Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 3/7/2018
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(ACC Mentioned) DowDuPont Says Steel Tariff Hurts Case for More U.S. Factories (Corrected)
Mar 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jack Kaskey
DowDuPont Inc., the world's largest chemical company, is considering Canada or Argentina instead of the U.S. Gulf Coast for its next major investment as President Donald Trump's proposed steel tariffs make domestic construction pricier. -
(ACC Mentioned) Recycling Industry Could See Variety of Metals Tariff Impacts
Mar 7, 2018 | Resource Recycling
By Colin Staub
Steel and aluminum imports have been singled out by the White House, and though plenty of questions linger about the development, prices for recyclables could jump in the short term. -
GAO to Focus on Political Appointees Filling Advisory Boards
Mar 6, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
The Government Accountability Office is expanding its inquiry into U.S. EPA's filling of advisory committee slots to look more closely at the role of political appointees in the selection process. -
EPA Side Hustles Draw Congressional Democrats’ Scrutiny (1)
Mar 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
Congressional Democrats are digging for more information on the side businesses of top EPA aides in an effort to uncover more details about how businesses shape the federal agency's decisions. -
Scott Pruitt Just Released His First Year Report Card. EWG Marked It Up and Sent It Back.
Mar 6, 2018 | Environmental Working Group
By Alex Formuzis
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt just released his list of “accomplishments” as he marks his first year as administrator of the agency. -
(ACC Mentioned) Hold That Plate Lunch! Lawmakers Consider Statewide Ban of Popular Foam Containers
Mar 7, 2018 | Hawaii News Now
By Mileka Lincoln
Hawaii senators later this week are expected to vote on a bill that would prohibit the sale and use of polystyrene foam containers statewide.Additional LinksMaui County Council approves measure banning use, sale of polystyrene 'plate lunch' containers -
Ohio AG Files New 'Super Tort' Suit over PCB Contamination
Mar 7, 2018 | Inside EPA
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) has filed the latest in a series of common law suits brought by state and local officials against the manufacturers of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to address contamination, a move that expands a series of similar suits brought by West Coast officials... -
Interior Inspectors Will Spend Less Time Offshore, Zinke Says
Mar 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Nushin Huq
The Interior Department's new inspection program for offshore oil and natural gas production facilities will focus on equipment, Secretary Ryan Zinke told industry representatives in Houston. -
Dems Ask for Longer Comment Period on Trump’s Offshore Drilling Plan
Mar 6, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A group of Senate Democrats is asking the Trump administration to extend the comment period for its controversial offshore drilling plan. -
Barrasso Worries Tariffs Would Spark Retaliation on Energy Exports
Mar 6, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
Sen. John Barrasso, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, says he fears the tariffs sought by President Donald Trump on aluminum and steel will trigger retaliatory actions against U.S. energy exports. -
Trump’s Proposed Tariffs Introduce Uncertainty
Mar 7, 2018 | Platts
By Harry Weber
Getting inside President Donald Trump’s head was an early theme Monday at CERAWeek by IHS Markit. -
Co-Tenancy Awaiting Signature by West Virginia’s Governor
Mar 7, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
West Virginia’s natural gas industry is “anxiously awaiting” Republican Gov. Jim Justice’s signature on co-tenancy legislation that would modernize the mineral law and better accommodate unconventional development in the state. -
Exxon's $8 Billion Wager on Algae Pools Signals Post-Oil World
Mar 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Kevin Crowley
Exxon Mobil Corp. is testing whether biofuel created from algae can work at an industrial scale, part of an $8 billion peek into potential low-carbon technologies by the world's largest publicly traded producer of crude oil. -
After Decades Of Air Pollution, A Louisiana Town Rebels Against A Chemical Giant
Mar 6, 2018 | NPR
By Rebecca Hersher
Robert Taylor isn't sure why he's alive. "My mother succumbed to bone cancer. My brother had lung cancer," he ticks them off on his fingers. "My sister, I think it was cervical cancer. My nephew lung cancer." -
Clean-Up Chemicals at Deepwater Horizon Made Coast Guard Workers Sicker Than Spilled Oil: Report
Mar 7, 2018 | Newsweek
By Ewan Palmer
Coast Guard workers exposed to chemicals used to clean up the Deepwater Horizon disaster suffered a series of illnesses and at a greater rate than those who were exposed to just the oil, a study has found. -
Chao Pitches Permitting at Testy Hearing
Mar 7, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao yesterday continued her campaign to defend President Trump's infrastructure plan, sparring with House Democrats on issues ranging from environmental permitting to the contentious Gateway project. -
Imposing Regulations on Railroad Industry Will Harm Small Business
Mar 6, 2018 | The Hill - Opinion
By Raymond Keating
March 7 is Railroad Day on Capitol Hill. Entrepreneurs, executives and workers from across railway industries will communicate to members of Congress how important railroads are to the U.S. economy. -
House Sets Votes on Bills to Ease Obama EPA Air Rules
Mar 6, 2018 | Inside EPA
The House is slated to vote this week on two primarily GOP-backed bills that aim to soften Obama-era air rules for brick manufacturers, waste coal-fired power plants, and residential wood-burning heaters, with the measures expected to clear the lower chamber over broad Democratic opposition. -
How Trump’s Climate Skeptics Are Changing the Country
Mar 6, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Emily Holden
President Donald Trump is filling the upper ranks of his administration with appointees who share his disbelief in the scientific evidence for climate change — giving them an opportunity to impose their views on policies ranging from disaster planning to national security to housing standards. -
5th Circuit Judges Doubt EPA's NSR Enforcement for 'Ongoing' Violations
Mar 6, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit appears to be doubting EPA's long-running claim that it can enforce alleged violations of its Clean Air Act new source (NSR) permit program as “ongoing” rather than one-time events, which could significantly limit NSR -
A Secret Superpower, Right in Your Backyard
Mar 6, 2018 | New York Times
By Kendra Pierre-Louis
As the verdant hills of Wakanda are secretly enriched with the fictional metal vibranium in “Black Panther,” your average backyard also has hidden superpowers: Its soil can absorb and store a significant amount of carbon from the air...
Industry and Association News
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) DowDuPont Says Steel Tariff Hurts Case for More U.S. Factories (Corrected)
Mar 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jack Kaskey
DowDuPont Inc., the world's largest chemical company, is considering Canada or Argentina instead of the U.S. Gulf Coast for its next major investment as President Donald Trump's proposed steel tariffs make domestic construction pricier.
The tariffs would add hundreds of million of dollars to DowDuPont's next wave of petrochemical expansion, said Jim Fitterling, chief operating officer of the Dow unit.
“You eventually get yourself to the point where you are saying, ‘Should I really be building that here or somewhere else?’” Fitterling said March 6 on the sidelines of the CERAWeek by IHS Market energy conference in Houston. “We've got opportunities in other places like Canada, like Argentina. All of them right now are on the radar screen.”
DowDupont last year completed construction of $6 billion in new factories along the Texas Gulf Coast to take advantage of abundant, low-cost natural gas from the shale drilling boom. Those plants contained about $1.2 billion worth of steel, Fitterling said March 6 in an interview. Trump's proposed 25 percent tax on steel imports would have added about $300 million in costs to the project.
Next Wave
The company, which in May announced another $6 billion of U.S. projects, plans to disclose a big investment before the Dow unit is spun off as a separate company in the first quarter of next year, Fitterling said. But the economics of the development are shifting.
Rising U.S. exports of propane and ethane—the gas liquids that Dow converts into chemicals and plastics—already threaten to narrow U.S. profit margins. Steel tariffs would reduce U.S. profitability further, he said.
Nearly half of all U.S. manufacturing investment for the past two years has been for chemical plants, largely because shale gas provides a cost advantage over other areas of the world, he said. That's helped turn a U.S. trade deficit for chemicals into a surplus, the COO said.
“You don't want to stop that development from happening,” Fitterling said. “You don't want policies to get in the way of that. Before we start damping everything, let's see what's at risk.”
Shale gas has spurred $185 billion of completed and proposed investments in chemical and plastics factories, with about half of the spending yet to begin, the American Chemistry Council said March 2. President Trump should reconsider the tariffs that will hurt a sector that is creating jobs, the industry group added.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=129219672&vname=dennotallissues&fn=129219672&jd=129219672
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(ACC Mentioned) Recycling Industry Could See Variety of Metals Tariff Impacts
Mar 7, 2018 | Resource Recycling
By Colin Staub
Steel and aluminum imports have been singled out by the White House, and though plenty of questions linger about the development, prices for recyclables could jump in the short term.
In March 1 remarks, President Donald Trump said he plans to impose import tariffs of 25 percent for steel and 10 percent for aluminum, measures he said would be in effect for “a long period of time.” He said the proposals are being written this week.
He said the goal is to bolster the domestic steel and aluminum industries by reducing what industry groups have described as unfair competition with overseas companies.
“What they do is they dump massive amounts of product on our country, and it just kills – it destroys our companies and our jobs,” Trump said. “And it’s been happening for so many years, and we are not the beneficiary.”
The tariff talk comes shortly after the release of Department of Commerce reports on steel and aluminum imports. They found substantial impacts on the domestic industries for each material, and characterized the effects as a national security threat.
Industry groups react
The impact on the scrap industry as a whole is uncertain, since the various industry sectors could fare differently. The top trade organizations for recovered materials are primarily taking a wait-and-see stance.
David Biderman, executive director of the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), said the tariffs would have a number of impacts on the waste and recycling industry if implemented, chiefly due to the anticipated rise in commodity prices the tariffs would bring.
“In the short term, the tariffs will likely generate a little more revenue for recycling programs,” he said. “However, solid waste vehicles and containers are made primarily of metal, and their cost can be expected to increase as well.”
He added it’s “too early to tell whether these changes will have similar impacts in Canada,” which would be subject to the tariffs for steel and aluminum shipped into the U.S.
The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) has not taken a stance on the proposal.
“Until we see more details from the administration about how they’re going to implement these new tariffs, we don’t have a clear (position) on how it impacts the recycling industry,” Adina Renee Adler, ISRI’s senior director of international relations, told Resource Recycling.
The National Waste and Recycling Association (NWRA) is following the developments and will “do its part to help meet the nation’s steel and aluminum needs,” said NWRA spokesman Brandon Wright.
Steel and aluminum interests have lobbied for import controls, citing imports as artificially driving down metal prices and hurting American businesses. In statements following Trump’s announcement, the American Iron and Steel Institute thanked the president for “following through on his commitment to addressing the steel crisis.” The Aluminum Association also released a statement in response to the Commerce reports, describing Trump’s “commitment to strengthening the U.S. aluminum industry.”
Reducing foreign competition would likely drive up prices and increase demand for domestically created steel. It could also translate to more demand for scrap metals. But the end users paying higher prices would almost certainly pass the cost onto consumers. Higher prices could diminish sales, ultimately lessening demand for the metals.
That fear was clearly articulated in a release from the Beer Institute, an industry association. The group condemned the tariff proposal, describing it as a new tax on brewers and beer importers. The aluminum tariff would “increase the cost of aluminum in the United States and endanger American jobs in the beer industry and throughout the supply chain,” the group wrote.
The Can Manufacturers Institute similarly criticized the tariffs and said it would file a petition with the Department of Commerce asking for materials used in can manufacturing to be excluded from the import tariffs.
Although the tariffs would only cover steel and aluminum, they may have bearing on other materials as well.With higher steel prices, natural gas pipeline firms could switch to using plastic pipe for certain projects, according to the American Gas Association. Steel could become too expensive, or its availability could be unreliable due to import restrictions. That could present an opportunity for higher demand in the recovered plastics sector. However, the American Chemistry Council said the tariffs could constrain plastics industry growth, because they will raise the cost of building materials needed for new facilities.
Trade war coming?
Shortly after the tariff announcement, the European Commission released statements condemning the policy. The statements called the proposal “a blatant intervention to protect U.S. domestic industry” and said the Commission would propose “countermeasures against the U.S. to rebalance the situation.”
Over the weekend, numerous countries made similar announcements, leading the World Trade Organization (WTO) to comment on Monday. Roberto Azevêdo, director-general of the WTO, described the “real risk of triggering an escalation of trade barriers across the globe” in response to the flurry of recent trade policy announcements.
“Once we start down this path, it will be very difficult to reverse direction,” he said. “An eye for an eye will leave us all blind and the world in deep recession. We must make every effort to avoid the fall of the first dominoes. There is still time.”
https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2018/03/06/recycling-industry-see-variety-metals-tariff-impacts/
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GAO to Focus on Political Appointees Filling Advisory Boards
Mar 6, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
The Government Accountability Office is expanding its inquiry into U.S. EPA's filling of advisory committee slots to look more closely at the role of political appointees in the selection process.
Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), citing the role of one senior official in naming two new members to a key air quality panel, had asked the congressional watchdog agency last month to examine whether it was typical for the EPA administrator and his subordinates to reject the advice of career employees in making appointments (E&E Daily, Feb. 15).
The two lawmakers also asked GAO to examine whether the Science Advisory Board Staff Office has "adequate policies and procedures" in place to vet nominees for compliance with the Ethics in Government Act and other applicable rules.
Carper and Whitehouse are both senior members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. In a written response tweeted out today by the EPW Committee's Democratic staff, a GAO official agreed to take on the added assignment, saying that the work is "within the scope of its authority."
In their request, Carper and Whitehouse pointed to the handling of appointments by EPA chief Scott Pruitt to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) last fall.
The seven-member committee provides outside expertise to EPA during regularly required reviews of the standards for ozone, particulate matter and four other pollutants.
Internal EPA records, the lawmakers wrote, indicated that Richard Yamada, a Pruitt appointee in EPA's Office of Research and Development, overrode the recommendations of career employees in the SAB Staff Office to promote two candidates over others who had been rated "most qualified."
Contrary to past practice, those records suggested that political appointees under Pruitt "are disregarding normal procedures and advice from career staff," their letter added. "By doing so, they are avoiding the procedures put in place by the agency to ensure compliance with federal law and risk undermining the integrity and impartiality of these boards."
The CASAC is one of almost two dozen EPA advisory committees. GAO began its review last year (E&E News PM, July 20, 2017).
Reporter Kevin Bogardus contributed.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/03/06/stories/1060075583
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EPA Side Hustles Draw Congressional Democrats’ Scrutiny (1)
Mar 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
Congressional Democrats are digging for more information on the side businesses of top EPA aides in an effort to uncover more details about how businesses shape the federal agency's decisions.
The move indicates an escalating scrutiny of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt's perceived ties with business, and a broader reflection of the Trump administration's practice of making decisions that result in financial gains to friends and associates.
Democratic Sens. Tom Carper of Delaware and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island called on Pruitt to disclose information about the role Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta plays at the agency. Perrotta, who heads Pruitt's security detail and is principal of the surveillance and cybersecurity firm Sequoia Security Group, works with Edwin Steinmetz.
Steinmetz was hired last year to sweep Pruitt's office for surveillance and recording devices and to purchase biometric locks, according to a March 6 letter from the senators, who requested details on Perrotta and Steinmetz and asked whether the relationship complied with ethics rules.
The senators’ letters come one day after House Energy and Commerce Democrats released documents March 5 showing that two top Environmental Protection Agency employees—John Konkus and Patrick Davis — received waivers to act as media consultants to clients.
The EPA didn't immediately comment on the letters.
Ethics Permission Granted
Konkus, EPA deputy associate administrator for public affairs, was given permission by the agency's top ethics official to earn up to $27,765 last year. Konkus provided advice on strategy, mail, and media production for at least two clients, according to the ethics waiver.
Davis, a special assistant in the Office of the Administrator, was granted a waiver to work outside of his EPA work hours for Telephone Town Hall Meeting, a provider of phone and online meeting services based in Genesee, Colo. A search on USASpending.gov, which hosts an online database of government contracts, for Telephone Town Hall Meeting or TTHM provided no results.
Neither Konkus nor Davis are allowed to participate in any EPA duties that will provide a “direct or predictable” financial benefit to their clients and must report their work on financial disclosure forms, according to the waivers.
The requirement that an employee recuse himself or herself on issues that could help their side business provides some oversight on the situation, Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, told Bloomberg Environment.
“There are checks and balances on this,” he said. But the possibility that Perrotta may have given helped his business partner obtain an exclusive contract with the EPA is troubling, Amey said.
“It could be an ethics issues as well as a contracting problem,” he said. “Sole-source” or “no-bid” contracts between a company and the federal government are allowed under certain circumstances but often frowned upon because it reduces competition.
Further Look
Konkus worked for Trump's presidential campaign in Florida and later served as the EPA liaison for Trump's transition team after the election. Davis worked as Colorado state director for the Trump campaign.
The committee's minority will now look into Konkus’ role at the EPA while maintaining a private media consulting business, a House Energy and Commerce Committee Democratic representative told Bloomberg Environment.
“We think that it is unacceptable that these employees are maintaining a secret roster of clients,” the representative said.
Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee didn't immediately respond to Bloomberg Environment's request for comment.
Konkus has been charged with deciding which entities are eligible to receive EPA grants, an unusual role for a political appointee. The Washington Post reported last year that Konkus canceled nearly $2 million in competitively awarded grants to universities and nonprofit organizations working on climate change and other issues seen as contrary to the administration's priorities.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=129219671&vname=dennotallissues&fn=129219671&jd=129219671
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Scott Pruitt Just Released His First Year Report Card. EWG Marked It Up and Sent It Back.
Mar 6, 2018 | Environmental Working Group
By Alex Formuzis
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt just released his list of “accomplishments” as he marks his first year as administrator of the agency.
He lauded his decision to stop the ban of a pesticide the EPA’s own scientists wanted banned because it causes brain damage in children. He bragged about rescinding a rule to protect streams that provide drinking water for 117 million Americans. He patted himself on the back for repealing the Clean Power Plan, which would have prevented an additional 150,000 asthma attacks in kids, as well as his actions to rubber-stamp toxic chemicals without knowing if they’re safe.
EWG marked up the failures, exaggerations and deceptions on Pruitt’s report card. We’d give him an “A” on kowtowing to the interests of polluters. But on protecting public health and the environment? We had some corrections and comments.
https://www.ewg.org/planet-trump/2018/03/scott-pruitt-just-released-his-first-year-report-card-ewg-marked-it-and-sent-it#.Wp--VW1ubIU
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(ACC Mentioned) Hold That Plate Lunch! Lawmakers Consider Statewide Ban of Popular Foam Containers
Mar 7, 2018 | Hawaii News Now
By Mileka Lincoln
Hawaii senators later this week are expected to vote on a bill that would prohibit the sale and use of polystyrene foam containers statewide.Additional LinksMaui County Council approves measure banning use, sale of polystyrene 'plate lunch' containers
There have been repeated efforts over the years to ban what is more commonly known as Styrofoam containers, and several attempts to address the issue with county initiatives as well.
Senate Bill 2498 has already passed the Senate Commerce, Consumer Protection, and Health Committee and heads next to a full Senate vote.
The bill would prohibit restaurants and other vendors from selling or using polystyrene foam containers for serving food statewide starting in January 2019.
It would also authorize the Department of Health to require vendors to explain proper disposal of non-reusable food containers to customers.
The measure has strong support from the Surfrider Foundation, Sustainable Coastlines, the Sierra Club, and the Hawaii Wildlife Fund.
Environmentalists say polystyrene foam is one of the least recycled plastics and can persist in the environment for more than a million years.
They say these single-use products are slow to break down chemically and instead fragment into small pieces and are eaten by animals.
The Hawaii Food Industry Association, American Chemistry Council, Hawaii Restaurant Association, Hawaii Food Industry Association, and the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii all oppose the bill.
In written testimony, many pointed to the fact that biodegradable products cost 30 percent more than polystyrene products and the increase in costs could force the closure of small businesses.
A Styrofoam container ban is already in place for Maui County and will take effect at the end of this year. Hawaii County has a similar initiative that will roll out in July 2019. The Honolulu City Council is also considering a ban on foam containers.
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/37661171/hold-that-plate-lunch-lawmakers-consider-statewide-ban-of-popular-foam-containers
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Ohio AG Files New 'Super Tort' Suit over PCB Contamination
Mar 7, 2018 | Inside EPA
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) has filed the latest in a series of common law suits brought by state and local officials against the manufacturers of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to address contamination, a move that expands a series of similar suits brought by West Coast officials and brings a high-profile Republican plaintiff to the litigation.
Represented by private attorneys, DeWine March 5 filed suit in state court against Monsanto, the sole manufacturer of PCBs, and its successors seeking damages to address a series of common law claims, including nuisance, trespass and others. The state contends high PCB levels have caused the impairment of more than 100 significant Ohio waterbodies.
The lawsuit alleges that “Monsanto learned that its PCBs were toxic to humans in the 1930s, yet it kept producing them for decades, while concealing the dangers, denying the toxicity, and failing to give reasonable warnings about the hazards they posed to the environment,” according to a press release.
The suit seeks relief including unspecified “damages for harm to Ohio’s natural resources (including the economic impact) and an award of present and future costs to clean up PCB contamination,” the release adds.
Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice president of global strategy, said in a statement that the company was still reviewing the lawsuit but would “defend ourselves aggressively.”
He noted that the company voluntarily stopped producing PCBs more than 40 years ago and suggested that industrial and other consumers of the substance, including the federal government, may also be responsible. Those parties “put them to various uses and disposed of them in different ways,” he said.
DeWine's suit joins similar actions filed by state and local governments on the West Coast seeking to recoup damages from Monsanto and its successors for PCB contamination.
For example, Monsanto is currently fighting similar suits -- which the company has dubbed a “Super Tort” -- brought by Washington state and Oregon that also seek damages and cleanup costs for alleged injuries to its natural resources, public nuisance, product liability violations, negligence and others.
The company suffered a loss last year when a federal district court ruled that Washington state's suit should be heard by a state court, defeating the companies' efforts to prevent the state from gaining a "home court advantage."
The company is currently appealing the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Twelve West Coast municipal entities, including the cities of Seattle, Spokane, Portland, Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose, Long Beach, and San Diego, are also suing the companies.
But the city of Westport, CT, was recently unsuccessful in its suit against the companies over contamination in its school system stemming from caulk manufactured with PCBs. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit late last year upheld a lower court ruling dismissing the claim on the grounds that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated causation.
Nonetheless, a recent legal analysis suggests the West Coast municipalities' suits may be more successful and have “staying power.”
According to Gary Smith and Casey Clausen, lawyers at Beveridge & Diamond, some courts have agreed with the municipalities' allegations that PCBs migrated into their stormwater systems without any intervening acts by third parties.
“Thus, a direct line of causation between the widespread presence of PCBs in waterways can be traced to the manufacturer -- a line of causation that the municipalities allege Monsanto actually foresaw,” they write.
Nevertheless, the attorneys say the municipalities still face challenges, including the fact that one federal court has stayed actions until California entities exhaust administrative remedies before a state panel.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ohio-ag-files-new-super-tort-suit-over-pcb-contamination
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Interior Inspectors Will Spend Less Time Offshore, Zinke Says
Mar 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Nushin Huq
The Interior Department's new inspection program for offshore oil and natural gas production facilities will focus on equipment, Secretary Ryan Zinke told industry representatives in Houston.
The change focuses on inspection location not content.
Inspection of operational records such as maintenance and incident logs will now be conducted onshore, and inspectors will only be offshore looking at components on the offshore rigs, Zinke said during his March 6 remarks at CERAWeek by IHS Markit.
Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement inspects all oil and gas operations on the outer continental shelf. The inspections examine all safety equipment designed to prevent blowouts, fires, spills, or other major accidents.
The department will also be moving to a risk-based inspection program, but Zinke didn't elaborate on those plans.
“Not every component is important when it comes to risk,” Zinke said.
Lease Sale a Bellwether
Zinke also promoted the department's planned offshore lease sale, which he characterized as the largest in U.S. history. It will be a bellwether for the direction of the country's offshore development, Zinke said.
Interior's latest five-year leasing plan would open up more than 90 percent of federal offshore areas to oil and gas exploration, drawing criticism from coastal communities. The department will make sure local communities have a voice, Zinke said.
Onshore, Interior is looking at ways to encourage producers to capture gases instead of flaring, he said. Interior has proposed to revise an Obama-era rule that toughened restrictions on venting, flaring, and leaking of methane and other natural gases. The revisions would mostly be reversions to pre-existing regulations.
“We're willing to look at royalties in order to provide an incentive to do that,” Zinke said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=129219667&vname=dennotallissues&fn=129219667&jd=129219667
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Dems Ask for Longer Comment Period on Trump’s Offshore Drilling Plan
Mar 6, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A group of Senate Democrats is asking the Trump administration to extend the comment period for its controversial offshore drilling plan.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (Wash.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led 22 colleagues in a Monday letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke seeking the extension.
Friday is the end of a two-month period in which the Interior Department is taking comments on its plan. The plan, released in January, floated drilling almost everywhere it could be legally allowed: along the entire Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf coasts, as well as all around Alaska, except Bristol Bay.
“Given the large scope of the Draft Proposed Program, we believe a 60-day extension of the deadline for comments is necessary to allow for more public hearings in coastal areas and to give the public sufficient time to submit comments on offshore drilling proposed for nearly the entire U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), encompassing over 90 percent of total OCS acreage — the largest number of potential offshore lease sales ever proposed,” the Democratic senators wrote.
The lawmakers also criticized the entire public input process, including events Interior has been holding in coastal states, and called for more input opportunities.
“The opportunity for the public to provide input on the Draft Proposed Program is critical given the new, large scope of the Draft Proposed Program and its potential impacts on coastal communities and economies, the marine environment, and climate,” they wrote.
“We do not believe that the 23 currently announced ‘open house’ style meeting are adequate in duration, location, nor format needed to meet the public input requirements.”
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/376930-dems-ask-for-longer-comment-period-on-trumps-offshore-drilling-plan
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Barrasso Worries Tariffs Would Spark Retaliation on Energy Exports
Mar 6, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
Sen. John Barrasso, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, says he fears the tariffs sought by President Donald Trump on aluminum and steel will trigger retaliatory actions against U.S. energy exports.
"I worry about any recrimination with tariffs," he told POLITICO today. "For us in Wyoming, it’s energy for sure with natural gas, with coal. But it’s also our number one cash crop, which is beef. And then there’s soda ash."
"The president’s position is different than mine on this. I’m a free trader, as are people from my state, and I’m going to continue to work on that," he added.
Senior Republicans have pushed Trump to soften his approach on tariffs, warning of massive congressional resistance and a potential backlash in the midterm elections.
WHAT'S NEXT: The White House could slap a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum as soon as this week.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Trump’s Proposed Tariffs Introduce Uncertainty
Mar 7, 2018 | Platts
By Harry Weber
Getting inside President Donald Trump’s head was an early theme Monday at CERAWeek by IHS Markit.
Speakers were asked on the first day of the annual oil and gas confab to figure out what the US president will do next and how it will impact global energy markets.
Like with many things with Trump and his year-old Republican administration, executives, analysts and foreign industry leaders said they were scratching their heads. There seemed to be agreement that the US is not in decline, despite Trump’s suggestions to the contrary on the stump, and domestic production and exports will continue on an upswing as long as regulatory and trade policies don’t stand in the way.
“People want to believe in America’s sense of direction,” said John Scarlett, a Morgan Stanley senior adviser and former British intelligence chief.
That’s especially critical on the trade front. Trump’s talk of imposing tariffs on steel imports was the 800-pound gorilla in the room during several of the conference sessions. The virtually universal message to Trump so far from energy’s elite: Don’t go there.
“We’ll survive no matter what, but it is a thornier issue than perhaps what is printed in the headlines,” said Greg Armstrong, CEO of Plains All American Pipeline.
http://blogs.platts.com/2018/03/06/ceraweek-trump-proposed-tariffs-uncertainty/
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Co-Tenancy Awaiting Signature by West Virginia’s Governor
Mar 7, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
West Virginia’s natural gas industry is “anxiously awaiting” Republican Gov. Jim Justice’s signature on co-tenancy legislation that would modernize the mineral law and better accommodate unconventional development in the state.
After failing for years to reach consensus with an array of stakeholders inside and outside the legislature on similar proposals to enact forced pooling or joint development, the state Senate passed HB 4268 by a vote of 23-11 on Saturday. The bill had passed the House of Delegates 60-40 last month, but it had to be returned after minor changes were made in the Senate version. The House agreed and sent the bill to Justice’s desk with just days left before the regular sessions ends.
The co-tenancy legislation would require a producer to obtain consent from 75% of the mineral rights owners of a single tract of land. It’s common for dozens of people to own a single piece of property in the state, which has prevented some producers from developing assets when a minority co-tenant can’t be found or doesn’t agree to drilling.
While HB 4268 was still hotly debated in this year’s legislative session, it didn’t divide like similar bills have in the past. The industry, surface owners, and mineral owners all supported the bill.
“HB 4268 represents great compromise among the various stakeholder groups that have been interested in this issue for a number of years, and the passage of this bill is a victory to all of those groups, especially the mineral interest owners,” said Executive Director Anne Blankenship of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association.
As the bill was being debated in the Senate last week, Tom Huber, president of the West Virginia Royalty Owners Association told NGI’s Shale Dailythat the bill appealed to members in part because it would provide adequate protections for nonconsenting landowners. For example, the bill would allow those property owners the option of collecting a royalty or participating in a well by sharing the revenues and costs.
At one point last week, the bill seemed imperiled when Justice said it should be scrapped, brought to special session and traded for a higher severance tax to help fund pay raises for striking teachers. Justice later dropped the proposal and indicated he would sign it if it were to reach his desk.
The teacher strike was in its ninth day on Tuesday, but a solution appeared near. It was unclear when Justice could sign the co-tenancy legislation as he was devoting his attention to the strike.
WVONGA, other industry groups and some of their members have said for years that the state’s mineral laws had to be modernized to accommodate longer laterals and make the state more competitive with other energy producing states.
“Once effective, this bill will allow more access to the enormous amount of natural gas we are sitting upon in West Virginia, which will provide even greater economic benefits to West Virginia and its citizens, and game changing opportunities for downstream uses of natural gas,” Blankenship said Tuesday.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/113595-co-tenancy-awaiting-signature-by-west-virginias-governor
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Exxon's $8 Billion Wager on Algae Pools Signals Post-Oil World
Mar 7, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Kevin Crowley
Exxon Mobil Corp. is testing whether biofuel created from algae can work at an industrial scale, part of an $8 billion peek into potential low-carbon technologies by the world's largest publicly traded producer of crude oil.
The company has said its traditional fossil fuels business is under no threat from climate-change policies that may constrain demand for carbon-based fuels such as gasoline. The project, undertaken with gene-mapping pioneer Craig Venter, is exploring whether algae-based biofuel can be done on large enough scale to be a commercial business.
Exxon plans to take its biofuels experiment out of the laboratory and grow naturally occurring algae in ponds in California to explore whether it can be scaled up to producing 10,000 barrels a day by 2025, the Irving, Texas-based company said in a statement March 6. The project, a joint venture with gene-mapping pioneer Craig Venter's Synthetics Genomics Inc., aims to produce 10,000 barrels of the biofuel a day by 2025.
“This is Plan A for 9 billion people and you've got to mitigate climate change,’’ said Vijay Swarup, vice president of research and development at Exxon. “There is no B, C, D. We have to come up with these scalable solutions that can be used in a low carbon society.’’
Exxon has said its traditional fossil fuels business is under no threat from climate-change policies that may constrain demand for carbon-based fuels such as gasoline. Renewables such as wind and solar can't supply the sheer amount of energy that an expanding world population will need in coming decades, according to the company.
Even so, Exxon has spent about $8 billion since 2000 researching, developing and deploying low-carbon technologies.
The algae project, which started in 2009, is engineering strains of algae that convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into biofuels similar to diesel to be used for transportation.
“I see nothing but commitment from Exxon,” Oliver Fetzer, CEO of Synthetic Genomics, said in an interview. “It's easy to say haven't you been part of the problem but we've all been part of the problem. We all fly on airplanes we all consume energy. Until you have an alternative, it's easy to beat up companies for what they have done.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=129219691&vname=dennotallissues&fn=129219691&jd=129219691
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After Decades Of Air Pollution, A Louisiana Town Rebels Against A Chemical Giant
Mar 6, 2018 | NPR
By Rebecca Hersher
Robert Taylor isn't sure why he's alive.
"My mother succumbed to bone cancer. My brother had lung cancer," he ticks them off on his fingers. "My sister, I think it was cervical cancer. My nephew lung cancer." A favorite cousin. That cousin's son. Both neighbors on one side, one neighbor on the other. "And here I am. I don't understand how it decides who to take."
Taylor is 77. He was born in St. John the Baptist Parish, La., when the area was still covered in sugar cane fields, before the petrochemical industry came to that part of the Gulf Coast. Taylor grew up in a house built by his father. After Taylor got married, he built a house for his family right around the corner.
"I was born here, raised here. My children were born here, my grandchildren and my great grandchildren," he says. "This is ours."
But the area was changing. Easy access to the Mississippi River, growing domestic oil production and cheap land made the strip between Baton Rouge and New Orleans attractive to petrochemical companies. Today, the region's clusters of cancer cases have earned it an infamous nickname: cancer alley.
In St. John the Baptist Parish, the main sugar refinery closed. The chemical giant DuPont opened a plant in 1969 that manufactured the chemical chloroprene. Chloroprene is the main ingredient in neoprene, the rubbery material in wet suits, computer sleeves and many other consumer products.
The Louisiana facility is the only neoprene manufacturer in the U.S. And, according to an analysis by the EPA's National Air Toxics Assessment, the five census tracts around the plant have the highest cancer risk in the country — more than 700 times the national average in one tract.
For decades, Taylor and his neighbors wondered if emissions from the plant were making people in the community sick, but most people thought that challenging a chemical giant was a lost cause. The company was rich, the people were poor.
DuPont had obtained all the necessary state environmental permits, and had scientists, engineers and lawyers to protect its interests. Taylor and his neighbors didn't feel like they had any of those resources available to them.
"People say, 'What's wrong with y'all? Ya'll trying to fight DuPont?'" Taylor remembers. "'Y'all crazy? You can't win fighting DuPont!'"
And there was a more fundamental problem: No one knew exactly how dangerous the chemical chloroprene was. Until someone established how much was safe for people to breathe, it would virtually impossible for Taylor and his neighbors to know whether they were in danger, and, if so, to act.
But definitively assessing the hazards posed by a chemical takes enormous scientific resources — more than the local or even state government could afford. And, unbeknownst to Taylor, a fight was brewing over the federal program that could give him the information he needed.
How Toxic Is Too Toxic?
The EPA is home to one of the most rigorous public chemical hazard assessment programs in the world, called the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS.
"IRIS was created in the first place because different parts of EPA when working on the same chemical came to different conclusions," says Patricia Fenner-Crisp, who served in numerous senior toxicological roles at the EPA between 1978 and 2000, and helped design the IRIS program. "The thought was, can we create some kind of consensus process, so the agency presents a single face on chemical X?"
The result was a complex system that produces a single toxicity value for each chemical and conveys how much exposure is safe for humans. It is frequently referred to as the gold standard. Many EPA air and water rules rely on information from IRIS. It's a major source of chemical safety information for local and state environmental and health agencies. IRIS values have even been cited in environmental regulations and lawsuits outside the U.S.
For years, the IRIS program had been analyzing chloroprene.
In 2010, the EPA announced that the long-term exposure limit for breathing the chemical was 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter, and classified chloroprene as a "likely human carcinogen." Shortly after that, federal and state authorities started monitoring the air in the neighborhoods around the Louisiana plant, and found radically elevated levels of chloroprene.
Around that time, "EPA called and said, 'We need to talk about chloroprene,'" remembers Wilma Subra, a chemist and the lead technical adviser for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, which coordinates environmental and citizen groups across the state. She had been studying epidemiological effects of chloroprene for years, and pushing the EPA to use the IRIS program to do the same.
Subra got in touch with Taylor and told him about the IRIS number, and about the high levels of chloroprene showing up on air monitors. Taylor was frightened, angry and energized all at once. "I don't have power," he says. "I have information. That's what I got. That's what got me motivated."
Taylor became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to reduce pollution from the plant, which was sold to the Japanese chemical company Denka in 2015.
Earlier this year, the company finished installing technology it promised would reduce chloroprene emissions by 85 percent. So far, public air monitors suggest chloroprene levels in the surrounding area are still trending upward — as of early February multiple air monitors showed concentrations more than 1,500 times higher than the IRIS value.
Lawyers handling the case are pushing the state government to shut down the plant, at least temporarily.
Taylor also started a group called Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish that meets every week at a chapel up the road from the plant. They printed t-shirts that say "ONLY 0.2 WILL DO" on the front and wear them to community meetings and to picket outside the plant.
He says the IRIS number is his main source of power. "It's the ability to determine your own destiny. To have some input," he says. "That's the heartbeat of these concerned citizens."
But not everyone is happy with the 0.2 guideline. The company twice petitioned the EPA to change the safety threshold, arguing the IRIS analysis was faulty. The EPA declined both requests.
And the fight over the chloroprene plant has become a flashpoint in a larger fight playing out in Washington, D.C. Critics see the IRIS program as a poster child for ineffective government bureaucracy, and are pushing for it to be dismantled, or even killed.
"The program is failing"
Going back to its earliest days, IRIS has struggled to produce information quickly. The flip side of being rigorous is that it takes a long time to finish a single analysis. In one case, the program took 25 years to finish analyzing the chemical formaldehyde, only to have the analysis challenged in court by the chemical industry once it was completed.
The evaluation process takes so long, other offices within the EPA can't always depend on IRIS to provide information for regulations.
Under the Obama administration, there was a push to reform the IRIS program after the Government Accountability Office concluded in 2008 that, "the IRIS database is at serious risk of becoming obsolete because EPA has not been able to routinely complete timely, credible assessments or decrease its backlog of 70 ongoing assessments." In 2014, Congress requested that the program make a handful of changes to the way it analyzes chemicals, and in 2017 the GAO again questioned IRIS's efficiency.
Even Fenner-Crisp, who helped launch IRIS, believes the program needs to be overhauled. "It's internal incompetence and external pressures that all weigh on the program," she says. "They don't get anything done in a very timely manner, and they're aided and abetted in that by the regulated industry." Chemical companies use delaying tactics, she says, to slow down the process further, in order to delay regulations that might come from an IRIS value being published.
And, under the Trump administration, some lawmakers have been pushing to kill the IRIS program altogether. "The program has long suffered from a lack of scientific transparency and an inability to produce work in a timely fashion," said Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, a Republican, at one of many congressional hearings in recent years about reforming or eliminating IRIS. "The program is failing and is in danger of irrevocably subverting its mission."
Biggs and others point to the chloroprene plant in Louisiana as an example of IRIS being used to unjustly regulate the chemical industry. Because the plant is already complying with state pollution permits, they argue, company shouldn't be forced to reduce chloroprene emissions further.
In November, the Senate moved to eliminate funding for IRIS, although the current spending bill continues to fund the program. In the coming months, the National Academies of Science is expected to release a report on the program's progress instituting congressionally mandated reforms.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/03/06/583973428/after-decades-of-air-pollution-a-louisiana-town-rebels-against-a-chemical-giant
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Clean-Up Chemicals at Deepwater Horizon Made Coast Guard Workers Sicker Than Spilled Oil: Report
Mar 7, 2018 | Newsweek
By Ewan Palmer
Coast Guard workers exposed to chemicals used to clean up the Deepwater Horizon disaster suffered a series of illnesses and at a greater rate than those who were exposed to just the oil, a study has found.
Around 2000 responders who reported being exposed to dispersants used during the clean-up in the wake of the 2010 BP oil disaster reported a string of health issues, including lung irritation, nausea, vomiting, skin rashes and diarrhea.
According to research by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Coast Guard members who came into contact with the oil dispersants suffered symptoms at a higher rate than those who were not exposed to the chemicals or exposed to just the oil.
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"With increased levels of exposure there was a higher prevalence of reporting cough and shortness of breath, and more reporting of wheeze than non-exposed people," said Jennifer Rusiecki, a USU researcher involved in studies on the health impacts of Coast Guards members in the wake of the disaster.
Elsewhere, the study said those exposed to the dispersants were four times more likely to experience shortness of breath and three times more likely to report skin rashes than those who did not come into contact with the chemicals. They were also two times more likely to experience symptoms such as diarrhea and vomiting than their counterparts not exposed to the dispersants.
More than 4.9 million barrels of crude oil were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico following an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig which also killed 11 workers on site.
As part of the immense clean-up operation, approximately 1.8 million gallons of oil dispersant was sprayed from the air to the sea surface, as well as injected directly into the stream of oil leaving the damaged wellhead nearly one mile beneath the surface.
The two types of chemical supplied by BP, Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527, were used to reduce the interfacial tension between crude oil and water in order to make it easier to break down.
According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, workers brought in to clean up the spill had expressed concerns about the use of the chemicals sprayed directly from the sky. Responders were also told by BP and Corexit’s manufacturer, Nalco Environmental Solutions, that the chemicals were safe and that they wouldn’t even need to wear protective gear.
"I can tell you Coast Guard members were terrified of the concept of dispersants," Rear Admiral Erica Schwartz, the Coast Guard's director of health and safety, said.
This not the first time a study has made a link between the chemicals used in the oil spill clean-up affected human health. A ground-breaking study by the National Institutes of Health, published in September 2017, examined around 31,000 people involved in the clean-up. The research found they also experienced similar symptoms after being exposed, such as coughing, shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, and burning in the nose, throat, or lung .
In its conclusion, the study said: “Our findings suggest associations between exposure to dispersants, specifically Corexit EC9527A or Corexit EC9500A, and adverse acute health effects at the time of the oil spill response and clean-up as well as with symptoms that were present at the time of study enrolment one to three years later. ”
Schwartz said the latest USU study is “critical for our responders.” He added: "Nearly 20 percent of our workforce responded to the disaster."
Newsweek has contacted BP for comment on the latest study.
http://www.newsweek.com/coast-guards-exposed-chemical-used-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-clean-suffered-834243
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Chao Pitches Permitting at Testy Hearing
Mar 7, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao yesterday continued her campaign to defend President Trump's infrastructure plan, sparring with House Democrats on issues ranging from environmental permitting to the contentious Gateway project.
Chao's appearance before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee generally followed the same path as her testimony for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last week (E&E News PM, March 1).
But Chao added a layer of nuance to her position on the permitting provisions of Trump's proposal, which Democrats have largely decried as attacks on bedrock environmental laws.
Chao and other administration officials have repeatedly said during the past few weeks that changes to the permitting process don't preclude protecting the environment. Yesterday's hearing, the first look at the infrastructure plan on the House side, gave Chao a chance to discuss the issue in more detail.
"People get permitting and the deregulatory agenda mixed up," Chao said. "They're actually quite different."
Chao said the administration isn't necessarily talking about making major changes to the underlying regulations and laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, that govern projects using federal money.
Rather, the discussion should be centered on the lack of collaboration among permitting agencies and a process made redundant by similar requirements from different federal, state and local regulators.
"There is no reason why several permitting processes can't happen simultaneously instead of sequentially," Chao said.
That explanation didn't seem to satisfy Democrats, even if some have said they'd be open to working on permitting reform.
Trump has proposed putting a two-year shot clock on NEPA and requiring the White House Council on Environmental Quality to rewrite its NEPA guidance.
Environmentalists and some Democrats fear that those changes, in addition to proposed tweaks to the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, would amount to gutting the environmental review process.
Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.) yesterday called the administration's plan a "Trojan horse."
"We can't streamline our way out of underinvestment," she said at the hearing. "Rolling back environmental protections will not save hundreds of billions of dollars."
Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and other Republicans, meanwhile, were looking for jumping-off points to reform permitting.
Shuster suggested starting by looking at long permitting waits for Army Corps of Engineers projects. The Pennsylvania Republican said he'd like to see the Army Corps' Civil Works division under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation, or even the Interior Department, rather than the Department of Defense (E&E News PM, March 6).
"Today, there's no need for Civil Works to remain at DOD," he said. "It needs to be at a different agency."
The hearing bordered on a shouting match on several occasions when New York and New Jersey lawmakers brought up the Gateway project, a proposed new series of rail tunnels, bridges and other infrastructure aimed at bolstering the busy Northeast Corridor near New York City.
The Trump administration has signaled that it does not want to devote federal money to the project, reneging on a preliminary plan from the Obama administration to pay for half.
But the atmosphere was surprisingly sanguine when climate change, which goes unmentioned in Trump's plan, got a moment in the spotlight.
Republican Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a member of the Climate Solutions Caucus, brought the issue up.
Trump's plan puts a heavy emphasis on incentivizing public-private partnerships, with the goal of generating $1.5 trillion in total investment with just $200 billion in federal money.
But partnerships with the private sector aren't generally the best bet for coastal mitigation projects that are unlikely to generate revenue, Sanford said.
"Something's going on in terms of sea-level rise," Sanford said. "We can have long debates as to the why and the what, but bottom line is it's happening."'Everything is on the table'
As she has in previous appearances on Capitol Hill, Chao declined to take a position on raising the federal gasoline tax.
Members of both parties, including Shuster, have floated the idea as they try to find a way to pay for the plan and bolster the Highway Trust Fund.
"We have not yet come to a resolution on that," she said. "I think the good news for certain people is that everything is on the table and this administration is open to considering all revenue sources."
That's a line Chao has been repeating in some form or another for weeks now, even as Trump has reportedly explicitly endorsed a 25-cent-a-gallon increase in the gas tax.
"I acknowledge that pay-fors are a big issue, and so we want to work with the Congress to find solutions to that," Chao added.
To figure it out, Democrats are hoping to bring in other panels.
Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday penned a letter to committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) asking him to hold hearings on Trump's infrastructure plan.
"It has been nearly three years since our Committee held a hearing on these matters as they relate to infrastructure, and last year, major legislation regarding overhauling our country's aviation system bypassed its referral to Ways and Means," they wrote. "We urge you to not let that happen again as Congress considers the Trump administration's infrastructure proposal."
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/03/07/stories/1060075619
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Imposing Regulations on Railroad Industry Will Harm Small Business
Mar 6, 2018 | The Hill - Opinion
By Raymond Keating
March 7 is Railroad Day on Capitol Hill. Entrepreneurs, executives and workers from across railway industries will communicate to members of Congress how important railroads are to the U.S. economy. Make no mistake, the story of America’s freight railroads also is a small business story. The U.S. economy is an entrepreneurial, small business economy, with smaller firms being the majority in most industries. That’s no different in the sectors directly and indirectly impacted by freight railroads.
In terms of industry background, after decades of decline, the U.S. railroad industry was revitalized by a major federal policy change nearly 40 years ago, when Congress passed and President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Staggers Rail Act of 1980. That law partially deregulated railroads in terms of setting prices for services and setting rail rates, making decisions regarding what routes to use, and establishing shipper contracts, that is, allowing freight railroads to make decisions based on market conditions.
The benefits from this major deregulatory measure are recognized across the board in terms of vast improvements in industry efficiency and productivity, capital investment, maintenance and safety, market share, profitability, and reduced costs and enhanced service for customers.
Today, freight railroads, with 140,000 rail miles operated by seven Class I railroads and more than 500 regional and local railroads, stand out as an essential bloodline for the U.S. economy. For example, according to a Towson University study, in terms of total impact, Class I railroad operations and capital investment supported approximately 1.5 million jobs, $273.6 billion in output and $88.4 billion in wages in the United States. And these estimates do not include the entire freight railroad industry.
The Association of American Railroads has also noted that freight railroads spent more than $635 billion “on capital expenditures and maintenance expenses related to locomotives, freight cars, tracks, bridges, tunnels and other infrastructure and equipment” from 1980 to 2016.
In terms of this being a small business story, a wide variety of the industries directly and indirectly affected by U.S. railroads are about small firms, that is, smaller enterprises in the railroad business, and as both customers and suppliers. In terms of direct impact, sectors include the railroad rolling stock manufacturing industry, which makes or rebuilds locomotives, railroad cars and equipment, and other railway equipment, as well as the support activities for rail transportation industry, which features a wide array of transportation, cargo switching, maintenance and repair, safety, goods handling, renting and resale services.
In a new report that I authored for the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, we looked at 13 major industries directly and indirectly impacted by railroads. It turns out that in all but one of these industries, the majority of employer firms are small businesses with fewer than 20 employees, ranging from 51 percent of firms in the warehousing and storage sector to 93 percent in the agricultural sector. In all 13 sectors, firms with fewer than 100 employees make up at least 69 percent of employer firms, all the way to 99 percent in construction.
Specifically, in the support activities for rail transportation sector, 63 percent of firms have fewer than 20 workers and 81 percent fewer than 100 workers, and in the railroad rolling stock manufacturing industry, 43 percent have fewer than 50 workers and more than 69 percent fewer than 100 workers.
For good measure, many short line railroads are small businesses. According to American Short Line and Railroad Association, “Operating 47,500 route miles, or 29 percent of freight rail in the U.S., these small business railroad entities play a vital role in the hub-and-spoke transportation network, providing the connection between farmers, manufacturers and other industries, and ultimately, the consumer.” Short line railroads, like their larger peers, are also capital intensive, investing a quarter of revenue in capital and maintenance.
As the American economy grows, U.S. freight shipments are expected to grow by more than 40 percent from 2015 and 2040. So, it’s important that the best policy environment be established to incentivize the entrepreneurship, investment and innovation.
Therefore, any relapses into a regime of over-regulation — such as that prevailing before partial economic deregulation — would bode ill for railroads in terms of their ability and incentive for investment, for rail maintenance and safety, and for their ability to compete in the freight transportation marketplace with, for example, trucking. Over-regulation would generate assorted negatives, such as higher costs and reduced service for the small businesses in the broader railroad sector, in sectors serving railroads, in the many sectors served by railroads, and for consumers in general.
Unfortunately, certain interests have long been pushing the Surface Transportation Board to, in effect, reimpose price controls on the railroad industry and inflict “forced access” whereby railroads would be forced to open up their rail lines to competitors. If imposed, such measures would undermine profitability, investment and service. Specifically, such government controls would hinder the ability and incentive to invest in rail capacity, maintenance and innovation, generate additional costs, and strike blows against reliability, speed, efficiency and safety.
Clearly, policymakers need to stay focused on the fact that a healthy freight railroad industry, disciplined and encouraged to invest thanks to competition and deregulation, has been beneficial to countless small businesses throughout the economy.
Raymond J. Keating is chief economist for the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, whose members include firms in the railroad industry. He is the author of a new report “All Aboard! Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses Power Freight Railroads.”
http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/377034-imposing-regulations-on-railroad-industry-will-harm-small-business
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House Sets Votes on Bills to Ease Obama EPA Air Rules
Mar 6, 2018 | Inside EPA
The House is slated to vote this week on two primarily GOP-backed bills that aim to soften Obama-era air rules for brick manufacturers, waste coal-fired power plants, and residential wood-burning heaters, with the measures expected to clear the lower chamber over broad Democratic opposition.
The first of the EPA bills, H.R. 1917, is slated for a March 7 vote without further amendment. The bill aims to prevent the entry into force of Obama-era air toxics rules for the brick and clay products manufacturing sector until all pending federal appeals court litigation over the rule is resolved.
GOP lawmakers on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, including bill sponsor Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH), say the measure is a commonsense step to avoid imposition of tough new controls on industry until all uncertainty created by litigation is ended. Democrats counter that the bill, if enacted, would set a dangerous precedent that would encourage frivolous lawsuits to delay regulations indefinitely.
H.R. 1917 now also contains a measure -- formerly the stand-alone bill H.R. 453 -- to extend by three years a May 2020 deadline, until May 2023, for manufacturers of wood heaters to comply with the second phase of regulation under Obama EPA new source performance standards (NSPS) for the sector.
The second phase of the NSPS imposes tougher emissions limits that some smaller manufacturers say they cannot meet, but House Energy & Commerce Committee Democrats note that some companies in the industry are already complying with the tougher emissions limits. However, Minnesota Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson was the sponsor of H.R. 453, indicating some level of Democratic support for the measure.
Another bill, H.R. 1119, sponsored by Rep. Keith Rothfus (R-PA), would ease the terms of compliance with EPA's power plant air toxics rules for facilities using waste coal to generate power. The bill is scheduled for a March 8 vote, without further amendment.
Republicans say the bill would help the plants, most located in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, to clean up waste coal piles that cause environmental problems. But Democrats say the plants should not get a regulatory carve-out at the expense of other power plants, and should not be subject to softer pollution controls.
Should the bills clear the House, they will face an uncertain future in the Senate, where Democrats have expressed opposition to the brick kilns and wood heaters provisions.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/house-sets-votes-bills-ease-obama-epa-air-rules
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How Trump’s Climate Skeptics Are Changing the Country
Mar 6, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Emily Holden
President Donald Trump is filling the upper ranks of his administration with appointees who share his disbelief in the scientific evidence for climate change — giving them an opportunity to impose their views on policies ranging from disaster planning to national security to housing standards.
At the Interior Department, decisions about Pacific island territories threatened by rising seas are in the hands of an assistant secretary who has criticized “climate alarmists” for “once again predicting the end of the world as we know it.” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s top advisers include a former talk radio host who has dismissed much climate research as “junk science.” Trump’s nominee to head research and technology at the Department of Transportation claimed three years ago that global warming had “stopped” — a position at sharp odds with the findings of federal agencies like NASA.
Trump has chosen at least 20 like-minded people to serve as agency leaders and advisers, according to a POLITICO review of his appointees' past statements on climate science. And they are already having an impact in abandoning former President Barack Obama’s attempt to help unite the world against the threat of rising sea levels, worsening storms and spreading droughts.
Most famously, the president and his team have scrubbed mentions of climate change from government websites, kicked scientists off advisory boards, repudiated the Obama administration’s greenhouse gas regulations and made the U.S. the only nation on Earth to reject the 2015 Paris agreement on global warming.
More quietly, Trump’s White House excluded rising temperatures from the list of threats in its December national security strategy, contradicting the approach of both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. Last year, just before Hurricane Harvey drowned Houston, the White House rescinded requirements that projects built with federal dollars take into account the way warming temperatures might intensify extreme weather.
People worried about the consequences of climate change say a government that denies the problem is courting danger.
“The analogy could be if somebody’s got a heart problem or high cholesterol, you take medicine that helps manage that so you can avoid a heart attack,” said Ana Unruh Cohen, the government affairs director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Trump taking that away, saying, ‘Forget it, I don’t believe I have high cholesterol,’ is setting up the country for a heart attack.”
Aparna Mathur, a resident scholar in economic policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, found the trend worrying as well.
Many administration officials “don’t seem to believe climate change is real, or if they believe climate change is real, there’s this sort of attitude that there’s not much to do about it or it’s not caused by human actions,” said Mathur, whose AEI colleagues also include people who question the extent of man-made climate change. As a result, she said, the U.S. is falling behind countries that are taking action on the problem.
The doubts are coming from both prominent and little-known Trump appointees, in ways both obscure and subtle.
Some have expressed doubt that the Earth is warming at all, speculated that the trend might be good for humans, or said it’s just impossible to know how much of a role humans and their pollution are playing. All these statements fly in the face of findings by the government’s own research agencies and the vast majority of climate scientists.
“There are scientists that think lots of different things about climate change,” then-Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), now Trump’s CIA director, said on C-SPAN in 2013. “There’s some who think we’re warming, there’s some who think we’re cooling, there’s some who think that the last 16 years have shown a pretty stable climate environment.” Pompeo dodged the issue in his confirmation hearing last year, saying he would “prefer today not to get into the details of the climate debate and science.”
When he was running for president, HUD Secretary Ben Carson scoffed at the idea that strong evidence for human-caused climate change even exists. “I know there are a lot of people who say ‘overwhelming science,’ but then when you ask them to show the overwhelming science they never can show it,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2015.
Few have been as publicly outspoken on the issue as Trump, who more than once has dismissed human-caused climate change as a "hoax" and claimed in January that polar ice isn’t melting.
The White House sought to strike a somewhat more moderate tone in a statement to POLITICO on Monday, which said that “the climate has changed and is always changing. The Administration supports rigorous scientific analysis and debate." The statement from principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah added that "the development of modern and efficient infrastructure ... will reduce emissions and enable us to address future risks, including climate related risks.”
Some of the administration's climate skeptics have already come and gone.
Former HHS Secretary Tom Price, who had criticized the “allegedly ‘settled science’ of global warming” as a member of Congress, resigned in September amid criticism of his expensive travels on government and private planes. Kathleen Hartnett White, Trump’s pick to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, withdrew her nomination earlier this year after she stirred criticism with a long list of controversial statements, including calling the human role in climate change “very uncertain.”
Another unsuccessful nominee, former talk radio host and political science professor Sam Clovis, had to pull out of the running to be USDA’s chief scientist after critics noted that he has no science credentials — but he remains a top adviser to Perdue. Clovis dismissed much climate research as “junk science” in a 2014 interview, adding that “a lot of this global warming ... is really about income redistribution from rich nations that are industrialized to nations that are not.”
Brent Fewell, a conservative environmental lawyer who was an EPA water official under Bush, suggested that some of these officials may privately acknowledge that man-made climate change is real. But he added: “A lot of people on the political right are uninformed about the issue. For whatever reason, it’s a lot easier to simply agree with the prominent voices in the political party.”
The upshot is the same, however: a 180-degree reversal from Obama’s efforts to make the U.S. a leader in addressing the causes and consequences of a warming planet.
The EPA is leading the charge by withdrawing or weakening a host of climate regulations, including a 2015 rule that would have sped the electric power industry’s shift away from coal-fired energy. Trump has also approved tariffs for solar panel imports, which will make it harder for green energy to compete with fossil fuels. Agencies have sought to cancel rules meant to limit the oil and gas industry's methane pollution — another major greenhouse gas source — and are reconsidering tougher standards for vehicles, too.
The Energy Department has proposed regulatory changes to prop up coal plants that can’t compete in the market, while the White House is seeking buyers for U.S. coal and gas exports.
When Trump’s critics seek to challenge these actions in court, the government’s defense will be run by the Justice Department — an agency whose leader, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, said during a 2015 Senate hearing that carbon dioxide is “really not a pollutant.”
“It's a plant food, and it doesn't harm anybody except that it might include temperature increases,” Sessions said.
Some agencies are still continuing to study climate change and factor their findings into their policy decisions. But even there, career staffers may not talk about their work as openly as they once did, and the agencies seldom showcase it the way they did during the Obama years.
Much of the alarm among Trump’s critics focuses on EPA, which has replaced dozens of scientists on its key advisory boards with industry or state representatives, and has found other ways to keep researchers from contradicting the administration’s message. Last fall, the agency canceled an appearance by three EPA scientists scheduled to speak about climate change at a Narragansett Bay conference. Both EPA and the Energy Department have given extra scrutiny to grant proposals with the words “climate change,” and in the case of EPA, it has put a political appointee in charge of signing off on them, The Washington Post has reported.
All this is in line with the public statements of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has suggested that global warming might be a good thing and has spoken about holding a public debate on whether climate change is real.
“Right out of the gate … the administration took any and all mention of climate change off of the White House website,” said Jacob Carter, a research scientist who has been tracking the administration's treatment of science for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It seems like the administration is really trying to undo a lot of the scientific process as a whole and get experts out of the way.”
The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which has studied the purging and rewording of climate-related documents on government websites, reported at the end of 2017 that it had found a “significant loss of public access to information about climate change.”
The State Department’s website took down links related to the Paris climate agreement, EPA removed a student’s guide to climate change, and the Energy Department got rid of the words “clean energy” on a page with information for investors and businesses looking for projects with national laboratories.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which oversees energy development on federal land, cut text about the effects of climate change. Some of the resources are still technically available in archives or in new locations, but they are harder to find because the government sites don’t directly link to them, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative says.
“It’s not alarming the public because it’s very hard to see each incremental thing,” said Andrew Bergman, a co-author of the report.
Some Trump appointees have downplayed the idea that agency leaders’ personal views about climate change are critical to making policy, suggesting they can still respond to global warming’s effects without addressing why it’s happening.
“We continue to take seriously climate change — not the cause of it, but the things that we observe,” Tom Bossert, the president’s homeland security adviser, told reporters after last year’s spree of catastrophic hurricanes that ravaged Houston, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Sarah Hunt, who works in energy policy at the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, said that “policymaker views on climate science needn’t have any bearing on their support for conservative clean energy policies that spur the innovation we need to reduce emissions and promote environmental stewardship while we grow our economy.”
But Trump’s actions have reflected his views on the science. For example, one of his early executive orders in March 2017 eliminated a number of ways agencies had been required to consider climate change, including in environmental reviews for infrastructure projects.
Because so many of his appointees have questioned the conclusions of climate scientists, they are jettisoning climate change from routine processes. Those include EPA’s refusal to consider the global monetary benefits of curbing rising temperatures when it rolled back Obama-era rules for the power sector.
Still, some agencies have continued to issue major reports that warn that climate change is a real and growing problem — even as the president's staffers push the message that the science is uncertain.
In November, the government’s 13-agency National Climate Assessment concludedthat humans have pushed global temperatures to their highest level in modern times. In January, NASA published data showing that last year was the second-warmest on record, and noted that temperature rises are “driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere.”
Trump’s nominee to run the space agency, Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), criticized “climate change alarmists” on the House floor in 2013 and claimed that “global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago.” (In fact, they haven’t.) At his confirmation hearing last year, he acknowledged that humans are a cause of climate change but wouldn’t call them the main cause.
“That is a question that I do not have an answer to,” he said.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/03/how-trumps-climate-skeptics-are-changing-the-country-385111
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5th Circuit Judges Doubt EPA's NSR Enforcement for 'Ongoing' Violations
Mar 6, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit appears to be doubting EPA's long-running claim that it can enforce alleged violations of its Clean Air Act new source (NSR) permit program as “ongoing” rather than one-time events, which could significantly limit NSR enforcement if the court rejects EPA's position.
Although the Department of Justice (DOJ) on EPA's behalf is defending the claim that NSR violations are ongoing, a loss for the administration could boost EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and agency air chief William Wehrum in their bid to reform and ease the NSR program. Pruitt previously issued a policy memo deferring to industry data on when a facility should trigger NSR, which critics say will make it easier to avoid permits.
The memo addresses projected future emissions from a facility, and does not affect the 5th Circuit case, USA, et al. v. Luminant Generation, LLC, et al., which hinges on whether NSR violations are ongoing. A loss for EPA would make it harder to pursue NSR enforcement by imposing time limits on when cases could be filed, and would apply in the 5th Circuit states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas -- echoing existing decisions in at least five other circuits.
A win for EPA that finds NSR violations to be ongoing would create a split with those other circuits, significantly increasing the chance that the Supreme Court might hear an appeal of the 5th Circuit's eventual ruling.
In the long-running case, the Trump DOJ is continuing the Obama DOJ's enforcement action against Luminant for alleged NSR violations at several power plants. NSR applies in areas out of attainment with national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) and can impose stringent, expensive pollution control requirements, while the closely related prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) program applies in NAAQS attainment areas.
A federal district court in Texas said the alleged NSR violations cannot be considered ongoing and were one-off, time-limited and outside the statute of limitations for EPA to pursue enforcement. That prompted the Trump administration to appeal the case to the 5th Circuit.
Despite the effort by Pruitt and Wehrum to ease NSR, DOJ attorney Robert Lundman at March 5 argument in the case said noted that “this appeal is authorized post-administration change.”
DOJ in the case is defending EPA's longstanding position that violations of NSR are ongoing, not one-time events, and therefore such violations are not subject to the general five-year statute of limitations.
DOJ is further asking for Clean Air Act penalties for Luminant's failure to obtain the necessary PSD permit for modifications it undertook to its Big Brown and Martin Lake power plants in Texas. PSD permits are required for new and modified major pollution sources in areas attaining NAAQS.
Big Brown is now closed, and the three judges that heard argument -- E. Grady Jolly, James Dennis and Jennifer Walker Elrod -- pressed both DOJ and Luminant attorney P. Stephen Gidiere whether the case is now moot with respect to injunctive relief at this plant.
Neither party would concede that the case is moot with respect to the plant. DOJ is still pressing its claim for damages for NSR violations at the plant. Neither Gidiere nor Lundman said they could easily conceive of any injunctive relief that could be brought against the facility, however.
Martin Lake, meanwhile, is still in operation. EPA is seeking to force the plant to obtain a PSD permit from Texas that would include a best available control technology mandate, a level of emissions control that would reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 90 percent, Lundman said.
'Skin The Cat'
Jolly asked Lundman why EPA tried to “come through this door” of claiming ongoing violations because it presents problems related to the statute of limitations. Jolly pressed Lundman on whether there are other ways to “skin the cat” through other air law programs that could reduce SO2 and NOx from the plant.
The judge noted adverse rulings by other judicial circuits that found NSR violations to not be ongoing. “I can't understand why you want to go against all the other circuits,” Jolly said.
But Lundman said, “there is no other door that gets us the best available control technology limitation,” adding, “there is no program that requires this reduction but this program."
Lundman also pushed back against the idea that other appellate courts have all found against EPA regarding ongoing violations. “With respect to the injunction, we are not against all the other circuits,” he said. Some courts have found that the statute of limitation applies to penalties, but not to injunctive relief, for which there is no time limit, he said.
Elrod cited other circuits' rulings as precedent counting against EPA, saying DOJ is asking the court to create a circuit split with the 3rd, 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th Circuits. “There is no circuit that goes your way,” she said. “We have been very reluctant to do these continuing violations” under other statutes in other cases, Elrod noted.
DOJ relies on the 5th Circuit's 1996 ruling in United States v. Marine Shale Processors and the 6th Circuit's 2007 ruling in National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) v. Tennessee Valley Authority. In those cases, the courts ruled in favor of the federal government and environmentalists in cases involving NSR violations that the courts deemed “ongoing,” but in those cases state regulations in Louisiana and Tennessee explicitly created ongoing liability.
“The 6th Circuit goes our way,” Lundman said.
When pressed by Elrod on whether the NPCA ruling is “explicitly” relevant, Lundman said it is, “addressing exactly this sort of suit.”
The three judges were dubious that DOJ can get around the statute of limitations and claim that NSR violations are ongoing, pressing Lundman on why EPA did not bring enforcement action earlier.
But Lundman denied that EPA “sat on its haunches” and did nothing. “These things occur within the walls of the boiler. They don't have a duty to report that they are doing to us,” Lundman said. This makes it very difficult to enforce NSR before construction of a project begins.
Attorney Joshua Smith, representing Sierra Club which is supporting EPA in the case, said the statute of limitations “must be interpreted strictly in favor of the government” in this case. The ruling of a Texas federal district court that EPA is appealing, if left to stand, “has the possibility of upsetting the availability of injunctive relief across the board.”
Gidiere said, however, that EPA misinterprets the Clean Air Act, arguing that NSR/PSD prevents construction of a project without the appropriate permit, but not operation of a new or modified plant after the fact.
He argued that EPA missed opportunities to object to the plant's Title V air operating permit, which is an “umbrella” permit that should contain applicable requirements.
Lundman countered that “we cannot in the Title V process impose requirements that are not already in a permit,” in line with Trump EPA policy that the agency should not challenge the underlying provisions contained within a Title V permit, including states' decisions about whether PSD/NSR applies in the first place.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/5th-circuit-judges-doubt-epas-nsr-enforcement-ongoing-violations
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A Secret Superpower, Right in Your Backyard
Mar 6, 2018 | New York Times
By Kendra Pierre-Louis
As the verdant hills of Wakanda are secretly enriched with the fictional metal vibranium in “Black Panther,” your average backyard also has hidden superpowers: Its soil can absorb and store a significant amount of carbon from the air, unexpectedly making such green spaces an important asset in the battle against climate change.
Backyard soils can lock in more planet-warming carbon emissions than soils found in native grasslands or urban forests like arboretums, according to Carly Ziter, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The results of her research, published Tuesday in the journal Ecological Applications, were something of a surprise, given that those of us who have yards generally don’t think of them as “nature,” or as especially beneficial to the environment. But at least in this case, the things we enjoy for ourselves are also helping the community at large.
Ms. Ziter studied the powers of yards by knocking on doors in Madison and asking residents to let her sample their backyard soil. Parents would often send their children outside to observe Ms. Ziter’s work. “They would say, ‘Oh, there’s a scientist in the yard, go see what she’s doing,’” she said, laughing. “All of a sudden there would be three small children and a dog surrounding me when I’m taking soil samples.”
As cities look for ways to mitigate the effects of global warming, urban green spaces are often cited as a potential solution. Green spaces can reduce temperatures in cities where paved surfaces magnify hot weather, and they can capture storm water to reduce flooding as climate change leads to increasing rainfall in some parts of the country.
Until now most research in this vein focused on larger green spaces like parks, which could give the impression that smaller spaces like yards do not contribute to the bigger urban ecosystem.
“But what we realized is that people’s backyards are a really big player here,” Ms. Ziter said.
To get a more nuanced picture of the services that green spaces provide in a city, Ms. Ziter took soil samples from 100 sites in Madison. The sites ranged from forests to grasslands to open spaces, a category that includes parks, golf courses and cemeteries. She also sampled from residential lots, which cover 47 percent of Madison’s landscape (but only parts of those lots are yards).
The study showed that the soil in forest ecosystems was best at absorbing water. But soil on open and developed land — like golf courses and backyard lawns — was better at absorbing carbon.
It was not clear why the soil in residential green spaces was better at sequestering carbon, but Ms. Ziter thinks it might be related to how people manage their yards, like by mowing. So there is a risk that the carbon we release using gas-powered lawn mowers, for example, could eclipse the soil’s ability to absorb carbon.
And before we start chopping down forests and putting in lawns, it is important to note that the study focused on soils, not on what may be growing above.
“Carbon storage as an ecosystem service can’t be just reduced to soil carbon,” said Marco Keiluweit, an assistant professor of soils and the environment at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was not involved with the study. “You also have to factor in the carbon above ground. If you have a forest ecosystem you probably have as much locked up in trees.”
Still, the study suggests that fragmented ecosystems like those in backyards do benefit cities and should be factored into urban planning. For example, green spaces placed next to developed spaces might act as a buffer against the negative effects that impervious surfaces have on the environment.
Ms. Ziter and Dr. Keiluweit agreed that minimizing pavement and keeping green spaces green was an important first step.
“You don’t need to have a perfect lawn for it to be really beneficial,” Ms. Ziter said. “You don’t have to have an incredibly intensive management system. It’s O.K. to have things to be a little wild.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/climate/yard-garden-global-warming.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience
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