Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 2/12/2018
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Hearing on Chemical Safety
Feb 15, 2018 | House Homeland Security Committee
Location: HVC-210 Capitol / 10:00 AM -
Oversight Hearing on Water and Infrastructure
Feb 14, 2018 | House Natural Resources Committee
Location: 1324 Longworth / 2:00 PM -
Hearing on EPA's New Source Review Program
Feb 14, 2018 | House Energy and Commerce Committee
Location: 2123 Rayburn / 2:00 PM -
First-Class Travel Distinguishes Scott Pruitt’s EPA Tenure
Feb 12, 2018 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis
Just days after helping orchestrate the United States’ exit from a global climate accord last June, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt embarked on a whirlwind tour aimed at championing President Trump’s agenda at home and abroad. -
Looking Ahead to Significant TSCA Progress in 2018
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch - Briefing
By Dr. Nancy B. Beck
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making great progress in implementing the Frank R Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act -
TSCA Rule Would Help Fund Broader EPA Chemical Program
Feb 9, 2018 | Law 360
By Juan Carlos Rodriguez
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new fee structure for its Toxic Substances Control Act program would bring much-needed revenue to an agency facing dramatically increased responsibilities under recent amendments to the law... -
EPA Releases User Fee Rule for Administration of TSCA
Feb 9, 2018 | National Law Review
By Thomas C. Berger and Javaneh Nekoomaram
On February 7, 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the pre-publication version of its proposed rule to establish user fees for the administration of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
(ACC Mentioned) ACC Announces Plans to Establish PFOA/PFOS Panel
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Frank Zaworski
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has told its membership it anticipates forming a self-funded panel to engage in regulatory advocacy on perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS). -
Global Cancer Agency’s Funding in the Crosshairs
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson
Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are threatening to withhold funding from the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The U.S. provides about $2.0 million, or about 7.4% of IARC’s annual budget. -
US Formaldehyde Emissions Testing Rule Finalised
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A. Miller
The US EPA has published final regulations implementing administrative changes to regulations on formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products. -
Fluorochemicals in Delaware Town Prompts Bottled Water Order (1)
Feb 12, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Leslie A. Pappas
Delaware Gov. John Carney (D) issued an executive order Feb. 9 authorizing the Delaware National Guard to help distribute bottled water to residents of a town with contaminated drinking water. -
Merged Lawsuit Filed Against Dupont and Chemours in North Carolina
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Marc S. Reisch
Lawyers have filed a new class-action lawsuit against DuPont and Chemours claiming that a plant run by the two firms contaminated the Cape Fear River in North Carolina with fluorosurfactants. The river is a source of drinking water for much of the southeast part... -
Europe’s Clear Future After the 2018 Deadline
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch - Briefing
By Geraint Roberts
This spring’s third and final REACH registration deadline is the regime’s last major leap forward. After this, with all of the substances on the EU market registered, REACH will enter its ‘operational’ phase. There -
Business Impacts of Not Registering for REACH on Time
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch - Briefing
By Frederik Johanson
At the start of the year, Echa was still expecting about 25,000 unique substances covered by some 60,000 registrations, to be submitted by the last REACH deadline of 31 May 2018, for substances in the 1-100 tonnes/year band. -
Taking Echa on the Next Stage of Its Journey
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch - Briefing
By Björn Gaarn Hansen
Björn Hansen is stepping into the hot seat at Echa less than six months before the final REACH registration deadline for existing substances -
Plastic Trash Is Killing Coral Reefs. Here’s How We Can Still Save Our Oceans.
Feb 9, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Douglas Rader
In 2016, members of our research team were surveying the health of coral reefs along a 200-mile stretch off Myanmar’s southern coast when they made a startling discovery. -
(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Chamber, State Coalition Seek to Upend TVA Coal Ash Ruling
Feb 12, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
Industry organizations and a group of states are backing the Tennessee Valley Authority's bid to overturn an order requiring the removal of coal ash ponds from two sites. -
EPA Seeks Stay of CPP Litigation Until Agency Finalizes Repeal
Feb 12, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to continue to hold a lawsuit over the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) in abeyance until the agency completes its work on an already-proposed CPP repeal and possible replacement. -
Ads Blast Zinke over Energy Strategy
Feb 9, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Jennifer Yachnin
The National Wildlife Federation today urged Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to reconsider his agency's energy dominance strategy, arguing in a pair of full-page newspaper ads that the scheme values "short-term profits" from extraction over hunters and anglers. -
Fracking Earthquakes Pop Up in Unexpected Corner of Shale Patch
Feb 12, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Wethe
The oil prospectors of Oklahoma, it appeared, finally had a solution to their earthquake problem. -
Cheniere Energy Strikes LNG Export Deals with China
Feb 9, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
Cheniere Energy announced Friday that it has struck two long-term deals to sell liquefied natural gas to China's state-controlled oil and gas giant. -
Enhanced Oil Recovery May Offer Climate Solution: Fuel for Thought
Feb 12, 2018 | Platts
By Bob Williams
As counterintuitive as it may sound to those who want to transition away from fossil energy to combat climate change, the US government has long supported research into technology that could potentially slow or even halt the growth of industrial carbon emissions... -
Panel to Review Landmark Plant Safety Law
Feb 12, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Corbin Hiar
A House subcommittee this week will review the Department of Homeland Security's decade-old chemical plant safety effort. -
Trump to Unveil $1.5 Trillion Infrastructure Plan
Feb 12, 2018 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Jonathan Lemire and Martin Crutsinger
President Donald Trump on Monday will unveil his long-awaited infrastructure plan, a $1.5 trillion proposal that fulfills a number of campaign goals, but relies heavily on state and local governments to produce much of the funding. -
Trump’s Infrastructure Plan May Ignore Climate Change. It Could Be Costly.
Feb 12, 2018 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
President Trump is expected to unveil on Monday a plan that would fulfill one of his signature campaign promises: a $1.5 trillion, once-in-a-generation proposal to rebuild, restore and modernize the nation’s aging infrastructure. -
EPA Chief’s Questions About Climate Science Draw New Scrutiny
Feb 12, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt is getting bolder in questioning climate change. -
Former DOJ Attorney Says Ozone Order Shows 'Sue-Settle' Policy's Flaw
Feb 12, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
A federal district court order's setting a 60-day deadline for EPA to grant or deny Connecticut's petition to regulate interstate air pollution shows the flaw of the agency's “sue-and-settle” directive curbing settlements with litigants because it can lead to much tougher deadlines... -
Climate Change Just Got a Little Less Terrible
Feb 12, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Eric Roston
There are some 20,000 research papers listed on Google Scholar, a search engine for academics, that mention the worst-case scenario for climate change, one where an overpopulated, technology-poor world digs up all the coal it can find.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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Feb 15, 2018 | House Homeland Security Committee
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Oversight Hearing on Water and Infrastructure
Feb 14, 2018 | House Natural Resources Committee
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Hearing on EPA's New Source Review Program
Feb 14, 2018 | House Energy and Commerce Committee
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First-Class Travel Distinguishes Scott Pruitt’s EPA Tenure
Feb 12, 2018 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis
Just days after helping orchestrate the United States’ exit from a global climate accord last June, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt embarked on a whirlwind tour aimed at championing President Trump’s agenda at home and abroad.
On Monday, June 5, accompanied by his personal security detail, Pruitt settled into his $1,641.43 first-class seat for a short flight from the District to New York City. His ticket cost more than six times that of the two media aides who came along and sat in coach, according to agency travel vouchers; the records do not show whether his security detail accompanied him at the front of the plane.
In Manhattan, Pruitt made two brief television appearances praising the White House’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, stayed with staff at an upscale hotel near Times Square and returned to Washington the next day.
That Wednesday, after traveling with Trump on Air Force One for an infrastructure event in Cincinnati, Pruitt and several staffers raced to New York on a military jet, at a cost of $36,068.50, to catch a plane to Rome.
The transatlantic flight was part of a round-trip ticket for the administrator that cost $7,003.52, according to EPA records — several times what was paid for other officials who went. The documents do not explain the discrepancy. In Rome, Pruitt and a coterie of aides and security personnel got private tours of the Vatican and met with papal officials, business executives and legal experts before heading briefly to a meeting of environmental ministers in Bologna. Pruitt departed the Group of Seven summit a day early, before negotiations had concluded, to attend a Cabinet meeting at which Trump’s deputies lauded the president’s job performance.
In total, the taxpayer-funded travel for Pruitt and his top aides during that stretch in early June cost at least $90,000, according to months of receipts obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project under the Freedom of Information Act. That figure does not account for the costs of Pruitt’s round-the-clock security detail, which have not been disclosed.
In an interview Sunday, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said all of Pruitt’s travel expenses have been approved by federal ethics officials.
“He’s trying to further positive environmental outcomes and achieve tangible environmental results” through his travel, she said, adding that in the case of the New York trip, “He’s communicating the message about his agenda and the president’s agenda.”
On other domestic trips, Bowman added: “He’s hearing directly from people affected by EPA’s regulatory overreach.”
As he enters his second year in charge of the EPA, Pruitt is distinguishing himself from his predecessors in ways that go beyond policy differences. His travel practices — which tend to be secretive, costly and frequent — are integral to how he approaches his role.
Pruitt tends to bring a larger entourage of political advisers on his trips than past administrators. But while the aides usually fly coach, according to travel vouchers through August obtained by The Washington Post separately from the Environmental Integrity Project, he often sits in first or business class, which previous administrators typically eschewed.
Last year, Pruitt promoted U.S. natural-gas exports in Morocco, sat on a panel about the rule of law in Rome and met with his counterparts from major industrialized countries. This year, he plans to travel to Israel, Australia, Japan, Mexico and possibly Canada, according to officials familiar with his schedule. None of those visits have been officially announced.
Pruitt plans to meet with his foreign counterparts and U.S. and foreign business officials abroad, as well as tour energy facilities.
These overseas trips are largely untethered to the kind of multilateral environmental summits that dominated his predecessors’ schedules, and Pruitt rarely discloses where he plans to be.
In an interview Friday, Bowman said the agency doesn’t release Pruitt’s schedule in advance “due to security concerns” and because it could be a “distraction” from the trips. But she added that he has received government invitations for all his foreign trips.
“There’s just a lot of international cooperation that the head of any Cabinet-level agency wants to establish with his or her counterparts,” she said.
The agency records show that wherever Pruitt’s schedule takes him, he often flies first or business class, citing unspecified security concerns. The EPA’s assistant inspector general for investigations told The Post in September that Pruitt has gotten a higher number of threats than his recent predecessors.
Federal regulations state that government travelers are required to “exercise the same care in incurring expenses that a prudent person would exercise if traveling on personal business . . . and therefore, should consider the least expensive class of travel that meets their needs.” Agencies are allowed to authorize first-class travel in rare instances, such as a flight of 14 hours or more, a medical disability or when “exceptional security circumstances” mean “use of coach class accommodations would endanger your life or government property.”
Pruitt has used the security exception often during the past year.
In a two-day period last July, he spent $4,443 for separate round-trips to Birmingham and Atlanta for visits that included a power plant and farm tour. On at least four occasions, he has spent between $2,000 and $2,600 on first-class airfare to official meetings or tours near Tulsa, where he lives. Frequently, he stayed in Tulsa for the weekend, records show, before returning to Washington.
Pruitt’s other first-class trips include a $4,680.04 itinerary to Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Little Rock to promote the unraveling of a controversial Obama administration water regulation. Another multi-city ticket, which included stops in Colorado, Iowa, North Dakota and Texas, cost $10,830, according to the vouchers, not including lodging and incidentals.
A separate batch of travel vouchers obtained by the Environmental Working Group shows that Pruitt flew coach multiple times from March to May 2017, but he also logged several more expensive trips during that period. On May 11, the administrator delivered the keynote address to the Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank Meeting in Colorado Springs; the conservative group covered his lodging, but the ticket cost $2,903.56. A week later, he flew to Tulsa to tour the Brainerd Chemical Co. and stayed the weekend, for a flight cost of $1,980.34.
While on the road, Pruitt often stays at high-end hotels, according to travel records: the Kimpton in Salt Lake City, Le Meridien in Minneapolis, the Capital in Little Rock and the Michelangelo in New York.
In addition, he frequently opts to fly Delta Airlines, even though the government has contracts with specific airlines on certain routes. Asked whether there is an additional expense associated with flying Delta when there is a comparable government contract flight, Bowman said, “EPA staff seek cost-efficient travel options at all times.”
Such travel decisions, coupled with a tendency to not publicize out-of-town trips, have prompted criticism from Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups, who have questioned how much some of Pruitt’s trips have to do with the EPA’s mission.
“What did American taxpayers get for Pruitt visiting the Vatican and getting photographed with European agency heads?” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, of last year’s Italy trip. “This was all for show.”
The group obtained Pruitt’s travel vouchers through litigation and is suing for other travel-related documents, including speeches he has made in closed-door meetings with industry officials.
“It is acutely paranoid,” Schaeffer said of the EPA’s refusal to disclose Pruitt’s whereabouts on any given day. “He’s a public official. His schedule should be publicly known.”
At the request of congressional Democrats, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General is conducting probes of Pruitt’s travel last year and the expansion of his security detail.
The decision to bring seven political aides and his security detail to Rome for two days before the G-7 summit significantly increased the cost of the Italy trip, which included just two career EPA officials. The Rome stop included a routine U.S. Embassy briefing, a meet-and-greet with business executives and a roundtable on the judiciary. But much of the two-day stop was devoted to papal visits, including a meeting with Archbishop Paul Gallagher and private tours of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica.
Bowman declined to comment specifically on the topics discussed at the Vatican, but said in an email, “While in Italy, Administrator Pruitt discussed how the U.S. is leading the world in environmental achievements to remediate toxic land, reduce air pollution, improve water infrastructure, and ensure access to clean drinking water.” She added: “These discussions were broad, and very well-received.”
In December, Pruitt journeyed to Morocco, where he touted America’s natural-gas exports and discussed a series of policy collaborations between the two countries.
Pruitt’s two immediate predecessors, Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy, also traveled repeatedly to foreign summits and other events. Jackson traveled abroad four times a year while on the job, including to the Group of Eight’s environment ministers’ meeting in Siracusa, Italy; the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen; the inauguration of Indonesia’s president; and the Netherlands as part of a trip focused on sea-level rise. The entire delegation flew coach to the Netherlands, and invited the media to come along.
McCarthy traveled overseas between four and seven times a year, including to multilateral meetings; a G.E. oil and gas conference in Florence, Italy; the Costa Rican president’s inauguration; and to the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics.
Unlike with Pruitt, the EPA typically announced McCarthy’s general itinerary and the purpose of her trips in advance.
“McCarthy will arrive in China beginning on Monday, December 9, to discuss US-China cooperation on air quality, climate pollution and environmental issues. She will travel to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong during her four-day visit,” read a 2013 agency news release posted days before her visit.
By contrast, Pruitt’s EPA routinely gives the public no such notice, either domestically or internationally.
Last week, for instance, Pruitt surfaced in Florida, to the surprise of reporters who cover the EPA and even media outlets in the state. An official said the agency notified some local and national outlets.
The EPA has also declined at times to confirm in advance Pruitt’s speaking engagements to various industry and political groups.
Several foreign officials, when contacted by The Post, deferred questions about Pruitt’s upcoming visits either to the U.S. Embassy or the EPA.
In the coming weeks, Pruitt will embark on a series of trips, some of which had been postponed due to external circumstances. A brief government shutdown in January forced Pruitt to cancel a trip to Japan and Israel, for example, and he will travel this month instead.
Japanese Embassy spokeswoman Rieko Suzuki said in an email that Pruitt had raised the idea of visiting with Japanese Environment Minister Masaharu Nakagawa, and her country was working on finalizing the details. “Since EPA Administrator Pruitt expressed his intention of visiting Japan and meeting Minister Nakagawa,” she wrote, “the Ministry of Environment of Japan has been trying to arrange a bilateral meeting.”
A spokesman for a low-emissions coal thermal plant located in the suburbs of Tokyo, run by the electric utility firm J-Power, confirmed Pruitt was scheduled to visit the facility. J Power spokesman Shingen Tsuneoka said that the plant emits “almost no” nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, two major air pollutants released by burning coal.
Bowman said Pruitt is headed to Japan “to strengthen existing areas of environmental cooperation, learn how Japan is responding to emerging energy challenges, and share successful approaches to innovative environmental technologies.” The administrator also will participate in a business roundtable with the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and visit the Yokohama Hydrogen Supply Chain Demonstration, she added.
In Israel, Bowman said, Pruitt will “visit a water recycling plant, hear from Israeli water technology companies about their successes in wastewater recycling for irrigation, visit a waste processing facility, tour a toxic land remediation site” and take part in a clean energy roundtable.
Next month, Pruitt is tentatively planning a one-day trip to Mexico to meet with Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Rafael Pacchiano Alamán, she said. That trip also had been postponed, according to travel vouchers.
Pruitt had intended to journey to Australia last year, according to EPA officials, where he was set to meet with officials from Peabody, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, as well as Melbourne-based energy giant BHP. The visit was to include a boat trip, according to an official, but was canceled because Pruitt had to work on the federal response to Hurricane Harvey.
This week, Pruitt is expected to travel to New Hampshire on a trip that will include a meeting with the governor, a visit to a local paper company and a tour of a Superfund site. The EPA has not publicized the trip.
Yuki Oda in Tokyo and Ruth Eglash in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/first-class-travel-distinguishes-scott-pruitts-epa-tenure/2018/02/11/5bb89afc-0b7d-11e8-8b0d-891602206fb7_story.html?utm_term=.ebb635999cb7
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Looking Ahead to Significant TSCA Progress in 2018
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch - Briefing
By Dr. Nancy B. Beck
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making great progress in implementing the Frank R Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. This significantly amended the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 2016 and was the first major change to the US’s primary toxic chemicals law since it was passed in 1976. Highlights of 2017 included:
· eliminating a backlog of new chemical reviews which had arisen from new requirements under the Lautenberg Act;
· publishing scoping documents for the first ten chemicals undergoing risk evaluation;
· providing a guidance document for external parties interested in developing draft risk evaluations; and
· issuing three new regulations to provide a framework for the implementation of the amended law.
The three framework regulations outline the EPA’s path forward as it develops an improved and expanded chemicals management programme under the updated TSCA. They include:
· final rules on the procedures for prioritising chemicals for risk evaluation;
· the process for evaluating high priority chemicals; and
· a requirement for industry reporting
· of chemicals manufactured, imported or processed in the US over the past ten years.
We expect the coming year to be no less busy. Our top priorities for 2018 are:
· setting up a fees programme (a fourth and final framework rule);
· developing the alternative test methods strategy to reduce animal testing;
· focusing on the first ten chemical risk evaluations; and
· finishing the TSCA chemical inventory update (or ‘active-inactive list’).
As part of the administrator’s transparency initiative, we plan to continue to hold public meetings and routinely engage with stakeholder groups on important aspects of TSCA implementation.
Establishing a fee programme
The EPA has proposed a rule to collect fees from chemical manufacturers, importers and processors, as authorised under the recent amendments. This fee authority allows the agency to defray a portion of the costs it incurs from its new responsibilities. The proposed rule will apply to manufacturers and processors that:
· are required to submit test data;
· submit notification of, or information related to, intent to manufacture a new chemical or a new use;
· manufacture or process a chemical substance that is subject to a risk evaluation; or
· request the EPA to conduct a risk evaluation on an existing chemical.
We have conducted outreach to a broad stakeholder community, including those potentially subject to the fees, about the best way to implement this before developing the rule. As part of the consultation, we held a multi-day public meeting and opened a docket to ensure that everyone had an opportunity to share their input, concerns and questions.
We are confident that the final rule will create a straightforward, user-friendly
and fair fee structure. The agency is taking comments on the proposal and we
hope to publish the final rule in 2018.
Alternative strategies
A new requirement under TSCA is sub-section 4(h), which requires the EPA to develop a strategic plan to promote the development and implementation of alternative test methods and strategies to reduce, refine or replace vertebrate animal testing. The agency recognises that many of these are currently available
and potentially useful for some regulatory purposes.
TSCA calls for risk-based decision making for both new and existing chemicals, and the prioritisation of existing chemicals for eventual risk evaluation.
The EPA expects to use combinations of alternative test methods, computer models and tiered testing and evaluation approaches to assist in these efforts for the evaluation of both hazard and exposure. Its use of these methods will be iterative; this will evolve as they are revised and improved over time as knowledge and acceptance increases.
The agency is committed to being inclusive and transparent in developing the strategic plan, while following the scientific principles described in section 26 of TSCA.
On 2 November 2017, it held a public meeting to formally begin obtaining input from interested parties and the public, during which it presented its intended goals and considerations. Some common themes which were discussed included:
· the importance of the regulatory decision context in the use of alternative methods, such as their use for new and/or existing chemical evaluations;
· the education of EPA staff in the use of new methods; and
· the importance of collaboration with stakeholders, industry, and other national and international regulatory bodies.
Early this year, the agency will release a draft plan for further public comment and will hold more public outreach events. It will incorporate responses and finalise the plan by the statutory deadline of 22 June.
Inventory update
The EPA continues to make progress in updating the TSCA inventory to accurately reflect chemicals that are currently in use or being manufactured. One of the requirements under the Lautenberg Act was for the agency to do this by designating every substance on it as either ‘active’ or ‘inactive’ in US commerce.
To accomplish that, we have asked manufacturers and processors to report whether they have manufactured, imported or processed chemicals on the inventory in the ten-year period ending on 21 June 2016. The final TSCA inventory notification (active-inactive) rule was published on 11 August 2017.
The agency has begun to publish monthly updates to keep the stakeholder community and downstream users informed of the status of reporting under the active-inactive rule.
The reporting period for manufacturers, including importers, ended on 7 February. For processors, it ends on 5 October.
After the reporting deadlines and the review of information for consistency and confidential business information (CBI)-related issues, we will have an updated inventory of all the chemicals currently in use.
We expect to publish a draft inventory a few months after the February deadline and a first inventory a few months after the October deadline. This should give us a more accurate understanding of the chemicals being used in the US, so we can effectively prioritise chemicals for review and implement TSCA efficiently.
First ten chemicals
The EPA has made significant inroads on the initial risk evaluations under the amended TSCA. The first ten chemicals undergoing review were screened for hazard, exposure, persistence and bioaccumulation. The new law has stringent deadlines – we must complete the risk evaluation for these within three years.
Problem formulation documents (which narrow the scope of the risk evaluation) will be published shortly and we hope the public will take this opportunity to share their input on how best to conduct the work.
Once these documents are released, the agency will focus its efforts on robust hazard and exposure assessments consistent with the scientific requirements in the statute and the risk evaluation framework rule. We plan to finalise the risk evaluations by late 2019.
Transparency and CBI
Also during 2018, the EPA will be moving forward two important initiatives on transparency, involving CBI. Early in the year, we will be requesting comments on an additional option for the implementation of the ‘unique identifier’ provision of TSCA.
Under amended TSCA, whenever the EPA approves a CBI claim for chemical identity, it must assign a ‘unique identifier’ to be used in lieu of the name and apply this to other information or submissions for that substance. Any non-confidential
information received must use this because the specific chemical identity is protected.
Later in the year, we will be implementing the provision of TSCA that permits us to share TSCA CBI with an expanded set of people and entities, including:
· state, tribal and local governments;
· government health and environmental professionals, doctors and nurses; and
· first responders and other health or environmental emergency personnel.
Both of these actions will give the public more access to chemical information potentially needed by their communities.
PBT chemicals
This year we are also taking a closer look at persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals. Under TSCA, we are required to examine various ways in which exposure to PBT chemicals that meet certain criteria is likely under the ‘conditions of use’ - that is, the circumstances, as determined by the EPA administrator, under which a chemical substance is intended, known or reasonably foreseen to be manufactured, processed, distributed in commerce, used or disposed of.
Under the conditions of use for each PBT chemical, the EPA will characterise the exposures to humans and the environment. Once peer-reviewed and released for public comment, this information will be used to address, by regulatory action, the risks they pose of injury to health and the environment. The agency must propose a rule to reduce exposures to the extent practicable no later than 22 June 2019.
Conclusion
We have a demanding year ahead. It has the potential for significant achievements in the review of new and existing chemicals, scientific testing strategies, curation of an accurate and up-to-date inventory and in careful adherence to the rigorous deadlines established in the Lautenberg Act. I look forward to working with the people of the EPA and the public to achieve meaningful progress.
Dr Nancy B Beck is the Deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Safety and Pollution Prevention, US EPA
https://chemicalwatch.com/63848/looking-ahead-to-significant-tsca-progress-in-2018
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TSCA Rule Would Help Fund Broader EPA Chemical Program
Feb 9, 2018 | Law 360
By Juan Carlos Rodriguez
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new fee structure for its Toxic Substances Control Act program would bring much-needed revenue to an agency facing dramatically increased responsibilities under recent amendments to the law, although environmentalists say companies would get off easy.
The $20 million expected to roll into the agency’s coffers each year from fees paid by chemical manufacturers and distributors would go toward helping the EPA carry out new regulatory duties it was given in 2016 amendments to TSCA. Before the amendments passed, the EPA’s chemical program was criticized as unacceptably weak and slow, and the agency has been under pressure to quickly implement improvements desired by both industry, which wants to see a more efficient chemical approval process, and environmentalists, who want to see stronger health protections.
The proposed fee program would defray some of the costs of administering certain provisions of TSCA. Those would be Section 4, which covers chemical testing requirements, Section 5, which covers new chemical reviews and regulation, and Section 6, which covers existing chemical reviews and regulatory actions. The fees would also offset the costs of collecting, processing, reviewing, protecting and providing access to information about chemical substances.
Crowell & Moring LLP partner Warren Lehrenbaum said the fees are a necessary part of ensuring the EPA can handle the increased workload it faces.
“We’ve seen EPA struggling to meet its new obligations under the new chemical review program, and once the rest of the statute gets going, in particular the prioritizations and risk evaluations, that’s going to be a huge burden on staff,” Lehrenbaum said. “They need to collect these fees.”
Even with the new fees, he said there’s still a concern among industry that companies will pay money but still not see the turnaround times — on premanufacture notices for new chemicals, for example — that they're hoping for.
“It would be nice if we had more certainty about the timing of the EPA’s actions,” he said.
On the environmentalists’ side, Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, said the EPA could and should be collecting even more money from fees. Although the TSCA amendments don’t require the EPA to collect fees, Congress said if the agency chose to do so it could get more than what it’s asking for in the proposed rule.
In particular, Denison pointed to the the fees the EPA has proposed implementing to cover Section 4 costs. While TSCA says the EPA can collect fees to cover up to 25 percent of its costs, the agency has proposed collecting only 3.5 percent.
“The fee rule is just the latest manifestation, on paper, of the political leadership’s disturbing unwillingness to impose costs on the industry that Congress gave it the authority to do,” Denison said.
EDF has challenged three other TSCA rules the EPA has rolled out to implement the changes Congress said it wants to see in the chemical program. The rules address identifying high-priority chemicals for risk evaluations, creating a framework for assessing the risk potential of high-priority chemicals, and documenting which chemicals manufactured, imported or processed in the U.S. over the past 10 years are active in U.S. commerce.
Denison said the group has argued those rules skimp on public health protections by not being as stringent as they should be. And he said the proposed fee rule follows that pattern, although he said it’s too early to tell if it will spark a similar legal challenge.
“There’s an effort here, in our view, to lowball the real costs to the agency of doing this work, meaning the EPA gets less money in fees than it would otherwise get and industry has to pay less,” he said. “The result is going to be that we’re going to get assessments done with far less robust information on the risks chemicals present than we should be getting.”
Judah Prero, counsel at Sidley Austin LLP, noted that chemical companies are facing big increases in fees from what they currently pay, and said the EPA had to walk a tightrope in setting appropriate amounts.
“No one realistically expected the numbers to stay close to what they have been for a number of years,” Prero said. “I think overall EPA tried to strike the balance where, on one hand everything is going to cost money, but on the other if it’s too much no one is going to want to play ball within the system.”
Chemical businesses told the EPA they were worried that fees could become so onerous that they would make research and development prohibitively expensive in the U.S., Prero said. But they also want their chemicals approved by the EPA.
“If EPA just doesn’t have the manpower or the ability to do it, then what good is the new regulatory structure?” he said. “There needs to be a balance, and I think that’s what EPA tried to do. It doesn’t serve industry to have an underfunded EPA that can’t do its job.”
--Editing by Mark Lebetkin and Aaron Pelc.https://www.law360.com/articles/1011037/tsca-rule-would-help-fund-broader-epa-chemical-program
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EPA Releases User Fee Rule for Administration of TSCA
Feb 9, 2018 | National Law Review
By Thomas C. Berger and Javaneh Nekoomaram
On February 7, 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the pre-publication version of its proposed rule to establish user fees for the administration of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The rulemaking is authorized by section 26 of TSCA (as revised by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act). EPA currently collects fees for TSCA section 5 submissions; however, through the Lautenberg Act, Congress provided EPA with expanded authority to require regulated entities to pay reasonable fees to defray a significant portion of EPA’s expenses in carrying out its statutory obligations.
In 2016, EPA held a meeting and opened a public docket to consider comments from the public regarding approaches (See industry consultation meeting on fees: https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/public-meeting-presentation-industry-consultation). After considering comments received, EPA is proposing to set user fees for:
· Any person required to submit information to EPA under TSCA section 4 (testing);
· Any person required to submit a notice, exemption application or other information under TSCA section 5 (new chemicals);
· Any person who manufactures a chemical subject to a risk evaluation under TSCA section 6(b).
The purpose of the fees are to defray a portion of costs associated with:
· The Agency’s administration of sections 4, 5, and 6;
· The Agency’s collection, processing, review, and protection of confidential business information (CBI) claims under section 14 of TSCA, including contractor costs.
In the rule, EPA proposes fees and fee categories for fiscal years 2019, 2020 and 2021, and explains how fees will be established in the future. EPA also proposes to revise its regulations governing the review of TSCA section 5 premanufacture notices (PMN), exemption applications and notices, and significant new use notices (SNUN). Finally, EPA proposes standards for determining whether a business is a “small business” and, thus, would be subject to lower fees. Overall, EPA estimates that the annualized fees collected from industry for the fees as proposed are approximately $20 million, with the highest percentage of fees coming from section 6 chemical risk evaluation fees.
It is critical for companies impacted by this user fee rule—including manufacturers, importers and processors—to carefully review the proposal and submit comments to EPA. EPA will be accepting comments until 60 days after the date of publication in the Federal Register.
To review the pre-publication version of the proposed rule, please visit EPA’s website: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-02/documents/prepublicat...
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-releases-user-fee-rule-administration-tsca
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(ACC Mentioned) ACC Announces Plans to Establish PFOA/PFOS Panel
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Frank Zaworski
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has told its membership it anticipates forming a self-funded panel to engage in regulatory advocacy on perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS).
The panel, which would sit within its Chemical Products and Technology Division, would also "promote sound science regarding potential exposures and toxicity of PFOS and PFOA, among other activities".
"We want to be at the forefront addressing many of the concerns about PFOA and PFOS that are being raised by policy makers on the local, state and federal levels," said Steve Risotto, ACC senior director.
"We hope that this group will be a helpful resource to these policy makers, providing them with science-based information as they make important decisions about these older chemistries," he said.
"It is important to note that these chemistries have been phased out of production by the major PFAS manufacturers in the US, Europe and Japan."
The ACC said the panel would closely coordinate its efforts with the organisation's FluoroCouncil.
State policy experts predict that ways of addressing PFOA, PFOS and other related substances will be the biggest emerging chemical regulation issue at state level in 2018.
In December, the US EPA announced "a cross-agency effort to address per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs)", including PFOA, PFOS and GenX, but the plan notably included no regulatory action.
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Global Cancer Agency’s Funding in the Crosshairs
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Britt E. Erickson
Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are threatening to withhold funding from the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The U.S. provides about $2.0 million, or about 7.4% of IARC’s annual budget.
At issue is a 2015 IARC assessment that classifies the widely used herbicide glyphosate as a probable carcinogen. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and many other generic herbicide formulations. IARC’s assessment led to lawsuits against Monsanto and an uproar last year in the European Union over whether to continue allowing use of the herbicide.
The agrochemical industry and its allies in Congress are intensifying an attack on IARC and its glyphosate assessment. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chair of the House Science Committee, held a hearing on Feb. 6 to examine what he says are “serious problems with the science underlying IARC’s assessment of glyphosate.” The director of IARC, Christopher Wild, declined the committee’s invitation to provide a witness for the hearing.
IARC is the only agency that has classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen. Regulatory agencies in the U.S. and EU say the herbicide is safe. In a draft human health risk assessment released in December, EPA concludes that glyphosate has “little to no hazard when exposure is to the skin and when it is inhaled,” Anna Lowit, a science adviser in EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, testified at the Feb. 6 hearing. “Effects in laboratory animals were only seen through ingestion at high doses,” she added.
Democrats and environmental groups are calling for the House to investigate whether Monsanto influenced EPA’s review.
“Today’s hearing supports the agrochemical industry agenda to discredit and ultimately defund IARC,” noted Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Sass claimed that the agrochemical industry is using tobacco-industry tactics to “support glyphosate registration and approval” and to “defend itself against litigation claims by thousands of farmers that were once Monsanto Co. customers and are now cancer patients.”
https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i7/Global-cancer-agencys-funding-crosshairs.html
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US Formaldehyde Emissions Testing Rule Finalised
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A. Miller
The US EPA has published final regulations implementing administrative changes to regulations on formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products.
The regulation updates references to voluntary consensus standards on emission testing methods and product construction characteristics. Most significantly, it will allow the use of two testing methods approved by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), rather than one.
CARB's formaldehyde standards were made national by the regulations published in 2016. The first deadlines under the new regulations were extended to last December.
The administrative rule was to go into effect on 11 December, but the EPA received comments it construed as "adverse". As a result it had to proceed through a formal rulemaking process. The final rule, published on 7 February, was effective immediately.
https://chemicalwatch.com/63827/us-formaldehyde-emissions-testing-rule-finalised
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Fluorochemicals in Delaware Town Prompts Bottled Water Order (1)
Feb 12, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Leslie A. Pappas
Delaware Gov. John Carney (D) issued an executive order Feb. 9 authorizing the Delaware National Guard to help distribute bottled water to residents of a town with contaminated drinking water.
The order comes after the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) found that municipal drinking wells supplying Blades—a town with about 1,400 residents in Sussex County—were contaminated by high concentrations of perfluorinated compounds. The drinking water in that town doesn't meet public safety standards, according to Carney's order.
The chemicals are being monitored and discovered most frequently near chemical plants and military bases. The compounds have a variety of consumer and industrial uses because of their heat-, grease- and fire-resistant properties.
All three of the town's drinking water wells had concentrations of perfluorinated chemicals above the human health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion, according to DNREC, which recently sampled the wells at the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The water is still safe for bathing and laundry, officials said.
DNREC and the state's Division of Public Health delivered bottled water to the local elementary school, four day care centers, and to residents at the local fire hall. The Delaware National Guard provided two 400-gallon water tanks and a 5,000-gallon water tanker was readied to continue supplying water to the town, the governor's office said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=128012819&vname=dennotallissues&fn=128012819&jd=128012819
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Merged Lawsuit Filed Against Dupont and Chemours in North Carolina
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Marc S. Reisch
Lawyers have filed a new class-action lawsuit against DuPont and Chemours claiming that a plant run by the two firms contaminated the Cape Fear River in North Carolina with fluorosurfactants. The river is a source of drinking water for much of the southeast part of the state (see page 28).
The filing, made late last month, consolidates and updates three class-action suits filed since October by lawyers representing thousands of people who claim they are ill or could get ill because they drank water from the Cape Fear River and from wells surrounding the plant, now run by DuPont spin-off Chemours. A judge in the U.S. federal district court in Wilmington, N.C., ordered the consolidation in early January to streamline the effort to try claims.
The consolidated suit charges that DuPont dumped potentially toxic fluorosurfactants from the Fayetteville, N.C., plant starting in the 1980s. It also claims that DuPont knew as far back as the 1960s that some of those compounds, such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), had toxic effects on laboratory animals.
DuPont acknowledges that the lawsuits and ongoing federal and state investigations “could result in penalties or sanctions,” according to documents it has filed with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). Chemours says in its SEC filings that it believes discharges from the Fayetteville site “have not impacted the safety of drinking water in North Carolina.”
In February 2017, the two firms agreed to pay $670 million to settle 3,550 lawsuits in Ohio and West Virginia by residents who say they were sickened by drinking water that was contaminated with PFOA released from what is now Chemours’s Parkersburg, W.Va., site.
The latest suit seeks funding for an epidemiological study to gauge the impact of PFOA, other polyfluoroalkyl substances, and GenX—which Chemours considers a safer alternative to PFOA—on residents along the Cape Fear River. It also seeks undetermined compensatory and punitive damages for illness, reduced property value, and the cost of water filtration.
“We will make these companies take responsibility,” says Steve Morrissey, plaintiff’s counsel at the law firm Susman Godfrey.
https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i7/Merged-lawsuit-filed-against-DuPont.html
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Europe’s Clear Future After the 2018 Deadline
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch - Briefing
By Geraint Roberts
This spring’s third and final REACH registration deadline is the regime’s last major leap forward. After this, with all of the substances on the EU market registered, REACH will enter its ‘operational’ phase. There will be a level playing field for all substances, as data and information about their hazards, uses and exposures will have been submitted to Echa and made available to member state authorities.
In this post-deadline world, having a compliant and regularly updated dossier will give registrants a competitive advantage. They will be able to explain clearly to their customers what risk management measures are needed to ensure their safe use, and their customers, in turn, will have more confidence in the substance’s future.
With high energy and labour costs, the European chemical industry’s big competitive advantage - along with its excellent infrastructure - is innovation. Once the REACH registration phase is completed, the safety of a particular substance or mixture will become an integral part of its marketability. Downstream users will choose less risky, less harmful chemicals if they can. As public awareness and concern about chemicals grows in Asia and other regions, Europe’s safer chemicals will become a bigger draw.
It will be easier for member state regulators and Echa to draw firm conclusions and focus regulatory actions where they matter most.And for them to advise the European Commission and member states on how REACH and the EU’s classification and labelling rules can best interact with other legislation related to chemicals, such as that on waste, water or industrial emissions, or products like food contact materials and cosmetics. Cefic also supports this.
Björn Hansen, Echa’s new head, has the experience to bring greater rationality, efficiency and consistency to the patchwork of chemicals-related legislation in Europe. And, while member states have different ideas about where the broader EU project should go, the majority of those that are most active and experienced in chemicals policy have embraced the direction in which REACH is taking the EU chemicals market.
This unity is likely to strengthen once the UK - which has often been at odds with other member states on toxicity issues and the level of precaution necessary - has left the trading bloc and is unable to take part in its science and policy discussions. Industry in the remaining member states, the EU-27, faces a clear future.
https://chemicalwatch.com/63838/europes-clear-future-after-the-2018-deadline
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Business Impacts of Not Registering for REACH on Time
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch - Briefing
By Frederik Johanson
At the start of the year, Echa was still expecting about 25,000 unique substances covered by some 60,000 registrations, to be submitted by the last REACH deadline of 31 May 2018, for substances in the 1-100 tonnes/year band. However, the numbers at that point were about 6,500 and 15,000 respectively, meaning there is a large gap to be filled during the remaining months.
This begs two questions. What will happen to the substances that are not registered by the deadline? And what will the business impact be on would-be registrants and downstream users?
From 1 June, the REACH Regulation will have reached a business-as-usual state where no further transitional schemes will apply for substances that require registration - that is, those manufactured in or imported into the EU and EEA at one tonne/year or more and not exempt from REACH or the registration requirement. Therefore, companies will have either:
1. successfully registered their substances; submitted registrations but, for whatever reason, had them rejected and not resubmitted them in time;
2. had an additional extension granted by Echa to complement an inadequate submitted dossier; or
3. not registered at all, due to negligence, wilful intent not to register or unawareness of the obligation.
Options available
This article will focus on cases two and four, looking at the business impact on the would-be registrant and the options available. The downstream user implications of not registering may actually have an even greater impact on businesses in the supply chain through obsolescence, but this will not be covered here.
What are the options when a registration that was submitted on time has been rejected due to the poor quality or non-compliance of the dossier? Where the failed registrant is a co-registrant, the obvious alternative is to reduce the volume of the substance to less than one tonne/year or simply cease to manufacture or import it, but this generally does not make business sense.
If the substance is in stock within the EU and EEA (at whatever volume), it can be used even if the stock is not registered, because it was presumably either manufactured in or imported into the EU and/or EEA before the applicable deadline. However, placing substances on the market in this way may encounter difficulties as well-informed downstream users will generally only accept registered substances after the deadline.
Although the substance will have been pre-registered, it will not be possible to simply resubmit it with a compliant dossier. The phase-in regime will have ended and substance information exchange forums (Siefs) disbanded, effectively making pre-registrations invalid.
Inquiry process
In practice, this means that any registrations submitted from 1 June 2018 onwards would first have to go through the inquiry procedure. Echa uses this process to verify substance identity and place the registrant in contact with the lead registrant (LR) of that substance.
Echa must accept an inquiry before a new registration can be submitted. There is no way around this requirement. Therefore, when preparing the inquiry dossier, the registrant should contact the LR or consortium and purchase access to the joint submission of the substance through a letter of access (LoA).
LoA negotiations may often prove time-consuming and therefore it is recommended that you start them as soon as possible. Once access has been granted to the joint submission, Echa has accepted the inquiry and the registrant has prepared a compliant co-registration dossier, the registration can be submitted.
The agency will accept the dossier when the registration fee is paid and, once all the checks are made, it will issue a registration number as a decision. Only when this number is available can the manufacture and import of the substance and related business continue.
Where the failed registrant is an LR, the matter becomes even more complicated, especially if there are other co-registrants. This is because other Sief members cannot successfully submit their co-registrations if the LR dossier is rejected.
They will not have a valid registration for their substances until the LR has successfully resubmitted the lead dossier and passed at least the business rules check. Later, all of Echa’s checks on the lead dossier must be successfull for the LR and co-registrants to have a valid registration for the substance in place.
Liability for failure
With failures of this magnitude, the LR may be liable towards the co-registrants, especially those that have bought a LoA and signed a Sief agreement. The LR’s responsibilities in this case, would probably be determined on the applicable national civil or commercial law.
Therefore, coming back to the question of what options are available to the LR from a registration compliance perspective, the answer is: the same ones that are available to the co-registrant in the first case, except that the LR does not have to purchase a LoA.
Therefore, ahead of 31 May, LRs are strongly recommended to keep Sief members informed of progress in developing the lead registration dossier, whatever the circumstances. Being open with Sief members allows them, when there are problems, to vote to change the LR before the registration deadline. This gives them a chance of meeting it with a new, and hopefully better, LR. Although time is short, changing the lead may be the only option.
Based on information provided by the Directors’ Contact Group (DCG), Echa can allow the new LR to submit an incomplete dossier (though passing the business rules is a must) with an extended time period given for delivering the complete dossier.
Echa determines the length of the extended deadline on a case-by-case basis. However, it is worth noting is that the registration number will only be issued once the complete dossier has passed all checks and is considered compliant. This may, in turn, have implications in the supply chain, where downstream users may be unsure of the REACH compliance status of the substance.
To conclude, the registrant can register substances after the final deadline, but that does not come without business implications. Therefore to avoid disruptions to business, make sure to register your substances for REACH on time.
The views expressed in this article are those of the expert author and are not necessarily shared by Chemical Watch
Summary: options for late registrants
If the volume is one tonne per year or more and the business does not wish to cease its commerce involving the substance, stop manufacture and/or import of the substance immediately and do the following:
1. For substances where a joint submission is available, contact the LR or consortium for access to it (usually via LoA purchase). If not, you need to become the LR.
2. Submit an inquiry to Echa with information on the substance identify and await acceptance before submitting the registration dossier for the substance.
3. Submit the required (co- or lead) registration dossier to Echa and pay the registration fee.
4. Await acceptance of registration dossier and issuance of a registration number, before continuing manufacture or import of the substance.
Frederik Johanson is a Partner of sales at REACHLaw
https://chemicalwatch.com/63849/business-impacts-of-not-registering-for-reach-on-time
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Taking Echa on the Next Stage of Its Journey
Feb 12, 2018 | Chemical Watch - Briefing
By Björn Gaarn Hansen
Björn Hansen is stepping into the hot seat at Echa less than six months before the final REACH registration deadline for existing substances. During his tenure as executive director - which could stretch to 2027 - the ‘safety’ of all substances on the EU market can, theoretically, be compared and the agency is free to focus on evaluating chemicals, introducing risk management measures and helping chemical companies improve their dossiers.Here we present an abridged interview with Chemical Watch, in which Mr Hansen puts the next decade in context and sets out his vision.
CW: What were the key trends and fundamental changes in European and global chemical policy over the last ten years?
BH: The fundamental changes were based on the introduction of REACH and CLP. REACH reversed the burden of proof for industrial chemicals, thus aligning the way they are treated with the way biocides, pesticides and pharmaceuticals were already treated. There is a necessity for industry to show that the products it puts on the market can be used safely.The introduction of the classification, labelling and packaging (CLP) Regulation meant that the EU implemented a globally harmonised system of classification and labelling rather than having just an EU system. Ultimately, the classification, and especially the label, for a chemical is a very efficient way to risk-manage it.
There was a significant change in chemical companies’ awareness of safety issues, and their acceptance that they had to take responsibility and build this into their strategies. At first, there was strong resistance to REACH in its final form. Then there was an acceptance that it had been adopted and companies needed to address it.
Some parts of industry said they had learned a lot from it, had mainstreamed chemicals management into their business and even, in some cases, had gained business advantages because they could say that their substances fulfilled the REACH requirements.
There was a similar increase in awareness in downstream companies that they were now covered by chemicals legislation and had obligations.There was also a lot of development in the understanding of toxicity - how a chemical can exert a toxic of health effect or have an environmental impact. You see this in the registration dossiers and in the discussions that take place among the scientists in the various committees, but also in our sister agencies.
With this increase in awareness and information came better risk management decision making, and this willingness to take action, including by the companies themselves, was mirrored internationally, with more countries implementing chemicals legislation.
CW: What will be the key trends in European and global chemical policy over the next ten years?
BH: The trends I just mentioned will accelerate. After this year’s registration deadline, REACH moves from a setting-up stage to total operation. We will have finished the phase-in and have all substances on the European market registered, with certain exemptions. And the same will happen with biocides - the plan is to get through the review programme and then go into operational mode.
So in Europe we’ll get our legislation into full operation in its complete scope. Regulators and industry will have insight into and understanding of all chemicals on the market; all new chemicals must go through an approval or registration system and that will continuously improve health and the environment.
The big competitive advantage Europe has is innovation. Over the next decade, the chemical industry - the motor of all industry in Europe - will continue to innovate and, in a world that’s becoming more connected and faster and faster, the pace of innovation will probably increase. And that will affect REACH and the type of chemicals we get in.
With the completion of the phase-in, all chemicals will be competing on an equal playing field within the European market and safety, because registrations and data are needed for all of them and will become an integral part of the product on the market. So within company decisions about which substances to choose, there will automatically be a tendency to go for less risky, less harmful chemicals if they can.The circular economy package will require a lot on innovation in order to develop ‘circular’ materials which can be recycled over and over again, not like today, where most materials can only be recycled a few times.
CW: Will emerging economies seek inspiration from REACH or go for a different approach?
BH: Whatever a country decides to do to regulate chemicals, Echa’s learnings about REACH and the tools we use - which, by the way, are to a large extent OECD tools - can be used by other countries to implement their legislation.
The way we in Europe have managed to reverse the burden of proof is a mechanism which many other countries will be looking at for inspiration. If you look at the EU and member states’ performance in the international arena, we are having a big impact because we’re very active, we’re very transparent and we’re achieving, at least partially, our objectives, and this inspires others.
CW: Can Echa keep REACH’s momentum going after this year’s final deadline for existing substances and prevent companies taking their feet off the pedal?
BH: The European Commission is just finishing the REACH evaluation and there are quite a lot of places where we need to improve and increase efficiencies. We need to focus our decision making better, whether it’s in Echa or supporting Brussels to make its decisions, and learn to target the important parts of a dossier on which decisions really are dependent.
That will enable industry to focus on these parts, save costs and increase their understanding.On the industry side, I agree that this will be a challenge. Industry is making a huge effort now and many companies are tight on resources, so a natural reaction will be to turn their attention to areas where they need to catch up. But once you complete your dossiers, REACH really starts.
It will be a big task for Echa, together with the member states and the Commission, to remind companies of the advantage of continuously updating their dossiers - not so much in order to change things in them, but to continuously monitor and follow developments on their substances, and then implement the consequences for risk management and document those in their registration update. It’s not the update itself, but all the work that leads to it that is the important thing for industry to do. We are definitely looking into how to do this systematically, but ultimately the onus lies on industry to do it.
CW: A preliminary draft of Echa’s strategy for 2019-2023 said in several places that various bits of REACH, such as completeness checks, evaluation and prioritisation, have been moving too slowly. How can these be speeded up?
BH: Yes, there is a general ambition to speed things up but to use the words ‘too slowly’ sounds a bit like attributing blame. There are many understandable reasons here. One is that we’re not at the point that we wanted to be at when we were drafting REACH in 2003-07.
We’re not as efficient as we had hoped we would be at this point, but there may originally have been too high a level of ambition. We’re behind schedule but the reasons why are complex. For example, how good were the estimates back then? But yes, Echa needs to increase its efficiencies.
We’ve seen from Echa’s communication and heard from industry themselves that there is quite a lot of work we need to do together on compliance on registrations dossiers. So the need for dossier evaluation is higher than originally estimated.
Although REACH goes into operational mode after this registration deadline and we will have less activity on registration, evaluation activity is not going to decrease as was planned originally because we need to maintain or even increase the current activity and do that for a longer time – over the next five to ten years.
CW: Will Europe succeed in getting all relevant substances of very high concern (SVHCs) onto the candidate list by 2020? How many substances might be on the list by then?
BH: I can’t predict how many will be there but if I go by past experience we’ve been putting ten on each year, so if 2020 means 31 December 2020 and not 1 January 2021, then there will be 30 more. Using the definition of ‘relevant’ in the Commission’s SVHCs roadmap, whether or not I’ll be able to say on 31 December 2020 "Now it’s done", I don’t know, but if we don’t manage to do it by 2020 it will be within a few years thereafter.
CW: How can Echa best contribute towards raising the bar in European and global chemicals management? In particular, what might it do that is different to its actions/achievements up to now? Can Echa continue to function in exactly the same way?
BH: No. Our backbone of competence comes from our scientific and technical support for implementing chemicals legislation and over the last ten years Echa has been entrusted with more and more regulation. The big benefit of this, for citizens, is an increased efficiency and consistency. So the more regulations which are implemented in the same way, using the same concepts of risk assessment and hazard assessment, and the same risk management tools, the more efficiently the machinery runs - which means it runs at a lower cost for more protection and we get a better functioning internal market.
Regulation becomes more predictable and that’s also good for competitiveness and innovation. So it’s more efficient, but it’s also done more consistently. If EU citizens see that consistency between the way we do classification and labelling and the way we do a restriction, for example, they become more confident in the system.It’s clear that the Commission, by continuously giving us more and more legislation to implement, sees Echa as a good place to do this and get more efficiency and consistency. And with our growing competence we can take on further tasks should the Commission and the legislator so decide.
CW: Will you seek to give Echa more of a policy suggesting or inputting role in areas like emerging issues or integrating EU chemicals-related legislation?
BH: Clearly our job is not to develop policy or initiate policy discussions. Our duty is to carry out the scientific and technical implementation of legislation, but through this we gain a competence, and with competence we have a responsibility to communicate scientific and technical issues, as we have been doing. As Echa matures, this might be an area we can develop and when we see specific scientific and technical issues that come from our implementation, we make clear to policy makers what the scientific and technical base is saying.
For example, in the area of test method development, we are building understanding of what current test methods deliver and how this can be used for classification and risk assessments, and where these test methods can be improved in order to give us more or better information to make better assessments. That type of understanding is relevant to policy makers in order for them to say they want to focus further development on test methods in these areas because there’s a necessity identified by Echa.
CW: How might Echa help identify priority articles? Any early thoughts on potential candidates?
BH: Not on potential candidates, but on how it could operate, yes. Echa stores a lot of information from industry on substances and on articles. From this, we can get some idea of where chemicals end up and group substances according to the articles or types of articles where they are used.
When looking at efficiencies in risk assessment, one very work-intensive area is the exposure assessment. If we can identify articles on the EU market which contain a number of substances of potential concern, we can use the same type of exposure assessments to cover all the substances, thereby gaining efficiencies.
It could therefore help with restrictions: if we find a number of very hazardous substances which seem to be presenting a risk; with evaluation, if we see there are a number of other substances being used in these very same products but the registrations are either not compliant or there’s additional data needed; or in classification and labelling, where we see these substances seem to have certain hazardous properties.
CW: How can you get more companies to improve their dossiers and supply chain communication, especially extended safety data sheets (eSDSs)?
BH: We can use our legislative powers on a case-by-case basis to tell registrants where they are not complying with the law and need to do this and this. That is, of course, an after the fact response and so, from a preventative point of view, not the optimal use of resources, but it’s one we have the power to do and will continue to do.
But if we are also able to support industry to ensure that its dossiers are compliant, this has a huge advantage. The chemicals that they put on the market are supported by a chemical safety report (CSR) and an SDS which, in crude terms, ‘ensure safety’ because they are based on compliant data - compared with a chemical on the market with an SDS which is based on a non-compliant dossier. We don’t have a strong legislative power to do this but it is one that some companies and some industry associations are interested in for exactly the reason I just mentioned. Of course, the type of discussion or ‘advice’ would need to remain generic, but giving generic examples of what a compliant registration dossier, or a useful CSR or SDS looks like, helps.
Björn Gaarn Hansen is the Executive Director at Echa
https://chemicalwatch.com/63833/taking-echa-on-the-next-stage-of-its-journey
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Plastic Trash Is Killing Coral Reefs. Here’s How We Can Still Save Our Oceans.
Feb 9, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Douglas Rader
In 2016, members of our research team were surveying the health of coral reefs along a 200-mile stretch off Myanmar’s southern coast when they made a startling discovery. Bags, bottles, diapers and other plastic debris were stuck everywhere on the reefs and, our data confirmed, adding to coral disease with alarming frequency.
Now that the extensive international coverage about the Cornell University-led oceans plastics study has subsided, we’re left with a towering question: How do we best help these littered reefs that are already so stressed by overfishing and climate change?
Better management of fisheries, as it turns out, may offset some of the damage from plastics and warming waters. This can have a bigger, long-term impact on coral health than you may think – and on the fishing communities worldwide that depend on healthy reefs.
That’s because just like fish depend on healthy reefs, reefs depend on healthy fish populations.
Some fish eat algae that can otherwise crowd out corals, for example, while other, predatory fish control the populations of snails that can damage corals. It’s even possible that some fish might slow coral disease by eating diseased coral tissue. There are literally dozens of these complex interactions that together keep coral reefs healthy.Fishery management: Critical for coral survival
Needless to say, nations should stop using oceans as a trash dump, and they must double down on efforts to tackle climate change, the main culprit behind ocean acidification and coral bleaching.
Nearly 200 nations recently committed to halting plastic dumping into the ocean, and the global community is moving forward with the Paris climate agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions that also warm and acidify the ocean. These are areas where we can’t let up.
But we also know that the health of coral reefs is closely tied to fishing practices. Overfishing remains the largest immediate threat to coral reefs because decreasing numbers of big fish disturbs the ecological balance of these reefs.
Here’s the good news: We know how to fix that. Our fishery management work around the globe shows that sustainable fisheries management brings back fish populations – along with the wellbeing of fishing communities.Fishery progress around the world
After fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico shifted to a right-based fishing system a decade ago, red snapper and other reef fish rebounded. We are now working with fishermen, communities and agency partners to take that lesson to countries across the coral world – including Belize, Cuba, Mexico, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Pacific Islands and the Philippines.
We plan to scale up our fisheries work in 12 places accounting for most of the world’s catch by 2020.
Belize became the first country in world to adopt a nationwide secure fishing rights program in 2016. We’re now demonstrating with our partners in that country that rebuilding fish populations through good management practices also improves reefs and makes them more resilient to changing conditions.
We hope to make sustainable fishing the norm worldwide, for the sake of people and reefs. Which brings me back to the plastics discovery in Myanmar.With 100% of coral reefs polluted, Myanmar was a wake-up call
What began as research supporting our fishery management work in this Southeast Asian nation yielded a new study with major implications.
In Myanmar, all reefs of the 700-island Mergui Archipelago have corals ensnarled in plastics, and nearly every plastic-draped coral is diseased.
Throughout the Asia-Pacific region, the Cornell study estimates, there are now more than 11 billion plastic items caught on reefs. This looming environmental disaster is a wake-up call.
Our work in Myanmar and beyond will continue to focus on helping fishermen use new management programs to halt overfishing, rebuild fish abundances and help feed their communities for generations to come.
But today, these efforts are also emerging as a key strategy for strengthening the health of coral reef ecosystems that now – more than ever before – desperately need our help.
https://www.edf.org/blog/2018/02/09/plastic-trash-killing-coral-reefs-heres-how-we-can-still-save-our-oceans
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(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Chamber, State Coalition Seek to Upend TVA Coal Ash Ruling
Feb 12, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
Industry organizations and a group of states are backing the Tennessee Valley Authority's bid to overturn an order requiring the removal of coal ash ponds from two sites.
The Sixth Circuit is being asked to address a question that has divided federal courts—whether pollutant migration through groundwater hydrologically connected to navigable waters can be the basis of Clean Water Act liability.
The Clean Water Act bars adding a pollutant to navigable waters from a point source, but that doesn't include the release of coal ash into groundwater, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Chemistry Council, and several energy organizations said in a Feb. 7 friend of the court brief.
A group of 18 states led by Alabama and Kentucky said in a separate brief that removing the ash ponds would be prohibitively expensive and would increase costs to utility customers.
If the lower court's ruling is upheld and applied to other states, “the resulting costs to utility customers would be astronomical, costing in the tens-of-billions of dollars,” the state group said.
Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality filed the brief.
The appeal stems from a Clean Water Act citizen suit seeking the cleanup of coal ash located in two sites at Gallatin, Tenn.
Pollutants from the sites leaking to groundwater that migrates to the Cumberland River are an unpermitted discharge under the Clean Water Act, the trial court found.
It ordered the TVA to remove 13.8 million cubic yards of coal ash stored at Gallatin.
In its appeal to the Sixth Circuit, the TVA argued that Congress expressly refused to regulate the migration of pollutants through groundwater under the CWA's point source discharge program.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act “is specifically tailored to address groundwater pollution resulting from the storage and disposal of solid waste,” the TVA argued.
Hunton & Williams LLP filed the U.S. Chamber amicus brief.
The case is Tennessee Clean Water Network v. TVA, 6th Cir., No. 17-06155, U.S. Chamber brief filed 2/7/18.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=128012832&vname=dennotallissues&fn=128012832&jd=128012832
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EPA Seeks Stay of CPP Litigation Until Agency Finalizes Repeal
Feb 12, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to continue to hold a lawsuit over the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) in abeyance until the agency completes its work on an already-proposed CPP repeal and possible replacement.
The new request to the court comes in a Feb. 9 status report in West Virginia, et al. v. EPA, et al., a step the court is requiring EPA to complete every 30 days.
Supporters of the Obama CPP -- including some states and environmental groups -- have long opposed continuing the case, which was argued before the full circuit in September 2016 without resolution. They most recently in Jan. 17 filings opposed EPA's prior Jan. 10 identical request, saying “neither EPA's proposed repeal of the [CPP] nor its prolonged and uncertain plans to replace the rule justify additional abeyance.”
They added that because the Supreme Court stayed implementation of the CPP during litigation over it, the continued pause of the lawsuit is not “benign” and is allowing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to “exploit the stay well beyond its intended effect, pursuing a repeal of the [CPP] based on the same legal arguments” that he used as a challenger to the rule when he was Oklahoma attorney general.
EPA's new filing cites progress on the rulemakings, including scheduling three more public listening sessions in February and March on the repeal and reopening the public comment period until April 26.
“EPA is further considering the scope of any potential new rule” to replace the CPP, including issuing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking late last year, which is open for comment until Feb. 26, EPA notes.
Neither the court nor EPA responded to the state or environmentalists prior filings, though it is likely they will reiterate their opposition here.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-seeks-stay-cpp-litigation-until-agency-finalizes-repeal
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Ads Blast Zinke over Energy Strategy
Feb 9, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Jennifer Yachnin
The National Wildlife Federation today urged Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to reconsider his agency's energy dominance strategy, arguing in a pair of full-page newspaper ads that the scheme values "short-term profits" from extraction over hunters and anglers.
The conservation group purchased ads in both The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News as Zinke visits Salt Lake City today to meet with Gov. Gary Herbert (R) and attend the Western Hunting & Conservation Expo.
The ad features images of sportsmen in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico, Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, South Platte River in Colorado and Bureau of Land Management lands in Wyoming.
"Public lands from sagebrush country to national monuments give us clean water, abundant wildlife and incredible opportunities outdoors. Secretary Zinke, as a fellow sportsman you know the power of these places," the ad states. "They define our heritage, strengthen family bonds and fill our freezers. Our public lands also provide important natural resources. But Interior's energy dominance strategy threatens that balance, putting short-term profits ahead of everything else, including the everyday hunter and angler."
The ad concludes: "Let's make conservation a priority — it's the only way to maintain our way of life in the West."
NWF warns that opening additional federal lands to extraction could limit access for hunters and anglers and disrupt wildlife habitats.
"Sportsmen and women believe energy development can co-exist with other activities, but it takes careful planning, input from the public and a commitment to the long-term health of public lands," said Aaron Kindle, NWF's senior manager of Western sporting campaigns, in a statement. "The value of our public lands is far more than what we can extract from them. It goes to the heart of who we are as Westerners and as Americans."
'Say "no" to dirty fuels from our national monuments'
The Sierra Club launched its own social media campaign today that aims to curb would-be energy development on previously protected national monument land in Utah.
President Trump culled 2 million acres of land from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in December, returning some of those lands to mining and possibly other extractive industries (Greenwire, Feb. 2).
Congressional Republicans have rebutted assertions that the lands are of interest to oil and gas developers, but the former Grand Staircase-Escalante monument lands do contain major coal deposits.
The Sierra Club campaign, which will run on social media sites in Arizona, Utah, Nevada and parts of California, urges consumers to lobby their utility companies against purchasing fuels extracted from the former monument lands.
"The vast majority of Americans want to see these monuments protected — not destroyed for fossil fuel industry profit. Now, utilities have an opportunity to stand with the public and their consumers who want these lands protected for generations to come," said the Sierra Club's Our Wild America Campaign Director Lena Moffitt.
The ads state that utility companies that join the campaign "will be heros to their customers and millions of people across the country who value these special places."
"Join the fight and tell your utility to say 'no' to dirty fuels from our national monuments," the ad states.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/02/09/stories/1060073479
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Fracking Earthquakes Pop Up in Unexpected Corner of Shale Patch
Feb 12, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Wethe
The oil prospectors of Oklahoma, it appeared, finally had a solution to their earthquake problem.
Ordered by regulators to curb the wastewater they were dumping deep into the ground, they watched with satisfaction as tremors plunged to fewer than two a day from more than five. This seemed to be important confirmation of what had long been suspected in the petroleum-dependent state: The act of drilling for crude wasn't the big problem, it was just the way the main byproduct was being discarded.
But now quakes are popping up in a relatively new corner of Oklahoma's shale patch and sparking jitters once again. It's not the volume (so few that officials are just starting to record them) or force (very low on the Richter Scale) that's worrisome. It's the circumstances—because in the Scoop and Stack, the fields where the earth is suddenly moving, almost no wastewater is jettisoned underground.
That, in turn, has brought critical attention back to fracking, the essential technology that has made the oil business viable in countless low-margin fields, helping push output so high the U.S. recently hit 10 million barrels a day for the first time in four decades.
Oklahoma lawmakers and regulators aren't inclined to put heavy brakes on the use of a tool that has helped triple output in the past decade to 497,000 barrels a day and create thousands of jobs. After all, the state, the fifth-largest producer in the U.S., was among the first to forbid cities and counties from banning fracking activities.
To some industry defenders in Oklahoma, in fact, low-level tremors now and again are a fair price to pay. In any event, the ones out in the Scoop and Stack are so minor, experts are still puzzling over their significance.
But “all earthquakes start out small,” said Austin Holland, a supervisory geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico who worked for the Oklahoma Geological Survey until 2015. “You can't rule out the possibility that you could have a significant earthquake triggered by hydraulic fracturing.”
That's what the state wants to avoid. Wastewater disposal has already set off some sizable quakes, including a 5.7 magnitude in 2011 that shattered windows, crumbled masonry, closed a school and spurred at least one lawsuit.
It was in 2009 that the Sooner State, territory once highly unfamiliar with earthquakes, suddenly began to be really rattled by them—just as oil output, and fracking, started to zoom. By 2014, Oklahoma was more seismically active than California. Other shale-rich regions in North America have experienced a rise in quakes as crude production has gone up.
Seismologists and geologists concluded the main reason by far was the reinjection into disposal wells of water that gushes up with oil and gas. These blasts can stir fault lines that had been quiet for centuries.
Limiting the quantity that could be shot back into Earth and slowing the speed at which it was discharged made a difference: Earthquakes of at least 2.7 magnitude dropped to a daily average of just 1.7 last year from a high of 5.4 in 2015, according to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates the industry.
Then, late in 2016, the tiny tremors began to be felt around the Scoop and Stack, shale plays in the Anadarko Basin. Central Oklahoma “started seeing some relatively small earthquakes,” said Jeremy Boak, director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, “and some slightly up-in-arms residents.”
And now the quakes “are rising to a number to where you can count them,” said Matt Skinner, a spokesman for the commission.
The investigation into the new mini-quake epidemic has only recently begun. “We were preoccupied with the other earthquakes,” Boak said. “We're just coming back” to the frack-quake risk and figuring out what to do about it.
Fracking opponents have seized on the issue. They have long viewed the process as environmentally risky, and several governments agree: New York, Vermont, Maryland, Ireland and France are among those that have banned it. Last week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said he would join his counterparts in Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania to support a prohibition in the Delaware River Basin.
There's no question that hydraulic fracturing, to use the technical term, is hard-hitting. Water, sand and chemicals are blown down a well under extremely high pressure to crack tightly-packed shale. The force can cause tiny subterranean trembles.
In Oklahoma, only about 4 percent of fracking jobs result in quakes that can be felt above ground. While research is still underway across the U.S. and Canada as to what's behind the frack-quake phenomenon, seismologists suspect a ready-to-slip fault line must be nearby for hydraulic fracturing to cause a tremor that registers.
“At the end of the day, what we need to do is make sure we're limiting the felt activity,” said Chad Warmington, head of the state Oil & Gas Association. “That kind of takes care of everything.”
Oklahoma requires drillers to stop fracking for at least six hours after an earthquake of 3.0 in magnitude. If one registers 3.5 or more, they must suspend operations for two days and coordinate with regulators on plans for restarting.
That, according to frack critics, isn't enough.
“I am incredibly concerned about where we are in Oklahoma,” said Johnson Bridgwater, director of the local Sierra Club. “They're just fracking like crazy.” Without a slowdown, “we're setting the state up for some large mass-magnitude earthquakes.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=128012820&vname=dennotallissues&fn=128012820&jd=128012820
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Cheniere Energy Strikes LNG Export Deals with China
Feb 9, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
Cheniere Energy announced Friday that it has struck two long-term deals to sell liquefied natural gas to China's state-controlled oil and gas giant.
The Houston-based energy company will sell about 1.2 million tons of LNG a year to PetroChina International Co., a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation, as part of two sale agreements that extend through 2043. Shipments will begin this year and ramp up in 2023.
In a statement, Cheniere president and CEO Jack Fusco called China "one of the largest and fastest growing LNG markets worldwide." The country has recently accelerated a shift from coal to natural gas in an effort to address an air pollution crisis in many of its urban areas.
Cheniere has been exporting natural gas since 2016 through its Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana. It's now expanding that complex to support more production and exports.
It's also working to open a terminal at the Port of Corpus Christi, which will support the deals with China. The company has begun construction on two liquefaction facilities there, and it's planning to build a third if it secures enough sale contracts.
"We expect these agreements to support the development of Corpus Christi Train 3, and we are now focused on completing the remaining necessary steps to reach a final investment decision later this year," Fusco said.
U.S. Department of Energy said last month that the nation could become a net exporter of natural gas this year for the first time since 1957 as a result of the so-called shale boom that has unlocked vast reserve of natural gas in West Texas. The U.S. now ships LNG to at least 20 foreign markets.
Freeport LNG and Kinder Morgan are scheduled to begin exporting liquefied natural gas later this year. Several other companies, including Sempra Energy, are working on projects expected to start up in the coming years.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Cheniere-Energy-strikes-LNG-export-deals-with-12564631.php
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Enhanced Oil Recovery May Offer Climate Solution: Fuel for Thought
Feb 12, 2018 | Platts
By Bob Williams
As counterintuitive as it may sound to those who want to transition away from fossil energy to combat climate change, the US government has long supported research into technology that could potentially slow or even halt the growth of industrial carbon emissions while expanding the recovery of oil from existing fields.
Many in the oil industry support the concept—and have been implementing commercial projects based on it for decades, in the US and abroad.
In using this technology to enhance the recovery of oil (EOR), the oil industry has developed an extensive know-how for capturing, permanently storing, and monitoring carbon dioxide (CO2).
Additionally, a US government-backed research initiative has identified scores of underground receptacles nationwide that have the collective capacity for permanently storing, or sequestering massive volumes of CO2 captured from industrial sources—better known as carbon capture and storage (CCS).
The question arises anew because of shifting political winds in Washington. The administration of President Donald Trump is a strong advocate of fossil energy and wants to see more production of oil and natural gas and coal—rather than accelerating the nation’s transition away from these fuels and to renewable energy sources. Meanwhile, pressure continues to mount worldwide for the US to resume a leadership role in curbing greenhouse gas
emissions in order to tackle climate change.In a sign of changing US priorities, a two-year federal budget approved by Congress early Friday includes an expanded tax credit for enhanced oil recovery, a measure pushed by top Permian oil producer Occidental Petroleum and governors of six oil- and gas-producing states including North Dakota and Oklahoma.
The new incentive offers credits worth $35/mt of CO2 used in EOR, up from $10/mt. The existing program had a cap of 75 million mt that was on track to max out in the first half of this year, according to ClearView Energy Partners.CO2 EOR FLOODING
EOR has proven a key arrow in the industry’s quiver of solutions for maximizing the recovery of oil resources from sub-surface rock formations by overcoming the barriers posed by the physics of fluid flow.
There are three stages of recovery: primary (natural lift, subsurface pumps), secondary (flooding the reservoir with water or repressurizing it with associated natural gas) and tertiary, aka EOR.
These stages represent levels of resource recovery ranging from 5% to 60%—which means that, in most cases, more than half the oil remains unrecovered in the reservoir.
EOR methods include the injection of chemicals, gases, or thermal energy into an oil reservoir to alter the subsurface rock physics so as to enhance the flow of oil to the wellbore.
By far the most widespread and prolific form of EOR is carbon dioxide flooding, or CO2 EOR.
The US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has estimated that the volume of residual discovered oil left behind—and thus a target for EOR—totals more than 400 billion barrels.
For perspective, BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy estimated US proved reserves of oil in 2016 totaled 48 billion barrels.
The US oil industry as of 2014 was injecting 3.5 Bcf/d of CO2 from natural and industrial sources to help produce 300,000 b/d of oil from 136 CO2 EOR projects, according to Vello Kuuskraa, president of Advanced Resources International Inc. of Arlington, Virginia. Kuuskraa then predicted that CO2 EOR oil production would increase to 638,000 b/d by 2020 with the availability of new CO2 supply sources.CO2 POTENTIAL
What has stymied further growth in CO2 EOR is the lack of adequate, reliable supply of economic sources of the gas, according to ARI.
In a 2010 study ARI conducted for the Natural Resources Defense Council, most of the CO2 used for EOR comes from natural CO2 reservoirs,
which are limited in capacity and distant from markets other than the Permian Basin.ARI recently noted that, even with increased access to naturally sourced CO2 by operators such as Denbury Resources, those sources remain inadequate relative to potential demand for CO2 by EOR.
“Thus, an attractive market exists for CO2 emissions captured from industrial sources and power plants for expanding domestic oil production through the application of CO2 EOR,” ARI concluded in the study.INDUSTRY’S EXPERIENCE
Of course, with current CO2 EOR floods, the costly gas is recycled for multiple injection courses and can be considered permanently sequestered only after the targeted reservoir has been depleted of economically recoverable oil.
But some projects were designed for CCS as much as they were for CO2 EOR.
A prominent example is the Weyburn-Midale CO2 project in Saskatchewan, Canada, in which CO2 was injected into two adjacent oil fields for EOR, and the subsurface behavior of the CO2 was monitored from 2000–2011 by a large group of institutions led by the International Energy Agency.
The CO2 was sourced from the Great Plains Synfuels Plant at Beulah, North Dakota. The synthetic fuels plant is described by the Basin Electric Power Cooperative subsidiary that operates it as the only commercial-scale coal gasification plant in the US that manufactures natural gas and as the world’s largest CCS project.
Apart from recovering an incremental 160 million barrels of oil as a result of the CO2 EOR flood, the project is expected to permanently sequester about 40 million metric tons of CO2.THE BIG PICTURE
For all of its potential for sequestering CO2 industrial emissions and recovering large volumes of incremental oil, the hard truth is that CO2 EOR has a limited capacity for absorbing the mammoth volumes of North America’s total CO2 emissions, according to NETL.
However, the US DOE, Natural Resources Canada, and Mexico’s Energy Ministry issued a report in 2012 that North America has enough subsurface capacity combined in depleted oil and gas fields, uneconomic coal seams, and deep saline aquifers to store all of the continent’s CO2 emissions for 600 years.
With that potential in mind, DOE in 2003 awarded cooperative agreements to seven Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships, which are tasked to determine the best geologic storage approaches and apply technologies to safely and permanently store CO2 for their specific regions.
In short, there is enormous potential for CCS to help meet the challenge of climate change.
— with Meghan Gordon
http://blogs.platts.com/2018/02/12/enhanced-oil-recovery-eor-climate-solution/
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Panel to Review Landmark Plant Safety Law
Feb 12, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Corbin Hiar
A House subcommittee this week will review the Department of Homeland Security's decade-old chemical plant safety effort.
Congress created the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program, or CFATS, in 2007 and overhauled it four years ago. It requires certain chemical facilities to file security plans with DHS and categorizes the plants into tiers, depending on the threat the agency determines they pose.
But the exact methods, and the number and identity of the plants, are kept confidential for national security reasons. Federal officials fear that groups like the Islamic State group or al-Qaida could target chemical plants with highly explosive or toxic products.
The opacity of CFATS has been a long-running complaint of public health groups, which are accustomed to checking the federal government's work on other environmental and safety laws (Greenwire, April 11, 2016).
With its authorization set to expire later this year, the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection is set to take a closer look.
On Thursday, lawmakers plan to "hear from industry about the CFATS program and how DHS and industry have worked to update the program since the 2014 reauthorization," the subcommittee said.
Approved by a voice vote, that reauthorization bill aimed to streamline the department's approval of site security plans and to allow plants in lower security tiers to self-certify their compliance.
Notably, the Protecting and Securing Chemical Facilities from Terrorist Attacks Act didn't attempt to expand the scope of the program to other facilities, like water and wastewater.
DHS has said it would like to regulate these sites, but industry groups oppose creating new regulatory obligations for their members (Greenwire, Dec. 11, 2014).
Schedule: The hearing is on Thursday, Feb. 15, at 10 a.m. in HVC-210 Capitol.
Witnesses: TBA.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/02/12/stories/1060073521
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Trump to Unveil $1.5 Trillion Infrastructure Plan
Feb 12, 2018 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Jonathan Lemire and Martin Crutsinger
President Donald Trump on Monday will unveil his long-awaited infrastructure plan, a $1.5 trillion proposal that fulfills a number of campaign goals, but relies heavily on state and local governments to produce much of the funding.
The administration’s plan is centered on using $200 billion in federal money to leverage local and state tax dollars to fix America’s infrastructure, such as roads, highways, ports and airports.
“Every federal dollar should be leveraged by partnering with state and local governments and — where appropriate — tapping into private sector investment to permanently fix the infrastructure deficit,” Trump said at last month’s State of the Union address.
Trump has repeatedly blamed the “crumbling” state of the nation’s roads and highways for preventing the American economy from reaching its full potential. Many in Washington believe that Trump should have begun his term a year ago with an infrastructure push, one that could have garnered bipartisan support or, at minimum, placed Democrats in a bind for opposing a popular political measure.
But the administration chose to begin with health care and relations with Democrats have only grown more strained during a turbulent, contentious year. The White House, now grappling with the fallout from the departure of a senior aide after spousal abuse allegations, may not have an easy time navigating a massive infrastructure plan through a polarized Congress. It just grappled with two federal government shutdowns and will soon turns its attention to immigration.
Administration officials previewing the plan said it would feature two key components: an injection of funding for new investments and help speed up repairs of crumbling roads and airports, as well as a streamlined permitting process that would truncate the wait time to get projects underway. Officials said the $200 billion in federal support would come from cuts to existing programs.
Half the money would go to grants for transportation, water, flood control, cleanup at some of the country’s most polluted sites and other projects.
States, local governments and other project sponsors could use the grants — which administration officials view as incentives — for no more than 20 percent of the cost. Transit agencies generally count on the federal government for half the cost of major construction projects, and federal dollars can make up as much as 80 percent of some highway projects.
About $50 billion, would go toward rural projects — transportation, broadband, water, waste, power, flood management and ports. That is intended to address criticism from some Republican senators that the administration’s initial emphasis on public-private partnerships would do little to help rural, GOP-leaning states
Early reaction to the proposal was divided.
Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, saluted Trump “for providing the leadership we have desperately needed to reclaim our rightful place as global leader on true 21st-century infrastructure.”
“When ports are clogged, trucks are delayed, power is down, water is shut off, or the internet has a lapse, modern manufacturers’ ability to compete is threatened and jobs are put at risk,” said Timmons. “There is no excuse for inaction, and manufacturers are committed to ensuring that America seizes this opportunity.”
But a number of Democrats and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have pushed the administration to commit far more federal dollars, funded by tax increases, or by closing tax loopholes. And environmental groups expressed worry about its impact.
“President Trump’s infrastructure proposal is a disaster,” said Shelley Poticha, of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It fails to offer the investment needed to bring our country into the 21st century. Even worse, his plan includes an unacceptable corporate giveaway by truncating environmental reviews.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/trump-to-unveil-15-trillion-infrastructure-plan/2018/02/12/4bec8ee4-0fba-11e8-a68c-e9374188170e_story.html?utm_term=.c4a4ef4e3bff
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Trump’s Infrastructure Plan May Ignore Climate Change. It Could Be Costly.
Feb 12, 2018 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
President Trump is expected to unveil on Monday a plan that would fulfill one of his signature campaign promises: a $1.5 trillion, once-in-a-generation proposal to rebuild, restore and modernize the nation’s aging infrastructure.
“We will build gleaming new roads, bridges, highways, railways and waterways all across our land,” Mr. Trump said in his State of the Union address.
But while the proposal represents one of the administration’s main legislative ambitions, it could directly clash with one of its defining regulatory principles, which is to question the risk from global warming and roll back regulations addressing climate change.
The Trump infrastructure blueprint is almost certain to call for expensive new roads, bridges, airports and other projects in areas that are increasingly vulnerable to rising waters and other threats from a warming planet. Engineers and researchers say that construction plans should consider these design constraints at the outset. Their concern is that a plan led by a White House that has both discounted climate science and weakened climate change regulations could mean that costly projects may be vulnerable to damage or, in a worst-case scenario, quickly rendered obsolete by the changing environment.
\“The impact of not considering climate change when planning infrastructure means you end up building the wrong thing, in the wrong place, to the wrong standards,” said Michael Kuby, a professor of geographical sciences and urban planning at Arizona State University and contributing author to the National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s most comprehensive scientific study of the effect of global warming on the United States. “That’s a whole lot of waste.”
Climate change already poses one of the most significant threats to the nation’s infrastructure, according to dozens of scientific and engineering studies, including several prepared by the federal government. A 2017 report by the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that, through the end of the century, up to $280 billion will be needed to adapt the nation’s roads and railways to the effects of a warming climate.Continue reading the main storyRELATED COVERAGEgraphic2017: The Year in Climate DEC. 6, 2017Climate Change Is Driving People From Home. So Why Don’t They Count as Refugees? DEC. 21, 2017Jakarta Is Sinking So Fast, It Could End Up Underwater DEC. 21, 2017graphicAs Greenland Melts, Where’s the Water Going? DEC. 5, 2017
A White House spokeswoman, who asked to remain anonymous because the plan was not yet public, declined to discuss whether climate change reports were considered in the preparation of Mr. Trump’s blueprint. “The president’s team spent almost a full year formulating his infrastructure plan and all relevant scientific data was considered,” she said in an emailed statement.
Since the beginning of his administration, Mr. Trump and his appointees have steadily worked to roll back climate change regulations. Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. chief, Scott Pruitt, has taken the lead role in the administration’s efforts to undo climate policies and question the validity of climate science. On Wednesday, Mr. Pruitt suggested that global warming could benefit humanity.
Those views are contradicted by research conducted by his own agency.
The 2017 E.P.A. report warned that some 6,000 bridges nationwide face a greater risk of damage in coming decades from the effects of a warming climate. It provides analysis showing that “proactive adaptation” — essentially, planning for global warming before you build — could save the government up to 70 percent in future costs of repairing damage caused by climate change-driven weather events such as deluges, coastal flooding and heat waves.
A spokeswoman for the E.P.A. did not respond to requests to interview the study’s lead scientist, Jeremy Martinich. An academic colleague of Mr. Martinich’s, who has worked with him on several climate reports, including the E.P.A. study published last year, described in practical terms what the findings mean for federal infrastructure planners.
“Say you’re going to build a new road in Denver that’s designed to last for 25 years,” said the colleague, Paul Chinowsky, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “What climate science tells us is that, over the next 25 years, the climate in Denver is going to look more like the climate in Albuquerque” — meaning, he said, that the asphalt will have to be designed to withstand much higher levels of heat than a Denver road might historically have experienced.
“If you don’t do that,” he said, “It could double the cost of maintenance and the amount of delays on that road.”
In New England and the Upper Midwest, Mr. Chinowsky said, failing to account for climate change when planning the asphalt mix for roads there could mean that more rapid cycles of winter freezes and thaws could cause more potholes.
“If you think places like Wisconsin, Minnesota and New England have potholes now, just wait,” he said.
Mr. Chinowsky also pointed to a 2015 study he helped write that focused on the Southeast, in particular an 18-mile stretch of Interstate 85 between Atlanta and Alabama. Over the next 50 years, stronger rainstorms were estimated to cause up to $118 million in damage to the highway and surrounding feeder roads, the study found.
Other scientific and engineering studies make the case that rising sea levels will erode coastal highways in Florida, stronger rains will send rivers flooding bridges in Iowa and more powerful heat waves will melt asphalt across the Southwest.
For instance, the 2014 National Climate Assessment concluded climate changes will disrupt the reliability and capacity of the nation’s transportation systems, including an increase in flooding of airports, harbors and tunnels. It found that runways in 13 of the nation’s largest airports are vulnerable to flooding from higher storm surges driven by climate change. It also found that, absent planning, municipal drainage systems will overflow.
The impact of climate change on Alaskan infrastructure is expected to be particularly severe.
Already the Alaska Highway, built atop permafrost that was never expected to go away, has started buckling as the permafrost melts. A 2010 studyconcluded that the highway is one of the state’s 4,576 miles of paved road, 5,000 miles of unpaved road, 253 airports, 853 bridges, 131 harbors and 819 miles of railroad that could be damaged by a warming climate in coming decades. The study concluded that the impact of climate change on Alaska’s infrastructure could reach up to $7.6 billion by through 2080.
In Iowa, meanwhile, a 2008 rainstorm sent the waters of the Cedar River pouring over the Interstate 80 bridge, closing it for four days and sending drivers on a 120-mile detour. The impact of climate change in the Hawkeye State will threaten nearly 3,000 bridges in coming years, according to the author of a 2015 report by the Iowa Department of Transportation.
“With climate change and infrastructure, it’s pay me now, or pay me later,” said Eugene S. Takle, a co-author of that study and director of the climate-science program at Iowa State University. “Pay a lot more later.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/climate/trump-infrastructure-climate-change.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience
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EPA Chief’s Questions About Climate Science Draw New Scrutiny
Feb 12, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt is getting bolder in questioning climate change.
In several recent public comments, Pruitt has sowed doubt about whether global warming is harmful to humans, and whether anyone could truly know what the Earth’s “ideal” temperature would be in 2100.
“Is it an existential threat? Is it something that is unsustainable? Or what kind of effect or harm is this going to have,” Pruitt said in an interview with Las Vegas television station KSNV.
“We know that humans have most flourished during times of, what? Warming trends. So I think there’s assumptions made that because the climate is warming, that that necessarily is a bad thing.”
Pruitt in recent months has frequently questioned if scientists know the ideal surface temperature of the earth. In making the case that governments should reduce the greenhouse gases believed to lead to global warming, scientists have discussed what the average global temperature at ground level could be in 2100.
“There are things we know and things we don’t know. I think it’s pretty arrogant for people in 2018 to say ‘you know, we know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100,’ ” he said on the New York Times podcast “The Daily” earlier in February.
Pruitt’s statements have alarmed many in the scientific community, who see a thinly-disguised denial of the science behind climate change.
“This is a standard trope of climate change denialism and it is ill-premised,” said Michael Mann, a Penn State University atmospheric science professor.
“The ideal temperature for us is of course the temperature that our entire civilization and infrastructure was built around and tailored to — i.e. the temperature range that prevailed since the dawn of civilization until we began burning fossil fuels and warming the planet at an unprecedented rate,” added Mann who is known for taking on climate skeptics.
Mann and others believe the statements are an effort by Pruitt to sow doubt about climate change policy as the EPA embarks on an historic effort to roll back Obama-era regulations intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“We’ve seen a shift in what Administrator Pruitt is focusing on. At the beginning of his tenure, the focus was a bit more on ‘can we precisely measure the impact of humans on climate change?’” said Rachel Licker, senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that has opposed many of Pruitt’s policies.
“There’s been a bit of shift now into a space of whether or not climate change will harm humans and what is the ideal temperature that we should be striving for by the end of the century and even suggesting that climate change could be beneficial.”
The EPA did not respond to questions about the scientific backlash to his remarks, or about where Pruitt is getting his scientific information.
Pruitt maintains that humans do play a role in climate change, but questions the degree. His public statements also question whether changes in the climate are a net-negative to mankind.
“No one disputes the climate changes, is changing, and we see that is a constant. We obviously contribute to it,” he told the Nevada TV station. “But I think the bigger question is ... is it an existential threat? Is it something that is unsustainable? Or what kind of effect or harm is this going to have.”
On a factual basis, mainstream climate scientists fully reject the idea that climate change can be a net positive for humans, and they say the ideal change in temperature is as close to current temperatures as possible.
“This administration is doing its best to sow doubt where there is no doubt, and also to sow doubt where there isn’t a lot of understanding in the scientific community, but sow doubt in a way that encourages inaction when the opposite should be true,” said Alan Barreca, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles.
Barreca said some areas of the world will undoubtedly benefit from climate change, at least in certain respects.
Areas near the poles are likely to have longer growing seasons, and deaths from extreme cold would nearly certain drop in those places.
But on balance worldwide, warming is a net negative, says Barreca, whose studies focus on the health risks of a changing climate.
“There is no doubt that extremely hot weather kills people. There’s no doubt that extremely hot weather is bad for agriculture,” Barreca said. “There are ways that we can adapt, but those things cost a lot.”
Pruitt’s statements align closely with some of what outspoken climate skeptics have been arguing for years: the harm to humans from global warming is overstated.
“I think Administrator Pruitt’s comments show that he is getting up to speed on climate science,” said Myron Ebell, director of the energy and environment center at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
“The evidence so far is that humankind is on the whole better off with the slightly warmer temperatures compared to the widespread crop failures and big storms that were prevalent during the Little Ice Age from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries,” he said. “Thus I think Administrator Pruitt is right to say that some more warming may be good.”
Marc Morano, head of the climate skeptic blog Climate Depot, was similarly pleased to hear Pruitt’s new lines of talking and is hopeful that the EPA head can go farther.
“It is refreshing to have an EPA chief who embraces science and does not parrot the United Nations’s climate claims uncritically,” he said. “Pruitt was quite measured in his remarks on climate change and he actually could have gone much further in promoting his points.”
Beyond rhetoric, Pruitt’s skepticisms may have some real policy impacts.
The EPA’s current policy, as outlined in the 2009 “Endangerment Finding,” is that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health and the environment. That scientific finding obligates the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Pruitt has said the EPA is not reviewing the finding for potential repeal, to the disappointment of some conservatives. Though he said in Decemberthat the Obama administration committed a “breach of process” and left the door open for reviewing it.
Experts say the finding is on solid scientific ground. But Pruitt’s statements are fueling speculation that he is trying to drum up scientific uncertainty, since the finding is focused squarely on the environmental and health impacts of greenhouse gases.
“If he can succeed in finding some sort of fundamental error in the science of climate change — which we know he’s not going to find — his motivation may very well be to open the door to take down the endangerment finding,” Licker said.
Ebell is also hopeful, though his focus is more on Pruitt’s longstanding promise to set up a “red team/blue team” debate process to formally challenge climate science.
“It seems to me that Administrator Pruitt’s support for a red and blue team analysis of climate science indicates that he is open to being convinced one way or the other on the endangerment finding,” Ebell said.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/373169-epa-chiefs-questions-about-climate-science-draw-new-scrutiny
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Former DOJ Attorney Says Ozone Order Shows 'Sue-Settle' Policy's Flaw
Feb 12, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
A federal district court order's setting a 60-day deadline for EPA to grant or deny Connecticut's petition to regulate interstate air pollution shows the flaw of the agency's “sue-and-settle” directive curbing settlements with litigants because it can lead to much tougher deadlines, a former Justice Department (DOJ) attorney says.
Thomas Lorenzen, formerly a DOJ environmental attorney and now with law firm Crowell and Moring, told a Feb. 8 law conference that the order by the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut shows why the sue-and-settle policy will backfire. “This is what happens when you are trying to defend against an absolute statutory deadline,” Lorenzen said. “EPA would have been better served” by negotiating with the state, but was prevented from doing so by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's directive blocking settlement of so-called “sue-and-settle” lawsuits.
Speaking at an American Law Institute- Continuing Legal Education environmental law event in Washington, D.C., Lorenzen said that EPA has never responded to petitions like Connecticut's interstate air pollution petition within a Clean Air Act-mandated 60 days. But courts when faced with unambiguous statutory deadlines will normally adhere to the statute. “This is the first sign of the problems inherent” in Pruitt's policy, he said.
EPA's critics under the Obama administration coined the term “sue and settle” to describe suits brought by environmentalists or others, seeking to force EPA to perform statutory obligations. Many of these applied to missed statutory deadlines, and EPA settled them in the knowledge that defending such lawsuits is difficult or impossible.
Environmentalists have long rejected the term “sue and settle” as meaningless, as most such lawsuits simply seek to enforce deadlines EPA has missed rather than force affirmative new rules.
But Pruitt's policy issued in October prohibits such settlements without the input of regulated industries or states affected. At the time of the policy's issuance, one industry attorney said it “paralyzes EPA from responding to these kinds of cases [and] probably makes almost every single case go to actual full-scale litigation and go all the way to judgment when these cases have merit. That's probably not a good thing."
Lorenzen in his remarks noted that given the many Clean Air Act deadlines that EPA repeatedly misses, and lawsuits brought to enforce them, the policy will be tested in “lots and lots” of cases. These include others brought by other states over EPA's failure to respond to outstanding interstate air pollution petitions.
Ozone Petition
The district court in State of Connecticut v. Pruitt gave EPA 60 days to respond to the state's petition to directly regulate air emissions from a Pennsylvania power plant that Connecticut blames for its problems meeting federal ozone standards. Clean Air Act section 126 allows states to petition EPA to directly limit emissions from out-of-state sources that compromise attainment of national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS).
EPA in the case argued that it should have until the end of this year to respond, despite already being long overdue to respond under the air law's 60-day deadline. Even with a six-month extension that EPA granted itself, the agency has missed its deadline to respond by many months, as has been typical for section 126 petition responses for many years.
In its order, the district court says, “EPA is instructed to hold a public hearing on a proposed decision within 30 days of this ruling’s filing date; and to take final action making the requested finding or denying the Section 126(b) petition within 60 days of this ruling’s filing date.”
Further, “Defendants justify the need for almost a year extension to complete review of the petition on the 'many other important mandatory duties that the EPA is already obligated to complete by the end of this fiscal year.' Defendants also indicate that the extended time period is necessary to ensure a thorough evaluation and a sound decision. However, agency compliance more than two years after the filing of the petition is clearly at odds with [the] period of time that Congress deemed appropriate for EPA review of a Section 126(b) petition.”
Meanwhile, Maryland is suing EPA in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland over its failure to respond to its November 2016 petition seeking to regulate multiple power plants in five upwind states under section 126.
Further, Delaware Jan. 2 gave EPA 60 days' notice of its intent to sue the agency in district court over its lack of action over four petitions brought under section 126. The state is already suing EPA in appeals court over EPA's self-granted six-month extension of the statutory deadline to respond to such a petition.
In another example of a coming statutory deadline suit, Sierra Club and the Environmental Integrity Project Feb. 7 gave EPA 60 days notice of their intent to sue the agency in district court over its failure to grant or deny their petition for the agency to object to the Title V air operating permit of a Pennsylvania power plant.
The groups Dec. 4 petitioned EPA to object to the permit for the Wheelabrator Frackville Energy, Inc. power plant in Schuylkill County, PA, claiming deficiencies with the permit.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/former-doj-attorney-says-ozone-order-shows-sue-settle-policys-flaw
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Climate Change Just Got a Little Less Terrible
Feb 12, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Eric Roston
There are some 20,000 research papers listed on Google Scholar, a search engine for academics, that mention the worst-case scenario for climate change, one where an overpopulated, technology-poor world digs up all the coal it can find. Basically, it's the most cataclysmic estimate of global warming.
This scenario is important to scientists. It focuses minds on the unthinkable and how to avoid it. According to a provocative new analysis from the University of British Columbia, it's also wrong.
This is good news. The researchers contend that current goals of reducing coal, oil and gas consumption may be closer than we think, thus allowing us to set the bar even higher in our efforts to reduce pollution. The bad news is that this is good news in the way a destabilizing climate-shift is preferable to planetary extinction: We are still in a lot of trouble. Nevertheless, if the study is verified by other scientists and catches a wave into the realm of policy makers, it could help accelerate initiatives to arrest global warming.
The basic issue has to do with coal. Quite simply, the more we burn, the faster we destroy the atmosphere. The darkest scenario assumes much more coal burning will take place in this century than is likely to happen, according to the study's authors. Their first paper, published in May, made it seem like the only people who see more coal use than the Trump administration are climate-scenario designers. For example, the most extreme worst-case storyline assumes that by 2100 coal would grow to 94 percent of the world energy supply. In 2015, that figure was about 28 percent.
The new work, published this week in Environmental Research Letters, shows just how much all that phantom coal may be distorting our picture of what the future may look like. It casts “doubt on whether this outlook is still valid,” the researchers write.
The worst-case scenario is one of four siblings. Their names, from bad to worst, are RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. They were introduced in 2011 as a way for researchers running different climate-economic models to do comparable studies regarding how high greenhouse gas concentrations might rise by 2100.
These four storylines range from a 2100 in which aggressive global climate policy leads to low warming, to one in which humanity digs up and burns anything that'll catch fire.
One big problem with the amount of coal burning assumed by RCP8.5 is that there's probably not enough extractable coal to make the scenario possible. “We don't think it's going to happen,” said Justin Ritchie, lead author of the University of British Columbia study and a Ph.D. candidate. “That's extremely unlikely and also inconsistent with every year since the late 19th century.”
RCP8.5, the authors said, fails to match up with long-term trends in world energy use. The amount of greenhouse gases emitted as a result of using energy—called the carbon intensity of energy—has been slipping for decades. Burning oil produces less carbon dioxide molecule for molecule than burning coal. Burning natural gas produces much less carbon than burning oil, and renewables such as solar and wind burn nothing at all.
The drop in carbon intensity is likely to continue as coal use peaks, which may happen in the next 10 years, according to the 2017 BP Energy Outlook. Ritchie and his co-author, Professor Hadi Dowlatabadi of the university's Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, suggest that climate scenarios should be adjusted to capture this “passive decarbonization.” Instead, 210 scenarios used in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected the reverse: a “re-carbonization,” as coal's influence overpowers much-reduced emissions from oil and gas.
As national and state governments enact or update laws designed to lower emissions, policymakers rely on our evolving understanding of what's happening to the world. If Ritchie and Dowlatabadi are right, and the very worst probabilities aren't probable, then policymakers can set tighter goals at the same cost. By assuming that humanity, if left unchecked, would burn a lot more coal in the future, RCP8.5 may have wrongly limited the goals in our efforts to cut back.
The 2015 Paris Agreement called for limiting warming to from 1.5 degrees to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Global average temperatures have already risen almost 1C in the past century. The 1.5C goal may already be impossible, and 2C would require major emissions reductions and, later this century, technological advances to pull enough carbon out of the air.
The disconnect between the historical decarbonization trend and the demands of RCP8.5 shed light on the often-ignored foundation of the world's climate goals: the baseline. Paying attention to climate goals without studying optimal baselines is like watching the end of a marathon without knowing where or when it started.
“We worry if the 2C pathway is feasible, but we need to apply the same thinking and logic to baseline scenarios,” said Glen Peters, research director of the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo. Peters's group is working to make climate-research scenarios and modeling more accessible to investors. Noah Kaufman, a research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, agreed that goals receive vastly more attention than observed baselines, when both are actually important parts of the same story. “There hasn't been much push toward getting these scenarios right,” he said.
Researchers run hundreds of scenarios to cover the breadth of possibilities the future may hold. For a while—when China was really coaling up a few years back—some thought the worst case looked like the coming future. Those concerns were parried by others, who pointed out that short-term pollution trends don't mean a long-term commitment, said Detlef van Vuuren, senior researcher at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and lead author of a 2011 overview of the RCPs.
He said that just because something has become unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible, and given the stakes of climate change, it's best to be thorough. There could be a coal resurgence, or methane from melting permafrost could supersize emissions, for example. “But decreasing renewable energy costs and emerging climate policy would be reasons to” expect a less calamitous outlook, van Vuuren said.
Bas van Ruijven, a senior research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, outside Vienna, said the new paper may not be as disruptive as its authors think. He noted even they concede that steps have been taken to improve the accuracy of the RCPs. A new generation of scenarios already harmonize better with existing trends. Three of them even show continued decarbonization—and not a return to the coal bonanza, he said.
“The community is actually already producing ‘better’ baseline scenarios that build upon recent developments in the energy sector,” including shale gas and renewables, van Ruijven said.
There are no crystal balls, particularly on the timelines which govern climate-economic models. It's not impossible that societies will return to coal in the way they are now fleeing it, particularly if population growth continues apace and technological aspirations fall short. “Humans are very hungry for energy,” van Ruijven said. If renewables hit a wall, oil and gas dry up and we punt forever on climate change, “we might well be excavating all the coal we can put our hands on.”
—With assistance from Chloe Whiteaker.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=128012816&vname=dennotallissues&fn=128012816&jd=128012816
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