety net.“
At today's oil price of about $60 a barrel, a sale of 100 million barrels would raise $6 billion. But it's impossible to determine exactly how much money the government would raise with the proposed sales because oil prices fluctuate wildly and the budget plan calls for the sales to take place between now and the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, 2027.
Hidden Stockpile
The stockpile is kept inside a network of underground caverns and storage tanks along the U.S. Gulf Coast and has a capacity of 700 million barrels, making it the world's largest supply of emergency crude oil. It was created in 1970s after the Arab oil embargo sent prices skyrocketing and forced Americans to ration gasoline, but has more recently become Congress's go-to piggy bank, used to fund everything from roads to drugs to deficit reduction.
Past drawdowns approved by Congress have included 25 million barrels to pay for a medical research bill in 2015 and 66 million barrels to pay for transportation legislation in 2016. A draw down of 7 million barrels, worth an estimated $600 million, helped pay for a package of tax cuts that Congress passed last December.
Emergency uses have included sales after Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and an oil-supply disruption in Libya in 2011. It also was tapped last year after Hurricane Harvey left refiners in Texas and Louisiana unable to secure crude. “This is a good example of why we need an SPR,” Energy Secretary Rick Perry said at the time.
The last drawdown, a congressionally mandated sale in September 2017, fetched an average $47.45 a barrel, while the one before that drew $53.88 a barrel. Both sales yielded significantly more money than the government paid for the existing reserve oil, some of which is decades old. According to the Energy Department, the reserve's inventory cost an average $29.70 a barrel.
‘Government ATM’
With the U.S. awash in crude oil produced at home, some in Washington have questioned its usefulness, including President Donald Trump who proposed drawing down half of it in his budget request last year—a move the White House estimated would raise nearly $17 billion dollars.
But the reserve was not intended to be “a government ATM,“ Energy Undersecretary Mark Menezes said in an interview Feb. 8.
“My own view is that SPR was put in place as an energy security mechanism to ensure that we had supply,” Menezes said.
He's not alone.
“Selling the SPR to cover non-energy budget expenses is deeply short-sighted and unwise,” said Bob McNally, president of consultant Rapidan Group in Washington and a former senior energy official at the White House under Republican President George W. Bush. “In 1996 and 1997, we sold SPR barrels to pay for unrelated budget expenses and I was in the White House when we put those barrels back at higher prices starting about five years later, after 9/11.“
The pending budget bill also authorizes $350 million in sales to help pay for efforts to modernize the stockpile itself—a sign that Congress doesn't want to completely do away with the emergency oil supply.
“The SPR is only effective if it can get its petroleum to market quickly and efficiently in the event of a supply emergency,” said Robbie Diamond, president of Securing America's Future Energy, a group aiming to pare U.S. dependence on oil. “Geopolitical risk is alive and well in the oil market, and the SPR is America's only formal short-term line of defense against oil supply disruptions and price spikes.“
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127963974&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127963974&jd=127963974
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JCT: Energy Tax Provisions Cost $11B
Feb 8, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Nick Juliano
Energy tax credits in the budget deal Congress is considering will cost about $11billion over the next decade, according to estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation released Thursday.
The most expensive piece of the energy package is a retroactive, one-year extension of a set of income and excise tax credits for biodiesel and renewable diesel. JCT says reinstating those so-called 25D credits for 2017 will cost nearly $3.3 billion in lost revenue to the government.
Extending tax credits for residential clean energy technologies such as geothermal heat pumps will cost close to $3.2 billion over the next 10 years, according to JCT, making it the second-most expensive energy provision included. The credit, which expired at the end of 2016 for some technologies, will now be phased out through 2021.
The bill also extends and phases out a set of “orphaned” technologies that had been eligible for the investment tax credit but were left out of a 2015 law. Applying the phaseout to technologies such as fuel cells and small wind systems will cost about $1.3 billion over the next decade, JCT estimates.
JCT said it will cost about $689 million over a decade to expand a tax credit for carbon capture and sequestration and enhanced oil recovery. The budget deal includes bipartisan language to increase the value of the credit to from $10 to $35 for carbon used in enhanced oil recovery, and from $20 to $50 for other geologic storage, and it makes it easier for companies to claim the credit.
Removing the expiration date of a nuclear energy production tax credit — which will allow the under-construction Vogtle reactors to qualify — will reduce revenues by $637 million over the next 10 years, according to JCT. But those costs do not begin accumulating in earnest until around 2024.
Reinstating an excise tax credit for alternative fuels and mixtures for last year will cost about $555 million, according to JCT.
Another set of home efficiency credits, known as 25C, would be reinstated for 2017 in the bill, at an estimated cost of $542 million over a decade.
Several other energy extenders included in the package carry price tags of less than a half-billion dollars apiece.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/02/jct-energy-tax-provisions-cost-more-than-10b-331051
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Energy Committee 'Teed up' to Work on Package
Feb 9, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Sam Mintz
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is preparing to push for energy infrastructure provisions to be part of the massive infrastructure package set to be proposed by the Trump administration next week and considered by Congress over the coming months.
Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said yesterday she would seek to pull from legislative language the committee has been working on for years as part of a comprehensive, bipartisan energy reform bill, S. 1460 in its latest iteration.
The nearly 900-page bill has a section on infrastructure, which deals largely with modernizing the electric grid and updating transmission systems.
It would establish microgrid and energy storage research programs, call for better grid modeling and planning, and reform vegetation management laws. It would also expedite liquefied natural gas exports.
Murkowski has been trying to advance the energy package for months but has seen other priorities leapfrog it. The infrastructure debate could represent a chance to incorporate some provisions into a high-profile, top-priority item.
"We at the Energy Committee have been gathering not only proposals, but we've been working on our own energy infrastructure through our energy bill, and have been doing that for a couple years now. We feel like we're pretty well teed up, we've got legislative language," Murkowski said yesterday. "A lot of other committees don't have that. So I think we're in good shape there."
The natural gas industry has made clear it wants Congress to think about its needs as part of the infrastructure plans, and its leaders have an enticing pitch: Pipelines require no government investment. Instead of money, companies want streamlined permitting and more regulatory certainty.
"Not all solutions require federal involvement, federal funding," said Murkowski at a hearing yesterday. "As we talk about an infrastructure package here, there is no shortage of ideas as to what might go into a broader, economywide infrastructure package. What it all comes down to is, how are we going to pay for it?"
Legislation that has passed the House would reinforce the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's role as the lead agency for permitting interstate gas pipelines and allow it to impose deadlines on other federal and state agencies (E&E Daily, July 20, 2017). A similar bill is pending in the Senate.
Other sectors of the energy world have asks, too.
"Any responsible infrastructure legislation argued before Congress must include funding to update our aging and failing power grid, prioritize conservation over consumption, and test market readiness through demonstration projects," said David Allen, an executive from efficient building consulting firm McKinstry.
The White House is set to unveil its proposal Monday, and while details remain scarce, lawmakers have said they expect it to be broad and likely include some energy provisions (E&E News PM, Feb. 6).
"Every time the White House comes out with something, they give a litany of different things: energy, transportation, ports. And so I think it's going to be all of the above. And it's been suggested to me that that's what's going to happen," said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, this week.
Reporter Nick Sobczyk contributed.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/02/09/stories/1060073359
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Ongoing Power Sector GHG Cuts Could Frustrate Pruitt's CPP Agenda
Feb 9, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
New EPA data shows the power sector is three-quarters of the way toward meeting the greenhouse gas targets of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) -- over a decade ahead of the rule's 2030 deadline and just three years after it was issued -- a development that could frustrate the Trump administration's plans to revoke the rule and replace it with a much narrower version.
Sources say that the dramatic GHG reductions could help environmentalists and other CPP supporters argue that the Clean Air Act requires more ambitious reductions than what would be achieved by a narrow, inside-the-fence rule EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt appears poised to advance as a replacement measure.
The chief purpose of the air law is to cut “dangerous pollution that threatens health and welfare,” says one environmentalist attorney. “The idea that EPA can get away with . . . finding the way of doing as little as possible, that's not what the statute is about. Particularly in a world where we're seeing big, big drops” in power sector GHGs.
Given that “reality,” the source says, the question will be, “are they using the pollution statute to reduce pollution in a meaningful way? If they're not, we think it will be illegal.”
Experts say the sector's emissions will continue to fall, even though the CPP never took effect after it was stayed by the Supreme Court. That is because of continued cheap natural gas prices, falling costs for renewables and other advanced grid technology, as well as relatively flat growth of electricity demand.
Further, many utilities expect that -- eventually -- the federal government will impose carbon controls in some form, and may be preparing for them.
Those trends come despite the Trump administration's broad push to remove regulatory limits on the coal sector and boost its role in power markets.
Specifically, the latest figures from EPA's Clean Air Markets database show that the electricity sector released 1.913 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2017, down from 1.996 billion tons the year before.
The sector's GHG emissions are now 25 percent below 2005 levels. By contrast, the Obama EPA projected that full implementation of the CPP would reduce power sector emissions by 32 percent by 2030, from the same baseline.
Investor-owned utilities are already touting the reductions. Edison Electric Institute (EEI) President Tom Kuhn said during the group's Feb. 7 annual briefing to Wall Street that the sector's the generation mix is becoming “increasingly clean” and that the group will urge EPA to “develop a replacement rule if the CPP is repealed.”
Looking ahead, planned coal plant closures announced last year totaled 16.3 gigawatts of capacity, two-thirds of which would be retired in 2018, according to an S&P Global report.
At minimum, the new emissions data seem to validate claims by EPA in the final weeks of the Obama administration that market shifts toward lower-carbon power would make CPP compliance much easier and cheaper than anticipated.
'All We Get Is A Mouse?'
The environmentalist attorney and others say that the emissions reductions also underscore the importance of a chief legal claim by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, that the CPP is legally flawed because it includes GHG targets based on actions taken “beyond the fence” of regulated power plants, such as shifting from coal to natural gas or renewables.
Pruitt plans to repeal the CPP, proposing to interpret EPA's Clean Air Act section 111(d) authority as prohibiting such targets and requiring the agency to craft an “inside the fence” rule.
Most observers expect any replacement would thus be much narrower, likely based only on improving fossil fuel plants' “heat rate,” or efficiency -- though environmental groups charge that an “inside the fence” rule can include a range of actions beyond heat rate improvements.
EPA's advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) floating possible options to replace the CPP strongly hinted at a heat rate-focused regulation. Such a rule might achieve a 2 percent cut in GHG emissions nationwide, “if we're lucky,” according to Resources for the Future (RFF) fellow Dallas Burtraw. That would be “trivial” compared to the reductions that have occurred in recent years and are projected to continue.
In an interview with Inside EPA, Burtraw notes that courts still “haven't spoken” about the fenceline issue, and suggested that those who believe EPA must stay within the fence when setting targets could face an uphill battle.
He says courts might “look at the emission reductions that are achieved” by such a rule, “and say, 'After all this, all we get is a mouse? How does this address the endangerment finding?'”
And the environmentalist attorney adds that the GHG reductions to date “really undercut the claims that the CPP was going to hurt the economy,” paraphrasing opponents' arguments that the rule would be a “major drain on the economy” or that it would be a “ruinously aggressive shock to the power system.”
To the extent that the Trump EPA is “relying on that” to justify its CPP repeal proposal, “that will not be persuasive.”
EPA's 'Conundrum'
Burtraw also raises a potential “conundrum” for EPA if it were to write a CPP replacement based only on heat rate improvements. He cited RFF research showing that when coal plants improve their efficiency, they tend to operate more frequently in competitive markets and they postpone retirement.
This “rebound effect” can erode between 20-30 percent of the CO2 benefits of a climate rule, he said, but he also cited research by RFF and Harvard University that it can actually “worsen” air quality by boosting criteria pollutants in some areas.
He noted that one criterion EPA must weigh under section 111(d) is “other environmental outcomes,” and that “foremost among that is air quality.”
If EPA proposes such a regulation, Burtraw says his group and others would urge EPA to address this issue and design policy mechanisms that -- at minimum -- ensure the rule does not degrade air quality. “EPA hasn't done that” in the ANPR, he says. “There hasn't been any thinking about that.”
Burtraw adds that the power market trends show that “we could achieve the [CPP] goal at a faster rate than many naysayers thought could occur.” He adds that in a scenario of “good faith” implementation of the rule, it would be “very unlikely” that the targets “would have remained unchanged by 2025.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/ongoing-power-sector-ghg-cuts-could-frustrate-pruitts-cpp-agenda
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Trump 'Energy Dominance' Policy Pits Washington Against Moscow
Feb 9, 2018 | Reuters
By Timothy Gardner
Last July, U.S. President Donald Trump stood beside his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, in Warsaw and promised to help wean the nation off Russian energy imports. He offered U.S. fuel as an alternative, “so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier.”
Trump was tapping into longstanding European concerns about Russia’s ability to shut off natural gas supplies - which it has done in past pricing disputes. U.S. lawmakers say Russia’s influence over energy has proven effective in silencing critics of its human rights abuses, annexation of Crimea, and incursion into eastern Ukraine, an assertion the Kremlin has denied.
Six months after Trump’s trip, Poland has contracted for imports of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG), crude oil, and coal, and announced it will not renew a gas supply deal with Russia’s state-owned Gazprom when it expires in 2022 - halting an exclusive and troubled relationship dating to 1944.
The episode exemplifies a key goal of Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda - using rising energy exports to bolster Washington’s geopolitical influence.
The policy also seeks to boost domestic production through rollbacks of environmental regulations and expanded energy leasing in federal territories, but those efforts have so far had little impact.
Trump nonetheless inherited a booming oil and gas industry that has given his administration more international clout in energy markets than any White House has enjoyed in decades.
U.S. oil output has risen to more than 10 million barrels per day for the first time since 1970 thanks to improved drilling technology that dates back years. Natural gas output has also soared, making America the world’s top producer of the fuel.
Meanwhile, the 2015 repeal of a 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports - passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by former President Barack Obama - has made strategic shipments overseas possible. The permitting of U.S. LNG export facilities in recent years has provided another boost.
(For an interactive graphic detailing the global impacts of the U.S. shale revolution, see: tmsnrt.rs/2EtJgen )
It remains to be seen how successfully the administration will play its strong hand. Obstacles include environmental opposition to new pipelines and other energy projects at home, competition from other big exporters abroad, and potential trade disputes.
But early signs are promising. Lithuania, Ukraine, China, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam are among the more than 30 countries that have recently cut U.S. energy supply deals over the past two years - many for the first time.BUYING LESS FROM OPEC, SELLING MORE TO CHINA
John McCarrick, the deputy assistant secretary at the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources, said his staff helped pave the way for some of the energy supply agreements by meeting with private and public officials in Europe and Asia to promote the strategic value of U.S. energy.
“All we’re trying to do is level the market playing field,” by giving allies the ability to diversify their energy supply, he said.
Doing so, he said, could reduce the influence of “market distorting actors,” including Russia and producers in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
The administration also hopes to use energy exports to reduce yawning trade deficits with partners - particularly with China, which last year exported goods to the United States worth $347 billion more than it imported.
China has become a top customer of U.S. LNG and is now the second-largest buyer of U.S. crude behind Canada. China’s state oil company signed a preliminary agreement in November to invest in a $43 billion LNG export facility in Alaska, which would compete with Russia’s Yamal LNG export terminal in the Arctic.
“To see collaboration rather than being at each other’s throats - that’s a real positive,” said Daniel Yergin, an energy historian and vice chairman of IHS Markit.
U.S. coal exports to Asia have also risen in recent months as ailing U.S. mining companies search for alternatives to the weak domestic market.
While U.S. exports are soaring, its imports are falling - reducing its economic and political dependence on oil-producing nations in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Since 2005, U.S. net petroleum imports have plunged to just 4 million barrels per day, from 12.5 million bpd, with the share coming from OPEC falling to about a third from more than half.
The now-repealed U.S. oil export ban dated back to an era of feared fuel shortages after Arab members of OPEC imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of the Israeli military.WAKING THE BEAR
Trump’s National Security Strategy document, unveiled in December, said one aim of the “energy dominance” policy was to “help our allies and partners become more resilient against those that use energy to coerce.”
Former Soviet bloc nation Lithuania received its first cargo of U.S. LNG in August - an event Lithuania’s foreign affairs minister called “crucially important for the whole region.”
In comments to Reuters, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the United States has undertaken efforts to undermine the Russian energy projects in Europe, comparing these attempts with “unfair competition”.
“We know about absolutely, let’s say, unfair attempts by the United States to try to undermine Gazprom’s (GAZP.MM) various energy projects, which is an unfair competition. We will fight against it,” he said.
Peskov also said that Russian companies, including gas giant Gazprom, are ready to take on rivals on Europe’s gas markets, adding the companies are providing energy security to Europe.
The Trump administration also helped negotiate a deal in July between Ukraine and U.S. miner Xcoal Energy for some 700,000 tons of coal, and provided hundreds of millions of dollars in financing and insurance to gas and wind power projects there.
Ukraine has borne the brunt of Russia’s near-monopoly of gas supplies to Europe over the years. State energy company Gazprom has cut off gas to Ukraine, and onward to Western Europe, during price disputes in deep winter, and imposed bans on customers reselling gas to other countries.
The Kremlin and Gazprom have said those disputes were driven by commercial, not political, matters. Gazprom’s deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev downplayed the impact of U.S. energy shipments on the region.
“I would compare Gazprom’s gas exports to Europe with a cup of tea and U.S. supplies to a few drops of cognac or whiskey added to that cup,” he told investors in London on Thursday. “You get a bit of smell but there is no major taste.”
Russia aims to solidify business ties in Western Europe with a proposed gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea to Germany - the Nord Stream 2. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Warsaw on Jan. 27 that Washington views the project as a threat to Europe’s energy security.
In addition, Russia may have enough spare capacity to threaten U.S. drilling companies with a price war if American policy irks the country enough, analysts say.
“Down the road, Russia could show the world just how much energy it has to produce, to the detriment... of rival U.S. oil and gas producers,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Past price wars with OPEC nations have triggered bankruptcies in the United States, including in 2014 when Saudi Arabia opened the spigots. But OPEC eventually relented as oil prices tanked, trimming output and paving the way for a U.S. recovery.
Even if the United States struggles to win market share in its competition with cheaper piped gas from Russia, the availability of an alternative will blunt the impact if Russia cuts supplies off again, and reduce its ability to dictate long-term restrictive contracts with its customers, analysts said.
“America’s greatest contribution will be changing the way gas business is done, rather than grabbing particular market share,” said Agnia Grigas of the Atlantic Council think tank.
The State Department’s McCarrick balked at the suggestion by some analysts that the U.S. effort to expand its exports overseas could anger Russia.
“The Russians should understand they are competing in a market,” he said. “Really, it’s just a competition, it’s not a geopolitical threat.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oil-record-geopolitics/trump-energy-dominance-policy-pits-washington-against-moscow-idUSKBN1FT0OE
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California Seeks to Thwart Trump's Offshore Oil-Drilling Plan (1)
Feb 8, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
A Trump administration plan to open coastal waters for drilling is running into trouble in California as the state takes steps to ensure that oil from any new offshore leases can't be brought ashore.
No new pipelines will be approved, and the use of existing ones won't be allowed, the California State Lands Commission said in a statement. The pronouncement came in the run-up to the Interior Department Bureau of Ocean Management's Feb. 8 public meeting in Sacramento on the White House's proposal to expand coastal offshore drilling.
The commission, which has authority to deny infrastructure crossing state waters, forwarded a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Management objecting to the proposal that would offer 47 leases in U.S. waters, including two each along the Northern, Central, and Southern California coasts and one off Washington and Oregon.
New offshore drilling would harm the marine environment and the state's coastal economies, the State Lands Commission said in its letter.
State Attorney General Xavier Becerra has indicated he is “prepared to take any and all action necessary, including initiating legal proceedings,” to protect the state's coast, his office told Bloomberg Environment.
State and local elected officials will join environmental groups, businesses, and others Feb. 8 to protest the proposal.
Legislation, Opposition
State Sen. Hannah Beth Jackson (D) and Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D) have introduced legislation (S.B. 834 and A.B. 1775) to guarantee the State Lands Commission can't approve leases for pipelines, piers, wharves, or other infrastructure to support new federal oil and gas development.
Opposition to offshore drilling in the state has grown since the 1969 blowout from a platform along the Santa Barbara coast that spilled more than 3.2 million gallons of oil. The state has been successful in challenging or stalling new federal leasing for years. In 2016, President Obama removed California from the federal leasing program through 2022.
Today, 23 of the 26 oil platforms off California's coast are in federal waters.
“Exploring potential resources in federal water is the first step in helping California increase our energy security through potentially increasing our domestic energy production,” Western States Petroleum Association President Cathy Reheis-Boyd told Bloomberg Environment in an email. “Currently we import over 1 million barrels of oil in super tankers from overseas locations each and every day.”
Californians have a say in producing energy offshore through a collaborative federal, state, and local regulatory process, she said.
Even if the Trump administration clears the way for new drilling, California could use the the complex, multi-pronged administrative and legal process for leasing and permitting to buy time, Eric Biber, director of Environmental and Energy Law Programs at the University of California, Berkeley, told Bloomberg Environment.
California can use its authority under the Coastal Zone Management Act to object to any oil and gas development and sue the federal government to comply with the legal requirements of the leasing process, Biber said.
(Adds comment from Land Commission letter in third paragraph.)
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127963988&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127963988&jd=127963988
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Interior Methane Waste Rule Change Clears OMB
Feb 8, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Ben Lefebvre
The Interior Department’s proposed change to an Obama-era rule on methane emissions has cleared the Office of Management and Budget, according to OMB's website, indicating an official announcement could come soon.
Interior has made it clear that it would roll back or significantly soften the Bureau of Land Management rule on methane emissions from wells and pipelines that was finalized in November 2016. Interior has delayed enforcing it after Congressional Republicans failed to kill the rule using a Congressional Review Act in May,
Environmental groups and state attorneys general have already pledged to sue any attempt to repeal the rule.
WHAT'S NEXT: Interior will announce its planned changes to the rule.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Ex-Microsoft VP Tapped for Federal Chemical Security Position (1)
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
A former Microsoft Corp. vice president will be responsible for securing reauthorization of a chemical security program later this year if confirmed by the Senate for a Homeland Security Department post.
The White House tapped Christopher Krebs as its nominee for undersecretary for national protection and programs at the department, it announced late Feb. 7. Krebs joined the department as a senior counselor in March 2017 and has been the acting undersecretary since August, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The directorate oversees a broad policy portfolio at Homeland Security, including critical infrastructure protection, chemical security, and cyber and physical infrastructure safety.
During the past year, the division has helped local responders in Crosby, Texas, plan an emergency evacuation in the face of reactive chemicals on the verge of explosion and warned nearly two dozen states they were targeted by Russian government hackers during the 2016 elections.
Reauthorization
One of Krebs’ duties will be working with Congress to secure reauthorization of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program, which expires Dec. 18.
CFATS is a performance-based security program that requires operators of facilities handling specified quantities of hazardous chemicals to analyze their risks, develop security plans, submit information to the department, and install security measures as appropriate.
Krebs was a director for cybersecurity policy at Microsoft's government affairs unit from 2014 to 2017.. He also served as a senior adviser in the DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection from 2007 to 2009.
Krebs would replace former NPPD undersecretary Suzanne Spaulding, who was confirmed in 2014 and served until January 2017.
Krebs “is not only an expert in cybersecurity issues but also understands that risks to critical infrastructure increasingly combine cyber and physical aspects,” Spaulding said in an email to Bloomberg Environment.
The Homeland Security Department didn't immediately respond to Bloomberg Environment's request for comment. Aides to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which will vote on the nomination, and the House Homeland Security Committee, didn't respond to requests for comment.
(Updates with comment and previous position at the Department of Homeland Security.)
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127963985&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127963985&jd=127963985
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Dems Call for $1 Trillion Federal Investment in Infrastructure
Feb 9, 2018 | The Hill - Transportation
By Mallory Shelbourne
House Democrats on Thursday called for $1 trillion in federal dollars for an infrastructure overhaul, a proposal that comes just days ahead of the announcement of President Trump’s long-awaited infrastructure proposal.
The House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC) unveiled the party’s own infrastructure package at a press conference meant to counter the anticipated release of a Monday White House proposal.
“The federal government is a necessary partner in this effort to rebuild our country. It’s not enough to punt this to the private sector, as the president wants,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.).
“Rebuilding our country will require a serious smart investment of real federal resources to get this work done."
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The blueprint pushes for a stronger federal investment in various infrastructure programs, including energy, airports, schools, water and roads. It also calls for the use of U.S.-made materials like iron and steel, in addition to green materials.
The $1 trillion direct federal investment in the Democrats’ plan is a steep increase from the $200 billion of federal seed money the Trump administration is expected to kick in for a rebuilding initiative. Under the expected Trump plans, local and state governments, as well as private groups, will foot the rest of the bill.
But Democrats have long argued for a larger federal direct investment in infrastructure, while members of both parties have questioned revenue sources for an overhaul. And lawmakers from rural areas have worried that reliance on private funding would neglect rural communities, where toll roads are less likely to be profitable.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, called the Trump proposal a “fake plan.”
“Republicans lack a sense of history in terms of dealing with our infrastructure,” he said, noting the federal government’s historical role in rebuilding.
Trump recently touted an infrastructure package of “at least” $1.5 trillion during his State of the Union address, a figure that left lawmakers on both sides of the aisle wondering how that planning would be funded.
A leaked document purporting to reveal the administration’s thinking suggests the plan will emphasize payments from state and local governments, in addition to private investment, to make up for the shortfall.
Democrats on Thursday morning poked fun at the fluctuating numbers coming from the Trump administration.
"The president promised infrastructure. Well here it is — a year later," said Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.), who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
"And it went from a trillion to a trillion-and-a-half in less than a week. Because I had been at the White House the week before, and it had been a trillion and suddenly because a trillion-and-a-half, but with no new money."
One similarity between the Democrats’ plan and the expected administration proposal is an emphasis on expanding broadband access to rural areas. While Democrats say they will “close the rural-urban divide,” the White House said in a recent fact sheet that a quarter of the federal seed money will go towards a pot to invest in rural regions.
Democrats, according to their plan, will “connect more communities” and advance rail technology. The proposal also includes a push for enacting Positive Train Control, a key safety feature that automatically decreases the speed of a train traveling over the limit.
The package says Democrats will work to maintain the solvency of the struggling Highway Trust Fund, which receives financing from the federal gas tax for road-building projects, and contribute a larger federal investment toward rebuilding roads and bridges.
The White House said earlier this week that it will release its plan Monday, which comes after multiple delays.
http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/infrastructure/372930-dems-call-for-1-trillion-federal-investment-in
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Feb 8, 2018 | Sacremento Bee
By Tony Bizjak
Union Pacific Railroad, the largest freight carrier in California and the West, revealed this week that it will not meet this year’s deadline to have a federally mandated crash-prevention system fully up and running.
A company spokesman said the railroad is on track to have the necessary safety equipment installed this year. However, UP officials indicated in a statement published Wednesday that the company will continue to test the system on its lines in 2019 and 2020 before making it fully operational.
Such a move will require special federal permission. UP appears to be the first major railroad to indicate it will not hit the Dec. 31, 2018, deadline for full operation.
The announcement comes weeks after several major train crashes nationally have thrown the spotlight on rail industry safety lapses, and prompted more calls for railroads to speed up work on installing computer systems – called Positive Train Control – that will stop trains if the conductor fails to heed speed limit warnings.
In December, three people were killed and dozens injured when an Amtrak train in Washington sped at twice the speed limit through a turn and derailed onto Interstate 5. On Sunday, an Amtrak train ran head-on into a freight train in South Carolina, killing two and injuring 100.
Those incidents have caused some in Congress to complain the railroads should have PTC systems up and running by now, and to say they fear heel-dragging by the industry.
The federal government first mandated in its Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 that all major railroads, including passenger and freight lines, install the system by the end of 2015.
Industry representatives persuaded officials to extend the deadline to 2018, and to add a provision that will allow railroads a further extension to 2020 for full installation, testing and service startup.
In an announcement Wednesday, UP said it “continues to make strides implementing positive train control. The company anticipates it will make all required deadlines for installing PTC on its network. As allowed by federal law, Union Pacific will continue to test and refine the immature technologies comprising the system in 2019-20.”
According to federal PTC guidelines, however, railroads are to implement PTC systems by Dec. 31, 2018. If not, the FRA says a railroad “may request FRA’s approval an an ‘alternative schedule” with a deadline no later than Dec. 31, 2020, for certain non-hardware, operations aspects of PTC system implementation.”
UP officials said on Thursday they have not yet made such a request. An FRA spokesman said his agency has not received any extension requests from railroads yet.
A chart on the FRA website shows that UP does not yet qualify to be able to request the extension. That chart lists UP as having completed 86 percent of the work it will need in order to be allowed to request the extension.
UP is one of 41 railroads nationally that are required to install the computerized safety system. Two other large railroads that operate in California, the BNSF and Amtrak, are listed as having made more progress than UP.
UP and other major railroads have argued in the past that the PTC system is expensive – estimated at $10 billion nationally – as well as complex and difficult to install. It requires new computer systems in all locomotive cabs, new communications systems at intervals along all rail tracks, and extensive back office systems that can communicate with the locomotives and with the new track-side installations.
The system is further complicated by the fact that freight and passenger rail companies use many of the same tracks, requiring them to work together to ensure their systems can communicate with each other.
UP officials this week pointed out that their rail system has the largest footprint in North America. The company’s chief executive, Lance Fritz, said last month that UP has run into trouble testing PTC in areas where it has been installed.
In an email this week to The Bee, UP officials said trains “are experiencing unintended stops” during PTC tests. “These unintended stops have an adverse impact on our system. On occasion, the communities we serve experience impacts to vehicular traffic ... We are diligently working to reduce unintended stop situations to eventually eliminate these occurrences.”
Those complaints have caused some critics to worry more railroads may push for extensions beyond this year.
Ron Goldman, a Los Angeles attorney and critic of railroad safety efforts, recently said he worries that railroads will persuade the Trump administration, which has been deregulating industries, to push the deadlines back more.
“This is a bad habit, like Groundhog Day,” he said. “What do train crashes have in common? Speed and derailments. It repeats over and over.”
Last month Trump’s Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao sent a letter to railroads, giving them a nudge to work harder on installing the system by December of this year.
“Advancing the implementation of Positive Train Control is among the most important rail safety initiatives on the Department’s agenda,” she said. “The FRA leadership has been directed to work with your organization’s leadership to help create an increased level of urgency to underscore the imperative of meeting existing expectations for rolling out this critical rail-safety technology.”
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article199110499.html
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Trump Admin Touts Enforcement Data and Draws Fire
Feb 9, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly and Amanda Reilly
U.S. EPA, its enforcement record under close scrutiny since President Trump took office, today released numbers for last year that a top official touted as evidence of the agency's commitment to ensuring compliance with environmental laws.
"A strong enforcement program is essential to achieving positive health and environmental outcomes," Susan Bodine, who has headed the agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) since December, said in a news release.
During fiscal 2017, Bodine said, EPA focused on deterring noncompliance, expediting site cleanups and bringing facilities back into compliance "while respecting the cooperative federalism structure of our nation's environmental laws."
Among the highlights singled out in the release:
· $1.6 billion in judicial and civil penalties. EPA says that 2017 total is higher than the amounts imposed in any of the preceding 10 years with the exception of 2016.
· An increase in the value of commitments by private parties for cleanups of contaminated sites to more than $1.2 billion.
· The total of criminal fines, restitution and mitigation rose to $2.98 billion.
But fiscal 2017 also encompasses the final months of the Obama administration. In a statement, Cynthia Giles, who headed OECA from 2009 to the beginning of 2017, accused the Trump administration of claiming credit for cases it had nothing to do with.
Almost all the civil penalties "were under a signed, filed and public agreement" before Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017, Giles said. At most, she added, EPA under Administrator Scott Pruitt "is responsible" for about 2 percent of the total.
Similarly, Giles said, $2.83 billion in criminal fines and restitution — including a $2.8 billion criminal fine for the German automaker Volkswagen AG — had already been set before Trump took office.
"Based on the data that is public so far," she said, "it appears that the Pruitt EPA is responsible for less than one percent of the total criminal recoveries" in fiscal 2017.
While Giles' impartiality might be questioned, a nonpartisan advocacy group last August found a steep drop in one gauge of enforcement activity during the first six months of the new administration. During that time, EPA and the Justice Department imposed $12 million in fines on businesses and local governments through lawsuit settlements over alleged pollution violations, according to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project (Greenwire, Aug. 10, 2017).
That was less than half of the combined average of $30 million in penalties levied under the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations during comparable periods, the report found.
Patrick Traylor, the deputy head of OECA, responded at the time that the numbers said "much more" about enforcement actions launched in the final years of the Obama administration than it did about any steps newly undertaken under Trump.
At a conference today, the director of EPA's air enforcement division said the desire to create a "level playing field" is in large part driving enforcement efforts at EPA.
"It means that law enforcement has to think about the impact of enforcing against one entity and not others," Phillip Brooks said at an annual gathering of environmental lawyers hosted by the American Law Institute.
In the air division, Brooks said mobile sources have been a big enforcement priority since the Volkswagen diesel-emissions scandal. EPA is "spending a considerable portion of our effort" focusing on "after-market tuning," or software that allows vehicles to exceed pollution limits, he said.
"This poses a significant threat to air quality, especially in those areas where states are struggling with ozone attainment," he said. "So you can expect us to be spending some serious time on that."
Brooks also responded to criticism of a memo last year by Attorney General Jeff Sessions barring third parties from receiving money as part of settlement agreements, except in limited circumstances. Critics have said that the policy would affect supplemental environmental projects that have made up a key part of settlements to resolve environmental enforcement actions.
Pollution-mitigation projects would continue to be a part of settlement agreements in enforcement proceedings, Brooks said.
"It's not an eradication of the idea. It's a refinement of the idea," Brooks said of the Sessions memo. "And this idea of pushing for mitigation wher
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/02/08/stories/1060073337
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Rise in E.P.A. Penalties Against Polluters Comes With an Asterisk
Feb 9, 2018 | New York Times
By Eric Lipton and Danielle Ivory
The Trump administration has released data showing a large increase in penalties against polluters, as well $20 billion in commitments from companies to correct problems that have caused environmental damage.
“A strong enforcement program is essential to achieving positive health and environmental outcomes,” Susan Bodine, head of the enforcement division at the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement on Thursday.
The data from the E.P.A. represented activity during the government’s 2017 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, meaning the totals included the final three and half months of the Obama administration, when some of the E.P.A.’s biggest cases were settled. The data also reflected cases that were resolved during the Trump administration but had been initiated and largely handled under President Obama.
The New York Times in December did its own analysis of the E.P.A.’s civil enforcement action initiated in the first nine months under Scott Pruitt, the administrator appointed by President Trump. During that time frame, the agency sought civil penalties of about $50.4 million from polluters, which, adjusted for inflation, was about 39 percent of what the Obama administration sought in the same time period under its first E.P.A. director and about 70 percent of what the Bush administration sought in the same period.
The tally released Thursday showed a total of $1.6 billion in civil judicial and administrative penalties — money paid to punish polluters — the second largest amount in the last decade, with the single biggest amount of that coming from Volkswagen, which agreed to pay a $1.45 billion penaltyat the end of the Obama administration. The prior peak was in fiscal year 2016, when BP agreed to pay $5.7 billion in penalties for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
In her statement, Ms. Bodine, who became enforcement director in December, said that the agency had focused its enforcement efforts during fiscal 2017 on speeding up the cleanup of contaminated sites, “deterring noncompliance” as well as a philosophy of “cooperative federalism,” which has meant turning over enforcement responsibilities to states.
The $20 billion in commitments by polluters to correct problems was up from $14 billion in 2016, the E.P.A. said.
But the analysis by The Times showed that during the first nine months of Mr. Pruitt’s tenure, demands for such fixes dropped sharply. The agency sought about $1.2 billion worth of fixes, known as injunctive relief, in civil cases initiated during that period. Adjusted for inflation, that was about 12 percent of what was sought under Mr. Obama and 48 percent under Mr. Bush. Overall, The Times’s analysis said, cases started under Mr. Pruitt’s leadership dropped significantly from both of the previous administrations.
Cynthia Giles, who was the assistant administrator for the E.P.A.’s enforcement office during the Obama administration, said the data released Thursday should not be interpreted as the Trump administration being tough on polluters.
“Nearly all of the large cases included in E.P.A.’s annual enforcement report were essentially over before the new administration arrived at E.P.A.,” said Ms. Giles, who had reviewed The Times’s analysis. “Without an unprecedented disavowal of an already negotiated and public agreement, there is nothing Administrator Pruitt’s team could have done to change the outcome. In no sense do these cases reflect the intentions or actions of the new administration.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/epa-penalties-polluters.html
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Environmental Enforcement Increasingly Left to the States
Feb 9, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz and Jennifer Lu
The EPA is conducting fewer inspections of polluting industries and leaving more of that work to states, part of an ongoing trend in environmental enforcement, according to annual data released Feb. 8.
The Environmental Protection Agency conducted slightly more than 11,000 inspections and evaluations in the 2017 fiscal year, a number that has declined every year since 2012, when it was at close to 20,000. These numbers don't include inspections conducted by state authorities—data that the EPA said it is working to try to quantify.
The annual enforcement data paint a somewhat muddy picture. The Obama administration was in charge for four of the 12 months it encompasses, so it's tough to determine the exact effects of the Trump administration.
Additionally, many of the settlements that the EPA is touting in this data resulted from lawsuits that began many years before President Donald Trump took office.
Air Enforcement
Phillip Brooks, head of the EPA's air enforcement office, said a priority is regulating mobile sources—cars, boats, heavy equipment, and any other moving object that have a fuel-burning engine.
Indeed, the agency's largest enforcement action in the 2017 fiscal year by far came from a mobile sources case. The agency collected nearly $3 billion in fines and other penalties related to criminal actions, with $2.8 billion of that coming from one source: Volkswagen.
The German automaker paid the fines in response to charges that it installed illegal software in its vehicles that allowed them to subvert emissions tests.
Brooks also said the EPA will continue to look for opportunities to get violators to clean up some of the damage they caused.
“Mitigation, where appropriate, remains a part of the enforcement portfolio,” he told a Feb. 8 conference of environmental attorneys in Washington.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=127963981&vname=dennotallissues&fn=127963981&jd=127963981
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EPA's Scott Pruitt Asks Whether Global Warming ‘Necessarily Is a Bad Thing’
Feb 8, 2018 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney
As head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt has repeatedly questioned the scientific consensus that rising levels of carbon dioxide from human-fueled activity are warming the planet.
He’s now taking a different tack: Even if climate change is occurring, as the vast majority of scientists say it is, a warmer atmosphere might not be so awful for humans, according to Pruitt.
“We know humans have most flourished during times of what, warming trends,” Pruitt said Tuesday during an interview on KSNV, an NBC affiliate in Las Vegas. “So I think there’s assumptions made that because the climate is warming, that that necessarily is a bad thing. Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100, in the year 2018? That’s fairly arrogant for us to think that we know exactly what it should be in 2100.”
Pruitt continued: “There are very important questions around the climate issue that folks really don’t get to. And that’s one of the reasons why I’ve talked about having an honest, open, transparent debate about what do we know, what don’t we know, so the American people can be informed and they can make decisions on their own with respect to these issues.”
Not long after taking office last February, Pruitt seemed to reject the established science of climate change in a nationally televised interview — a move that outraged scientists, environmental advocates and his predecessors at the EPA.
“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Pruitt said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in March. “We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
At the time, his comments represented a startling statement for an official so high in the U.S. government. They put him at odds not only with leaders around the world, but also with the EPA’s own official scientific findings. President Trump has famously called the idea of human-driven climate change a hoax. Other Cabinet members, including Energy Secretary Rick Perry, have questioned the scientific basis for combating global warming.
He now seems to have embraced an argument long held by other climate-science skeptics: that a warmer atmosphere may in fact be better for humanity.
“The climate is changing. That’s not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100? . . . I think the American people deserve an open honest transparent discussion about those things,” Pruitt said in an interviewwith Reuters last month. He added, “This agency for the last several years has been more focused on what might be happening in 2100, as opposed to what is happening today.”
And during a hearing on Capitol Hill later in January, Pruitt said, “There are questions that we know the answer to; there are questions we don’t know the answer to. For example, what is the ideal surface temperature in the year 2100? [It’s] something that many folks have different perspective on.”
The theme echoes one advanced by Kathleen Hartnett White, Trump’s pick to lead the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, who once touted carbon dioxide as “the gas of life on this planet.” The White House withdrew her nomination on Saturday after even Republican senators raised questions about her expertise.
Pruitt also has been the main administration official pushing for a governmentwide effort to debate the science of climate change. He first raised the possibility of such a “red team-blue team” exercise in an interview in June.
“What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,” Pruitt told Breitbart’s Joel Pollack.
During his most recent congressional testimony, Pruitt came back to the same idea.
“That red team-blue team exercise is an exercise to provide an opportunity to the American people to consume information from scientists that have different perspectives on key issues,” Pruitt told Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), “and frankly could be used to build consensus in this body.”
It’s unclear why Pruitt thinks warmer temperatures may be better for people. The last 11,700 years, since the end of the last ice age, constitute a relatively stable period of climate for human civilization. Many of the cities built during those millennia dot the coasts of Earth’s continents and were situated there assuming relatively stable sea levels.
And while rising temperatures may indeed boost agricultural yield in some regions, they are projected to cause debilitating drought elsewhere.
Although the not-so-bad argument may be new for Pruitt, some conservative and fossil-fuel industry groups have used it for almost three decades. In 1991, for example, the Western Fuels Association funded “The Greening of Planet Earth,” a 30-minute video arguing that more CO2 in the air helps farmers.
In 2001, the Cato Institute echoed the video’s message. “The video was right,” Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow at the libertarian think tank, wrote. “The greens were wrong.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/02/07/scott-pruitt-asks-if-global-warming-necessarily-is-a-bad-thing/?utm_term=.a8f4dfbeee3e
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Sierra Club Sues EPA over Air Permitting Policy Change
Feb 8, 2018 | Inside EPA
Sierra Club is suing EPA over the agency’s denial of the group’s challenge to a Utah power plant’s air permit, in a case that will test a key change in policy by the Trump EPA in which the agency makes it more difficult to challenge underlying provisions of Clean Air Act “Title V” operating permits.
In recently-filed suits in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, and also the D.C. Circuit, Sierra Club challenges EPA’s Oct. 16 denial of the group’s petition for the agency to object to the Title V air permit of the Pacificorp Hunter power plant in Utah, published in the Federal Register Dec. 11.
The Hunter order establishes the principle that EPA will not second-guess states’ decisions on the merits of underlying permits, such as prevention of significant deterioration air permits, that are included under the “umbrella” Title V permits, which must document all “applicable” permitting requirements.
EPA will also defer to states’ decisions about which type of air permit is required, a change from what it calls the “expansive” reading of prior administrations that allowed some consideration of the adequacy of underlying permits.
“Sierra Club contends that this Order is nationally applicable because it announces EPA’s new interpretation of federal Clean Air Act operating permit regulations that EPA declares will govern its approach to permitting going forward. Accordingly, this Petition for Review properly belongs in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Colombia Circuit,” the group says in its 10th Circuit filing.
“Nevertheless, because Respondents may contend that venue is proper in this Court, Sierra Club is filing this petition for review as a protective matter to preserve their right to judicial review.”
Sierra Club in its 10th Circuit filing says it is filing in that court as a “protective” step, to preserve its ability to sue there should its D.C. Circuit suit be dismissed due to a disagreement over appropriate venue.
EPA in its Hunter order signaled that it will not question states’ decisions about when a source can satisfy Clean Air Act requirements with a “minor source” permit, which the source can win by limiting its “potential to emit” and keep its pollution below thresholds that would require a “major source” permit with tougher control requirements. In this way, an otherwise “major source” can become a “synthetic minor” source.
In the Hunter order, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wrote, “EPA is now interpreting the regulations to mean that the issuance of a minor NSR permit defines the applicability of preconstruction requirements under section (1) of the definition of 'applicable requirement' for the approved construction activities for the purposes of permitting under title V of the [Clean Air Act]."
Pruitt also denied Sierra Club's request for the agency to object to plant-wide applicability limits (PALs) for the Hunter plant that the group claims are flawed, again because they are not flaws with the Title V permit per se, but with underlying requirements. PALs are overarching emissions caps covering several emissions sources at a given facility.
While the Hunter order relates to “criteria” pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, EPA also recently ended a policy known as “once in, always in,” that previously kept sources subject to air toxics rules controls permanently once they had been regulated under maximum achievable control technology (MACT) rules. The new policy allows plants to reduce their potential to emit hazardous air pollutants to below “major source” thresholds, and so become synthetic minor sources of HAPs, escaping both MACT regulation and also some Title V permit requirements.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/sierra-club-sues-epa-over-air-permitting-policy-change
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